"What the government is doing is a crime against the people"

Sadr aide lashes out at Iraq's senior Shiite cleric

BAGHDAD (AFP) — An aide to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr lashed out on Friday at Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for keeping silent over clashes that have killed hundreds in Baghdad.

"We are surprised by the silence in Najaf where the highest Shiite religious authority is based," Sheikh Sattar Battat said, referring to Sistani.

"For 50 days Sadr City is being bombed ... Children, women and old people are being killed by all kinds of US weapons, and Najaf remains silent," he told the faithful at the weekly Friday prayers in Sadr City, Sadr's stronghold.

Battat said the Sadr movement has not seen any "reaction or fatwa (religious decree) from Najaf" criticising the government assault on Shiite fighters in Sadr City.

"For us this means that Najaf accepts the massacre in Sadr City," a sprawling slum district that has been the site of fierce clashes between US forces and Sadr's Mahdi Army militia since late March.

The clashes broke out after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shiite militiamen on March 25 in the southern city of Basra.

Sadr's Mahdi Army militia offered stiff resistance. The clashes then spread to other areas, particularly to Sadr City, where hundreds have been killed.

Shiite clerics, including Sistani, have remained silent despite the high casualties, suggesting that they were backing the government's crackdown on the militants.

On Friday, Sheikh Battat also launched a fresh tirade against Maliki, who he said was "murdering people with the help of a foreign state."

"What the government is doing is a crime against the people."

U.S. CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY IN IRAQ

Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of his home after a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad's Sadr City. The 2-year-old died at a hospital.

Ali Hussein est retiré des ruines de sa maison après une attaque aérienne américaine sur Sadr City. Ce petit garçon âgé de 2 ans est décédé à l'hôpital.

Photo Credit: By Karim Kadim -- Associated Press Photo

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

Newspaper Criticized For Publishing Photo

By Helen Thomas, Hearst White House columnist
07/05/08 "Hearst Newspapers" -- --

WASHINGTON -- Some readers resented The Washington Post for publishing an Associated Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from the rubble of his home in Baghdad’s Sadr City “after a U.S. airstrike.”

Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital.

As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it showed the true horrors of this war.

Neither side is immune from the killing of Iraqi civilians. But Americans should be aware of their own responsibility for inflicting death and pain on the innocent.

The Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, said about 20 readers complained about the photo, while a few readers praised the Post for publishing the stark picture on page one.

Some mothers said they were offended that their children might see the picture, though one wonders whether their youngsters watch television and play with violent videos in a pretend world.

From the start of the unprovoked U.S. “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, the government tried to bar the news media from photographing flag-draped coffins of American soldiers returning from Iraq.

A Freedom of Information lawsuit forced the government to release pictures of returning coffins.

Howell said some readers felt the photo of the Iraqi boy was “an anti-war statement; some thought it was in poor taste.” Well, so is war.

Howell said her boss, Executive Editor Len Downie, “is cautious about such photos.”“We have seldom been able to show the human impact of the fighting on Iraqis,” Downie was quoted as saying. “We decided this was a rare instance in which we had a powerful image with which to do so.”It’s unclear to me why this was deemed to be “rare.”

After five years of war, there is finally one photo that is supposed to say it all?

Howell said she checked hundreds of U.S. front pages on the Internet but saw the AP photo nowhere else.

This makes me wonder why the media have shied away from telling the story about Iraqi civilian casualties.

News people and editors were more courageous during the Vietnam War. What are they afraid of now?Who can forget the shocking picture of the little Vietnamese girl running down a road, aflame from a napalm attack? And who can forget the picture of South Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan putting a gun to the temple of a young member of the Viet Cong and executing him on a Saigon street?

I don’t remember any American outcry against the press for showing the horror of war when these photographs were published. Were we braver then? Or maybe more conscience stricken?Of course, the Pentagon did not enjoy such images coming out of Saigon in that era. Most Americans found them appalling, as further evidence of our misbegotten venture in Vietnam.

Americans rallied to the streets in protest and eventually persuaded President Lyndon Johnson to give up his dreams of reelection in 1968.

Some Americans believe the media were to blame for the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. Nonsense.

Johnson knew the war was unwinnable, especially after the 1968 Tet offensive and the request by Army Gen. William Westmoreland for 200,000 more troops, in addition to the 500,000 already in Vietnam.

The Pentagon made a command decision after the Vietnam War to get better control of the dissemination of information in future wars.

