Category: Iraq

Posted on

In Fallujah

I struggle every day with my feelings about what’s happening in Iraq. Not a subject I can write about casually. But occasionally, I read something that sort of cuts through all the anger and depression and turns the casualty statistics into wrenching flesh-and-blood reality. A great example today: A long dispatch from Dexter Filkins of The New York Times relating the Fallujah fighting as he saw it while accompanying a Marine company through the thick of the combat. One vignette:

“More than once, death crept up and snatched a member of Bravo Company and quietly slipped away. Cpl. Nick Ziolkowski, nicknamed Ski, was a Bravo Company sniper. For hours at a stretch, Corporal Ziolkowski would sit on a rooftop, looking through the scope on his bolt-action M-40 rifle, waiting for guerrillas to step into his sights. The scope was big and wide, and Corporal Ziolkowski often took off his helmet to get a better look.

“Tall, good-looking and gregarious, Corporal Ziolkowski was one of Bravo Company’s most popular soldiers. Unlike most snipers, who learned to shoot growing up in the countryside, Corporal Ziolkowski grew up near Baltimore, unfamiliar with guns. Though Baltimore boasts no beach front, Corporal Ziolkowski’s passion was surfing; at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Bravo Company’s base, he would often organize his entire day around the tides.

‘” All I need now is a beach with some waves,’ Corporal Ziolkowski said, during a break from his sniper duties at Falluja’s Grand Mosque, where he killed three men in a single day.

“During that same break, Corporal Ziolkowski foretold his own death. The snipers, he said, were now among the most hunted of American soldiers.

“In the first battle for Falluja, in April, American snipers had been especially lethal, Corporal Ziolkowski said, and intelligence officers had warned him that this time, the snipers would be targets.

” ‘They are trying to take us out,’ Corporal Ziolkowski said.

“The bullet knocked Corporal Ziolkowski backward and onto the roof. He had been sitting there on the outskirts of the Shuhada neighborhood, an area controlled by insurgents, peering through his wide scope. He had taken his helmet off to get a better view. The bullet hit him in the head.”

[Update on June 6, 2006: While doing a little reading and surfing for a post on Iraq War photography, I came across an unpublished picture of Corporal Ziolkowski shot by photographer (and sometimes New York Times stringer) Ashley Gilbertson. The picture depicts Ziolkowski and a spotter in a setting that well could be the Grand Mosque mentioned in Filkins’s report; that’s the the position from which the corporal killed is said to have killed three enemy fighters. The link to the picture, on the Aurora Photos site: http://www.auroraphotos.com/bin/Detail?ln=8158700002.]

Posted on

The Bile Variations

Irwin Graulich — the guy who says journalist Kevin Sites is an ally of al Qaida and Saddam for reporting on the Marine shooting in Falliujah — responded to my earlier letter. Graulich, who elsewhere describes himself as “a well known motivational speaker on morality, ethics, Judaism and politics,” promises to “kick the crap out of” Sites if he ever runs into him on the street. But compared to other online missives he’s credited with sending, he’s positively civil here:

Dear Dan

Thank you for your comments. I have seen the videotape and I stand by my article. I tried to place myself in the soldiers shoes, and knowing what had occurred with these so-called insurgents (who are actually terrorists and do not give a damn about their own lives), I would have probably shot them as well. It is frightening to go into that situation knowing these evildoers could set off a bomb hidden under their bodies or whip out an AK-47.

It is very easy for a journalist like Sites to take the situation out of context, which is what he did. I would always give the benefit of the doubt to our heroic, extremely moral military, whereas you and Sites apparently will not jump to that conclusion. That is where we differ. This is not a street fight in Brooklyn. This is an ugly war against some really bad monsters. Of course the marine was facing a life or death situation. If a branch to a tree moved, he should shoot it and ask questions later.

I know of Sites past reporting and some of it is commendable. However, this action was a very tragic and despicable error on his part and I do not want any other journalists to try to become heroes at our military’s expense. Frankly, if I ever run into Sites on the streets of Manhattan, I will personally kick the crap out of him for what he did to that marine. That is the justice I learned growing up on the streets of Brooklyn.

