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July
30, 2003
David
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Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Congratulations
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29, 2003
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J. Nagy
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Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
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July
25, 2003
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Krieger
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Steve Dunifer
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Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
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Stew Albert
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Bush's Wars Weblog
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July
30, 2003
Killing
Mustafa Hussein
Death
of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
By LISA WALSH THOMAS
The death of a child: the birth of a national
hero.
This story is still in first draft, rough
with a lot of blanks to be filled in. On July 22, 200 American
soldiers with enough sophisticated weaponry to start a small
war attacked an upscale villa in the al-Falah neighborhood of
Mosul for the purpose of killing Saddam Hussein's two sons, Uday
and Qusay. The four people in the villa, who defended themselves
with only small arms for approximately four hours, included an
aide to one of the brothers and Qusay's 14-year old son, Mustafa.
But, according to information available
as of July 27, after the three adults were killed and killed
again and again (ten to twenty anti-tank missiles, depending
upon the source, but undeniably by a 50-to-1 ratio), 14-year
old Mustafa, grandson to Saddam Hussein, held off eighty or more
soldiers until he too was finally overcome and shot to death.
Were it not for the pathos of Mustafa's
still being a child, the events would evoke the last scene in
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." It's not, however,
very comfortable to laugh at the image of a brave 14-year old
boy, his dead father and uncle at his feet, mustering the courage
of legendary heroes to fight off two hundred men from the world's
mightiest military, all armed to the teeth against whatever small
arms one boy could grab.
It's a cruel story that civilized people
will never be comfortable with as we wonder what kind of thoughts
ran through the boy's head in his last moments. Surely he made
a conscious decision to fight to the death. He had apparently
been placed protectively in a back bedroom, so it might well
be that he emerged only upon the murder of his father. Was his
own nationalism as firmly entrenched in his mind as that of the
soldiers who had invaded and destroyed his country? Perhaps a
Steven Spielberg can someday put it together right. There is
surely a devastated mother somewhere, a best friend, a girl who
had caught her breath once upon speaking with the teenager. Maybe
it will come out that there are keepsakes, first shoes, a lucky
soccer ball, a piece of artwork from a child artist. That we
have to leave to the movies. OR to those who preserve all they
can of their heroes.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi people who did not
support Saddam or his sons now have a hero able to break hearts,
not the first time one was compiled by the bones of a valiant
death. Whereas Saddam, Uday, and Qusay -- unless they have been
demonized out of any semblance to truth -- were cruel to their
own people, young Mustafa is probably squeaky clean. We don't
yet know, but it could be difficult for those forces against
Iraqi insurgence to convincingly paint any fourteen year old
as "evil."
Mention of young Mustafa, even after
his death, is rare. A long search provided no detailed report,
no biography. It might well be assumed that this is one death
the killers would prefer to bury. We have photos of Uday and
Qusay. For those who enjoy gore, there are the indelicate naked
pictures that almost seem to boast -- twenty plus bullet holes,
blood, disfigurement. Then, when global outrage against the brash
bad taste of displaying such photos shook the Mideast, new photos
emerged, these patched up, like an American body in an American
morgue.
But there are no photos of Mustafa. Not
in life OR death.
The invaders have shrugged and said they
had no choice but to kill them. Some of us wish we had been contacted
so that we could have reminded them of sieges, of tear gas. For
reasons we don't yet understand, Uday and Qusay appear to have
been wanted dead, not alive. It speaks poorly for the mentality
of the designers of this killing. Captured, the brothers could
have been tried by their own victims and a picture of some kind
of justice could have replaced the barbaric embarrassment of
two hundred soldiers, many inept enough that the entire neighborhood
around the villa was bullet-riddled by the end of the attack,
fumbling as they killed.
The official line (stated by U.S. General
Sanchez) is that the Americans were careful, conducting an orderly
and gradual siege, taking every effort to avoid harming bystanders.