This led then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to create an office of disinformation at the start of the Iraqi war. It was later disbanded after howls from the media.

More recently we have seen the Pentagon’s propaganda efforts take the form of carefully coaching retired generals about how to spin the Iraq war when they appear on television as alleged military experts.

The New York Times’ revelations about these pet generals have cast a pall over their reputations.Too often in this war, the news media seem to have tried to shield the public from the suffering this war has brought to Americans and Iraqis.

It’s not the job of the media to protect the nation from the reality of war. Rather, it is up to the media to tell the people the truth. They can handle it.

Helen Thomas can be reached at hthomas@hearstdc.com

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19878.htm


Copyright 2008 by Hearst Newspapers
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Iraq hospital 'damaged by US raid'

Aljazeera.net : Women and children were among those injured in the Sadr City raid [AFP]

May 3, 2008

At least 28 people have been wounded after a hospital in Baghdad's Sadr City district, a stronghold of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, was damaged in what witnesses described as a US air strike.

A medic at the al-Sadr hospital said women and children were among the wounded in the raid, which an Iraqi security official said took place at around 10am local time (0700 GMT) on Saturday.

Battle damage assessment is currently ongoing," a US military spokesman said. Witnesses said the target of the air raid, in which US forces fired several missiles, was a small house adjacent to the al-Sadr hospital and used as a rest area by Shia pilgrims.

The impact of the attack damaged more than a dozen ambulances belonging to the hospital, one of the three main medical facilities in the district, and shattered the windows of the building.

US forces used aircraft and an Abrams battle tank in the attack.

english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/86D6C28E-6E04-4549-BA78-E2C4AFCB24F6.htm

Is Sadr City becoming the next Gaza?

May 2, 2008
Misery Under Siege
Is Sadr City Becoming the Next Gaza?
By RANNIE AMIRI

“They have now completely surrounded Sadr City. The media is talking about Gaza, while we now have a second ‘Rafah Crossing’ in Sadr City. The hospitals are jammed with dead bodies...the occupation forces completely ban and open fire at any convoy trying to deliver humanitarian aid. People here suffer from shortage of food supplies. The occupation forces have burnt the city’s market.”

- Sadrist MP Dr. Maha al-Dori

“Do you want a third uprising?”

- Muqtada al-Sadr

The ripples of the March 25th Basra offensive-turned-fiasco initiated by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have been transformed into waves of bloodletting, crashing rhythmically northward onto Sadr City. According to one governmental official, more than 900 people were killed and 2600 wounded in the teeming slum of three million in April.

For the past month, Sadr City has been effectively sealed off from the rest of Baghdad as United States and Iraqi forces attempt to crush Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. In an ostensible effort to quell the launch of rockets from the neighborhood into the Green Zone, recent days have seen an intensification in fighting and causalities.

The largely symbolic Green Zone attacks are the only latest excuse to go after al-Sadr and his militia. His popular appeal among downtrodden Iraqi Shi’ites threatens to unseat the joint dominance of Maliki’s Dawa party and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (both of which favor the continued presence of American troops) in upcoming October parliamentary elections. Al-Sadr has always been outspoken in his demand the occupation come to an end. It was no therefore coincidence that Vice President Cheney’s March visit to Iraq shortly preceded the attack on his loyalists in Basra.

It was likewise unsurprising to learn that mortar rounds were being fired from Sadr City into the Green Zone by Mahdi Army members. Despite al-Sadr’s March 30th declaration reaffirming his ceasefire order – now in its eighth month – they continue to be targeted. Of far greater importance though are the ramifications of disproportionate violence and collective punishment being levied on the residents of Sadr City.

In an area only half the size of Manhattan, bombs have been dropped from U.S. warplanes, Predator Hellfire missiles fired and Apache attack helicopters dispatched. Yet the heart of Sadr City remains unpenetrated and only its southern outskirts precariously held. The difficulties of street warfare and a recent sandstorm – considered divine intervention by some – have hampered efforts to make further gains. The U.S. is now in the process of erecting a two-mile concrete wall which will separate the southern quarter’s Thawra and Jamila districts from the rest of the city. Apparently, what cannot be defeated will be imprisoned.

As is custom in conflicts where civilians frequently pay the ultimate price, the U.S. has resorted to the classic Israeli defense of blaming the victims. A Associated Press photo showing two-year-old Ali Hussein being pulled from the rubble of his home after it was destroyed by U.S. missiles (he later died in the hospital) caused military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Stover to comment, “The sole burden of responsibility lies on the shoulders of the militants who care nothing for the Iraqi people."

