Forgotten Fallujah

by redjade Thu Dec 02, 2004 13:18

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A group of 38 Shiite Muslim political parties broke off negotiations Tuesday with backers of Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, claiming a candidate list under discussion was dominated by religious extremists.

"We don't want to be an extension of Iran inside Iraq," said Hussein al-Mousawi, spokesman for the Shiite Political Council. "We found out that the top 10 names in the list are extremist Shiite Islamists who believe in the rule of religious clerics."

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has assigned a committee of six of his aides to try to put together a unified Shiite ticket for the Jan. 30 national election, during which Iraqis will select a 275-member assembly.

by redjade Thu Dec 02, 2004 13:25

Meanwhile, the military refused to allow yet another aid convoy into Fallujah. They were turned back because the military personnel told them the Ministry of Health would be allowed to send a relief convoy in “8 or 9 days.”

There are at least 150 families trapped within the city, and the military refuses to let any of them out. While a few ambulances were allowed into one section of the city a few days ago, there are at least three main neighborhoods that the military is keeping a tight lid on. Refugees continue to report the use of napalm and phosphorous weapons-of seeing dead bodies with no bullet holes in them, just scorched patches of skin.

More refugees at the Amiryah bomb shelter camp in Baghdad are telling the same horror stories. A man who fled the city says, “Fallujah is in a disaster!” He holds his hands out and pleads, “We call on all NGO’s and aid organizations to help Fallujans! We just want to return to our land; we know our homes are destroyed, but we’d rather sleep in tents in our own city.”

by redjade Thu Dec 02, 2004 13:39

In Falluja's Ruins, Big Plans and a Risk of Chaos
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/01/international/middleeast/01reconstruct.html?ex=1259557200&en=e6914e6964f559a2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

The role of the city's roughly 250,000 residents, now mostly scattered in other towns throughout the region, may be the most crucial and unpredictable part. It is still far from clear how the military will communicate its neat plan to repopulate the city sector by sector, or how the returnees will react once they arrive. Falluja, where resistance to the American occupation ran high, has a long history as a rebellious city.

American officials say they fully understand the risks, and have been planning for them since last spring. Already, American civil affairs teams have begun making condolence payments to residents who were injured or had their houses destroyed in the attack, up to a maximum of $2,500 per person. The interim Iraqi government has also promised $100 to each returning family.

[....]

Within two or three months, Marine officials say, bigger projects will be set in motion: a new $35 million wastewater treatment plant, four new school buildings, several new health clinics. Badly damaged homes will be bulldozed and rebuilt, or owners will be compensated. To help revive the city's economy, the Marines will ask all returning residents with relevant skills to take a job in the reconstruction projects.

[....]

"Before the battle, Iraqi engineers were not willing to talk to us, and I have not been able to get a good list yet," said Lt. Col. Leonard J. DeFrancisi, a Marine civil affairs officer. "I'm confident that when we put the call out we will find good people to help run the city."

All these plans, military officials say, are predicated on Iraqi security forces successfully keeping insurgents out and preventing violence. If they fail, as they did in April, the whole project could unravel.

by redjade Thu Dec 02, 2004 13:44

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - Iraqi rebels are creeping back into areas cleared by US marines in Fallujah, where the military continues daily to secure homes and try to seize weapons caches before they can be used to again attack US and Iraqi troops, marines say.

"The last few days we found 20, 25 guys in houses that were already cleared," said one marine.

by redjade Thu Dec 02, 2004 14:05

How bad is the Iraqi military?
http://www.motherjones.com/news/blog/2004/11/MB_2004_48.html#11

Now what about the local military and special forces units, which appear, as the Times notes, to be performing relatively well? The Iraqi Intervention Force, the unit designed to handle counterinsurgency, has only 1,816 soldiers of a required 6,584. And the Iraqi Army has a paltry 3,887 soldiers out of 27,000 needed. To put this in perspective, the "competent wing" of the Iraqi military is only half or quarter the size of the Sunni insurgency, and a tenth the size of the 60,000-strong peshmerga militia in Kurdistan. Were the U.S. to pull out right now, the nominal Iraqi state wouldn't have anything close to a monopoly on force; how long it would last is anyone's guess

- - -

U.S. Officials Say Iraq's Forces Founder Under Rebel Assaults

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/international/middleeast/30police.html?ex=1259470800&en=5e5a7610ba0f642b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

He said the Iraqi National Guard, known as the I.N.G., has only a "little bit more training." They also have serious problems of loyalty and competence. Just a few months ago, he believes, the local National Guard force was complicit in the abduction and killing of its own battalion commander west of Falluja.

