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| Children make no sound... US military said soldiers on Tuesday opened fire on a car as it approached a checkpoint in northern Iraq, killing two civilians in the vehicle's front seats. Six children were in the backseat. US troops trying to stop the car used hand signals and fired warning shots before firing at the car, killing the driver and front seat passenger, a military statement said on Wednesday. The shooting occurred in the city of Tal Afar, about 60km west of Mosul. “The Army’s translator later told me that this was a Turkoman family and that the teenaged girl kept shouting, ‘Why did they shoot us? We have no weapons! We were just going home!’” |
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Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by the National Catholic Reporter
What the Rest of the World Watched on Inauguration Day by Joan Chittister Dublin, on U.S. Inauguration Day, didn't seem to notice. Oh, they played a few clips that night of the American president saying, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." But that was not their lead story. The picture on the front page of The Irish Times was a large four-color picture of a small Iraqi girl. | ||||
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Her little body was a coil of steel.
She sat knees up, cowering, screaming madly into the dark night.
Her white clothes and spread hands and small tight face were blood-spattered.
The blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot through the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she sat beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters in the back seat.
A series of pictures of the incident played on the inside page, as well.
A 12-year-old brother, wounded in the fray, falls face down out of the car when the car door opens, the pictures show.
In another, a soldier decked out in battle gear, holds a large automatic weapon on the four children, all potential enemies, all possible suicide bombers, apparently, as they cling traumatized to one another in the back seat and the child on the ground goes on screaming in her parent's blood.
No promise of "freedom" rings in the cutline on this picture.
No joy of liberty underlies the terror on these faces here.
I found myself closing my eyes over and over again as I stared at the story, maybe to crush the tears forming there, maybe in the hope that the whole scene would simply disappear.
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But no, like the photo of a naked little girl bathed in napalm and running down a road in Vietnam served to crystallize the situation there for the rest of the world, I knew that this picture of a screaming, angry, helpless, orphaned child could do the same.
The soldiers standing in the dusk had called "halt," the story said, but no one did.
Maybe the soldiers' accents were bad.
Maybe the car motor was unduly noisy.
Maybe the children were laughing loudly — the way children do on family trips.
Whatever the case, the car did not stop, the soldiers shot with deadly accuracy, seven lives changed in an instant: two died in body, five died in soul.
BBC news announced that the picture was spreading across Europe like a brushfire that morning, featured from one major newspaper to another, served with coffee and Danish from kitchen table to kitchen table in one country after another.
I watched, while Inauguration Day dawned across the Atlantic, as the Irish up and down the aisle on the train from Killarney to Dublin, narrowed their eyes at the picture, shook their heads silently and slowly over it, and then sat back heavily in their seats, too stunned into reality to go back to business as usual — the real estate section, the sports section, the life-style section of the paper.
Here was the other side of the inauguration story.
No military bands played for this one.
No bulletproof viewing stands could stop the impact of this insight into the glory of force.
Here was an America they could no longer understand.
The contrast rang cruelly everywhere.
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I sat back and looked out the train window myself.
Would anybody in the United States be seeing this picture today?
Would the United States ever see it, in fact?
And if it is printed in the United States, will it also cross the country like wildfire and would people hear the unwritten story under it?
There are 54 million people in Iraq.
Over half of them are under the age of 15.
Of the over 100,000 civilians dead in this war, then, over half of them are children.
We are killing children.
The children are our enemy.
And we are defeating them.
"I'll tell you why I voted for George Bush," a friend of mine said.
"I voted for George Bush because he had the courage to do what Al Gore and John Kerry would never have done."
I've been thinking about that one.
Osama Bin Laden is still alive. Sadam Hussein is still alive. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still alive. Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah are burning.
But my government has the courage to kill children or their parents. And I'm supposed to be impressed.
That's an unfair assessment, of course. A lot of young soldiers have died, too. A lot of weekend soldiers are maimed for life. A lot of our kids went into the military only to get a college education and are now shattered in soul by what they had to do to other bodies.
A lot of adult civilians have been blasted out of their homes and their neighborhoods and their cars.
More and more every day.
According to U.N. Development Fund for Women, 15 percent of wartime casualties in World War I were civilians.
In World War II, 65 percent were civilians.