Lost in the coverage of this conflict has been the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Sadr City. On April 23rd, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that the fighting has isolated civilians from food and water supplies and caused hospitals to run out of basic necessities such as dressings and anesthesia. They continue to transport 10,000 liters of drinking water daily to the area.

According to the ICRC, as a consequence of the destruction of al-Jamila market – one of the largest and instrumental in providing for the entire community’s needs – “People are now short of food, especially as prices of fresh vegetables have increased considerably.”

Gaza too is under siege. The Israeli strangulation of this tiny strip of land has brought both humanitarian and military catastrophe to its people. It currently suffers from a severe fuel shortage which is hampering the ability of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to provide food and other essential aid to the majority of Gaza’s population. On April 28th in the town of Beit Hanoun, a mother and her four children ages one to six were massacred while they ate breakfast as a result of Israeli shelling. Prime Minister Olmert blamed Hamas for their deaths. It is only one story among hundreds.

Sadr City and Gaza are starting to look more and more alike and their inhabitants have much in common with one another. Both live in densely-populated, poverty-stricken areas where food, clean water, fuel and medical supplies get harder to come by as life under siege takes its inevitable toll; both are reeling from Israeli and American military strikes killing scores of civilians in their midst. Al-Sadr’s eight-month ceasefire is in jeopardy of being rescinded while Hamas’ offer for one was quickly rejected.

Of all the unmitigated disasters the occupation of Iraq has wrought and of all the comparisons made to other foreign misadventures, the U.S. siege of Sadr City and its unfortunate similarity to the Israeli siege of Gaza is certainly one of the most damning.


Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on the Arab and Islamic worlds. He may be reached at rbamiri at yahoo.com.

http://www.counterpunch.org/amiri05022008.html

Sadr City: The Genocide of Iraqis continues

More than 900 people have died in recent clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood [AFP]

Sadr City attacks are killing mostly unarmed civilians

Sunni parliamentarian: "Sadr City attacks are killing mostly unarmed civilians"

badger, Arablinks

In this photo 2 year old Ali Hussein is seen being pulled from the rubble of his family’s home in Sadr City Tuesday, April 29, 2008. Ali’s home was one of four destroyed by U.S. missiles. Ali died in hospital a few hours later.(http://gorillasguides.com/2008/04/29/scenes-from-an-iraki-childhood-april-29th-2008/)


April 29, 2008

A member of the Iraqi Accord Front (biggest Sunni bloc in parliament) Ahmed Radhi, who was in Sadr City on Sunday as part of the multi-party sit-in, repeated yesterday the call to implement the group's demands for an end to the crisis, and he said: "The majority of those who are being killed are civilians, and not armed persons."

And another Sunni deputy, Mustafa al-Heeti, from the Iraqi Dialogue Front, said at a press conference with other members of that group: "I urge an end to the military operations, an adoption of the language of dialogue, and an prompt meeting of the council (government executive committee, the so-called three plus one) in order to end the military operations."

Both statements are reported by Aswat al Iraq.

Rather than any easing, there was a dramatic escalation in military operations in Sadr City, where US forces intervened in one case with Abrams tanks, killing 22, and in another case with airstrikes killing 16. (See this summary in AlHayat, among many other accounts). *

And at the same time, the GreenZone and US accusations against Iran have taken on a new stridency. For instance, AlHayat reminds readers that US officials have said the Sadr City campaign is against "special groups" of criminals that are supported by Iran. And here's how Azzaman leads its main story this morning: "Armed groups linked to Iran took advangage of the bad weather for the third time, launching a round of self-propelled Katyusha rockets at various locations in the Green Zone..."

So along with (1) signs of domestic political solidarity against the attacks on Sadr City; and (2) dramatic military escalation in Sadr City; there is also (3) a sharper framing of this as a struggle between Iraq on the one side, and Iranian proxies on the other.

It's worth trying to keep the overall picture in mind, because there is a tendency not only in the corporate media, but in the Washington-based commentary as well, to talk exclusively about the third point, to the almost complete exclusion of the first two. As if America, politically and militarily, was some kind of a passive bystander.