Remember, reporting a war in real time is in a completely different category than reporting on a political rally or factory opening. So lease do not give me this baloney about Sites honorable attempt to convey the truth. I know a ex-marine who captured a Nazi officer in the Dachau concentration camp at the end of WWII, and when the Nazi spit in his face, the soldier pulled out a revolver and shot him in the head. This was featured in a well known Steven Spielberg documentary called “The Final Days.”

Would you want to give this heroic African-American soldier who eventually became the Secretary of Education of the state of Massachusetts a trial and a prison term? Frankly, I would give him a medal, a dinner in his honor, a brand new Cadillac and a cruise to the Bahamas.

Irwin N. Graulich

President

Bloch Graulich Whelan Inc.

333 Park Avenue South

New York, NY 10010

Posted on

Rage Against the News

So, a journalist videotapes something we’d rather not believe can happen — a Marine killing a wounded, unarmed enemy. The official response is that the incident is under investigation. And the unofficial response is: from people who feel the war is a misguided, ruinous dead end — people like me — that the incident somehow shows how senseless and tragic the whole adventure is. And from people who appear to feel that all the devastation of life and treasure in Iraq is just part of the cost of preserving our freedom and security — a view I find mind-bendingly out of touch with reality — there’s rage: that a reporter would dare do his job, that the actions of one of our soldiers would be questioned, that anyone could second-guess the need to blow away a wounded enemy, regardless of the circumstances.

Of course, the reactions on the other side (here and here for instance) go a lot farther than that. Kevin Sites, the journalist who shot the pool video, is now the enemy, “a turd,” “a slimy bastard,” and worse. Another blogger urges: “Note to all soldiers: If a prize-greedy journalist films something you don’t want aired because you know it could get your fellow soldiers killed, take the camera and destoy [sic] the film. You have the permission of the people who support you and NOT the savages you are so rightly killing.” Some posts even advocate violence against the journalist.

What’s stunning is the desire, on one hand, to deny what the pictures show, and on the other to punish or even shut down the source of the information. The right-wing site MichNews (“Most In-Depth, Conservative Honest News & Commentary) ran a column today that made the modest, unhysterical charge that Sites is an accomplice to al Qaida and Saddam Hussein and decrying how the video besmirched the “heroic warrior.” The column, by someone named Irwin Graulich, calls for a boycott of NBC and its owner, General Electric for “their despicable practices.”

OK, I was moved enough by that last piece of writing to send a letter in response:

Dear Mr. Graulich:

Regarding your piece “Fahrenheit Fallujah,” two points:

First, have you seen the videotape? If so, you would seem to be intentionally mischaracterizing it. The individual or individuals involved did not face any kind of “split second decision [sic]” in this case. Indeed, one voice can be heard identifying the wounded enemy as casualties from the previous day, then other voices discuss whether one of the wounded men is feigning death; then comes the shooting. If it’s improper to jump to the conclusion that the videotape

shows a Marine committing what amounts to murder, it’s also improper to characterize the tape as showing a Marine facing a life-and-death situation with no time to assess the situation.

Second, your comments about Kevin Sites amount to slander of a journalist who has a long and very accessible record of sympathetic coverage of our troops in Iraq. Far from portraying them as heartless killers, he’s done as much as any U.S. journalist I’m aware of to put a human face on a group of people who’ve been called upon to do an inhuman job in inhuman circumstances. Don’t take my word for it — check out his independent writings on the war at kevinsites.net.

The truth of this war is ugly and savage. It’s also ugly and savage to so casually condemn those who honorably and professionally try to convey that truth.

Respectfully yours,

Dan Brekke

Trying to respond reasonably and respectfully in this situation may be absurd. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, comes back in response.

Posted on

TomDispatch.com

TomDispatch.com is a blog published by Tom Engelhardt, an editor and journalist who teaches at UC-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. It’s a challenging, thoughtful site. Especially worth reading as soon as you have the time are a couple long posts he put up a few weeks ago dealing with Iraq: “The Costs of War,” a piece from a Texas woman named Teri Wills Allison whose son has been sent to the war, and a followup with reader reaction to her account. Among the many passages from Allison’s essay that struck a chord:

“For the first time in my life, and with great amazement and sorrow, I feel what can only be described as hatred. It took me a long time to admit it, but there it is. I loathe the hubris, the callousness, and the lies of those in the Bush administration who led us into this war. Truth be told, I even loathe the fallible and very human purveyors of those lies. I feel no satisfaction in this admission, only sadness and recognition. And hope that –given time — I can do better. I never wanted to hate anyone.”