By the mid '90s, over 75 percent of wartime casualties were civilians.
In Iraq, for every dead U.S. soldier, there are 14 other deaths, 93 percent of them are civilian.
But those things happen in war, the story says.
It's all for a greater good, we have to remember.
It's all to free them.
It's all being done to spread "liberty."
From where I stand, the only question now is who or what will free us from the 21st century's new definition of bravery.
Who will free us from the notion that killing children or their civilian parents takes courage?
A Benedictine Sister of Erie, Sister Joan is a best-selling author and well-known international lecturer. She is founder and executive director of Benetvision: A Resource and Research Center for Contemporary Spirituality, and past president of the Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Sister Joan has been recognized by universities and national organizations for her work for justice, peace and equality for women in the Church and society. She is an active member of the International Peace Council. Common Dreams © 1997-2005 |
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twenty twenty
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Iraqi Freedom: Mother and Father Shot in front of children
It was a routine foot patrol.
As we made our way up a broad boulevard, in the distance I could see a car making its way toward us.
As a defence against potential car bombs, it is now standard practice for foot patrols to stop oncoming vehicles, particularly after dark.
"We have a car coming," someone called out, as we entered an intersection.
We could see the car about 100 metres away.
It kept coming; I could hear its engine now, a high whine that sounded more like acceleration than slowing down.
It was maybe 50 yards away now.
"Stop that car!" someone shouted out, seemingly simultaneously with someone firing what sounded like warning shots — a staccato measured burst.
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world... pics http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/ 05/middle_east_shooting_in_tal_afar/html/1.stm by : Chris Hondros in Tal Afar, Iraq Friday 21st January 2005 |
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Maliki stooge and collaborator of US subjugation |
Iraq collaborators
Is this what the Iraq people are voting for:
Maliki — the stooge and collaborator!
Allawi — permanent CIA Illuminati tool!
How it sickens one to see human submissiveness in the face of such pervasive Illuminati evil!
Kewe | Iyad Allawi CIA Illuminati tool |
Depleted Uranium — its use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Balkans Photos of Iraq children being born deformed |
US used white phosphorus chemical and thermobaric fuel-air weapons War Crimes — Fallujah |
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twenty twenty
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May 04, 2005 U.S. Soldier — Death of a boy  |
Sitting there in that darkness listening to the briefing on how we were to execute the mission, I let my mind wander from the briefing and said a prayer.
"Just one more day God, let me live one more day and we will go from there..."
It was the same prayer I said every day because every day I did the same thing.
I left the base. With a small team I would go out each day on different missions. I was their translator.
You could see the hate in their eyes
There were different people to meet each day. There were some who would kill you if they could. They would look at you and you could see the hate in their eyes.
I also met with people who would have given me everything they owned.
People, that were so thankful to us because we had rid them of Saddam.
Well, this day was not really much different from all those other days so far.
After the briefing we all got into our assigned seats and convoyed out to the raid site.
I was to go in directly after the military police that would clear the building.
The raid began without a hitch.
Inside one of the courtyards of one of the houses, talking to an Iraqi woman checking to see if her story correlated with what the detained men had said), I heard gunfire.
It was automatic gunfire.
His was the weapon I had heard
Ducking next to the stone wall I yelled at the woman to get inside her house, and when the gunfire stopped I peeked my head around the front gate.
I saw a soldier amongst the others who was pulling rear security by our vehicles. This soldier I saw was still aiming his M249 (a fully automatic belt fed machine gun) at a black truck off in the distance. His was the weapon I had heard.
I ran up near his position and overheard the Captain in charge of the raid asking what had happened and why had this soldier opened fire.
The soldier kept his weapon aimed and answered that he was sure he had seen a man holding an AK-47 in the back of the black truck.
I was amongst the four (along with the soldier who had fired on the black truck) who had been selected to go and see what was up with that truck.
They were carrying a body
We were out of breath when we got to the gun-truck nearest to the black civilian truck(a gun-truck is a HUMMWV or sometimes called a Hummer by civilians, with a .50 caliber machine gun on its roof).
There was a group of four Iraqis walking towards us from the black truck.
They were carrying a body.
When I saw this I ran forward and began to speak (in Arabic) to the man holding the body but I couldn’t say a word.
There right in front of me in the arms of one of the men I saw a small boy (no more than 3 years old).