_____________

* Update to Tuesday evening Baghdad time: VOI quotes a medical source who said in the period from 11 am to 6 pm Tuesday April 29, US forces shelled sectors 10 and 11 of Sadr City, causing 24 deaths and 60 injuries. The medical source said most of the victims were women and children. And everyone is silent.


arablinks.blogspot.com/2008/04/sunni-parliamentarian-sadr-city-attacks.html

U.S. kills 800 in 3 weeks in Sadr city

Sadr city - Men grieving after U.S. raid

Laith Jawad, Azzaman
April 24, 2008

U.S. occupation forces have killed more than 800 people, most of them innocent civilians, in their three-week long military campaign to subdue the Mahdi Army in Sadr City, the leader of Sadr movement in Baghdad said.

Sheikh Salaman al-fariji said the troops have also injured more than 1,800 people and caused large-scale destruction of private property and the city’s rickety infrastructure.

Fariji made the remarks as he accompanied a delegation of 20 members of parliament on a tour of the impoverished city home to more than 2 million people.

U.S. troops have imposed a tight embargo on the city and bombing by war planes and helicopter gun ships in the densely populated Baghdad neighborhood continued even during the MPs’ tour.

Falah Shanshal, an MP, said the group would write to the parliament to lift the siege of Sadr City and reach a peaceful solution to the standoff with Mahdi Army.

Mahdi Army is the military wing of Sadr movement which has 30 deputies in parliament.

"The MPs were shocked by the scale of damage," said Fariji.

Shanshal said: "The people of Sadr City undergo horrific humanitarian conditions as a result of U.S. military operations and embargo."

www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news\2008-04-24\kurd.htm

U.S. snipers accused of targeting civilians in Sadr City

Residents, doctors of Baghdad's Sadr City say US snipers deliberately shoot civilians in feet, stomachs.

April 22, 2008BAGHDAD - Civilians caught up in the crossfire during raging street battles between Shiite militiamen and security forces in Baghdad's Shiite bastion Sadr City are blaming an unseen danger – US military snipers.

At least 321 people have been killed in Sadr City since March 25 and hundreds more wounded, many of them brought to hospitals with wounds that doctors say appear to be caused by high-powered rifles and "American bullets."

US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover dismissed claims that US snipers are targeting women and children as "preposterous" and said the wounds could be the result of "un-aimed" militia fire.

Residents of Sadr City, however, bastion of the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, blame US snipers whenever someone is shot in the stomach or the legs.

The mother of Ali Murtatha, a three-year-old boy lying with bullet wounds to his stomach in Al-Sadr hospital, has no doubt that her only son was shot by a US sniper.

"An American sniper shot my child. Who else would shoot my boy? The place where we stay is tense. There are American soldiers everywhere near us," she said as she watched over him on his hospital bed, where he is lying with bandages on his stomach and an oxygen tube in his nose.

His mother, Umm Murtatha, says he was shot outside his home in a southern sector of the impoverished slum district, which is criss-crossed by tiny lanes lined with small overcrowded homes.

In the same hospital, Tharwat Abbas, aged 26, lies under a heavy blanket in one of the hospital's few air-conditioned rooms on the ground floor.

Abbas has two bullet wounds -- one in the stomach, the other in his left thigh."There was some random shooting in our area. After a while it stopped and I stepped out of my house to fetch my younger brother when suddenly I was shot twice," Abbas said.

He too believes the bullets were fired by a US sharpshooter."I don't know who shot me but I believe it was an American soldier," he said.

Medics at Al-Sadr Hospital say some bullet wounds are difficult to explain as being caused by random fire."Random shots usually hit anywhere, but these people have wounds on specific parts of the body ... like their stomachs and legs," said Doctor Ala Haider.

He said some patients had been cut down by bullets that appear to have been fired by US forces." During the operations on the patients we found bullets inside the bodies. They were American bullets. We can distinguish the American bullets from the Iraqis," he said.

Lawmaker from Sadr's political bloc, Falah Shanshal, backed the widespread claims by locals that US snipers have been targeting residents of Sadr City since Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shiite militants."American snipers are on the roof-tops. They have killed many people. It has become difficult to move now, especially in the evenings," he said.

The US military dismissed the allegations."No American soldier is targeting innocent civilians of any age. We don't do that," Lieutenant Colonel Stover, spokesman for the US military command in Baghdad told."Allegations that we would target innocent teenagers, children, women and men are preposterous. Tell the mother of the three-year-old our hearts go out to her, but her son was not targeted by an American sniper."

Observers say, however, the US military is well known for its indiscriminate fire whenever they come under attack.

www.middle-east-online.com/english/features/?id=25503