Posted on

Winning Iraq, One Iraqi at a Time

Sometimes soccer balls aren’t enough to win the battle for hearts and minds. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. As in Falluja, where it’s hard to avoid the echo of the legendary (and, naturally, disputed) Vietnam quote reported by Peter Arnett, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” But beyond the spectacle of blowing the town to bits in order to make it safe for democracy, our mission to destroy the most evil of the evildoers produced an incident that’s sure to make us even more beloved not just throughout Iraq, but everywhere in the world where people are just hoping we’ll show up to spread our special brand of liberty. Not to be too elliptical, NBC reporter Kevin Sites (check out his blog; it’s excellent) witnessed a Marine execute a wounded Iraqi insurgent in a mosque.

From MSNBC’s online account of the incident:

“Sites saw the five wounded men left behind on Friday still in the mosque. Four of them had been shot again, apparently by members of the squad that entered the mosque moments earlier. One appeared to be dead, and the three others were severely wounded. The fifth man was lying under a blanket, apparently not having been shot a second time.

“One of the Marines noticed that one of the severely wounded men was still breathing. He did not appear to be armed, Sites said.

“The Marine could be heard insisting: ‘He’s f—ing faking he’s dead — he’s faking he’s f—ing dead.’ Sites then watched as the Marine raised his rifle and fired into the man’s head from point-blank range.

” ‘Well, he’s dead now,” another Marine said.

“When told that the man he shot was a wounded prisoner, the Marine, who himself had been shot in the face the day before but had already returned to duty, told Sites: ‘I didn’t know, sir. I didn’t know.’ ”

One may object to this incident being singled out since, hell, we’re up against savages and after all, this kind of thing happens in every war. Maybe so. But part of the mission ought to be to cling to whatever separates us from the savages, and the fact this happens in every war is no endorsement for it; in fact, it’s the strongest argument for making war the absolute last resort.

Posted on

Progress in Iraq

According to the Iraq Coalition Casualties site, 65 U.S. troops died in the first 12 days of the Iraq war in March 2003. Between Monday and Saturday last week, six days, 59 63 64 U.S. troops were killed, about two-thirds of them in the Falluja fighting (and let’s not forget the 1,200 Iraqis the U.S. says it terminated during the last week and whatever civilian casualties were inflicted). So, in Month 20 of the Great Regime Change, we’re experiencing the most intense and deadly combat to date. Now, of course, things are bound to get better.

(Update: The Iraq casualties web site updated the number of killed earlier today, so that’s why I’ve changed it above).

Posted on

Notes on the New Iraq

A reading: The New Yorker (Nov. 15 edition) has a harrowing piece from Jon Lee Anderson, its principal Iraq correspondent, on the consequences of the U.S. decision to try to break up the Baath Party and the Iraqi Army. I think a lot of this stuff has been said before — that abolishing the party and disbanding the army simply through Iraq’s best and brightest, on one hand, and most desperate and well-armed on the other — into the street with little to do but oppose or fight the occupation. But he presents a couple of tragic examples of what happened to individual Baathists in the wake of "de-Baathification," suggests how poorly the purge program was run, and collects some interesting opinions on the ground from U.S. military and civilian officials who questioned the purge when it was ordered.

"The order had an immediate effect. … ‘We had a lot of directors general of hospitals who were very good, and, with de-Baathification, we lost them and their expertise overnight,’ [Stephen Browning, the U.S. official in charge of Iraq’s Ministry of Health] told me. At the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, which was another of his responsibilities, ‘we were left dealing with what seemed like the fifth string. . . . Nobody who was left knew anything.’

"An American special-forces officer stationed in Baghdad at the time told me that he was stunned by Bremer’s twin decrees. After the dissolution of the Army, he said, ‘I had my guys coming up to me and saying, "Does Bremer realize that there are four hundred thousand of these guys out there and they all have guns?" They all have to feed their families.’ He went on, ‘The problem with the blanket ban is that you get rid of the infrastructure; I mean, after all, these guys ran the country, and you polarize them. So did these decisions contribute to the insurgency? Unequivocally, yes. And we have to ask ourselves: How well did we really know how to run Iraq? Zero.’ "

Even if you’ve been paying attention, Anderson’s article is helpful in explaining how our whole Iraq show has fallen apart.

