The US, UN & Iraq II

a
MIDDLE EAST

Tuesday, April 8, 2003 · Last updated 1:14 p.m. PT

Death, Fear, Grief at Baghdad Bomb Site

By HAMZA HENDAWI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A young woman's severed head and torso and a small boy's body were pulled Tuesday from a smoking crater carved into the earth by four U.S. bombs, so powerful they yanked orange trees from their roots. But there was no sign of the man those bombs were aimed at: Saddam Hussein.

For the second time in the war, coalition forces were wondering whether they'd gotten their man. One thing was all too clear, though: once again, civilians had suffered.

When the broken body of the 20-year-old woman was brought out - torso first, then the head - her mother started crying uncontrollably, then collapsed. She was helped into a car by two male relatives.

Across the street from the crater, which lay amid the ruins of three homes, relatives squatted on the sidewalk and watched as rescue workers and volunteers, using a bulldozer and their bare hands, searched for their loved ones. Some wept; others just buried their faces in their hands.

U.S. officials said they believed their attack in the upscale al-Mansour neighborhood had successfully destroyed the target - but that they didn't know exactly who had been inside, and what their condition was.

Officials did not make clear what type of building had been targeted. Earlier, one U.S. official said the target was a restaurant where the Iraqi president and his two sons, Odai and Qusai, were believed to be meeting. The official did not name the eatery, but the popular al-Saa'a restaurant is 100 yards from where the bombs struck. The restaurant looked intact on Tuesday, except for blown-out windows and doors.

The site remained in Iraqi hands Tuesday. And while some officials said it would take a lot of digging and forensic work to determine if Saddam had been inside, it wasn't clear when that work could be done.

There was no unusual security around the bomb site on Tuesday, and not even a single policeman in sight. Reporters were allowed to visit; by contrast, when U.S.-led forces first attempted to kill Saddam with an opening-salvo airstrike in the beginning of the war, reporters were not allowed to visit that suburban compound.

Acting on an intelligence tip, coalition forces attacked at about 3 p.m. Monday, turning the three homes into a 60-foot-deep crater. At least 20 other houses and nearly two dozen nearby shops were damaged.

Strewn over surrounding streets were door knobs, ceiling beams, bits of wooden furniture, light fixtures and other debris. Three orange trees that once stood outside the houses had been uprooted; a palm tree in a backyard was charred.

An elderly man's body was found Monday night. On Tuesday, rescuers recovered the small boy's body, and that of the 20-year-old woman. The bodies were placed in blankets and quilts and put on the sidewalk.

"It felt like a strong earthquake," recalled neighbor Nahid Abdullah, 26, of the blast.

"I flew for two meters (yards)," said greengrocer Hassan Ameen, 35. Others spoke of the sound of air being sucked before the blast was heard.

Neighbors said as many as 14 people, including at least seven children, may have been killed, and scores wounded in the adjacent homes and shops, where debris and shrapnel blew out doors and windows.

Scores of Iraqis have been killed and hundreds injured in the U.S.-led air campaign on the capital. Civilian casualties have increased dramatically since U.S. ground forces arrived in the capital last week.

Taleb Saadi, a doctor at Baghdad's al-Kindi hospital, said 30 to 35 bodies arrived at the hospital Tuesday and as many as 300 wounded were treated at its emergency ward.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon was confident that Saddam and his sons were at the target before it was bombed. "Our intelligence was solid," the official said. He did not elaborate on the source of the intelligence.

He said Saddam was known to frequent the restaurant, apparently because he thought coalition forces would not target him so close to a civilian center. On April 4, when Iraqi state television showed lengthy footage of Saddam - or at least a man who looked like him - on a walkabout of several Baghdad districts, including al-Mansour, the al-Saa'a restaurant appeared in the background.

Those close to Saddam have said the Iraqi leader is so obsessed with security that very few people would know about his movements. He maintains dozens of residences and uses doubles to keep people guessing.

