Bridges bombed, hospital invaded

A week of destroying Iraq in order to save it...


Refugees from Alqaim, Western Iraq -- recently under US assault. Voting will be the first thing on their minds.

The notion that there is a large flow of insurgent ``foreign fighters'' from Syria to Iraq has been disputed, even in very conservative quarters. So why is it the official US military stance that recent destruction of Euphrates River bridges in western Iraq is for the purpose of disrupting the flow of such insurgents eastward towards the capital? This language is stenographically repeated across the media, including in today's Guardian:

The Euphrates sweep was the latest effort to disrupt the flow of fighters and arms from the Syrian border to the capital. Major General Rick Lynch, a military spokesman, said warplanes had bombed eight bridges. ``There were 12 bridges from the Syrian border to Ramadi. Were is the operative term. There are now four. Those four that remain are under the control of the Iraqi security forces and coalition forces.''

Infrastructure destruction in Iraq by the US occupiers is in fact an incredible development. According to this post on Daily Kos,

Why is this a big deal? Because we are actually destroying infrastructure in a country we occupy. We are saying that the military value of the bridges to the insurgancy is greater than the value to us in either a military or economic/social way. This can be compared to the use of chemicals to destroy the jungle in Vietnam. Not because it caused cancer but because it was the long term destruction of some portion of the country.

Last week Juan Cole posted a Gilbert Achcar piece quoting sources that at the very least call the US military justifications for these actions into serious doubt. Achcar first refers to reports questioning the prevalence of ``foreign fighters'' (though one has a self-interested Saudi pedigree) and then offers an alternate analysis of the unspoken motivations behind the US attacks, an analysis that agrees with that of yesterday's Deep Blade post:

The [Saudi Kingdom's] campaign also included the release of a Saudi-sponsored (and co-written) study by the CSIS, an unofficial think-tank in Washington, titled ``Saudi Militants in Iraq: Assessment and Kingdom’s Response.'' (Much case was made of this study because it said that foreign fighters were only a minority of the ``insurgents,'' as if it were a scoop.) It ``estimated'' (more a guessing-game than anything else) the proportion of foreign fighters in Iraq at 4-6% of a total of ``insurgents'' put at 30 000, of whom 12% from the Saudi Kingdom (1-2% of the total).

Al-Hayat for 9/28 reports figures given by Iraqi officials on the foreigners detained in Iraq: according to the officials quoted, US forces in Iraq hold in detention over 10,000 persons, of whom only 210 are foreigners. Of those, the largest group by far is made up of Saudis (35%). Syrians, Tunisians and Libyans together amount to 15%, Palestinians and Jordanians are 10%, and Egyptians and Sudanese 5%.

The CSIS report (pdf here), co-authored by hard-right military realist Anthony Cordesman states that,

By all reports, the [Iraqi] insurgency is largely homegrown. This is not simply the view of US experts, based on estimates emanating from Iraq, at least 90% of the fighters are Iraqi, in contrast to some allegations that the insurgency is being mainly fueled from abroad.

Achcar goes on to compare the present pre-vote situation with that of last November, when the US created chaos in Falluja in order to ``diminish the legitimacy of the outcome of the January 30 elections.'' In support of this notion, Achcar provides quotes by important Sunni leaders:

...Al-Hayat reports that two main figures of the Arab Sunni community in Iraq, Saleh al-Mutlak, the man leading the campaign against the draft constitution, and Issam al-Rawi, a member of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, have accused US occupation forces and Iraqi governmental forces of trying — by the full-fledged offensive they launched in the Arab Sunni province of Al-Anbar, starting with the assault on Tal Afar — to prevent the participation of Arab Sunnis in the referendum, thus pushing them to call for a boycott.

I recommend reading of the entire Achcar piece. It seems to me that the US military is creating a climate of fear, intimidation, and clamp-down against movement of the ordinary residents in areas under attack. There is little hope that any of these actions will for very long suppress opposition fighters, but opposition voters surely will be suppressed. There is even more support for this notion...

US attacks hospital in Haditha
Real reporting on these US attacks is scarce. But here is a gem from an interesting October 4 Washington Post story:

Mohammed Hadithi, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in Haditha, charged the U.S. troops violated the rights of residents during the assault. The Marines ``neglected the humanitarian standards,'' he said. ``If the American people come and see the army they are proud of doing that to unarmed women and children, they would have disowned the army because those they are looking for have escaped hours before they came and attacked.''

His accusation could not independently verified.

At Haditha Hospital, Dr. Abdul Qaider Obaidi, said the [US] Marines also broke into the hospital and searched the facility, arresting the director, Waleed Hadeethi and his assistant. Obaidi said the Marines accused the two men of treating al Qaeda fighters. ``They are using the hospital as a base for the combat operations,'' he added. Obaidi said he had no information about civilian casualties.

Like during its Falluja atrocities of November 2004, the US military appears to be targeting hospitals (in abject contravention of Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention). They are always careful to make accusations that hospitals they attack support fighters, thus giving them an Article 19 case that such facilities are not in fact protected. But Article 19 requires fair warning, and proof is never offered. And the fact that a hospital treats wounded fighters does not automatically remove its protection under international law.

This then begs the question -- Why it is so important for the Americans to target hospitals? The real reason is that the Pentagon does not want them to become a source of news about heavy civilian casualties. This lesson learned by the military was quite shamelessly annunciated in the New York Times on November 8, 2004, during last year's destruction of Falluja.

But if you read this CNN report, you'd think that most residents of Haditha during this year's raids were on friendly terms with the American invaders:

``The U.S. forces said they were here to free us from Saddam, but now I am a prisoner in my own home,'' said one resident. Marines assured him it was OK to leave his house if he wanted.

The Marines said they hope that the new Iraqi army can follow them into Haditha, a town the U.S. military has said has been a crossroads for insurgent fighters coming into Iraq. Another resident, a one-time Iraqi army officer under Saddam, said he would welcome a permanent Marine and army presence in the city. ``There is slaughter here by men in black masks,'' he said.

Most civilians appeared to be cooperating with Marines who are searching some houses. In one instance, residents were pointing out bombs to the Marines.

I am highly skeptical of this kind of reporting. I suspect that while most residents of the towns subject to the American sweeps would remain frightened in their homes and would not resist the invaders with violence, most would in fact support guerrilla forces opposing the Americans. Meanwhile, however, the true military objective is to keep residents so scared and immobilized -- through attacks on hospitals and the blowing up of bridges -- that their ``no'' votes on the constitution will be supressed. It's an ideal Bush-type election strategy.

Heartbreak
Please read this for story and photos of the refugee situation caused by the US attacks. Shame on the mainstream media for failing to analyze US motivations behind the assaults -- beyond the military's own self-serving propaganda -- and then ignoring the consequences.