"That's what you get out of the I.N.G.," Colonel Gubler said. "They gave up their battalion commander, laid their weapons down, and 23 cars and trucks and massive amounts of ammunition went to Falluja. It's just pitiful."

Infiltration remains a problem. After the uprising, the Mosul police chief was quickly dismissed and was later arrested on suspicion of complicity with the insurgents.

When a captain in the Mosul police force, Abu Muhammad, was asked if the police had been penetrated by the mujahedeen, he took a long, deep breath.

"Yes, and this is the problem, and I do believe that they have contacts with senior policemen in Mosul," he said. "There is kind of cooperation between the two parties."

by redjade Thu Dec 02, 2004 14:19

Excerpt from Mickey Z's Seven Deadly Spins:
http://www.mickeyz.net/news/mickeyz/fullarticle/the_smell_of_napalm/

In the Pacific theater-cheered on by the likes of Time magazine, which explained that “properly kindled, Japanese cities will burn like autumn leaves"-U.S. General Curtis LeMay’s Twenty-first Bomber Command, laid siege on the poorer areas of Japan’s cities. On the night of March 9-10, 1945, the target was Tokyo, where tightly packed wooden buildings were targeted by 1,665 tons of incendiaries. LeMay later recalled that a few explosives had been mixed in with the incendiaries to demoralize firefighters (96 fire engines burned to ashes and 88 firemen died). The attack area was 87.4 percent residential.

By May 1945, 75 percent of the bombs being dropped on Japan were incendiaries. LeMay’s campaign took an estimated 672,000 lives. In a confidential memo of June 1945, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, an aide to MacArthur, called the raids, “one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings on non-combatants in all history.” Secretary of War Henry Stimson declared it was “appalling that there had been no protest over the air strikes we were conducting against Japan which led to such extraordinarily heavy loss of life.” Stimson added that he “did not want to have the United States get the reputation for outdoing Hitler in atrocities.”

LeMay (the Time cover boy above) admitted after the “good war” (sic):

“I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.”

- - - - -
more info Curtis LeMay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay

by BreakForNews.com Thu Dec 02, 2004 18:53

Dahr Jamail interview with Fintan Dunne, Irish independent journalist interviewed Dhar Jamail on Wed 1st Dec: Listen to the interview on breakfornews.com and get daily updates on events from Iraq and the US.

by news consumers for truth Thu Dec 02, 2004 19:30

What a nasty little biased article. The message clearly being that we should all 'feel the pain of the insurgents and terrorists', hate the Americans and stuff the non-Sunni Iraqis.
The Liberal media elite plays a dangerous game when it backs the forces of negativity, anarchy, chaos and terrorism. That is why CBSs Dan Rather has been ousted and why CNN is losing audience ratings to the FOX News channel who call spade a spade.
People in countries like Ireland and Britain do not realize that they are beholden to a politically motivated agenda-driven clique for their news, a clique which does not mind feeding people on daily distortions and lies about the US and Iraq.
A media which has been burying for instance the biggest financial fraud in history; the Oil for Food Programme, because it touches one of the Liberal gods; Kofi Annan.
Americans, always ahead, are coming to understand these facts and 'old media' with its liberal bias is losing ground.

by toneore Fri Dec 03, 2004 02:29 toneore at eircom dot net

Marines Find Alleged Iraqi Torture Chamber

"It's the combination of the chains, the cage, the blood — there were not nice people here, that's for sure," Ray said. "They certainly didn't have the morals I would expect in a human society."

Well done, Marines

by R. Isible Fri Dec 03, 2004 07:36

If so then there are a couple of cities in the USA that you're going to have to explain that to "toneore". The children that live there might be a little slow to grasp the point, so make sure you tell them about it.

"It's the combination of the chains, the cage, the blood — there were not nice people here, that's for sure," Ray said. "They certainly didn't have the morals I would expect in a human society."

