Okay so here’s my question. How many pictures have you seen in photo albumbs of people sitting at the table in a resturant? My guess is that you could count them all on one hand! But think about how many pictures you have been in at the table in a resturant. My family is obsessed with this practice, we take pictuers of anything fancier than McDonald’s. But I’ve yet to see one of these pictures again… why? Because they stink! You can’t see anyone because there are usually 20 people at the talbe, and it’s usually dimly lit, and to top it all off you can’t even remember where you were eating at… so you don’t bother to show them to anyone.

I however will be startgin an entire collection of these odd pictures… please send any my way.

Again, we have to read about it because without pictures and stories we do not hold ourselves accountable for our actions. On that note, I would like to say how much I appreciate War Photographers who do not let us get away with unconsionable things without seeing with our eyes the effects.

Wailing children, the wounded, the dead: victims of the day cluster bombs rained on Babylon
by Robert Fisk
03 April 2003

The wounds are vicious and deep, a rash of scarlet spots on the back and thighs or face, the shards of shrapnel from the cluster bombs buried an inch or more in the flesh. The wards of the Hillah teaching hospital are proof that something illegal – something quite outside the Geneva Conventions – occurred in the villages around the city once known as Babylon.

The wailing children, the young women with breast and leg wounds, the 10 patients upon whom doctors had to perform brain surgery to remove metal from their heads, talk of the days and nights when the explosives fell “like grapes” from the sky. Cluster bombs, the doctors say – and the detritus of the air raids around the hamlets of Nadr and Djifil and Akramin and Mahawil and Mohandesin and Hail Askeri shows that they are right.

Were they American or British aircraft that showered these villages with one of the most lethal weapons of modern warfare? The 61 dead who have passed through the Hillah hospital since Saturday night cannot tell us. Nor can the survivors who, in many cases, were sitting in their homes when the white canisters opened high above their village, spilling thousands of bomblets into the sky, exploding in the air, soaring through windows and doorways to burst indoors or bouncing off the roofs of the concrete huts to blow up later in the roadways.

Rahed Hakem remembers that it was 10.30am on Sunday when she was sitting in her home in Nadr, that she heard “the voice of explosions” and looked out of the door to see “the sky raining fire”. She said the bomblets were a black-grey colour. Mohamed Moussa described the clusters of “little boxes” that fell out of the sky in the same village and thought they were silver-coloured. They fell like “small grapefruit,” he said. “If it hadn’t exploded and you touched it, it went off immediately,” he said. “They exploded in the air and on the ground and we still have some in our home, unexploded.”

Karima Mizler thought the bomblets had some kind of wires attached to them – perhaps the metal “butterfly” that contains sets of the tiny cluster bombs and springs open to release them in showers.

Some victims died at once, mostly women and children, some of whose blackened, decomposing remains lay in the tiny charnel house mortuary at the back of the Hillah hospital. The teaching college received more than 200 wounded since Saturday night – the 61 dead are only those who were brought to the hospital or who died during or after surgery, and many others are believed to have been buried in their home villages – and, of these, doctors say about 80 per cent were civilians.

Soldiers there certainly were, at least 40 if these statistics are to be believed, and amid the foul clothing of the dead outside the mortuary door I found a khaki military belt and a combat jacket. But village men can also be soldiers and both they and their wives and daughters insisted there were no military installations around their homes. True or false? Who is to know if a tank or a missile launcher was positioned in a nearby field – as they were along the highway north to Baghdad? But the Geneva Conventions demand protection for civilians even if they are intermingled with military personnel, and the use of cluster bombs in these villages – even if aimed at military targets – thus crosses the boundaries of international law.

So it was that 27-year old Asil Yamin came to receive those awful round wounds in her back. And so five-year-old Zaman Abbais was hit in the legs and 48-year-old Samira Abdul-Hamza in the eyes, chest and legs. Her son Haidar, a 32-year-old soldier, said the containers which fell to the ground were white with some red and green sometimes painted on them. ”It is like a grenade and they came into the houses,” he said. “Some stayed on the land, others exploded.”

