Iraq: 935 lies, a tyrant and weapons of mass destruction by Felicity Arbuthnot

28th February 2014



The suffering is far from over in Iraq, reports Felicity Arbuthnot. It's new dictator is being supported by massive shipments of horrific weapons, while the country remains poor and devastated country, and a covert US re-invasion is under way ...

The greatest crime since World War II has been US foreign policy - Former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark.

In a Presentation at European Parliament in Brussels on 29th January the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, likened Iraq's justice system to"processing animals in a slaughterhouse".

She also accused Iraq's justice system of being "too deeply flawed to warrant even a limited use of the death penalty, let alone dozens of executions at a time." Torture, sexual abuse and the threat of rape and actual rape are frequently inflicted on detainees, regardless of their gender.

In January this year 38 people were hanged in two days. Last October 42 prisoners were executed in two days, acts Pillay called"obscene and inhuman". Iraq now has the third highest execution rate on earth, according to Amnesty International.

US, UK: selective condemnation of tyrants

However, the US and UK are seemingly remarkably selective when it comes to tyrants who "kill their own people".

Not only have they failed to censure their tyrannical Iraqi puppet, Nuri al-Maliki, but they are also arming him to the teeth with the same weapons which are linked to the horrific birth defects, and cancers throughout the country, which he is now using on "his own people".

Moreover, if allegations from very well informed sources that he holds an Iranian passport are correct, to say that US-UK's despot of choice appears in a whole new political light would be to massively understate.

To facilitate Al-Maliki's assault on Iraq's citizens, the US "rushed" 75 Hellfire missiles to Baghdad in December. On 23rd January Iraq requested a further 500 Hellfires, costing $82 million - small change compared to the $14 billion in weapons provided by America since 2005.

The AGM-114R Hellfire II, nauseatingly named 'Romeo', clocked in at: $94,000 each - in 2012. A shopping spree on weaponry in a country where electricity, clean water, education and health services have all but collapsed since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The re-invasion of Iraq

Two weeks ago an "American cargo jet loaded with weapons" including 2,400 rockets toarm Iraqi attack helicopters also arrived in Baghdad.

Subsequently a contract was agreed to sell a further 24 AH-64E attack helicopters to Iraq"along with spare parts and maintenance, in a massive $6.2 Billion deal."

With them comes the reinvasion of Iraq, with: "hundreds of Americans" to be shipped out"to oversee the training and fielding of equipment". Some are "US government employees" - read 'military' - plus a plethora of "contractors" - read mercenaries.

According to Jane's Defence Weekly, on 15th November 2013 Iraq also took delivery of"its first shipment of highly advanced Mi-35 attack helicopters as part of a $4.3 Billion arms purchase from Russia", out of an order of "about 40 Mi-35 and 40 Mi-28 Havoc attack helicopters".

The all to "attack his own people" in the guise of defeating 'Al Qaida' in Anbar province and elsewhere where the people have been peacefully protesting a near one man regime of torture, sectarianism, kangaroo courts which sentence victims who have also had confessions extracted under torture.

FALLUJAH, IRAQ - The Hidden Massacre (Video)

Fallujah - The Hidden Massacre

Veteran admits: Bodies melted away before us.

Shocking revelation RAI News 24.


WARNING

This video contains images that depict the reality and horror of war.

It should only be viewed by a mature audience

November 15, 2005

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

The cause of congenital anomaly and cancer in Fallujah Iraq is identified as Enriched Uranium from novel weapons systems deployed by the US.

 

