"The whole world is watching us die"

APRIL 12:
The World Stands Together Against War

In the face of Iraqi resistance to the invasion, the
U.S. military strategy has abruptly shifted in the
last few days. Instead of posing as liberators, the
U.S. high command has called for open warfare against
the Iraqi civilian population. In the last 48 hours,
hundreds of civilians have been shot down on the
roadways, in their homes, on their farms. The aerial
bombings are becoming more indiscriminate as missiles
land in markets and residential neighborhoods.

The Iraq war has suddenly taken on the worst features
of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Facing a defiant and
resisting population, U.S. troops, under the direction
of their officers, treat all members of the population
as suspect and decide to shoot first and ask questions
later. The U.S. soldiers have been lied to about their
mission. They have been sent to kill and be killed in
a war for empire and conquest, not liberation. U.S.
casualties are mounting in this war that need not have
happened.

On March 31, there was a massacre of civilians, mainly
women and their children, whose crime was that they
were driving on a roadway in their own country. As
their van approached a checkpoint, U.S. soldiers
destroyed their vehicle with a barrage of 25mm cannon
fire from one or more of their M2 Bradley Fighting
Vehicles. The Washington Post quoted Capt. Ronny
Johnson of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division in his
series of orders to the troops present:
- "Fire a warning shot"
- "Stop [messing] around!"
- "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!"
- "Cease fire!"
- "You just [expletive] killed a family because you
didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!"

The "shoot first ­ ask questions later" strategy is
not the result of spontaneous actions by scared and
edgy troops. These are orders given the troops from
the Pentagon high command.

"Everyone is now seen as a combatant until proven
otherwise," a Pentagon official is quoted in the
Washington Post of April 1, 2003. The Pentagon
recognizes that the shift in tactics will be
understood as a brutal escalation of force against the
civilian population and that their earlier posture as
"liberators" will be exposed. "You'll see acts of
kindness, medical care and the like, but the large
scale aid effort will have to wait," a Pentagon
official told the Washington Post. In fact the new
U.S. strategy now is deliberately preventing Iraqi
civilians in Nassiriya and other towns from receiving
food and water unless they cooperate with the
occupation forces.

U.S. Marine Operations Commander Lt. Colonel Paul
Roche told reporters on March 31 that the U.S.
strategy towards the people of the city of Nassiriya
included the use of food and water as a weapon to
terrorize and break the will of the civilian
population.

In the April 1 front page of the Washington Post, the
Pentagon's new strategy is euphemistically referred to
in the headline "U.S. troops instructed to use tougher
tactics."

The assault against civilians is being reported in
greater detail and honesty by the world media outside
the United States. This change in U.S. tactics is, as
the following report shows, encouraging the most
racist and homicidal tendencies among U.S. soldiers at
the front.

It is important to read the following passage from the
UK Times of Sunday, March 30. It reports of a gruesome
scene outside of Nassiriya. Some fifteen vehicles,
including a minivan and a couple of trucks, were found
destroyed and riddled with bullets by the Times UK
reporter Mark Franchetti:

"Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying
in the road or in nearby ditches. All had been trying
to leave this southern town overnight, probably for
fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and
heavy artillery.

"Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is
crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run
into a group of shell-shocked young American marines
with orders to shoot anything that moved.

"One man's body was still in flames. It gave out a
hissing sound. Tucked away in his breast pocket, thick
wads of banknotes were turning to ashes. His savings,
perhaps.

"Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and
dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress, lay dead in
a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been
her father. Half his head was missing.

"Nearby, in a battered old Volga, peppered with
ammunition holes, an Iraqi woman - perhaps the girl's
mother - was dead, slumped in the back seat. A US
Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the
bodies.

"This was not the only family who had taken what they
thought was a last chance for safety. A father, baby
girl and boy lay in a shallow grave. On the bridge
itself a dead Iraqi civilian lay next to the carcass
of a donkey."

The UK Times article also documents that in Iraq, just
as in Vietnam, the U.S. soldiers are being trained to
wage war against a civilian population by dehumanizing
those whom they are killing.

"I'll Just Kill Him"

"As I walked away, Lieutenant Matt Martin, whose third
child, Isabella, was born while he was on board ship
en route to the Gulf, appeared beside me.

" 'Did you see all that?' he asked, his eyes filled
with tears. 'Did you see that little baby girl? I
carried her body and buried it as best I could but I
had no time. It really gets to me to see children
being killed like this, but we had no choice.'

