Photos from Iraq

Iraq Forum

Death

Falloga

RPG27

more death

and more

more

Tank

starting

on going

here we come

dont make me angry

I have the wepon

Oppsss?? you are dead

Looks like channel 11 that i watch. And that is AMERICAN media for all you that think, jews wouldn't show that lmao
yeah, like they control what i watch. please.

SO????

That's what i thought about your pictures too.

wake up and stop dreaming, these photos are realety

I'm not dreaming - I know what reality is. you act as if we do not know these things happen. Want to see sick? want to see reality?

I suggest you watch a video of someone getting their head cut off and trying to scream and only gurgle instead when that pain goes rushing through their body - and they twitch while its going on due to nerves being sliced through. I've seen reality for i live in it.
I've also seen Gang shootings which are no different then your pictures - i've seen dead bodies on the road before after a person fell off a bridge and was hit by a car doing 75mph (around 100k/ph). Is this not reality?
oh, i suppose this is all fiction huh - and only what you have seen is ''REALITY''

The pictures you showed me are the same kind of pictures in my history book sitting on my shelf from two semesters ago - just that as graphic -
I explained to YOU that i do live in reality and explained that i've seen these on Channel 11 in my city, indicating that we all get to see pictures like that
and you said "SO???"
what kind of response did you expect but the same

I get your point asantana... unfortunately those are only the "soft core" photos. It gets much worse then that.

AMY GOODMAN: Today we turn to Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar, a retired Iraqi engineer in Baghdad right now, recently in Fallujah. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ghazwan.

GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you describe the reaction in the streets to what took place in Fallujah?

GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: This incident happened in Fallujah where two days before that, the American army shot many many people, women and children, on the streets, and --- in a bizarre shooting incident that was unjustified, killing many people. Fallujah has been a place where the US Army has actually used brutal force to suppress the people there, including using the F-15s, and F-16s to attack villages and place where they think the resistances are, which is unjustified to use high explosives against individuals. This resulted in many, many casualties in the province. Added to it, they have detained, for 50 or 60 days, hundreds of people on and off, which alienated the people against the American forces and the American contractors or the American security contractors, which are really a private army, uncontrollable by the US. This is part of the privatization of the war. Two days ago, three days ago, there was a similar incident in Mosul, where two contractors were killed, under electricity. They were going to the electricity generating plant. The important -- the thing that I know is in the media says that the contractors were involved in protecting the food supply. This is the food supply for the US Army, not to be confused with providing help to the local population or anything. It's just a routine US convoy that may have food and may have on other occasions, armaments or anything. So, the resentments of the people of Fallujah are justified. What happens to them is -- it's a sad thing, but you know, brutality breeds brutality, and violence breeds violence, and he who started first should take the responsibility, and I think the US army has used an unjustified force against the people of Fallujah, and they have brutalized the people of Fallujah to the point where they had to respond with the same brutality.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, some of the commercial media here in the United States are claiming that Fallujah is a hotbed of resistance, that up to 70% of the people are supporting attacks or have voiced in opinion polls support for attacks on the US forces. Is there a continuing large presence of US military within -- within the city itself, or have they largely pulled out to the outskirts of Fallujah?

GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: They pulled out to the outskirts, but they keep intruding into the city. Ten days ago, I was passing through Fallujah, and in the middle of the city, they brought the main highway, and we saw inside the city a convoy of US military vehicles. So, they keep coming in and out. If they keep out, I don't think they would have that many attacks on them, but don't forget, those are an occupying force, and the people believe they have the right to resist an occupying force - a foreign occupying force. We -- the closest we come to you is eight hours difference. That's 8,000, 9,000 miles. That's between us. You people have – you came to the east 8,000 miles to run a country you have no business in occupying.

AMY GOODMAN: Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar.

GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: We have discussed -- after we discovered that there was no justification for the US occupation whatsoever, because there is no weapons of mass destruction. It's a weapon of mass deception that's been propagated by the US administration.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us, Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar, retired Iraqi engineer speaking to us from Baghdad. Later in the program, we'll focus specifically on the firm, Blackwater, where the four US contractors were from, who were killed in Fallujah. Thank you for being with us.

from here

http://www.aliraqi.org/forums/attachment.php?postid=257778

http://www.aljazeera.net/mritems/images/2004/4/11/1_218279_1_6.jpg

to whom should he complain??

http://www.aliraqi.org/forums/attachment.php?postid=257909

wonded chiled

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/uploaded-46665_large.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected//capt.bag10604071346.iraq_bag106.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/1_217608_1_6.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected//capt.bag10604071346.iraq_bag106.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/capt.bag10104101247.iraq_bag101.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/06rama_slide2.jpg

http://www.aljazeera.net/mritems/images/2004/4/10/1_218037_1_6.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/040409122332.4q4xn9zy2b.jpg

http://www.aljazeera.net/mritems/images/2004/4/11/1_218302_1_17.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/uploaded-46526_large.jpg

http://www.aawsat.com/2004/04/10/images/front.227868.jpg

Now after that ugly show, who was the winner and who was the loser?? in my opinion, both Iraqi and Americans have lost, they lost lives, trust, and so many more things, my condolences to all people whom lost their loved once in Fallogah, from both sides.

Not everyone has lost - Bin Laden's probably very happy with the situation in Iraq.

this ugly peice of Sh!t created a mess and he laughing at it right now

asantana,
Are you of Abu Sayef?

Because your posts reek of it.

You are welcome.
I understand where you were coming from with that, because in some peoples posts, I get the same but not about terrorists.

This is about hate, not love. I see no love in your posts asantana.
If you love your country, then you would understand freedom and all it entales.

USA1
Exactly freedom

So what is the freedom you with for all Iraqis? What does your vision of Iraq entail?
Freedom of?

USA1 - As long as Americans occupy Iraq they will have no freedom. As long as you live in the US you will have almost as little.

Remember tossing out your Bill of Rights for George Bush's... or should i say PNAC's "Patriot Act". Only silly Americans would have allowed for this. Wait till they ALL realize what they gave up.

I only hope, for the good of America, that someone in the near future tosses this "Patriot Act" for what it is... A pile of rank bull****.


***********************Enjoy******************

The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is a Washington-based
think tank created in 1997. Above all else, PNAC desires and demands one
thing: The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of
all nations. They chafe at the idea that the United States, the last
remaining superpower, does not do more by way of economic and military
force to bring the rest of the world under the umbrella of a new
socio-economic Pax Americana.

The fundamental essence of PNAC's ideology can be found in a White Paper
produced in September of 2000 entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses:
Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." In it, PNAC outlines
what is required of America to create the global empire they envision.
According to PNAC, America must:
* Reposition permanently based forces to Southern Europe, Southeast Asia
and the Middle East;
* Modernize U.S. forces, including enhancing our fighter aircraft,
submarine and surface fleet capabilities; *Interesting note: Word has just come out that they may have to scrap this plan*
* Develop and deploy a global missile defense system, and develop a
strategic dominance of space;
* Control the "International Commons" of cyberspace;
* Increase defense spending to a minimum of 3.8 percent of gross domestic
product, up from the 3 percent currently spent.


Most ominously, this PNAC document described four "Core Missions" for the
American military. The two central requirements are for American forces to
"fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars," and
to "perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security
environment in critical regions." Note well that PNAC does not want America
to be prepared to fight simultaneous major wars. That is old school. In
order to bring this plan to fruition, the military must fight these wars
one way or the other to establish American dominance for all to see.

Why is this important? After all, wacky think tanks are a cottage industry
in Washington, DC. They are a dime a dozen. In what way does PNAC stand
above the other groups that would set American foreign policy if they could?
Two events brought PNAC into the mainstream of American government: the
disputed election of George W. Bush, and the attacks of September 11th.
When Bush assumed the Presidency, the men who created and nurtured the
imperial dreams of PNAC became the men who run the Pentagon, the Defense
Department and the White House. When the Towers came down, these men
saw, at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive
policy.

Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the
group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for
Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position
with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.


PNAC is staffed by men who previously served with groups like Friends of
the Democratic Center in Central America, which supported America's bloody
gamesmanship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with groups like The
Committee for the Present Danger, which spent years advocating that a
nuclear war with the Soviet Union was "winnable."


PNAC has recently given birth to a new group, The Committee for the
Liberation of Iraq, which met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice in order to formulate a plan to "educate" the American populace about
the need for war in Iraq. CLI has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to
support the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi heir presumptive, Ahmed
Chalabi. Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court in 1992 to
22 years in prison for bank fraud after the collapse of Petra Bank, which
he founded in 1977. Chalabi has not set foot in Iraq since 1956, but his
Enron-like business credentials apparently make him a good match for the
Bush administration's plans.


PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" report is the institutionalization
of plans and ideologies that have been formulated for decades by the men
currently running American government. The PNAC Statement of Principles is
signed by Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, as well as by Eliot Abrams, Jeb
Bush, Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, and many
others. William Kristol, famed conservative writer for the Weekly Standard,
is also a co-founder of the group. The Weekly Standard is owned by Ruppert
Murdoch, who also owns international media giant Fox News.


The desire for these freshly empowered PNAC men to extend American hegemony
by force of arms across the globe has been there since day one of the Bush
administration, and is in no small part a central reason for the Florida
electoral battle in 2000. Note that while many have said that Gore and Bush
are ideologically identical, Mr. Gore had no ties whatsoever to the fellows
at PNAC. George W. Bush had to win that election by any means necessary,
and PNAC signatory Jeb Bush was in the perfect position to ensure the rise
to prominence of his fellow imperialists. Desire for such action, however,
is by no means translatable into workable policy. Americans enjoy their
comforts, but don't cotton to the idea of being some sort of Neo-Rome.

On September 11th, the fellows from PNAC saw a door of opportunity open
wide before them, and stormed right through it.


Bush released on September 20th 2001 the "National Security Strategy of the
United States of America." It is an ideological match to PNAC's "Rebuilding
America's Defenses" report issued a year earlier. In many places, it uses
exactly the same language to describe America's new place in the world.

Recall that PNAC demanded an increase in defense spending to at least 3.8%
of GDP. Bush's proposed budget for next year asks for $379 billion in
defense spending, almost exactly 3.8% of GDP.


In August of 2002, Defense Policy Board chairman and PNAC member Richard
Perle heard a policy briefing from a think tank associated with the Rand
Corporation. According to the Washington Post and The Nation, the final
slide of this presentation described "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi
Arabia as the strategic pivot, and Egypt as the prize" in a war that would
purportedly be about ridding the world of Saddam Hussein's weapons. Bush
has deployed massive forces into the Mideast region, while simultaneously
engaging American forces in the Philippines and playing nuclear chicken
with North Korea. Somewhere in all this lurks at least one of the "major
theater wars" desired by the September 2000 PNAC report.


Iraq is but the beginning, a pretense for a wider conflict. Donald Kagan, a
central member of PNAC, sees America establishing permanent military bases
in Iraq after the war. This is purportedly a measure to defend the peace in
the Middle East, and to make sure the oil flows. The nations in that
region, however, will see this for what it is: a jump-off point for
American forces to invade any nation in that region they choose to. The
American people, anxiously awaiting some sort of exit plan after America
defeats Iraq, will see too late that no exit is planned.


All of the horses are traveling together at speed here. The defense
contractors who sup on American tax revenue will be handsomely paid for
arming this new American empire. The corporations that own the news media
will sell this eternal war at a profit, as viewership goes through the
stratosphere when there is combat to be shown. Those within the
administration who believe that the defense of Israel is contingent upon
laying waste to every possible aggressor in the region will have their
dreams fulfilled. The PNAC men who wish for a global Pax Americana at
gunpoint will see their plans unfold. Through it all, the bankrollers from
the WTO and the IMF will be able to dictate financial terms to the entire
planet. This last aspect of the plan is pivotal, and is best described in
the newly revised version of Greg Palast's masterpiece, "The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy."


