- Amid the welter of ugly pictures from Iraq last week
were images worse than those of the humiliation and torture of detainees
in Abu Ghraib prison. These show chunks of flesh and hanks of women's hair
scattered across a scene of devastation. Among the few recognisable objects
are musical instruments.
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- This is the scene of an incident that has divided Iraqis
from their occupiers like few others. It has highlighted an issue more
significant, yet far less discussed, than mistreatment in prisons: the
degree to which indiscriminate use of American firepower has made enemies
of the Iraqi population. According to independent estimates - none are
available from the coalition - about 11,500 Iraqi civilians have been killed
since the start of the war in March last year.
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- The footage of flesh, hair and musical instruments was
filmed by a video crew that reached the location of what local people say
was a wedding party attacked without warning by the Americans, killing
women and children. The instruments belonged to the band of Hussein Ali,
one of Iraq's most famous wedding singers, whose relatives buried him in
Baghdad last week.
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- Despite this evidence - and earlier pictures filmed by
al-Arabiya television, showing two dead babies wrapped side by side in
a blanket, and a headless child lying next to the body of his or her mother
- American commanders continue to insist that their strike, on a remote
village in the desert close to the Syrian border, was against foreign fighters
crossing into Iraq.
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- "These were more than two dozen military-age males,"
scoffed Maj-Gen James Mattis, commander of the US 1st Marine Division.
"Let's not be naive." What about the video footage? Maj-Gen Mattis
said he had not seen it, but added: "Bad things happen in wars. I
don't have to apologise for the conduct of my men." Although an investigation
has been promised, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard
Myers, said in Washington: "We feel at this point very confident that
this was a legitimate target, probably foreign fighters."
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- Not only that: the Americans are now also dropping hints
that the "foreign fighters" could be linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
an Islamist militant leader and ally of Osama bin Laden who is in Iraq,
and who is accused of personally beheading the American hostage Nick Berg.
Although such a connection was "still to be determined", said
General Myers, it was "not out of the question".
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- More telling, however, was the reaction of the occupation
authorities to the damaging video footage. US officials demanded al-Arabiya
give them the name of the cameraman who shot the pictures. Al-Arabiya refused.
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- As the Abu Ghraib scandal has proved, shocking images
can lead to investigations not only in Iraq but in Afghan-istan, Guantanamo
Bay and elsewhere, and cause trouble not only for the military but for
the CIA and the White House as well. Until they saw the pictures, Americans
were unaware of what was happening to Iraqis in custody; they remain ignorant
of the reasons for the mounting toll of civilian deaths, both during and
since the invasion last year, despite the evidence of those few Americans
who have witnessed them, such as Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, reported
opposite.
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- Ever since the occupation began, there have been regular
stories of American soldiers who were attacked by insurgents on the streets
of Iraqi cities and reacted by spraying the entire area with wild, indiscriminate
gunfire, killing and maiming innocent Iraqi bystanders. Other accounts,
however, are even more sinister.
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- Before he was jailed for a year last week for failing
to return from leave, another soldier who served in Iraq, Sergeant Camilo
Mejia, said a friend of his, a sniper, had shot a child about 10 years
old who was carrying an automatic weapon. "He realised it was a kid,"
said Sergeant Mejia. "The kid tried to get up. He shot him again."
The child died.
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- Few images exist of such incidents, not least because
journalists seeking to record them have ended up dead themselves. Thanks
to the persistence of one or two news organisations that have lost employees
in Iraq, these deaths are among the few to have been independently investigated.
After an award-winning cameraman, Mazen Dana, became the second Reuters
employee to be killed, the agency hired a security company and carried
out an exhaustive inquiry which found few differences of fact with the
military investigation, but which differed radically on the conclusions.
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- The soldier who shot Mr Dana claimed he had made "sudden
movements" which made him think the cameraman was about to fire a
rocket-propelled grenade, that he was blinded by the sun at the time, and
that he could not distinguish at a distance of 75 metres between an RPG
and a television camera.
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- Despite pages of evidence proving the sun was not in
the position claimed, and photographs demonstrating the visible difference
at 75 metres between a camera and a large weapon, the US military is sticking
to its finding that the journalist's death was "justified based on
the information available ... at the time".
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- If an organisation with the international clout of Reuters
cannot get the Pentagon to admit an error might have been made, the survivors
of last week's slaughtered wedding party have even less chance that their
version of events will prevail. But the incident illustrates several of
the concerns expressed about the operations undertaken by US forces in
Iraq, including their ignorance of Iraqi culture, their isolation from
local people and their over-dependence on firepower.
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- "How many people go to the middle of the desert
10 miles from the Syrian border to hold a wedding?" demanded Maj-Gen
Mattis.
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- The answer is plenty, if you come from a clan of livestock
herders and that is where you have lived all your life. The clan straddles
the Syrian border; even distant relatives would be expected to turn up
from there, as well as the far corners of Iraq.
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- Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the US military spokesman
in Iraq, said US forces found guns, Syrian passports and a satellite phone
at the scene of the fighting. None of that was surprising, either: even
in the cities, every house has a weapon. In a village 75 miles from the
nearest town they are even more necessary, both to protect against bandits
and to shield flocks from wild animals. With no telephone lines and no
mobile coverage, it is not unusual for such places to have a satellite
phone as well.
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- "The British military tends to have far more open
dealings with the local population than the Americans," said Christopher
Bellamy, professor of military science at Cranfield University. "While
the British rely more on local intelligence to warn them of trouble in
advance, US forces have a 'stand-off' posture, which means trouble tends
to erupt without warning. As a result they need to deliver enormous amounts
of firepower to overcome it."
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- Eleanor Goldsworthy, UK forces specialist at the Royal
United Services Institute, said the approach taken by British forces in
Iraq was: "If we behave, we earn their goodwill." The American
attitude, by contrast, was: "If they behave, they earn our goodwill."
And if they don't, others might add, US forces will punish them - the policy
that appeared to be adopted when the Marines moved on Fallujah last month
in the wake of the deaths of four American private security men.
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- The insistence of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld,
on a "war lite" policy, said Professor Bellamy, meant that "American
forces have to make up in firepower what they lack in manpower". Because
US soldiers specialised early in their careers, and received less overall
training than their British counterparts, the majority were not effective
combat troops, and had to be protected by those with the appropriate training.
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- "The philosophy is almost that of the wagon train,
and tends to lead to the 'spray and slay' behaviour we have seen,"
said the analyst.
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- "It is hard to over-estimate the lack of awareness
of most American soldiers in Iraq," said a military source. "Many,
perhaps most, have never been abroad before. They see their mission as
giving democracy to the Iraqis and enforcing stability, and find it very
difficult to understand why the Iraqis aren't grateful. They have no idea
that they are seen as arrogant and aggressive."
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- In the view of British forces, the source added, such
attitudes had led to a succession of "fundamental mistakes",
and had made senior officers extremely hostile to being put under American
command. This is one of the options reported to be under consideration
by Downing Street this weekend as the deployment of more British forces
is weighed.
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- The US wants Britain to take over from the departed Spanish
contingent in the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, where American
firepower is being deployed against militias loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr,
the Shia cleric declared an outlaw by Washington.
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- "Seeking to adopt normal low-profile British tactics
in the wake of American aggressiveness would be difficult enough,"
said the military source, "but to have to go in under US operational
command would be a disaster."
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=523993
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