Dr Chris Busby & Malak Hamdan

October 18, 2011 Press release: 17 th October 2011 The cause of congenital anomaly and cancer in Fallujah Iraq is identified as Enriched Uranium from novel weapons systems deployed by the US. Remarkably high levels of congenital anomaly at birth, together with high cancer rates in Fallujah, Iraq were previously found in a joint UK Iraqi epidemiological study published in the International Journal of Environment and Public Health in July 2010 and reported in The Independent. The illnesses and unusual changes in the sex-ratio at birth, were shown to appear following the US-led attacks on the town in 2004. Many believed that Depleted Uranium weapons were employed but no evidence of this was available. USA forces denied using DU. Now, one year after this, the authors have nailed down the cause of the genetic and genomic effects found in Fallujah. Samira Alaani and Muhammed Tafash, two paediatricians at Fallujah General Hospital, Chris Busby, Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster, Malak Hamdan, a chemical engineer and Eleonore Blaurock Busch, whose laboratory in Germany carried out analytical work has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Conflict and Healththe results of an exhaustive study of contamination in Fallujah. They began by analysing the hair of 25 parents of children with congenital malformations using highly sensitive Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS). Metal contamination is excreted into hair at same rate as it is excreted into urine. There were high values of Calcium, Magnesium, Strontium, Aluminium, Bismuth, Mercury and Uranium. However, of these only Uranium, which is radioactive, is associated with cancer and birth defects. Uranium levels were significantly higher than those expected on the basis of other published control measurements of uncontaminated populations, particularly Israel and Sweden. Levels reported for soil, tap, river and well water were unable to explain the hair results, but showed, surprisingly that the environmental Uranium was not natural but was man-made. It was not, however DU. The ratio of the two isotopes of Uranium U238 and U235 is always 138 in natural Uranium deposits. For DU, the ratio is always high: pure DU has a ratio above 400. However, in Fallujah, both in the hair of the parents and in the environmental samples, the Uranium ratio was significantly low, implying the presence of Enriched Uranium. To investigate the source of the Uranium, because the women in Fallujah have long hair, and hair grows at a known rate or about 1cm a month, the team was able to obtain historic exposure information by analysing along the length of the hair of 5 women. Hair contamination was much higher in the past. In the case of one woman whose hair was 80cm long, taking the hair end back to 2005, just after the attack, the Uranium concentration in 2011 defined exposures to very high levels of uranium in the past. In the paper, the authors introduce evidence that the effects on child health are clear to see in the whole of Iraq as well as in the children of Gulf War veterans. This is also true for childhood cancer which was reported in the epidemiological study to be shockingly high in Fallujah with rates about 14 times those expected on the basis of populations in Egypt. The anomalously high genotoxic effects of Uranium are also discussed. Uranium binds to DNA and work by Chris Busby reported in New Scientist in 2009 shows that the element concentrates natural background gamma radiation into the DNA through a process termed the secondary photoelectron effect. Given that man-made Enriched Uranium is found in the Fallujah environment and that levels were higher in the past, the authors conclude that a uranium based weapon of some type was employed in the Battle of Fallujah, and is the main cause of the high levels of cancer and congenital disease. The paper discusses weapons systems and cites patents which call for the use of Uranium in shaped charges and other types of anti-personnel weapons (rather than the anti-tank DU weapons used in GW1). Included also are thermobaric devices and novel uranium packed explosives which kill by charring victims and pressure effects which cause lung collapse. It is of interest that Enriched Uranium signatures have also turned up in other recent battlefields, notably in the Lebanon, where soil from a missile crater in Khiam and also dust from an ambulance air filter both showed the presence of Enriched Uranium in 2006, a finding reported in The Independent by Robert Fisk. The authors are unable to explain why these weapons contain or produce slightly enriched Uranium and call for the military to now reveal the truth about the weapons systems being employed in modern battlefields. Dr Busby said: What we have found makes it perfectly clear that a new generation of Uranium based weapons exists, is being employed in all modern battlefields and leads to shocking increases in cancer and congenital illness in innocent civilians and soldiers alike. Whether there is slightly enriched Uranium to cover up the use of Uranium weapons, or whether the enrichment is an integral requirement of some new weapons system, what we see is the deployment of a device of indiscriminate effect with terrible and indiscriminate consequences. It is most likely that this weapon is also being employed by NATO forces in Libya, and we will wait and watch with concern for increases in cancer and birth defects following this latest war. He continued: There has been a sustained effort to stop us making this study and then to stop us publishing it. We have been attacked by people writing to our funders so we had no money to pay for the analyses, to the Journals we were sending the study to even before we sent it, to our Universities and Hospitals and Institutions. It was rejected by The Lancet without even being sent for Peer Review. It was rejected by the International Journal of Environment and Public Health where we published our previous paper, without being sent to a reviewer on the basis of pressure brought on the editor from outside by people who hacked into the computers of the authors and knew about the paper before the journal received it. The implications of this discovery are extremely serious. First it means that all the measurements made for Depleted Uranium DU on Gulf War 2 veterans are now useless as indications of exposure to Uranium dust and must be revisited. Second it shows that Uranium is now being used routinely in anti-personnel weapons and no longer only in anti tank weapons. Finally it means that the focus of the NGOs on banning Depleted Uranium (DU) is misplaced and such a ban pointless since DU has not been deployed for a long time as the military rightly (and with some concealed amusement) say. The local civilian effects and global civilian exposures to this material represents a human rights issue of the greatest magnitude. Malak Hamdan added: This extraordinary discovery of a new uranium weapon should serve as a wake-up call to the entire world. We cannot keep denying that these radioactive weapons can discriminate in their effects between military and non-military targets. Because of this, enormous numbers of innocent people have died and will die in the future. Countless parents will watch their children with horror and pity as for several generations children will continue to be born with congenital anomalies as result of the genetic heritable effects induced by this exposure to uranium dust. Contact: Chris Busby +44 1970 630215; Mob +44 7989 428833 - c.busby@ulster.ac.uk - christo@greenaudit.org Malak Hamdan +44 7903153163 - malakhamdan@hotmail.com - malak@thecbdf.org Dr Chris Busby is Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster, Guest Reseacher at the German Federal Agricultural Laboratory, Julius Kuehn Institute, Braunschweig, Germany, Director of Green Audit, www.greenaudit.org, and is the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk www.euradcom.org Malak Hamdan a Chemical Engineer and is President of the London-Based Cancer and Birth Defects Foundation, www.thecbdf.org For more information please visit www.thecbdf.org The team at The Cancer and Birth Defects Foundation, Entesar Ariabi and Abdulmunaem Almula, have supported this research. This article was published on Uruknet