I'd agree with the Major, but I wonder was he asked to comment on the CIA supervised convoy of death where hundreds of taliban and mujaheddin were loaded into containers by "General" Dostun's militia and then when they started screaming and pleading for air their guards shot into the containers?

I wonder was he asked whether he thought the USA was a "human society" after it's finest boys and gals implemented torture on a wide scale in Abu Ghraib (also now known to have been practiced at Guantanamo Bay and modelled after standard Israeli interrogiation methods used on Palestinian suspects?

I wonder does he think that the cageing, chaining, starving and beating of prisoners and the use of prison rape makes the USA a non "human society"?

Maybe he does, but I wouldn't mind betting that like "Toneore"-scum and "Al Qaeda"-scum he's willing to condemn one and not the other based on his blind ideological hatred of "the other".

But in any case "Toneore" it's nice that you've established clearly for all to see your opinion that the illegal invasion of a country and the slaughter of a city is justified if there's a weak suspicion that there was torture of someone. I'll be sure to remind you of it again and again in the future. Public hypocrisy doesn't pay -- it just makes you look either insane or foolish.

by - Fri Dec 03, 2004 13:11

"People in countries like Ireland and Britain do not realize that they are beholden to a politically motivated agenda-driven clique for their news, a clique which does not mind feeding people on daily distortions and lies about the US and Iraq."

Actually, people in countries like Ireland and Britain do realize realise the bias in the media - his name is Ruppert Murdoch.

by redjade Fri Dec 03, 2004 13:41

Insurgency broken? Far from it
By Joseph L. Galloway - Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/10312561.htm

We now face the plain fact that the insurgency is growing. A year ago the enemy was able to mount 15 to 20 attacks a day in Iraq. Recently that number has escalated to near 150 attacks per day - attacks that now include daily car bombings of our convoys and occasional mortar and rocket attacks in the heart of Baghdad.

[....]

Why does my mind keep going back to the Weinberger/Powell doctrine, which the current civilian leadership in the Pentagon declared dead and gone while they were doing their victory laps and praising their own strategy of smaller, faster, deadlier in the field of military affairs?

That doctrine, dating to when Caspar Weinberger was defense secretary and Colin Powell was his military aid, said you only go to war when you have exhausted all other options; that you go to war with everything and everyone you need, not incrementally; that you clearly define your objectives; and that your military leaves after winning the war.

There's something in there for everyone - a lot of good lessons learned the hard way in a place called Vietnam. Now if only we can persuade the civilians who command our military to vet their plans for the next war against that doctrine.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young.''

by redjade Fri Dec 03, 2004 13:44

"The ferocity with which the war is being waged by both sides is escalating," said Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "It is not just that the number of incidents are increasing. The war looks to be changing in character."

Retired Army Col. Ralph Hallenbeck, who worked in Iraq with the U.S. occupation authority last year, said he is worried that the move represents a setback for the basic U.S. strategy of placing a greater burden on Iraqi security forces to control the country and deal with the insurgency. "I fear that it signals a re-Americanization . . . of our strategy in Iraq," he said.

by redjade Fri Dec 03, 2004 13:50

Report: Raytheon 'Heat Beam' Weapon Ready For Iraq
Boston Business Journal

Government defense giant Raytheon Co. has developed the first nonlethal weapon that fires a heat beam to repel enemies and reduces the chance of innocent civilians being shot, a Pentagon official said.

[....]

With U.S. casualties in Iraq rising, expectations are growing that Raytheon's weapon, called the Active Denial System, could be sent to Iraq in the next year

[....]

"It's there, it's ready,'' said Heal, who has felt the weapon's beam and compares it to having a hot iron placed on the skin. "It will likely be in Iraq in the next 12 months. They are very, very close.''

The weapon, mounted on a Humvee vehicle, projects a "focused, speed-of-light millimeter wave energy beam to induce an intolerable heating sensation,'' according to a U.S. Air Force fact sheet. The energy penetrates less than 1/64 of an inch into the skin and the sensation ceases when the target moves out of the beam.

[....]

"This forces your adversary to declare intentions,'' Heal said. "U.S. forces get killed because they are reluctant to shoot. It happens in Iraq every day."