The neighbors in Mosul, however, describe the entire event as
a "chaotic free-for-all" where ushering local residents
to safety was never a factor. (Source: Guardian Unlimited - Special
Report; Julian Borger in Washington and Jonathan Steele in Mosul,
Thursday July 24, 2003)
Hundreds watched from the street as the
U.S. troops fired missiles launched from Humvees into the villa,
helicopter-borne US troops climbed by rope down to the rooftops
of the villa, and a steady barrage of gunfire kept the neighbors
in frightened prone positions, as they feared for their own lives.
Two days later 21-year old Anas Basil
Hamed was laid to rest in Mosul by his father as fifty or so
friends mourned his death. Neighbors claimed that Hamed was killed
by U.S. soldiers who fired into a crowd of young, unarmed Iraqis
who were throwing rocks at the troops, shortly after the fierce
firefight in which Mustafa was killed.
A U.S. military spokesman reported no
record of any civilians being shot at during the uprising, but
eight eyewitnesses (two of whom were recovering from gunshot
wounds themselves) report seeing four to eight U.S. soldiers
firing briefly into the crowd. Those interviewed did not know
each other, but they provided nearly identical accounts of the
incident. (source: Washington Post, "Troops Accused of Killing
in Mosul" by Kevin Sullivan, Saturday, July 26, 2003; Page
A13)
Further evidence indicates that shots
were fired away from the building where the Hussein brothers
were trapped, and toward an area far from the fighting, where
the crowd had gathered. One witness, Bashar Ghanim Hamoodi, was
able to retrieve Hamed's body and take it to a physician who
noted two fatal gunshots.
A shopkeeper, Ashad Akram Ahmad, showed
reporters two bullet holes in the facade of his shop. Their location
was directly behind the spot where witnesses say Hamad was shot
down. (Source of these two paragraphs is the same Kevin Sullivan/Washington
Post article cited above)
However much we want to defend our young
U.S. soldiers as being uninformed victims of the administration
now running our country, can we truly feel pride in the US Army's
101st Airborne Division and the 200 men who shot a 14-year old
to death?
And however much some want to demonize
any Muslim or any Iraqi who is not willing to kneel at the invaders'
feet, can they truly not be touched at the story, if it is accurate,
of a child fighting to the death against all odds?
Some see the event differently. Top civilian
administrator L. Paul Bremer said of the killings: "It certainly
is good news for the Iraqi people." Ahman Chalabi, <U.S.-picked>
delegate speaking at the United Nations, reported: "This
will contribute significantly to reducing attacks on coalition
soldiers." (Source: WBZ 4 News, July 22, 2003 9:20 pm)
But the facts belie such expectations.
Ten U.S. soldiers have died in the five days following the Mosul
killings, causing some to claim that it is not only Iraqis who
are the victims of the heavy-handed attack. And despite U.S.
administration claims that this was done for the benefit of the
Iraqi people, Andrea Stone of USA Today reported on July 23rd
that many people are now claiming to have "loved" the
Hussein brothers. She examples Arfan Khalid, a 28-year old shopkeeper
who made this threat. "Those who reported their hideout
to the Americans, I will slaughter them with my bare hands."
The person who betrayed the Hussein brothers
and Mustafa has not been clearly identified, but the U.S. has
confirmed that he will receive the 30 million dollar bounty that
led them to the villa. The Iraqi people have never once turned
in the snipers who are increasingly killing U.S. soldiers. It
appears that a large payoff is required.
At last word, the army would not return
the bodies of Oday and Qusay to their appropriate tribe for correct
Islamic burial procedures but, instead, said that Saddam himself
must claim the bodies. One wonders whether Mustafa's mother has
been refused the body of her young son for burial according to
his religion.
If this story is placed in the general
"We v. Them" context, it must surely be accepted that
"we" have no heroes here. "They" have one,
one so potentially explosive that it could draw millions of neutral
Iraqis into the resistance.
This one renders the biblical story of
David vs. Goliath small.
May one more Iraqi child rest in peace,
Insha Allah.
Lisa Walsh Thomas is a lifelong writer of poetry, fiction, arts
reviews, and political essays. Her second book, "The
Girl with Yellow Flowers in Her Hair," is available
through Pitchfork Publishing . Lisa invites comments at saavedra1979@yahoo.com
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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