Birth defects in FALLUJAH linked to US assault

1 January 2011

Birth Defects In Fallujah Linked To US assault

By Samira Alaani, Mozhgan Savabieasfahani ,
Mohammad Tafash & Paola Manduca


Since 2003, congenital malformations have increased to account for 15% of all births in Fallujah, Iraq. Congenital heart defects have the highest incidence, followed by neural tube defects. Similar birth defects were reported in other populations exposed to war contaminants. While the causes of increased prevalence of birth defects are under investigation, we opted to release this communication to contribute to exploration of these issues- The Report in PDF

http://countercurrents.org/fallujah311210.htm

Fallujah, a Disgrace for the USA, an Eternal Curse on Humanity

Fallujah, a Disgrace for the USA, an Eternal Curse on Humanity

by Dirk Adriaensens


Global Research, September 21, 2010


“It is the people of Fallujah’s cherished right to hold to account the International Community that now has both the mandate and moral responsibility to initiate proceedings to prosecute and hold accountable all those perpetrators, and to seek full restitution and compensations commensurate with the endured suffering and pain throughout the occupation period, continuing till the present day.” (Dr. Muhamad Tareq Al-Darraji, President of Conservation Centre of Environment and Reserves in Fallujah – CCERF, Director of Monitoring net of human rights in Iraq – MHRI)
Despite the “end of combat operations”, American forces stepped in with ground troops and air support in three incidents in different parts of Iraq, when their Iraqi counterparts were so-called “threatened by suicide attackers or well-armed gunmen”, according to U.S. and Iraqi military accounts.[1]
One of those” incidents” occurred in Fallujah on Wednesday 15 September 2010 [following the official withrdrawal of US troops], where 7 civilians were killed and 4 injured. Their names will be added to the endless list of victims of the US aggression against this troubled city. May they never be forgotten.

• Killed during the raid by US/Iraqi forces on 15 September 2010
Humadi Jassim Ahmed..........old man
Manzel Humadi Jassim Ahmed.........youngster
Sameer Humadi Jassim Ahmed........youngster
Sadiek Humadi Jassim Ahmed.........youngster
Abid Swissan Ahmed.........old man
Yassein Abid Swissan Ahmed.......youngster
Yassein Kassar Saad........Former Iraqi officer in Iraqi army

• Injured civilians
Omar Humadi Jassim.......youngster
Ibrahim Abid Kassar.........youngster
Hathima Jassim (85 years old)
Ahmed Humadi Jassim ....youngster