There will be adverse side effects. The siege mentality average Americans
are suffering as they smother behind yards of plastic sheeting and duct
tape will increase by orders of magnitude as our aggressions bring forth
new terrorist attacks against the homeland. These attacks will require the
implementation of the newly drafted Patriot Act II, an augmentation of the
previous Act that has profoundly sharper teeth. The sun will set on the
Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The American economy will be ravaged by the need for increased defense
spending, and by the aforementioned "constabulary" duties in Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere. Former allies will turn on us. Germany, France
and the other nations resisting this Iraq war are fully aware of this game
plan. They are not acting out of cowardice or because they love Saddam
Hussein, but because they mean to resist this rising American empire, lest
they face economic and military serfdom at the hands of George W. Bush.
Richard Perle has already stated that France is no longer an American ally.

As the eagle spreads its wings, our rhetoric and their resistance will
become more agitated and dangerous.


Many people, of course, will die. They will die from war and from want,
from famine and disease. At home, the social fabric will be torn in ways
that make the Reagan nightmares of crack addiction, homelessness and AIDS
seem tame by comparison.


This is the price to be paid for empire, and the men of PNAC who now
control the fate and future of America are more than willing to pay it. For
them, the benefits far outweigh the liabilities.


The plan was running smoothly until those two icebergs collided. Millions
and millions of ordinary people are making it very difficult for Bush's
international allies to keep to the script. PNAC may have designs for the
control of the "International Commons" of the Internet, but for now it is
the staging ground for a movement that would see empire take a back seat to
a wise peace, human rights, equal protection under the law, and the
preponderance of a justice that will, if properly applied, do away forever
with the anger and hatred that gives birth to terrorism in the first place.
Tommaso Palladini of Milan perhaps said it best as he marched with his
countrymen in Rome. "You fight terrorism," he said, "by creating more
justice in the world."


The People versus the Powerful is the oldest story in human history. At no
point in history have the Powerful wielded so much control. At no point in
history has the active and informed involvement of the People, all of them,
been more absolutely required. The tide can be stopped, and the men who
desire empire by the sword can be thwarted. It has already begun, but it
must not cease. These are men of will, and they do not intend to fail.

Remember your key players here!

http://www.newamericancentury.org/s...fprinciples.htm

"I'm allowed to go out and by almost any kind of Gun that i want"

You've pointed out the very problem. Why do you need a gun? Ever watch Bowling for Columbine? Ya it's kinda opinionated but no one can deny it presents a harsh and real message. There is a serious problem when you have to lock your doors at night buddy - why the insecurity?

See where you're from you live in fear of robbery and murder, etc...

Where i'm from a prospective thief is more likely to call ahead and find out what is a good time for you.

BTW - did you even explore my posts? Go ahead and deny THAT reality chump.

Ah I'm a softie - i didn't mean to call you a chump. Sorry.

"If i have the guts to chase down a tornadoes" - This does not take guts - You may be interested to know, since you seem to partake in such activities, that this is a hobby of mine. I also race and sky dive in the summer. None of these things takes guts - i grew up around all three as a child. You'll have to do more than that to impress me.

"Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."

— Abraham Lincoln

Hey, Dream, I just heard of a new book just out that describes to a tee the mentality of the likes of Controversial J(erk):

Hating America: The New World Sport
by John Gibson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...994506?v=glance(erk)

Should be very interesting reading.

Isn't that nice? And people say Americans hate people - well gee, when you have people out there like conj putting you down all the time when you support someone whose quote is "Iraqi" - it makes you wonder if they even support anything at all.

For the record, i don't hate America - I hate it's Administration and feel sorry for those who think it's going in the right direction.