On the opening day of the war March 20, President Bush authorized a strike on a suburban Baghdad compound where Saddam and his sons were thought to be staying. U.S. intelligence officials suspect that he survived that attack.

a different point of view from a bbc reporter on the palestine hotel attack.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,932482,00.html

You can't take a city by driving around in armored vehicles. You have to have men on the ground patrolling and controlling. How much of Baghdad have the Americans really taken? Its a big place.

No, I don't want Saddam to win. No, I don't want to see heavy American casualties, I'm just asking how much of Baghdad is actually controlled by coalition forces: and is Saddam still alive after all?

tres, can't you imagine military action becoming so terrifyingly awful and end-of-the-world like -- surely we are not far from that now -- that no rational person would consider it even as a last solution?[/color][/quote]
No, Kara, I cannot. You seem willing to ignore reality and human nature. I cannot. The best we can hope for is that those who would do us harm will fear us too much to do so. That is the way things work on this planet.

Refusing to arm yourself doesn't make the mugger in the park less dangerous to you, it makes you more appealing to him. The same is true at a global scale. Terrorists struck the US because they did not fear the results of doing so. Imagine if we had NO military with which to respond. Can you not see that the notion of "live and let live" only works with people who are happy to let you do so?

Our ability to defend ourselves must be palpable, and we must let no one doubt our willingness to do so. Only then do we have any form of peace.

How much does an A1 Abrams tank cost $50m? Almost useless in urban warfare. An Apache attack helicopter? That gets take out with a peasant with an old hunting rifle.

What value Bang/Buck are nuclear weapons in an age of terrorism, cyber warfare and bio chemical attack against population centres?

Strong and weak in traditional terms are meaningless.

To attack you must vanquish
To defend you must merely survive

This quote of a CS Monitor article, that au linked to in another thread, struck me.

First, because it sketches, in simple terms, the dilemma most of us are debating here. Lemme paraphrase: yes, the Iraqi population will probably be better off after this war (depending on how the war lasts, of course, which it seems shouldnt be long anymore); but no, we dont trust that this war's being fought for what it's said to be fought for, we dont know why we really had to go in there, and we distrust what consequences it will have for the future. Or vice versa, of course, according to perspective.

Second because, to my slight surprise, the American soldiers on active duty apparently are all too aware - and concerned - about the same dilemma.



http://csmonitor.com/2003/0408/p01s01-woiq.html

Yes, Nimh. Every time I've seen a plea to support the troops I've thought of that. The troops aren't cut off from reality. They know what's happening. They can't feel much less dubious about it than we do. I also think that, in spite of the polls, the American public is much more aware of the REAL George Bush than they are given credit for.

It's all in the question - all in the question!

The US makes it clear: non-embedded journalists are merely "civilians put at risk by the Iraqi regime".

From The Guardian (my bolds)

...

In an exchange that was fraught at times, Brigadier General Brooks drew a pointed distinction between those journalists operating independently in Baghdad and those travelling with the troops.

"The regime is in many cases putting civilians at risk. We don't know where all the journalists are in Baghdad. We know where all the embedded journalists are," he said.

Underlining the confusion surrounding the incident, Brigadier General Brooks at one point claimed US forces had been fired on from the lobby of the hotel.

But asked by Sky News' Geoff Meade why, in that case, US forces had fired at the upper floors of the hotel rather than the lobby, Brigadier General Brooks said: "I may have misspoken on where the fire came from."

Later on during the news conference a Reuters journalist, one of whose colleagues has now died of injuries sustained in the attack, asked whether the US military had known the Palestine Hotel was being used by the media.

Brigadier General Brooks replied that troops had learned to expect "intermingling" of civilians and soldiers in the battlefield.

"We should anticipate attacks from unexpected locations, whether that's the use of snipers or using civilians," he said.

Asked by the BBC's Paul Adams whether US troops were now "compelled to open fire on buildings that they know are occupied by journalists" Brigadier General Brooks replied:

"When we have a known location that is used for multiple purposes, including regime purposes, command and control and otherwise, and certainly when we potentially take fire from those locations, decisions have to be made at a very low tactical level."