The raid has raised tensions and angered the city’s inhabitants. On 16 September the city has declared a three-day long mourning. U.S. and Iraqi officials claim that the raid killed a former Iraqi officer linked to al-Qaeda group in the country. But the claim could not be substantiated and eyewitnesses and officials in the city said all the dead and injured were civilians. Schools, offices and shops were closed in Fallujah on Thursday in protest against the attack that was also strongly condemned by provincial officials of Anbar of which the city of Ramadi is the capital. The officials in Anbar have asked Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for an independent investigation of the raid, according to Mohammed Fathi, the governor’s advisor.[2]




In 2003, after the fall of the capital Baghdad following the US lead invasion, Fallujah[3] remained calm and, contrary to what happened elsewhere, there was no looting. But the policy pursued by the US – UK of indiscriminate killing of civilians and of collective punishment, generated resistance in the whole area. In order to eradicate the resistance in and around Fallujah, the invading forces attacked the city and the crimes committed in the course of these attacks are the subject of a new report of Monitoring Net For Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI) called Testimonies of Crimes Against Humanity in Fallujah, Towards a Fair International Criminal Trial [4], presented at the15th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council[5]. This report gives a grim view of a policy of collective punishment, war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed by the US forces between 2003 en 2010:

- The killing of peaceful demonstrators
- Provocation and killing of the protection and police forces of Fallujah
- Arbitrary arrests and torture
- The first assault on Fallujah (April, 2004)
- The peace talks that could have prevented the second battle of Fallujah but were undermined by the US
- The crimes of the US/UK troops in the course of the second assault on Fallujah (November, 2004)
- Environmental pollution, its effects on health and the threat to future generations
Moreover, the city was totally destroyed. Dr. Hafidh al-Dulaimi, the head of “the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah citizens” reported the following destruction inflicted on Fallujah as a result of the American attack in November 2004:
- 7000 houses totally destroyed, or nearly totally destroyed, homes in all districts of Fallujah. - 8400 stores, workshops, clinics, warehouses, etc.. destroyed.
- 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries have been either totally demolished and leveled to the ground or whose minarets and inner halls have been demolished.
- 59 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges have been destroyed.
- 13 government buildings leveled to the ground.
- Destruction of the two electricity substations, the three water purification plants, the two railroad stations and heavy damages to the sewage and rain drainage subsystems throughout the city.
- The total destruction of a bridge to the West of the city.
- The death of 100,000 domestic and wild animals due to chemical and/or gaseous munitions.
- The burning and destruction of four libraries that housed hundreds perhaps thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts and books.
- The targeted destruction (which appears to be intentional) of the historical nearby site at Saqlawia and the castle of Abu al-Abbas al-Safah.[6]


A partial list of people assassinated during the first assault on Fallujah in April 2004 contains 749 names, 580 of which are males and 169 are females.[7] (Iraq Bodycount lists 26 casualties of this onslaught in its database, many of them different persons!). The number of civilians assassinated by the US during the 2nd assault on Fallujah in November 2004 is a multitude of the 749 April murders.

As a cynical token of “good will”, the US helped reconstruct the Fallujah hospital, in which many women now give birth to deformed babies, deformities caused by illegal weaponry used by the occupation forces during the assaults: white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and other chemical and uranium weapons. With a half-life of 4.5 billion years, DU and NDU amount to a permanently available contaminant randomly distributed into the environment. An eternal curse on humanity, inflicted by the “Champions of the Free World”.

The mainstream media has extensively reported how a British woman, Mary Bale, had been filmed dropping a cat into a wheelie bin. The cat was later released unharmed. “Whereas the story of the maltreated cat received heavy coverage for almost one week across the UK media, we (and activist friends in the United States) can find exactly one mention of the Fallujah cancer and infant mortality study in the entire UK and US national press - Patrick Cockburn’s article in the Independent.

The story has simply been ignored by every other US-UK national newspaper”, write the editors of Medialens.[8]

The article by Patrick Cockburn[9] was indeed a rare exception to the mainstream media near-blackout of news about this new scientific study, showing soaring rates of cancer and other indicators of mutagenic disorders in Fallujah[10], the city the U.S. obliterated in 2004.

