"A week of ground combat by Marines and some Iraqi troops, supported by tanks and attack helicopters, added to the destruction in a city where the homes and businesses for about 300,000 people are packed into an area a little less than 2 miles wide and a little more than 2 miles long. ... Cats and dogs scamper along streets littered with bricks, broken glass, toppled light poles, downed power lines, twisted traffic barriers and spent cartridges. Walls are full of bullet holes. Marines have blown holes in walls and knocked down doors to search homes and shops. Dead Iraqis still lay out in the open Monday."
For all intents and purposes, the US military declared any male in Fallujah and any family unlucky enough to be caught in the hail of deadly fire legitimate targets for death. We will perhaps never know how many civilians have been slaughtered by US forces.
The chief United Nations human rights official, Louise Arbour, has called for an investigation of abuses, including the disproportionate use of force and the targeting of civilians. Arbour claimed that all violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws should be investigated, including "the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons and the use of human shields." The American media either ignores or brushes this aside.
In none of the US media commentaries is there a single expression of concern about not merely the moral, but the legal issues involved in the attack on Fallujah. The American military operation in the city is an illegal act of aggression in an illegal, aggressive war.
As Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists, has noted, the attack began with an act contravening international law: "They [US forces] stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances to go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions."
And this comes from US media applauds destruction of Fallujah ... I'm sorry. I think the democratic wing of the republican party just can't cut it anymore. It's time to think in terms of entirely cutting loose the democrats.
For too long we have clung to some old family photos of democrats pulling for America. It's over. Howard Dean, MD, was the last true Democrat. Everything else has appealed to "sending in more troops." "Increasing the slaughter in Falluja" (Kerry's remark that he never would have pulled back from Falluja in April when the civilian body count was mounting).
If you are not on the mailing list from the WSWS, go there. Read it. They don't bite. Every stinkin' democracy in the world has socialist party members in their parliament. Nowhere else has the word 'socialist' been demonized to 'worse than liberal' by the opposing vicious and insane political agenda, such as the republicans have done since the Army-McCarthy hearings in the 1950's.
Take a look. www.wsws.org They say what is said on this blog every day. And they don't need to put on democrat face masks to do it.
Think. Or Thwim.
My little blog: http://nastyletterstocrookedpoliticians.blogspot.com