But see you obviously have this problem reading my posts through because I told you that I HAVE chased tornadoes and it has been a passion since I was a child. I'm not a scientist but instead do it for the rush. It IS fun, i'll agree. But i said that does not take guts - between you and I we both know it's more of a "stupidity" thing like our moms tell us.

Now about your job... This seems kind of ironic... It is very possible that i DO know you or at least know OF you and vice versa by the sounds of things...

See truth be told, the only place i act like an ass is on here - elsewhere i get along with everyone... Why is that? Because really deep down i don't give a ****. I come here for the conversation. Again, truth be told, i don't hate ANYBODY and would never want to hurt anybody. I DO think GW has to go and i DO think he is spiralling your country downward much like Iraq IS spiralling out of control. This, only time will tell. I can accept if i'm wrong but some people can't. We will see in November.

Again truth be told if you DID know me you'd know that anytime i stir **** up i'm only twisting someone's chain. I'm a jokester but perhaps moreso when it comes to this forum because i can't help but get caught up in the evident emotions and beliefs that go on in here.

My Resolution to my own problem: I will no longer blast the American people as a whole. I will no longer make it seem like i hate the American people as a whole. I will try my best to get along with people. I will still air my views of a President who i happen to believe is doing a miserable job for his people. I will continue to hope, one way or the other, that the American people get what's best for them.

Heh I didn't say Kerry was the solution to the problem. It will just be interesting to see if people actually want Bush out of office.

I think Controvesial J is from somewhere in China. Beijing, perhaps?

Yes Curley, you have it bang on. Beijing it is. Definately Beijing. Great detective work.

http://www.aliraqi.org/forums/attachment.php?postid=258849
in Fallujah

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/uploaded-46478_large.jpg

http://www.aawsat.com/2004/04/13/images/front.228393.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/awounded.jpg A wounded Iraqi man is treated in the besieged town of Falluja, April 13, 2004

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/ayounggirl.jpg
young Iraqi girl lies in a hospital after being injured after clashes in Falluja, April 10, 2004.

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/capt.ny20504101724.iraq_images_ny205.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/mdf517230.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/r7.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/06rama_slide6.jpg

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/7aywaan.jpg
US marine from the First Battalion Fifth Marines kicks a door during a raid south-east of Fallujah, 50 km West of Baghdad.

http://www.bayanit.com/upload/protected/girl.jpg
A little girl looks back as U.S. Marines from the 1st Battalion 5th Marine Regiment search house to house for weapons and insurgents in Fallujah

http://www.aljazeera.net/mritems/images/2004/4/7/1_217459_1_6.jpg

http://www.aljazeera.net/mritems/images/2004/4/7/1_217481_1_6.jpg

Jo Wilding is a British activist, law student and advocate from Bristol, she has been in Iraq since last November. She has been writing regular e-mail from inside Iraq. This is the last e-mail from here regarding Falluja.



quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I'm sorry it's so long, but please, please read and
forward widely. The truth of what's happening in
Falluja has to get out.

Hamoudie, my thoughts are with you.


April 11th
Falluja

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway
east to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to and
from a lorry that’s not burnt, stripping it bare. We
turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and
Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of
people and a few possessions, heading the other way,
past the improvised refreshment posts along the way
where boys throw food through the windows into the bus
for us and for the people inside still inside Falluja.

The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local
sheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin
and has cleared this with them. The reason I’m on the
bus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my door
at about 11 at night telling me things were desperate
in Falluja, he’d been bringing out children with their
limbs blown off, the US soldiers were going around
telling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but then
when people fled with whatever they could carry, they
were being stopped at the US military checkpoint on
the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching
the sun go down.

He said aid vehicles and the media were being turned
away. He said there was some medical aid that needed
to go in and there was a better chance of it getting
there with foreigners, westerners, to get through the
american checkpoints. The rest of the way was secured
with the armed groups who control the roads we’d
travel on. We’d take in the medical supplies, see what
else we could do to help and then use the bus to bring
out people who needed to leave.