Results of a population-based epidemiological study organized by Malak Hamdan and Chris Busby, published on 03 July 2010 in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH) based in Basle, Switzerland, show increases in cancer, leukemia and infant mortality and perturbations of the normal human population birth sex ratio significantly greater than those reported for the survivors of the A-Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.[11]

As Noam Chomsky has commented, the study’s findings are “vastly more significant” than the Wikileaks Afghan ‘War Diary’ leaks[12]

The refusal of the mainstream media to write about this report is another proof of cynical negligence.

On top of that the city of Fallujah still has no functioning sewage system: Waste pours onto the streets and seeps into drinking water supplies.[13]

And Fallujah is still under siege. Nahoko Takato, activist and aid worker of the NGO NCCI testifies:

“When I visited Falluja in 2009, it was very difficult to get permission to enter. It’s surrounded by checkpoints… Basically, only those who have IDs that are provided by the American army can enter. And only cars that get a number from the American army are allowed to enter. The Ramadi citizen can enter Falluja by foot, but he cannot enter Falluja in his own car because he needs special registration that is very difficult to get…Maybe the American army is afraid that an international will collect evidence of the pollution, uranium traces, and so on.”[14]

The demands of the people of Fallujah, formulated in the Testimonies of Crimes Against Humanity in Fallujah, Towards a Fair International Criminal Trial report, are highly justified and should be obligatory advocated and put high on the agenda of all Human Rights Organisations and peace movements worldwide.

1. The inability of the Iraqi judiciary to undertake any proceedings leading to eventual trials and accountability for the crimes and violations by the U.S.-British soldiers, is clear evidence of the complicity and to the continuation of absolute occupation, thereafter the situation was ratified thereafter with the drafting of the security agreement between U.S. government and the Iraqi government confirming and regularizing this deficiency.
It is our cherished right to hold to account the International Community who now has both the mandate, and moral responsibility to initiate proceedings to prosecute and hold accountable all those perpetrators and seek full restitution and compensations in appropriate portion and scale, commensurate with the endured suffering and pain throughout the endured periods and continuing till the present day.


2. We appeal to the international community, to hold the perpetrators of these crimes accountable, and obtain compensation for the victims, including for the suffering and all pain endured.


3. The establishment of an international criminal court, or at least an independent fact-finding mission to look at all violations happened in Iraq by the United States since 1991.


4. The reinstitution of the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iraq is one of the first steps that the international community can take in order to get at the truth regarding the human rights situation in Iraq.


5. We call on all visual media and audio, which have documented the crimes of Fallujah, to send a copy to the office of the special procedures in the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, to assist victims of Fallujah and help stop these crimes.[15]

As a final observation I’d like to stress that the people of Fallujah have all the right, according to International law, to defend themselves against the illegal invasion and occupation of their city, their country. Their right to resist should be defended by all.

Dirk Adriaensens is a Member of the BRussells Tribunal executive committee

Notes

[1] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/17/100778/iraqi-forces-struggling-as-us.html
[2] http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news%5C2010-09-16%5Ckurd.htm
[3] - Fallujah is a city rooted in history, located some 45 km to the west of the capital Baghdad. It has a population of more than 350.000 inhabitants and is at the crossroad of three rural areas that total 300.000 inhabitants, which brings the overall population of the area of Fallujah to 650000 people. The population of Fallujah is conservative as regards social, religious, traditional and tribal issues
[4] http://www.brusselstribunal.org/pdf/MHRI-Fallujah160910.pdf
[5] http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/15session/
[6] http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10580&s2=22
[7] http://www.brusselstribunal.org/pdf/Fallujah.pdf
[8] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/10/100907_beyond_hiroshima_the.php
[9] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html
[10] http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/9836/
[11] http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Fallujah020710.htm
[12] http://www.zcommunications.org/wikileaks-and-coverage-in-press-by-noam-chomsky
[13] http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89829
[14] http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=69624&s2=10
[15] http://www.brusselstribunal.org/pdf/MHRI-Fallujah160910.pdf


Dirk Adriaensens is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Dirk Adriaensens

The Hidden massacre in Falluja (VIDEO)

The Hidden massacre in Falluja

For the video please click on:

http://izenjero.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/653/

U.S. Leaked Intelligence Report: The Battle of Fallujah - April 2004

Please click on map to enlarge

Map from page four of the leaked intelligence report on the battle of Fallujah I. Fallujah is situated 40 miles from Baghdad. The report is classified SECRET/NOFORN. NOFORN means do not share with US allies such as the UK, Australia and Canada. 2031 06 03 is date for declassification after 25 years. X1 specifies that the document is, however, exempt from declassification.

