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Wars and conflicts

  • Falluja: Smoke and corpses
    16 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    BBC News November 11th (just to imagine what it could be 4 days later.)..
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4004873.stm
    Eyewitness: Smoke and corpses US troops, backed by Iraqi forces, are locked in a fierce fight to wrest the city of Falluja from rebel control. The BBC News website spoke by phone to Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi journalist and resident of Falluja who reports regularly for Reuters and the BBC World Service in Arabic. We are publishing his and other eyewitness (…)

  • Covering Fallujah
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    by Omar Khan November 14, 2004
    The Department of Defense seems continually faced with the difficulty of waging a war upon a population while maintaining that it is doing so on behalf of that population. But it is fortunate not to face this difficulty alone. A vast literature has been developed and deployed to effectively manage and promote its excursions in language that its intellectuals can contribute to and the public can repeat.
    After the US invasion of South Vietnam, one such (…)

  • A disaster, made in the USA
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    How long will it take for us to realise what we have done to Iraq, asks Robert Manne.
    Last week, as the ferocious battle for Fallujah began, the neo-conservative "scholar", Robert Kagan, paid a triumphal visit to Australia. Kagan was received by the Prime Minister. An edited version of the lecture he delivered was published in five newspapers. He was interviewed, respectfully, by almost every serious public affairs program on the ABC. Unhappily there was in all this virtually no discussion (…)

  • Civilian cost of battle for Falluja emerges
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Rory McCarthy in Baghdad and Peter Beaumont
    The full cost of the battle of Falluja emerged last night as large numbers of wounded civilians were evacuated to hospitals in Baghdad, as insurgents stepped up retaliatory attacks in other cities.
    As the first Red Crescent aid convoy was allowed into Falluja, Iraq’s Health Minister, Alaa Alwan, said ambulances had begun transferring a ’significant number’ of injured civilians out of the battle zone, although he did not specify how many. (…)

  • The final battle
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)

    Peter Beaumont says that American troops feared they would have to fight a bitter street conflict at the start of the invasion. Now civilians are paying the price in Falluja
    Their story is the hardest to tell: that of the Iraqi civilians who have remained in the besieged city of Falluja. They have no embedded Western journalists to speak for them, only a few Iraqi correspondents. They cannot leave their homes because of the risk of constant sniper fire. They have no water to drink, no (…)

  • When the smoke has cleared around Fallujah, what horrors will be revealed?
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)

    As the Americans move street by bloody street towards control of the insurgents’ stronghold, aid agencies warn of a humanitarian catastrophe.
    by Kim Sengupta and Raymond Whitaker report
    Victory was being declared yesterday in the battle of Fallujah, with 1,000 rebels reported dead, hundreds more in custody and spectacular footage from embedded television crews, showing Marines charging through deserted neighbourhoods.
    "It’s like those pictures from the advance into Baghdad," said one (…)

  • War Crimes in Fallujah; a Gutsy Campaign Against Lantos
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)

    By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
    The United States is bringing "democracy" to Iraq on the same terms that the Russians imposed its federal mandate on Chechnya, a region which has Iraq’s future written in its rubble. The advocates of intervention in Iraq, the epigones of Wolfowitz , should take a walk through Grozny, and measure against its ruins the fate of their proclaimed ambition to bring democracy to Fallujah and other cities in Iraq.
    In the waning weeks of the US election campaign the antiwar (…)

  • Uri Avnery : rejoice not...
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    by Uri Avnery
    “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him.” This biblical injunction (Proverbs 24:17) is one of the most profound Jewish moral tenets. In this connection, Israel is very far from being a “Jewish State”, as it likes to define itself. The disgusting filth poured out over Yasser Arafat during the last few days in practically all the Israeli media makes one ashamed to be an Israeli.
    The (…)

  • Berlin Wall
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)

    The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a long barrier separating West Berlin from East Berlin and the surrounding territory of East Germany. Its intent was to restrict access between West Berlin and the German Democratic Republic. It existed from 1961 until 1989.
    Background
    After World War II, Berlin, like the rest of Germany, was divided into four sectors, although it was surrounded on all sides by the Soviet sector of Germany. The Soviet Union, the United States, the United (…)

  • The onslaught in Fallujah : shooting at a fly that has landed on a horse’s head
    15 November 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
    91 comments

    “If your attack is going exceptionally well, it is probably an ambush.” Old military maxim
    by Maarten Vanheuverswyn
    On the face of it, the siege of Fallujah seems to be going relatively well for the US troops. Most of the city has been captured and according to the mass media “Operation Phantom Fury” will be finished in a couple of days. Though yesterday the US army suffered some losses, these were nothing compared to the figure of 600 insurgents killed, probably more. It is indeed (…)