--------------------------

I thought I had a couple of friends in Iraq as war correspondents. Now I know they are there as moving targets.

According to General Brooks, every civilian in Baghdad is either a soldier without a uniform or is potencially being used as worthless shield by the Iraqi regime.

This, and the disrespect to the press, makes me very angry.

Remember fbaezer, separate the leadership from the soldier - Brooks sits in Qatar, Bush in Washington - they have courage!

If we follow this principle to its end, every nation that has as many weapons as it can muster should let it be known that they will attack every country that is weaker and whom they disagree with.



No one is foolish enough to jog or walk in the park without some device of or skill at self defense. That is just common sense; all members of our species, some of whom we might run into on a dark night, are not civilized at all times. That is true also on on a global scale. We must have the ability to defend our country and our people. But you speak of terrorists striking at the US. What have we accomplished with our military since 9-11? Al-qaeda is still a viable network, or seems to be. It is a split-cell terrorist group, difficult to track down, and I fear there will be newly emboldened terrorists and suicide bombers now that we have given many jihad-minded ones a new cause for anger.



I do not know what you mean by palpable, here. Do you mean obvious, such as doing military manoeuvres in areas of concern? Do you mean massive strikes on recalcitrants to let 'em know who's boss? A show of strength can be just that, and one could discuss the issue. I agree that we would be living in cloud-cuckoo land not to have armies of defense. It would be like not locking your door at night, never mind setting the alarm. Or leaving your keys in the ignition when your car is parked in the driveway. (Remember when?)

Is it true that regular US soldiers only earn a thousand dollars a month - that many of them are eligible for foodstamps? And that the families of reservists who have been called up to the Iraq front are even worse off, because these reservists earn no money in fighting and their employers are not obliged to pay through the months they are away from their job?

There was this sad story in the paper about families of US soldiers currently in combat, who back home relied on handouts from orgs like "Feed the Children" ...

basic rates for E-1 thru E 7 (basic soldiers)
low is $1022 monthly high is $1986 monthly with increases by years of service

Some first hints on effective peacekeeping possibly deduce-able from *this report*

Gelisgesti, I guess I have to thank you for posting this. But it smacks of purple journalism. The mention, again and again, of awful things. I usually stop halfway through articles like this. The writer has made his point in the first paragraph or two.

$1022 a month in the US is not a lot of money - imagining having to raise your family on that - and thats when you're risking your life! <shakes head>

Habibi, I have heard and read much in the last few days about the mismatch between Brit and US soldiering styles. I dunno. I wish I were a spy in the sky with a scope.

Call me flippant ... but I just wanted to bring these back up again.

Even if one would maintain that, yes, it is necessary to "correct our mistakes by bombing" them off of the earth -
as in: OK, we armed Saddam ourselves, all the more reason to make up for our mistake now -
these few lines at least should inspire some seriously solid codes of conduct regarding 'tactical support' to dictatorial states representing some 'lesser evil'.

Supporting totalitarianism now, for whatever reason, guarantees the terrorism of tomorrow - whether b/c 'our' dictator will go bad or because he'll drive the opposition in his country to drastic ideologies.

A same kind of point can be made about arms trade. A TV report last week noted that 75% of the world's arms exports are from four of the Security Council states. Thatd be the US, China, who else? Britain, France, Russia? We sell them the weapons and we sell their enemies their weapons, until all are armed to the teeth - and then we protest when the region becomes 'unstable' and the odd dictator uses those weapons against rebels in his own country ... and we solve the problem by waging another war ... Sad vicious cycle.

(Sorry if I sound discouraged tonight).

Someone wrote:

To attack you must vanquish
To defend you must merely survive

Perception added

To survive with DIGNITY you must be free
To be FREE you must sometimes vanquish

To survive without freedom and dignity is to merely exist
To merely exist is not one of my options.

If you do not really want to seriously think about this proposition you are in such deep denial that there is no hope.