"This is where the future is going,'' Raytheon Chief Executive William Swanson, 55, said at a conference in Tucson, Ariz., where he introduced the weapon to investors Wednesday. "This is the ability to protect our troops, and we're talking about the speed of light.''

by eeekkkk Fri Dec 03, 2004 22:27

Ignore the fact that it's Alex Jones - listen to the extract he plays on show.

by eeekkkkk Sat Dec 04, 2004 12:13

"Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Falluja - but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around. "

by redjade Sun Dec 05, 2004 18:02

MEDIA ADVISORY:
The Return of PSYOPS
Military's media manipulation demands more investigation
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/cnn-psyops-fallujah.html
December 3, 2004

The Los Angeles Times revealed this week (12/1/04) that the U.S. military lied to CNN in the course of executing psychological warfare operations, or PSYOPS, in advance of the recent attack on Fallujah. This incident raises serious questions about government disinformation and journalistic credibility, but recent discussions of the government's propaganda plans have excluded some valuable context.

[....]

CNN's history of voluntary cooperation with PSYOPS troops is also worth considering. In March 2000, FAIR and international news organizations revealed that CNN had allowed military propaganda specialists from an Army PSYOPS unit to work as interns in the news division of its Atlanta headquarters.

As FAIR reported at the time (3/27/00), some PSYOPS officers were eager to find ways to use media power to their advantage. One officer explained at a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place.

by redjade Sun Dec 05, 2004 18:07

http://ancapistan.typepad.com/photos/navy_seals_torturing_iraq/navyseal2.html

by +/- Sun Dec 05, 2004 18:41

IED factories, packed with radios and plastic explosives. Martyr training manuals. Illicitly-used mosques, pinpointed on a map.

That's all part of an eye-popping PowerPoint presentation, obtained by Military.com, "Telling the Story of Fallujah to the Word." Allegedly created by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the Multi-National Corps - Iraq, the slide show is meant to catalog just how venomous insurgent forces in Fallujah had become.

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001245.html

by Indy Freedom Mon Dec 06, 2004 04:52 indifreedom at eircom dot net

Pity those murdered and tortured by the Saddam Regime. We never hear about those people. We never hear about the victims of Al-Qaida and insurgent terrorists holed up in Falluja.

The people of Fallujah were warned and largely cleared out when the invasion was imminent. Six months ago the terrorists were running around shouting about Fallujah being the graveyard for Americans. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. They had it coming.

Well Done Marines. Semper Fi.

Iraqi Victim of Iraqi Terrorist Saddam

by redjade Mon Dec 06, 2004 14:56

With politicians and the media distorting news of the upcoming Iraqi elections, most Americans have no idea how the process will work. Meanwhile, informed skeptics look at recent history and wonder if it will work at all.

Dec 2 - Asked last week if Sunni participation was needed to make Iraq's national elections "free and fair," President Bush told reporters that he was "confident [that] when people realize that there's a chance to vote on a President, they will participate."

Bush’s statement constitutes a significant misrepresentation of Iraq’s upcoming election, albeit one likely believed by millions of Americans. In truth, Iraqis will not be voting for a president or any other executive.

by redjade Mon Dec 06, 2004 17:01

Returning Fallujans will face clampdown
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/05/returning_fallujans_will_face_clampdown?pg=full

One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.

"You have to say, 'Here are the rules,' and you are firm and fair. That radiates stability," said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon, intelligence officer for the First Regimental Combat Team, the Marine regiment that took the western half of Fallujah during the US assault and expects to be based downtown for some time.

Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, " 'What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?' All this Oprah [stuff]," he said. "They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.' We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe.

"They're never going to like us," he added, echoing other Marine commanders who cautioned against raising hopes that Fallujans would warmly welcome troops when they return to ruined houses and rubble-strewn streets. The goal, Bellon said, is "mutual respect."

------

Corvee Law
http://34.1911encyclopedia.org/C/CO/CORVEE.htm
CORVEE, i,n feudal law, the term used to designate the unpaid labor due from tenants, whether free or unfree, to their lord; hence any forced labor, especially that exacted by the state, the word being applied both to each particular service and to the system generally. Though the corve formed a characteristic feature of the feudal system, it was, as an institution, much older than feudalism, and was already developed in its main features under the Roman Empire

by redjade Wed Dec 08, 2004 14:41

It is now official—the United States does not learn from history. It is destined to make the same mistakes over and over again.