I’ll spare you the whole decision making process, all
the questions we all asked ourselves and each other,
and you can spare me the accusations of madness, but
what it came down to was this: if I don’t do it, who
will? Either way, we arrive in one piece.

We pile the stuff in the corridor and the boxes are
torn open straightaway, the blankets most welcomed.
It’s not a hospital at all but a clinic, a private
doctor’s surgery treating people free since air
strikes destroyed the town’s main hospital. Another
has been improvised in a car garage. There’s no
anaesthetic. The blood bags are in a drinks fridge and
the doctors warm them up under the hot tap in an
unhygienic toilet.

Screaming women come in, praying, slapping their
chests and faces. Ummi, my mother, one cries. I hold
her until Maki, a consultant and acting director of
the clinic, brings me to the bed where a child of
about ten is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A
smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in
the next bed. A US sniper hit them and their
grandmother as they left their home to flee Falluja.

The lights go out, the fan stops and in the sudden
quiet someone holds up the flame of a cigarette
lighter for the doctor to carry on operating by. The
electricity to the town has been cut off for days and
when the generator runs out of petrol they just have
to manage till it comes back on. Dave quickly donates
his torch. The children are not going to live.

“Come,” says Maki and ushers me alone into a room
where an old woman has just had an abdominal bullet
wound stitched up. Another in her leg is being
dressed, the bed under her foot soaked with blood, a
white flag still clutched in her hand and the same
story: I was leaving my home to go to Baghdad when I
was hit by a US sniper. Some of the town is held by US
marines, other parts by the local fighters. Their
homes are in the US controlled area and they are
adamant that the snipers were US marines.

Snipers are causing not just carnage but also the
paralysis of the ambulance and evacuation services.
The biggest hospital after the main one was bombed is
in US territory and cut off from the clinic by
snipers. The ambulance has been repaired four times
after bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streets
because no one can go to collect them without being
shot.

Some said we were mad to come to Iraq; quite a few
said we were completely insane to come to Falluja and
now there are people telling me that getting in the
back of the pick up to go past the snipers and get
sick and injured people is the craziest thing they’ve
ever seen. I know, though, that if we don’t, no one
will.

He’s holding a white flag with a red crescent on; I
don’t know his name. The men we pass wave us on when
the driver explains where we’re going. The silence is
ferocious in the no man’s land between the pick up at
the edge of the Mujahedin territory, which has just
gone from our sight around the last corner and the
marines’ line beyond the next wall; no birds, no
music, no indication that anyone is still living until
a gate opens opposite and a woman comes out, points.

We edge along to the hole in the wall where we can see
the car, spent mortar shells around it. The feet are
visible, crossed, in the gutter. I think he’s dead
already. The snipers are visible too, two of them on
the corner of the building. As yet I think they can’t
see us so we need to let them know we’re there.

“Hello,” I bellow at the top of my voice. “Can you
hear me?” They must. They’re about 30 metres from us,
maybe less, and it’s so still you could hear the flies
buzzing at fifty paces. I repeat myself a few times,
still without reply, so decide to explain myself a bit
more.

“We are a medical team. We want to remove this wounded
man. Is it OK for us to come out and get him? Can you
give us a signal that it’s OK?”

I’m sure they can hear me but they’re still not
responding. Maybe they didn’t understand it all, so I
say the same again. Dave yells too in his US accent. I
yell again. Finally I think I hear a shout back. Not
sure, I call again.

“Hello.”

“Yeah.”

“Can we come out and get him?”

“Yeah,”

Slowly, our hands up, we go out. The black cloud that
rises to greet us carries with it a hot, sour smell.
Solidified, his legs are heavy. I leave them to Rana
and Dave, our guide lifting under his hips. The
Kalashnikov is attached by sticky blood to is hair and
hand and we don’t want it with us so I put my foot on
it as I pick up his shoulders and his blood falls out
through the hole in his back. We heave him into the
pick up as best we can and try to outrun the flies.

