U.S. Launches Airstrikes on Falluja....

I mean, I was, as you know, against the war - but I thnk we now cannot just leave the place an unholy mess.\\

dlowan wrote:

I mean, I was, as you know, against the war - but I thnk we now cannot just leave the place an unholy mess.\\

<sigh>
I sincerely believe that bombing Fallujah is creating a BIGGER unholy mess, Deb. And I suspect it will be a rallying call for more anti-US crazies to escalate their activities. In their eyes the thinking would be: See, Bush won the election & he's begun the bombing again.
I honestly don't believe that you can bomb a country into democracy.

It was the second time in six months that a battle had raged in Falluja. In April, American troops were closing in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage, fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties, forced the Americans to withdraw.

American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had been killed. The hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties.

"It's a center of propaganda," a senior American officer said Sunday.

This time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons. The military hopes that if it can hold its own in that war, then the armed invasion - involving as many as 25,000 American and Iraqi troops, all told - will smash what has become the largest remaining insurgent stronghold in Iraq.

And with only three months to go until the country's first democratic elections, American and Iraqi officials are grasping for any tool at their command to bring the insurgency under control.

The hospital was one of the primary initial targets of the assault, occupied by U.S. soldiers, with patients and doctors initially handcuffed. Later, doctors were allowed to resume treating patients, but it's for damn sure that few if any of Fallujah's wounded will be brought there -- and, in fact, with both bridges seized, it will be nearly impossible (Fallujah General is across the Euphrates from most of the city), as it was during the last assault.

It was selected as a target because it was the source of "rumors" that were "unconfirmed" about civilian casualties -- i.e., doctors who treated the patients and communicated with other doctors treating patients compiled estimates and gave them to those few journalists who wanted to know.

The U.S. military, of course, which claims never to count civilian dead, and distances itself from the people of Fallujah with a wall of metal, gunfire, artillery fire, and heavy bombs, is in a much better position to estimate civilian dead than the doctors who treat them.

The military "intends to fight its own information war." Of course, information about the truth has been a "potent weapon" for those who oppose the invasion, because Iraqis, Arabs in general, some Western Europeans, and a handful of Americans have learned that truth and tried to act on it.

That must be changed. Since hospitals and information itself are the primary initial targets, the only conclusion can be that the United States wants to cover up in advance the atrocities it will commit, atrocities almost certainly on a greater scale than in the last assault.

When the United States bombed Serbian TV during the war on Yugoslavia, with the same rationale that it spread propaganda and was thus a military target, Amnesty International determined that the attack was a war crime. How much greater a war crime it is to occupy a hospital (oh, and just by the way, the U.S. military is launching attacks on the resistance from positions near the hospital, thus making it in effect a military target for the other side as well) because it is reporting on the victims of this brutal assault.

If you want a symbol of Bush's second term, at home and abroad, there is no more potent one than this action.