In 1962, the Strategic Hamlet program was introduced in Vietnam, based on a British counterinsurgency program used in Malaya from 1948 to 1960. In a dismal attempt to prevent the National Liberation Front from “influencing” peasants in South Vietnam, the United States turned villages into concentration camps—they erected stockade walls and patrolled the villages with armed guards. According to figures compiled by the United States, 39 percent of the South Vietnamese population was housed in these restrictive hamlets (4,077 strategic hamlets were completed out of a projected total of 11,182).
[....]

Fast forward to the present. In the pulverized wreckage of Fallujah, Iraq, the United States will soon introduce the Strategic Hamlet program once again, albeit with significant differences. Under the new plan, according to the Boston Globe, “troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.” In Vietnam, peasants were forced to build their gulags, while in Fallujah male civilians will be organized in “military-style battalions” and, depending “on their skills” will “be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.” In other words, Fallujans will be organized into chain-gangs and forced to clean up the criminal mess the United States made of their city. For some reason the Pentagon either does not realize or could not care less about the anger and resistance such humiliation will cause.

by redjade Thu Dec 09, 2004 13:48

U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.

[....]

"I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. "One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets," he said.

In Iraq, shrapnel nearly severed his left thumb. He still has trouble moving it and shrapnel "still comes out once in a while," Arellano said. He is left handed.

Arellano said he felt pushed out of the military too quickly after getting back from Iraq without medical attention he needed for his hand -- and as he would later learn, his mind.

"It was more of a rush. They put us in a warehouse for a while. They treated us like cattle," Arellano said about how the military treated him on his return to the United States.

by redjade Tue Jan 04, 2005 16:51

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat:
Thousands of Fallujans demonstrated on Saturday in front of the main entrance to the largely abandoned city. They demanded that US military forces leave their city and that basic services be restored so that they could return. One eyewitness reporter called in from the scene an estimate of 30,000 demonstrators.

Juan Cole:
I saw footage of the demonstration on Arab satellite television, and agree that it was a big, important demonstration, but I'd say it was only a few thousand strong; I suspect that having 30,000 people out by that gate would be a logistics problem--where did their water come from, e.g.

by redjade Thu Jan 06, 2005 16:14

FALLUJAH, 4 January (IRIN) - "It was really distressing picking up dead bodies from destroyed homes, especially children. It is the most depressing situation I have ever been in since the war started," Dr Rafa'ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah city, some 60 km west of Baghdad, told IRIN.

According to al-Iyssaue, the hospital emergency team has recovered more than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood, adding that more than 550 were women and children. He said a very small number of men were found in these places and most were elderly.

Doctors at the hospital claim that many bodies had been found in a mutilated condition, some without legs or arms. Two babies were found at their homes, who are believed to have died from malnutrition, according to a specialist at the hospital.

[....]

"We need someone here to show the reality of Fallujah. Even when some journalists are here they are being followed by the Marines. We need someone to help us. The world should see the real picture of Fallujah," Sheikh Abbas al-Zubeiny told IRIN.

by redjade Thu Jan 06, 2005 17:12

Residents trickling back to Falluja, the city they fled in November before the biggest battle of the Iraq war, enter a desolate world of skeletal buildings, tank-blasted homes, weeping power lines and severed palm trees.

Sullen and anxious, tens of thousands of residents have passed through stringent checkpoints over the last week to find out, after agonizing weeks of uncertainty, whether their homes and shops were reduced to rubble or merely ransacked.

Even if their houses are still standing, they are pondering whether a family can resume any decent life in a place devoid of electricity, running water, schools or commerce, in a debris-strewn city with a strict 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, conspicuously occupied by American marines and Iraqi troops who still have daily firefights with guerrillas.

[....]

On the road out front, Lt. Col. Patrick Malay, who is running military operations in the northern half of Falluja and led fierce combat through this neighborhood, watched the scene with satisfaction. "This is how I like it, just like Disneyland," he said. "Orderly lines and people leave with a smile on their face."

His units killed hundreds of insurgents sweeping through this area but also lost several men, he said. "I'm proud of these marines," he said, pointing to the aid station. "To see them turn off the kill switch and help people is a great thing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/international/middleeast/06falluja.html
user/pass: mediajunkie / mediajunkie

by redjade Thu Jan 13, 2005 14:33

A man-made tsunami
Terry Jones

I am bewildered by the world reaction to the tsunami tragedy. Why are newspapers, television and politicians making such a fuss?