His head was cocked back at the wrong angle and there was blood.
So much blood. How could all that blood be from that small boy? I heard crying too.
All of the Iraqi men standing there were crying and sobbing and asking me WHY?
Someone behind me started screaming for a medic, it was the young soldier (around my age) who had fired his weapon.
He screamed and screamed for a medic until his voice was hoarse and a medic came just to tell us what I already knew.
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The boy was dead. I was so numb.
Speaking in a voice that sounded so very far away
I stood there looking at that little child, someone’s child (just like mine) and seeing how red the clean white shirt of the man holding the boy was turning.
It was then that I realized that I had been speaking to them; speaking in a voice that sounded so very far away.
I heard my voice telling them (in Arabic) how sorry we were.
My mouth was saying this but all my mind could focus on was the hole in the child’s head.
The white shirt covered in bright red blood.
Every color was so bright.
There were other colors too.
The glistening white pieces of the child’s skull still splattered on that so very white shirt.
I couldn’t stop looking at them even as I continued telling them how sorry we were.
I can still see it all to this very day.
Accomplished nothing except killing a child
The raid was over there were no weapons to be found and we had accomplished nothing except killing a child of some unknowing mother.
Not wanting to leave yet, I stayed as long as I could, talking to the man holding the child.
I couldn’t leave because I needed to know who they were. I wanted to remember.
The man was the brother of the child’s father. He was the boy’s uncle, and he was watching him for his father who had gone to the market.
They were carpenters and the soldier who had fired upon the truck had seen someone holding a piece of wood and standing in the truck bed.
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Published on Monday, July 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Sheldon Drobny Justice O'Connor's decision in Bush v. Gore led to the current Bush administration's execution of war crimes and atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places in the Middle East that are as egregious as those committed by the Third Reich and other evil governments in human history.
The lesson is clear.
Those people who may be honorable and distinguished in their chosen profession should always make decisions based upon good rather than evil no matter where their nominal allegiances may rest.
Justice O'Connor was quoted to have said something to the affect that she abhorred the thought of Bush losing the 2000 election to Gore.
She was known to have wanted to retire after the 2000 election for same reason she is now retiring.
She wanted to spend more time with her sick husband.
Unfortunately, she tarnished her distinguished career with the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore by going along with the partisan majority of the Court to interfere with a democratic election that she and the majority feared would be lost in an honest recount.
She dishonored herself and the Supreme Court by succumbing to party allegiances and not The Constitution to which she swore to uphold.
And the constitutional argument she and the majority used to justify their decision was the Equal Protection Clause.
The Equal Protection Clause was the ultimate basis for the decision, but the majority essentially admitted (what was obvious in any event) that it was not basing its conclusion on any general view of what equal protection requires.
The decision in Bush v Gore was not dictated by the law in any sense—either the law found through research, or the law as reflected in the kind of intuitive sense that comes from immersion in the legal culture.
The Equal Protection clause is generally used in matters concerning civil rights.
The majority ignored their basic conservative views supporting federalism and states' rights in order to justify their decision.
History will haunt these justices down for their utter lack of justice and the hypocrisy associated with this decision.
Sheldon Drobny is Co-founder of Air America Radio.
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Bush v. Gore Appointment of U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court — Raw political clout exercised by US Supreme Court |
Unspeakable grief and horror ...and the circus of deception continues... | |
Nanci Pelosi — U.S. House Democratic leader — Congresswoman California, 8th District
Speaking at the AIPAC agenda May 26, 2005
There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense.
In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.
The greatest threat to Israel's right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran.
For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology....
In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.'
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The United States will stand with Israel now and forever.
Now and forever.
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The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying — Lest we forget |
Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures What CNN never shows you |
Israel, chemical weapons and phosphorous bombs New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces Undetectable poison-needle gun for 'clean' assassinations |
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For archive purposes, this article is being stored on TheWE.cc website.The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. |
I watched, while Inauguration Day dawned across the Atlantic, as the Irish up and down the aisle on the train from Killarney to Dublin, narrowed their eyes at the picture, shook their heads silently and slowly over it, and then sat back heavily in their seats, too stunned into reality to go back to business as usual — the real estate section, the sports section, the life-style section of the paper. 