I suppose he was wearing flip flops because he’s
barefoot now, no more than 20 years old, in imitation
Nike pants and a blue and black striped football shirt
with a big 28 on the back. As the orderlies form the
clinic pull the young fighter off the pick up, yellow
fluid pours from his mouth and they flip him over,
face up, the way into the clinic clearing in front of
them, straight up the ramp into the makeshift morgue.

We wash the blood off our hands and get in the
ambulance. There are people trapped in the other
hospital who need to go to Baghdad. Siren screaming,
lights flashing, we huddle on the floor of the
ambulance, passports and ID cards held out the
windows. We pack it with people, one with his chest
taped together and a drip, one on a stretcher, legs
jerking violently so I have to hold them down as we
wheel him out, lifting him over steps.

The hospital is better able to treat them than the
clinic but hasn’t got enough of anything to sort them
out properly and the only way to get them to Baghdad
on our bus, which means they have to go to the clinic.
We’re crammed on the floor of the ambulance in case
it’s shot at. Nisareen, a woman doctor about my age,
can’t stop a few tears once we’re out.

The doctor rushes out to meet me: “Can you go to fetch
a lady, she is pregnant and she is delivering the baby
too soon?”

Azzam is driving, Ahmed in the middle directing him
and me by the window, the visible foreigner, the
passport. Something scatters across my hand,
simultaneous with the crashing of a bullet through the
ambulance, some plastic part dislodged, flying through
the window.

We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light
flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US
marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings.
Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible
and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the
window, past my head. Some, it’s hard to tell, are
hitting the ambulance I start singing. What else do
you do when someone’s shooting at you? A tyre bursts
with an enormous noise and a jerk of the vehicle.

I’m outraged. We’re trying to get to a woman who’s
giving birth without any medical attention, without
electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly
marked ambulance, and you’re shooting at us. How dare
you?

How dare you?

Azzam grabs the gear stick and gets the ambulance into
reverse, another tyre bursting as we go over the ridge
in the centre of the road , the sots still coming as
we flee around the corner. I carry on singing. The
wheels are scraping, burst rubber burning on the road.


The men run for a stretcher as we arrive and I shake
my head. They spot the new bullet holes and run to see
if we’re OK. Is there any other way to get to her, I
want to know. La, maaku tarieq. There is no other way.
They say we did the right thing. They say they’ve
fixed the ambulance four times already and they’ll fix
it again but the radiator’s gone and the wheels are
buckled and se’s still at home in the dark giving
birth alone. I let her down.

We can’t go out again. For one thing there’s no
ambulance and besides it’s dark now and that means our
foreign faces can’t protect the people who go out with
us or the people we pick up. Maki is the acting
director of the place. He says he hated Saddam but now
he hates the Americans more.

end of Part 1

part 2

We take off the blue gowns as the sky starts exploding
somewhere beyond the building opposite. Minutes later
a car roars up to the clinic. I can hear him screaming
before I can see that there’s no skin left on his
body. He’s burnt from head to foot. For sure there’s
nothing they can do. He’ll die of dehydration within a
few days.

Another man is pulled from the car onto a stretcher.
Cluster bombs, they say, although it’s not clear
whether they mean one or both of them. We set off
walking to Mr Yasser’s house, waiting at each corner
for someone to check the street before we cross. A
ball of fire falls from a plane, splits into smaller
balls of bright white lights. I think they’re cluster
bombs, because cluster bombs are in the front of my
mind, but they vanish, just magnesium flares,
incredibly bright but short-lived, giving a flash
picture of the town from above.

Yasser asks us all to introduce ourselves. I tell him
I’m training to be a lawyer. One of the other men asks
whether I know about international law. They want to
know about the law on war crimes, what a war crime is.
I tell them I know some of the Geneva Conventions,
that I’ll bring some information next time I come and
we can get someone to explain it in Arabic.