[....]

Of course it's wonderful to see the human race rallying to the aid of disaster victims, but it's the inconsistency that has me foxed. Nobody is making this sort of fuss about all the people killed in Iraq, and yet it's a human catastrophe of comparable dimensions.

According to the only scientific estimate attempted, Iraqi deaths since the war began number more than 100,000. The tsunami death toll is in the region of 150,000. Yet in the case of Iraq, the media seems reluctant to impress on the public the scale of the carnage.

I haven't seen many TV reporters standing in the ruins of Falluja, breathlessly describing how, in 30 years of reporting, they've never seen a human tragedy on this scale. The Pope hasn't appealed for everyone to remember the Iraqi dead in their prayers, and MTV hasn't gone silent in their memory.

by redjade Wed Jan 19, 2005 16:32

January 18, 2005
Odd Happenings in Fallujah
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives//000173.php

“The soldiers are doing strange things in Fallujah,” said one of my contacts in Fallujah who just returned. He was in his city checking on his home and just returned to Baghdad this evening.

Speaking on condition of anonymity he continued, “In the center of the Julan Quarter they are removing entire homes which have been bombed, meanwhile most of the homes that were bombed are left as they were. Why are they doing this?”

According to him, this was also done in the Nazal, Mualmeen, Jubail and Shuhada’a districts, and the military began to do this after Eid, which was after November 20th.

He told me he has watched the military use bulldozers to push the soil into piles and load it onto trucks to carry away. This was done in the Julan and Jimouriya quarters of the city, which is of course where the heaviest fighting occurred during the siege, as this was where resistance was the fiercest.

[....]

Last month one refugee who had just arrived at the hospital in the small city explained that he’d watched the military bring in water tanker trucks to power blast some of the streets in Fallujah.

“Why are they doing this,” explained Ahmed (name changed for his protection), “To beautify Fallujah? No! They are covering their tracks from the horrible weapons they used in my city.”

by redjade Tue Mar 15, 2005 16:15

Juan Cole:
Readers often write in for an update on Fallujah. I am sorry to say that there is no Fallujah to update. The city appears to be in ruins and perhaps uninhabitable in the near future. Of 300,000 residents, only about 9,000 seem to have returned, and apparently some of those are living in tents above the ruins of their homes. The rest of the Fallujans are scattered in refugee camps of hastily erected tents at several sites, including one near Habbaniyyah, or are staying with relatives in other cities, including Baghdad.

The scale of this human tragedy-- the dispossession and displacement of 300,000 persons-- is hard to imagine. Unlike the victims of the tsunami who were left homeless, moreover, the Fallujans have witnessed no outpouring of world sympathy.

-- -- -- -- --

Fallujah, Tent City, Awaits Compensation

Al-Zaman/ AFP: The Iraqi government has yet to pay out any compensation to the inhabitants of Fallujah from the funds dedicated to the rebuilding of the city, which was assaulted by the US Marines and Iraqi forces beginning last November 8 in order to root out guerrillas who were thought to dominate it. Most of its buildings and homes were damaged, such that most of its former residents still live in the hills southwest of the city in tents erected hastily in the wilderness. The Iraqi government had established committees to identify damaged buildings and to survey the damage in preparation for the payment of monetary compensation that would allow rebuilding.

by Repost - Report to UN Tue Mar 29, 2005 06:22

New report on Fallujah crimes by the Studies Center of Human Rights & Democracy Al- Fallujah has just been presented to the UN. See link.

by redjade Sat Jul 16, 2005 16:26

8 Months After U.S.-Led Siege, Insurgents Rise Again in Fallujah
http://tinyurl.com/8g6l9

July 12 - Transformed into a police state after last winter's siege, this should be the safest city in all of Iraq.

Thousands of American and Iraqi troops live in crumbling buildings here and patrol streets laced with concertina wire. Any Iraqi entering the city must show a badge and undergo a search at one of six checkpoints. There is a 10 p.m. curfew.

But the insurgency is rising from the rubble nevertheless, eight months after the American military killed as many as 1,500 Iraqis in a costly invasion that fanned anti-American passions across Iraq and the Arab world.