Heartbreaking is the only word to describe 10-year-old Maryam Nasr and her five-year-old sister Hoda. Maryam has a patch over her right eye where a piece of bomblet embedded itself. She also had wounds to the stomach and thighs. I didn’t realise that Hoda, standing by her sister’s bed, was wounded until her mother carefully lifted the little girl’s scarf and long hair to show a deep puncture in the right side of her head, just above her ear, congealed blood sticking to her hair but the wound still gently bleeding. Their mother described how she had been inside her home and heard an explosion and found her daughters lying in their own blood near the door. The little girls alternately smiled and hid when I took their pictures. In other wards, the hideously wounded would try to laugh, to show their bravery. It was a humbling experience.

The Iraqi authorities, of course, were all too ready to allow us journalists access to these patients. But there was no way these children and often uneducated parents could manufacture their stories of tragedy and pain. Nor could the Iraqis have faked the scene in Nadr village where the remains of the tiny bomblets littered the ground beside the scorch marks. A crew from Sky Television even managed to bring a set of bomblet shrapnel back to Baghdad from Nadr with them, the wicked little metal balls that are intended to puncture the human body still locked into their frame like cough sweets in a metal sheath, They were of a black colour which glinted silver when held against the light.

Again, were the aircraft that dropped these terrible weapons American or British? The deputy administrator of the hospital and one of his doctors told a confused tale of military action around the city in recent days, of Apache helicopters that would disgorge special forces on the road to Karbala; one of their operations – if the hospital personnel are to be believed – went spectacularly wrong one night recently when militiamen forced them to retreat. Shortly afterwards, the cluster bomb raids began, although the villages that were targeted appear to have been on the other side of Hillah to the reported abortive American attack.

One thing was clear: there is no “front line” in the fighting around Babylon, that US forces strike into land around the Tigris river by air and then withdraw and Iraqi forces do much the same in the other direction. Only the Americans and British, of course, have air superiority – indeed there is no evidence a single Iraqi aircraft has taken off since the start of the invasion – so even the US and British officers back at Qatar headquarters can hardly claim the cluster bombs were dropped by Iraq.

The most recent raid occurred on Tuesday when 11 civilians were killed – two of them women and three of them children – in a village called Hindiyeh. A man sent to collect the corpses reported to the hospital the only living thing he found in the area was a hen. Iraqi bomb disposal officers were ordered into the villages yesterday afternoon to clear the unexploded ordnance.

Needless to say, it is not the first time cluster bombs have been used against civilians. During Israel’s 1982 siege of west Beirut, its air force dropped cluster bomblets manufactured for the US Navy across several areas, especially in the Fakhani and Ouzai districts, causing civilians ferocious and deep wounds identical to those I saw in Hillah yesterday. Angry at the misuse of their weapons, which are designed for use against exclusively military targets, the Reagan administration withheld a shipment of fighter-bombers for Israel – then rel
ented a few weeks later and sent the aircraft anyway.

It is not easy to listen to Iraqi officials condemning the use of illegal weapons when the Iraqi air force has itself dropped poison gas on the Iranian army and on pro-Iranian Kurdish villages during the 1980-88 war against Iran. Outraged claims from Iraqi officials at the abuse of human rights sound like a bell with a very hollow ring. But something terrible happened around Hillah this week, something unforgivable and something contrary to international law. One hesitates, as I say, to talk of human rights in this land of torture but if the Americans and British don’t watch out, they are likely to find themselves condemned for what they have always – and rightly – accused Iraq of: war crimes.

Here again is another snapshot of the horror of war. War is not honrable or worthy of glory. No war happens without these kinds of “incidents” arising, no matter the intentonality. Pray for Peace, pray for the soliders who were involved who must be going through incredible emotions at this time. Soliders are not the enemy, death is, let us remember that our lord defeated death!

‘You’ve just killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough’
By Raymond Whitaker
02 April 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=393062

As a blue Toyota van raced towards an intersection held by American troops, Captain Ronny Johnson grew increasingly concerned. He radioed to one of his forward platoons, giving the order: “Fire a warning shot.” The vehicle kept coming, so, with increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot a machine-gun round into its radiator. “Stop [messing] around!” Capt Johnson yelled into the radio when he saw no action being taken. Then he shouted at the top of his voice “Stop him, Red 1, stop him!”

