Let's All Celebrate the Liberation of Iraq!

[pynchonoid]

caption:
<http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2534661>
"Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said [...] the
military campaign would go on to pursue "regime
appendages" in various parts of Iraq.

pix:
<http://www.antiwar.com/photos/ali.jpg>

story:
<http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12821263&method=full&siteid=50143>

ALI Ismaeel Abbas, 12, was fast asleep when war
shattered his life.

A missile obliterated his home and most of his family,
leaving him orphaned, badly burned - and blowing off
both his arms.

With tears running down his face he asked: "Can you
help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can
get me another pair of hands? If I don't get a pair of
hands I will commit suicide.

"I wanted to be an army officer when I grow up but not
any more. Now I want to be a doctor - but how can I? I
don't have hands."

Lying in a Baghdad hospital, an improvised metal cage
over his chest to stop his burned flesh touching the
bedclothes, he said: "It was midnight when the missile
fell on us. My father, my mother and my brother died.
My mother was five months pregnant.

"Our neighbours pulled me out and brought me here
unconscious.

"Our house was just a poor shack. Why did they want to
bomb us?"

He did not know the area where he lived was surrounded
by military installations.

Hospital staff were overwhelmed by the sharp rise in
casualties since US troops moved on Baghdad and
intensified the aerial assault.

Ambulances rushed in with victims, many carried in
bedsheets after running out of stretchers.

Doctors struggled to find them beds. Staff had no time
to clean the blood from trolleys. Patients' screams
and parents' cries echoed across the wards.

With many staff unable to get there due to the
bombing, doctors worked round the clock performing
surgery, taking blood, giving injections and ferrying
wounded.

Dr Osama Saleh al-Duleimi, an orthopaedic surgeon and
assistant director at Kindi, said they were overloaded
and suffering shortages of anaesthetics and
painkillers.

The Red Cross has been touring hospitals with first
aid and surgery kits. Spokesman Roland
Huguenin-Benjamin said: "They were overwhelmed by
sheer numbers - during fierce bombardment they
received up to 100 casualties an hour."

Doctors who treated victims of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq
war and the 1991 Gulf War were taken aback by the
injuries. Dr Duleimi, 48, said: "This is the worst
I've seen in the number of casualties and fatal
wounds.

"This is a disaster because they're attacking
civilians."

Dr Sadek al-Mukhtar said: "In the previous battles the
weapons seemed merely disabling. Now they're much more
lethal.

"Before the war I did not regard America as my enemy.
Now I do. War should be against the military. America
is killing civilians."


<http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1048313570322&p=1012571727088>

Operation Iraqi Hope for the Future

[...] The Iraqi Coalition of National Unity (ICNU),
which appeared in the city last week riding on US
special forces vehicles, has taken to looting and
terrorising their neighbourhood with impunity,
according to most residents.

"They steal and steal," said a man living near the
Medresa al Tayif school, calling himself Abu Zeinab.
"They threaten us, saying: 'We are with the Americans,
you can do nothing to us'."

Sa'ida al Hamed, another resident, said she witnessed
looting by the ICNU and other armed gangs in the city,
which lost its police force when the government fled
last week. One man told a US army translator on Monday
that he was taken out of his house and beaten by ICNU
forces when he refused to give them his car. They took
it anyway.

If true, the testimony of residents reveals a darker
side to US policy in Iraq. In their distaste for
peacekeeping and eagerness to hand the ruling of Iraq
back to Iraqis, US forces are in danger of losing the
peace as rapidly as they have won the war.

US special forces said they were looking into the
complaints, which had been passed to them by US
military sources. They declined, however, to discuss
the formation of the group, how its members were
chosen, or who they were.

The head of the ICNU, who says he is a former colonel
in the Iraqi artillery forces who has been working
with the underground opposition since 1996, announced
on Tuesday that he was acting mayor of Najaf, and his
group had taken over administration of the city.

Other Iraqi exiles, brought in by the CIA and US
special forces to help assemble a local government
over the next few days, say the militia is out of
control. [...] 

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2931297.stm>

Operation EVEN MORE Iraqi Hope for the Future

The US military in Afghanistan says it has killed 11
Afghan civilians by mistake in an air attack. 

The deaths occurred when "a bomb dropped by coalition
aircraft landed on a house... near the Pakistan
border," a statement issued the US air base at Bagram
said.

The statement said US planes had been responding to an
attack by unnamed enemy forces on the outskirts of the
town of Shkin. 

US-led forces have launched a number of operations in
recent weeks against members of the former Taleban
regime and remnants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda
network. 

'Tragic accident' 

The eleven dead civilians comprised seven men and four
women, the statement said. 

Another civilian was wounded. 

[...] 
Correspondents say there has been growing resentment
in southern Afghanistan as civilians have been caught
up in a number of US-led security operations. 

'Inaccurate information' 

The issue of civilian casualties has caused
controversy since the US launched its successful
campaign to dislodge the former Taleban regime from
control of Afghanistan. 

US forces have launched several operations recently

In February local people in the province of Helmand
said 17 people were killed when the US bombed a
suspected Taleban base. 

The US denied there had been fatalities. 

Last July the New York Times published a report by an
American aid group that said US air strikes had killed
more than 800 civilians. 

The aid group, Global Exchange, said the Pentagon
relied on inaccurate or misleading information and
preferred air strikes to ground operations that might
put US forces at risk. 

But a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai told the
BBC civilian casualties were below 500. 

In the most serious incident, the Afghan Government
said 48 civilians - mostly women and children - were
killed and 117 injured when a US AC-130 plane opened
fire on a wedding party. 

A US investigation concluded that the air crew were
justified in attacking because they had come under
fire. 




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