Posted on

Mission Accomplished! Again!

Sands
My dad suggests that there’s a little irony in U.S. troops going into Fallujah, in sort of latter-day "Sands of Iwo Jima" style, 18 months after the president and friends declared "mission accomplished." But maybe the new battle is an excellent public-relations opportunity. We could stage a "Mission Accomplished! Again!" event. Maybe George "Two-Term" Bush could land a chopper in the middle of town, or whatever is left of it after all our precision-munitions work. Maybe someone could drape a big "Mission Accomplished! Again!" banner on the bridge from which those four American security contractors were hung after insurgents killed and burned them earlier this year. And maybe we can get out of Iraq before we need to accomplish the same mission again, in Fallujah or Najaf or some other town we have to blow to hell to liberate.

Posted on

Those Multinational Sox Fans

Just one little complaint about something the Fox network did during the coverage of the Red Sox’s clinching game tonight. They kept cutting away to an American military base in Iraq. Fine — the boys (mostly) stayed up all night to watch the ball game; they deserve their fun, too; though I think mixing that into the coverage is a not-so-subtle way of expressing support for the way. But the caption (font or CG, in TV jargon) that Fox displayed when the boys were on the screen said “Multi-National Force Iraq.” What, were there some Iraqis and Brits and Bulgarians watching the game on camera, too? Beyond the idea of “multi-national force” being an absurd fiction — another attempt to blur the reality this is our national project — the decision not to say these guys in fatigues cheering and applauding were Americans was just kind of nutty.

Posted on

And Now, a Word from God

The New York Times published a special election section today. It’s 10 pages, with two ads. On the back page, there’s what looks like an interesting though endless essay from a number of Korean-American groups. The ad starts by describing Korea’s history since World War II, but it’s really a plea for a peaceful solution to the tensions with North Korea, and, at the very end, criticizes a new law (passed last month, signed by Bush earlier this month) called the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. The law is an attempt to tie U.S. humanitarian assistance to North Korea to improvements in human rights there; it also provides money for refugee and humanitarian aid, tries to force China to play ball with the U.N. in dealing with North Korean refugees who show up there, and makes it easier for North Korean refugees and defectors to relocate to the United States. Among other things. Kim Jong-Il doesn’t like the law. Also, South Korea apparently lobbied against it because of concerns that encouraging people to leave the North will flood the South with refugees.

But that’s not the ad I wanted to talk about. On page 3 of the special section, there’s a full page of text titled, “Revelation from God/War or Peace?” The ad features God speaking in the first person to Doris Orme of Bonita Springs, Florida (medium for “God Tells New Things to Doris“). God has some hopeful things to say. For instance, He’s getting ready to take some serious action to make the world a better place:

“Do you think that for one moment that I cannot fulfill My mandate to bring you into perfection and into My Image and Likeness and become One with Me? This is the hour when that will be fulfilled, on the foundation of all those who have given unselfishly to bring this hour which is now here with you. … The hour will come very shortly when you will see My hand move. It will be like a mighty thunder … and will be like a thief in the night, but a good thief, ready to fill your heart with joy!”

Maybe most interesting is that God is not a Bush Supporter, and that God holds a Holy Grudge over the Hanging Chads of 2000, and that God has His Holy Dander up over the war in Iraq. As God told Doris on July 24, 2003:

“I asked you to listen to My words very seriously after Mr. Bush became in a leading position here in America. I hesitate to even say he became President, because in My eyes he has never been the President of the United States. He has been a thief. I told you this before — you have a thief in the White House — Barabbas the murderer, and blood would flow in America and around the world, because of this deed. You know, as well as I know, that the election was not an election that was honest. There were many things that went wrong, deliberately went wrong, because people interfered with the rules, in Florida and caused the election to go the way it went.

“… And I told you again that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword. Those who lived in Baghdad had no where to hide, no where to go. I wonder if, the people who decided that, would like to experience that in this nation of America. I am sure they would not. ”

Well, you get the idea. God also discloses that our founding fathers are discussing the situation with Him in the spirit world, that the Bush administration “is leading America down into the pit,” and that salvation for Bush. Tony Blair, and the rest of us lies only in coming clean about our Iraq lies. It’s unhinged and humorous in a way. But also heartrending. And it goes on and on and on.