The hail of gunfire that followed resulted in the deaths of up to 10 Iraqi women and children, including five under the age of five.

Sharply conflicting accounts of the tragedy at a military checkpoint near Najaf on Monday evening were still circulating yesterday when American troops shot dead another civilian at a roadblock. He was unarmed.

American commanders admitted that their soldiers had killed seven women and children but their first reaction was to defend their troops, saying they opened fire after warning shots, including one into the vehicle’s engine, were ignored. The men involved did “absolutely the right thing”, said General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. “Our soldiers on the ground have an absolute right to defend themselves.”

But William Branigin, a journalist for The Washington Post who witnessed the incident, filed a graphic account of Capt Johnson’s interchange with his platoon. The reporter said 10 people were killed, and that the first shots fired included 25mm high-explosive cannon shells from one or more Bradley fighting vehicles, which tore into the four-wheel-drive.

He claimed that Capt Johnson, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, after peering into his binoculars from the intersection where he was positioned, screamed at his platoon leader: “You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough!”

Afterwards, reported Mr Branigin, the soldiers gave the survivors 10 body bags to recover the remains and offered them money in compensation.

An army medic present told Mr Branigin: “It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen and I hope I never see it again.”

US Central Command said Monday’s killings and yesterday’s shooting, which happened when a white pick-up truck failed to stop at a checkpoint 20 miles from Nasiriyah, were being investigated. But it was maintaining its unapologetic stance. “There will be occasions where civilians will be put in harm’s way,” said Brigadier General Vincent Brooks. Another spokesman blamed the Najaf deaths on Saddam Hussein.

“This is yet another incident in a trend of this regime using civilians, in this case innocent women and children, in order to cause harm to coalition forces,” said Capt Frank Thorp. “The blood of this incident is on the hands of this regime.”

To others, the deaths indicate how jittery and trigger-happy American troops have become since an Iraqi soldier blew himself up at a roadblock on Saturday, killing four Americans. “I thought it was a suicide bomb,” said one of the soldiers who opened fire.

Capt Johnson was quoted by The Washington Post as saying that he thought the Toyota driver might have been a suicide bomber. “All the other vehicles stopped and turned around when they saw us,” he said. “But this one kept on coming.”

These are the first civilian deaths for which the Anglo-American forces have admitted responsibility, but “embedded” journalists have seen evidence of several more, usually when Iraqis have approached troop positions at night.

Predictions that the Iraqi population would welcome British and American troops have proved wide of the mark. A Pentagon spokesman’s comment that “everyone is now seen as a combatant until proven otherwise” means gaining civilian support will be harder than ever. Asked if the checkpoint killings undermined attempts to win over locals, a British Army spokesman said: “It does indeed.”

Commanders insist that the rules of engagement have not changed, but new procedures have been ordered in response to the suicide bombing. Drivers and passengers at checkpoints will be ordered out of vehicles with their hands raised, and will be searched. Cars and lorries will no longer be permitted to cross through American and British convoys; any vehicle blocking traffic will be pushed aside.

And if civilians approach troops with their hands in their pockets and fail to respond, first to a shouted command and then to a warning shot, they will be killed, US officials say.

American forces have traditionally taken a more aggressive, arms-length approach towards civilian populations than other Western armies. This conflicts with their desire to appear as “liberators” in Iraq. On peace-keeping duties in Kosovo, for example, US troops were ordered to wear full battle gear at all times, unlike every other national contingent.

James Dingley, a lecturer on terrorism at the University of Ulster, contrasted the US approach with that of the British, whose Northern Ireland experience means they are accustomed to closer contact with civilians. “Americans lived in their fortified villages and never mixed with anybody [in the Balkans],” he said. “They had virtually no comprehension of the locals … and developing empathy with them.”

Let’s not forget that causalities (not collateral damage) happen on both sides. Here is a sotry from the “other side.”

Children killed and maimed in bomb attack on town
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad and Justin Huggler
02 April 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=393127

At least 11 civilians, nine of them children, were killed in Hilla in central Iraq yesterday, according to reporters in the town who said they appeared to be the victims of bombing.

