As Juan Cole noted today on Air America, the senseless destruction of Fallujah metastisizes the insurgency.
The city has no surgeons, the hospital has few or no supplies, and U.S. bombardment targeted one of the few remaining clinics. Every noncombatant death -- there have been many, with children and respected scholars among the casualties -- will stir calls for vengeance. American forces are using white phosporous rounds, which create fires and burns that water will not extinguish. Fighting has already escalated in several other cities, including Mosul and Ramadi.
Family members of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi have been kidnapped and threatened with beheading if the Fallujah campaign does not cease. Their fate is easy to foresee.
The United States media has made every effort to de-emphasize our own casualties, but NBC puts the current figure at 200. I would not be surprised to see a substantially higher number soon.
Al Zarqawi and other insurgent leaders have left Fallujah. This mass murder cannot benefit the United States in any way. We have chosen insanity.
3 comments:
Regarding the casuality counts, I've really wonder how these are being tabulated. Are they even conducting a hard count of civilian casualites? Are these being categorized in any way, i.e. men, women, children, elderly, etc.? Finally, is it true that when a soldier is severely injured in Iraq and then later dies in a US hospital in Germany, are these deaths counted in the casuality counts?
here in Oz, the ABC said last night that "...One American source states as many as 600 insurgents have been killed..."
to which my response was a) bullshit, the Americans have a policy of not counting, either the reporter or the source were bullshitting, and then b) maybe they _are_ counting and our ABC just dropped the ball by quoting said source
LamontCranston.
And, as was commented elsewhere, we are putting down the insurgency in Fallujah with more loss of civilian life than even Saddam Hussein managed in 1991 when supressing the Shia rebellion that followed Gulf War 1.
This is a scandal, and by our silence we are complicit in it.
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