WIKILEAKS

Tuesday Dec 25, 2007
Leak: Complex Environments: Battle of Fallujah I, April 2004

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld launched the failed April 2004 assault on the Iraqi town of Fallujah before marines were ready because it had become "a symbol of resistance that dominated international headlines" and similar considerations eventually destroyed the operation — both according to a highly classified U.S. intelligence report into the defeat.

"During the first week of April, insurgents invited a reporter from Al Jazeera, Ahmed Mansour, and his film crew into Fallujah where they filmed scenes of dead babies from the hospital, presumably killed by Coalition air strikes. Comparisons were made to the Palestinian Intifada. Children were shown bespattered with blood; mothers were shown screaming and mourning day after day."

Coalition air strikes were conducted during the three week cease-fire, which was a "bit of a misnomer" and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal contributed to the politically driven final peace settlement. The settlement left Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer "furious".

By the end of April, 600-700 Iraqis and 18 marines had been killed inside the town with 62 marines killed in the broader operational area and 565 wounded in action.
Fallujah's defenders were diverse but united to oppose the U.S. offensive. They included former regime soldiers, "nationalists, local Islamic extremists, foreign fighters and criminals" together comprising not so much a military organization, but "an evil Rotary club".

The revelations come from a highly classified report on the attack released today by the open government group Wikileaks, which has in the past month released a number of sensitive U.S. documents including manuals for Guantanamo Bay, Camp Bucca prison and Department of Defense detainee operations.

The report was penned last year by the U.S Army National Ground Intelligence Center and is classified "SECRET/NOFORN" -- meaning the report was not to be shared with Coalition partners.

The Fallujah assault was initiated when on March 31 2004 four private military personnel from the U.S firm Blackwater were killed in the town and photos of their burnt bodies received international coverage.

The report said the coverage had prompted Rumsfeld, General Abizaid and the then Coalition Provisional Authority Chief Paul Bremer to order an "immediate military response".
The report not only blames media driven political pressures for launching the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force before it was ready, but states similar political considerations led to a cease-fire five days later.

The three week official cease-fire was "a bit of a misnomer", with Coalition air strikes continuing and snipers on both sides making movement hazardous. On the town's resistance, the report claims the number one "enemy strategy" was "to gain media attention and sympathy" in-order to push political pressure "to a boiling point."

Contributing to the peace settlement at the end of the month was British opposition to the battle, an Iraqi Shia uprising over the forced closure of the newspaper "al-Hawza" and Abu Ghraib.

Paul Bremer was "furious when he found out about it, but he was in little position to overturn it since he had insisted on the cease-fire in the first place. Complicating matters was the fact that the Abu Ghraib scandal broke on 29 April, consuming the attention of senior leaders in the U.S. government. Bremer could not organize a consensus to overturn the Fallujah decision."

During the battle U.S. psychological operations loud speakers "blasted rock music or taunted the insurgents into attacking with insults about their marksmanship."

Marines used the M1A1 Abrams tank as bait, to lure defenders out into the open, however this ruse didn't work for long as "The enemy.. would initiate an ambush with small-arms fire on one side of a tank in order to get the tank crew to turn its armor in the direction of fire. They would then fire a coordinated 5 or 6 RPG [rocket propelled grenade] salvo into the exposed rear of the tank".

The report states "Approximately 150 air strikes destroyed 75 buildings, including two mosques" and that the operation "stirred up a hornets nest across the Al Anbar provence".

Concluding, the report states "Information operations are increasingly important in a 21st Century world where cable television runs 24 hours a day..the Iraqi government was nascent and weak and they offered no political cover for U.S. commanders to finish the operation in a reasonable time period... Abu Ghurayb.. and the Shia uprising further enflamed a politically precarious situation and could not have happened at a worse time for Coalition forces."

U.S. forces retook Fallujah during November 2004 in what was to be the most bloody battle of the occupation.

US Army National Ground Intelligence Center – Battle of Fallujah I April 2004 (16 pages)
Please click on:
https://secure.wikileaks.org/leak/fallujah.pdf