Reporters from the Reuters news agency said they counted the bodies of 11 civilians and two Iraqi fighters in the Babylon suburb, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Nine of the dead were children, one a baby. Hospital workers said as many as 33 civilians were killed.

Terrifying film of women and children later emerged after Reuters and the Associated Press were permitted by the Iraqi authorities to take their cameras into the town. Their pictures – the first by Western news agencies from the Iraqi side of the battlefront – showed babies cut in half and children with amputation wounds, apparently caused by American shellfire and cluster bombs.

Much of the videotape was too terrible to show on television and the agencies’ Baghdad editors felt able to send only a few minutes of a 21-minute tape that included a father holding out pieces of his baby and screaming “cowards, cowards” into the camera. Two lorryloads of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, could be seen outside the Hilla hospital.

Dr Nazem el-Adali, who was trained in Edinburgh, said almost all the patients were victims of cluster bombs dropped around Hella and in the neighbouring village of Mazarak. One woman, Alia Mukhtaff, is seen lying wounded on a bed; she lost six of her children and her husband in the attacks. Another man is seen with an arm missing, and a second man, Majeed Djelil, whose wife and two of his children were killed, can be seen sitting next to his third and surviving child, whose foot is missing. The mortuary of the hospital, a butcher’s shop of chopped up corpses, is seen briefly in the tape.

Iraqi officials have been insisting for 48 hours that the Americans have used cluster bombs on civilians in the region but this is the first time that evidence supporting these claims has come from Western news agencies. Most of the wounded said they were hit by American munitions and one man described how an American vehicle fired a shell into his family home. “I could see an American flag,” he says.

One of the editors in Baghdad, a European, when asked why he would not send the full videotape to London, wound the pictures on to two mutilated corpses of babies. “How could we ever send this?” he said.

Further south, there was heavy fire around the town of Diwaniyah, about 80 miles south-east of Baghdad. It was the second day of close combat between American forces and Iraqi troops, after fighting in the town of Hindiyah on Monday. It appeared that US troops were looking to take on some Iraqi forces after initially advancing largely unopposed through vast tracts of empty desert but deliberately avoiding population centres.

According to reports from Diwaniyah, US Marines deliberately provoked a firefight by moving into an area where they had come under fire before. The marines came under heavy fire from rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns.

Iraqi Republican Guard troops and other fighters fired on the advancing marines from fortified bunkers and positions in buildings and behind vehicles. Corporal Patrick Irish of the US Marines said: “They were shooting from buildings, from dug-out positions, from holes, from everything. They would jump out to shoot. They were behind buses. You name it, they were there.”

Although the Iraqis were outgunned by the heavily armed marines, the firefight went on for about 10 hours, according to Lieutenant-Colonel B P McCoy of the US Marines. They used 155mm artillery to destroy Iraqi tanks and mortar positions. “We hammered them pretty hard,” said Lt-Col McCoy. At least 75 Iraqis were killed in fighting on Diwaniyah’s outskirts and at least 44 soldiers, including some Republican Guard officers, were taken prisoner, Lt-Col McCoy said. There was no report of American casualties.

North-east of Diwaniyah there was heavy bombing yesterday near Kut to clear the way for ground forces, according to the US military. American marines also claim to have “secured” an air base at Qalat Sukkar, south-east of Kut, which US forces want to use as a staging ground.

Overnight, planes bombed the area around Hindiyah. Ominously, there were also reports of missiles streaking towards the Shia holy city of Kerbala, where any damage to the shrines could set the Shia Muslim world alight.

The Iraqi military said its troops were fighting US forces inside Nasiriyah and on the outskirts of the city, and had inflicted heavy casualties. “The blood of the enemy is flowing profusely,” a military spokesman said at a press briefing, who claimed that fighting was still going on as he spoke. He claimed the forces fighting in and around Nasiriyah included Republican Guards, regular Iraqi army soldiers, volunteers from across the Arab world, and ordinary Iraqi citizens.

US Marines fought their way across the city’s bridges last Tuesday but did not take control of the city. Since then, Iraqi forces have made several ambushes in the area.

The Iraqi spokesman also said US forces launched an attack on the Shia holy city of Najaf yesterday, and claimed fighters inside the city had forced them to retreat after suffering heavy losses.