Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 15, 2003
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
Recent
Stories
September 12, 2003
Writers Bloc
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demostration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
15, 2003
A Hail of Bullets,
a Trail of Dead
A
Mystery the US is in No Hurry to Solve
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
A human brain lay beside the highway. It was scattered
in the sand, blasted from its owner's head when the Americans
ambushed their own Iraqi policemen.
A few inches away were a policeman's
teeth, broken but clean dentures, the teeth of a young man. "I
don't know if they are the teeth of my brother--and I don't even
know if my brother is alive or dead," Ahmed Mohamed shouted
at me. "The Americans took the dead and the wounded away--they
won't tell us anything."
Ahmed Mohamed was telling the truth.
He is also, I should add, an Iraqi policeman working for the
Americans.
United States forces in Iraq officially
stated--incredibly--that they had "no information"
about the killing of the 10 cops and the wounding of five others
early yesterday morning. Unfortunately, the Americans are not
telling the truth.
Soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Divison
fired thousands of bullets in the ambush, hundreds of them smashing
the wall of a building in the neighbouring Jordanian Hospital
compound, setting several rooms on fire.
And if they really need "information",
they have only to look at the 40mm grenade cartridges scattered
in the sand near the brains and teeth.
On each is printed the coding "AMM
LOT MA-92A170-024". This is a US code for grenades belt-fired
from an American M-19 gun.
And out in Fallujah, where infuriated
Iraqi civilians roamed the streets after morning prayers looking
for US patrols to stone, it wasn't difficult to put the story
together. The local Americand-trained and American-paid police
chief, Qahtan Adnan Hamad--who confirmed that 10 died--described
hpow, not long after midnight yesterday morning, gunmen in a
BMW car had opened fire on the Mayor's office in Fallujah.
Two squads of the American-trained and
American-paid police force--from the local Fallujah constabulary
established by US forces last month and the newly constituted
Iraqi national police--set off in pursuit.
Since the Americans will not reveal the
truth, let Ahmed Mohamed, whose 28-year-old brother, Walid, was
one of the policemen who gave chase, tell his story.
"We have been told that the BMW
opened fire o the mayor's office at 12.30am. The police chased
them in two vehicles, a Nissan pick-up and a Honda car and they
set off down the old Kandar roads toward Baghdad.
"But the Americans were there in
the darkness, outside the Jordanian Hospital, to ambush cars
on the road. They let the BMW through and then fired at the police
cars."
One of the policemen who was wounded
in the second vehicle said the Americans suddenly appeared on
the darkened road. "When they shouted at us, we stopped
immediately," he said. "We tried to tell them we were
police. They just kept on shooting."
The latter is true. I found thousands
of brass cartridge cases at the scene, piles of them like autumn
leaves glimmering in the sun, along with the dark green grenade
cartridges. There were several hundred unfired bullets but--far
more disturbing--was the evidence on the walls of a building
at the Jordanian Hospital. At least 150 rounds had hit the breeze-block
wall and two rooms had burned out, the flames blackening the
outside of the building.
And therein lies another mystery that
the Americans were yesterday in no hurry to resolve. Several
Iraqis said that a Jordanian doctor in the hospital had been
killed and five nurses wounded. Yet when I approached the hospital
gate, I was confronted by three armed men who said they were
Jordanian. To enter hospitals here now, you must obtain permission
from the occupation authorities in Baghdad--which is rarely,
if ever, forthcoming.
No-one wants journalists prowling round
dismal morturaies in "liberated" Iraq. Who knows what
they might find.
"The doctors have gone to prayer
so you cannot come in," an unsmiling Jordanian gunman at
the gate told me. On the roof of the shattered hospital building,
two armed and helmeted guards watched us. They looked to me very
like Jordanian troops. And their hospital is opposite a US 3rd
Infantry Division base. Are the Jordanians here for the Americans?
Or are the Americans guarding the Jordanian Hospital? When I
asked if the bodies of the dead policemen were here, the armed
man at the gate shrugged his shoulders.
So what happened? Did the Americans shoot
down their Iraqi policemen under the mistaken impression that
they were "terrorists"--Saddamite or al-Qa'ida, depending
on their faith in President George Bush--and then, once their
bullets had smashed into the hospital, come under attack from
the Jordanian guards on the roof? In any other land the Americans
would surely have acknowledged some of the truth.
But all they would speak of yesterday
were their own casualties. Two US soldiers were killed and seven
wounded in a raid in the neighbouring town of Ramadi when the
occupants of a house fired back at them. It gave the impression,
of course, that American lives were infinetly more valuable than
Iraqi lives.
And had the brains and teeth beside the
road outside Fallujah been American brains and teeth, of course,
they would have been removed. There were other things beside
the highway yesterday.
A torn, blood-stained fragment of an
American-supplied Iraqi policeman's shirt, a primitive tourniquet
and medical gauze and lots and lots of dried, blackened blood.
The 3rd Infantry Division are tired, so the story goes here.
They invaded Iraq in March and haven't been home since. Their
morale is low. Or so they say in Fallujah and Baghdad.
But already the cancer of rumour is beginning
to turn this massacre into something far more dangerous. Here
are the words of Ahmed, whose brother Sabah was a policeman caught
inh the ambush and taken away by the Americans--alive or dead,
he dosen't know--and who turned up to examine the blood and cartridge
cases yesterday.
"The Americans were forced to leave
Fallujah after much fighting following their killing of 16 demonstrators
in April. They were forced to hire a Fallujah police force. But
they wanted to return to Fallujah so they arranged the ambush.
The BMW 'gunmen' who were supposed to show there was no security
in Fallujah--so the Americans could return. Our police kept crying
out: 'We are the police--we are the police'. And the Americans
went on shooting."
In vain did I try to explain that the
last thing the Americans wanted to do was to return to the Sunni
Muslim Saddamite town of Fallujah. Already they have paid "blood
money" to the families of local, innocent Iraqis shot down
at their checkpoints. They will have to do the same to the tribal
leader whose two sons they also killed at another checkpoint
near Fallujah on Thursday night.
But why did the Americans kill so many
of their own Iraqi policemen? Had they not heard the radio appeals
of the dying men? Why--and here the story of the Jordanian Hospital
guard's and the policemen's relatives were the same--did tjhe
Americans go on shooting for an hour and a half? And why did
the Americans say that they had "no information" about
the slaughter 18 hours after they had gunned down 10 of the very
men whom President Bush needs most if he wishes to extricate
his army from the Iraqi death trap?
Robert Fisk is
a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity
the Nation. He is also a contributor to Cockburn and
St. Clair's forthcoming book, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|