"Martin's distress was in contrast to the bitter
satisfaction of some of his fellow marines as they
surveyed the scene. 'The Iraqis are sick people and we
are the chemotherapy,' said Corporal Ryan Dupre. 'I am
starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of
a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll
just kill him.' "

Crimes Against Humanity

George Bush and the high command are guilty of crimes
against humanity and war crimes. What we are
witnessing is a full-scale massacre carried out from
the land, the air and the sea assault. The U.S. media
presents the war as carefully packaged propaganda and
trivializes the actual human costs of the war by
turning it into something of a spectator sport. But
the Iraqi people cannot escape this war and they
cannot turn off their television to make it go away.

Again, it is the non-U.S. press that reveals the
extent of the criminality of the war.

A March 29 Reuters article entitled "Iraqis Delirious
with Grief After Missile Attack" described the Friday
night attack by U.S. bombs in a poor section of
Baghdad. Arouba Khodeir, 39, while "wailing
hysterically and hitting herself in the face and
chest, as women around her were trying to calm her
down," spoke of her 11-year-old son Karar who died
outside the house with his friends: " 'My son had his
head blown off,' screamed Khodeir. 'Why are they
hitting the people? Why are they killing the children?
Why are they doing his to us? Why are they attacking
civilians? Didn't Bush say on TV that he won't attack
civilians. But these people who died are all
civilians? Is this a target?' she wailed, pointing at
the dried blood of her son still splashed on the
walls."

"The Whole World is Watching Us Die"

The report also described the killing of Shaza
Shallum, 20, who was "holding her baby and walking
with two relatives when the explosion sent a shard of
shrapnel through her neck. Six-month-old Fatma was
found alive in her dead mother's arms and brought by
neighbors to her grandmother. The wails of the
mourners drowned the cries of the hungry infant."

One of the people living in this neighborhood told
Reuters: "We are helpless people. It is all out of our
hands. Why cannot the world find a solution? The whole
world is watching us die and is doing nothing to help
us."

The full article can be found at
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=AIXRWPJ3C5TXOCRBAEOCFFA?
type=topNews&storyID=2471290

On April 12, people of conscience all over the world
are marching, rallying, and carrying out massive
protests in solidarity with the suffering people of
Iraq. The people who are being killed are not our
enemies, they are our sisters and brothers. They must
not be allowed to think that the world is "doing
nothing" as the violence is inflicted upon them.
Thousands of young men and women in the U.S. armed
forces either oppose the war or are going through a
process of questioning about the mission. It is
crucial that the people of the United States come
together to demand: Stop the War Against Iraq / Bring
the Troops Home Now.

 MORE INFORMATION ABOUT APRIL 12

In Washington, huge numbers of people will gather at
the Washington Monument at 12 noon. Joint U.S. actions
will take place in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

BUSES, VANS AND CAR CARAVANS WILL TRAVEL FROM THE EAST
COAST, MIDWEST AND SOUTH to be at the White House on
Saturday, April 12. For a listing of transportation
being organized from cities around the country, go to:
http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/a12/a12transp.html

If you are ORGANIZING TRANSPORTATION, fill out the
easy-to-use form at
http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/a12/index.html#a12transp
so that we can help spread the word to others (if the
link does not take you directly to the form, scroll
down)

To DOWNLOAD LITERATURE, go to
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/resources/index.html

If you cannot download and print the flyers and
stickers, you can pick up stacks at A.N.S.W.E.R.
offices around the country, or you can call us at
202-544-3389 and request a packet of flyers. Please
make your request immediately so they can be sent in
time for massive distribution.

To make a tax-deductible DONATION to support the work
of the anti-war movement, go to
http://www.internationalanswer.org/donate.html

Please check the April 12 page on the A.N.S.W.E.R.
website at
http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/a12/index.html
frequently for additional organizing information. This
will include additional pieces of downloadable
literature; a daily update to the list of cities
organizing transportation; logistical information; &
more.

*The National March to Stop the War on Iraq comes in
the midst of the long-planned Latin America Solidarity
Coalition (LASC) Mobilization Against Military and
Economic Intervention in Latin America and the
Caribbean. A.N.S.W.E.R. encourages participation in
the LASC public plenaries including major Latin
American speakers on Friday and Saturday at 7:00pm and
the LASC rally and demonstration ending at the World
Bank and IMF on Sunday, April 13. Visit the LASC web
page at http://www.lasolidarity.org for details.*

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

FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://www.InternationalANSWER.org
http://www.VoteNoWar.org
[log in to unmask]
New York 212-633-6646
Washington 202-544-3389
Los Angeles 213-487-2368
San Francisco 415-821-6545

To make a tax-deductible donation, go to
http://www.internationalanswer.org/donate.html

Sign up to receive updates (low volume):
http://www.internationalanswer.org/subscribelist.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~