We bring up the matter of Nayoko. This group of
fighters has nothing to do with the ones who are
holding the Japanese hostages, but while they’re
thanking us for what we did this evening, we talk
about the things Nayoko did for the street kids, how
much they loved her. They can’t promise anything but
that they’ll try and find out where she is and try to
persuade the group to let her and the others go. I
don’t suppose it will make any difference. They’re
busy fighting a war in Falluja. They’re unconnected
with the other group. But it can’t hurt to try.

The planes are above us all night so that as I doze I
forget I’m not on a long distance flight, the constant
bass note of an unmanned reconnaissance drone overlaid
with the frantic thrash of jets and the dull beat of
helicopters and interrupted by the explosions.

In the morning I make balloon dogs, giraffes and
elephants for the little one, Abdullah, Aboudi, who’s
clearly distressed by the noise of the aircraft and
explosions. I blow bubbles which he follows with his
eyes. Finally, finally, I score a smile. The twins,
thirteen years old, laugh too, one of them an
ambulance driver, both said to be handy with a
Kalashnikov.

The doctors look haggard in the morning. None has
slept more than a couple of hours a night for a week.
One as had only eight hours of sleep in the last seven
days, missing the funerals of his brother and aunt
because he was needed at the hospital.

“The dead we cannot help,” Jassim said. “I must worry
about the injured.”

We go again, Dave, Rana and me, this time in a pick
up. There are some sick people close to the marines’
line who need evacuating. No one dares come out of
their house because the marines are on top of the
buildings shooting at anything that moves. Saad
fetches us a white flag and tells us not to worry,
he’s checked and secured the road, no Mujahedin will
fire at us, that peace is upon us, this eleven year
old child, his face covered with a keffiyeh, but for
is bright brown eyes, his AK47 almost as tall as he
is.

We shout again to the soldiers, hold up the flag with
a red crescent sprayed onto it. Two come down from the
building, cover this side and Rana mutters, “Allahu
akbar. Please nobody take a shot at them.”

We jump down and tell them we need to get some sick
people from the houses and they want Rana to go and
bring out the family from the house whose roof they’re
on. Thirteen women and children are still inside, in
one room, without food and water for the last 24
hours.

“We’re going to be going through soon clearing the
houses,” the senior one says.

“What does that mean, clearing the houses?”

“Going into every one searching for weapons.” He’s
checking his watch, can’t tell me what will start
when, of course, but there’s going to be air strikes
in support. “If you’re going to do tis you gotta do it
soon.”

First we go down the street we were sent to. There’s a
man, face down, in a white dishdasha, a small round
red stain on his back. We run to him. Again the flies
ave got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I’m by
his knees and as we reach to roll him onto the
stretcher Dave’s hand goes through his chest, through
the cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatly
through his back and blew his heart out.

There’s no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive,
his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed,
they scream. He was unarmed. He just went out the gate
and they shot him. None of them have dared come out
since. No one had dared come to get his body,
horrified, terrified, forced to violate the traditions
of treating the body immediately. They couldn’t have
known we were coming so it’s inconceivable tat anyone
came out and retrieved a weapon but left the body.

He was unarmed, 55 years old, shot in the back.

We cover his face, carry him to the pick up. There’s
nothing to cover his body with. The sick woman is
helped out of the house, the little girls around her
hugging cloth bags to their bodies, whispering, “Baba.
Baba.” Daddy. Shaking, they let us go first, hands up,
around the corner, then we usher them to the cab of
the pick up, shielding their heads so they can’t see
him, the cuddly fat man stiff in the back.

The people seem to pour out of the houses now in the
hope we can escort them safely out of the line of
fire, kids, women, men, anxiously asking us whether
they can all go, or only the women and children. We go
to ask. The young marine tells us that men of fighting
age can’t leave. What’s fighting age, I want to know.
He contemplates. Anything under forty five. No lower
limit.

It appals me that all those men would be trapped in a
city which is about to be destroyed. Not all of them
are fighters, not all are armed. It’s going to happen
out of the view of the world, out of sight of the
media, because most of the media in Falluja is
embedded with the marines or turned away at the
outskirts. Before we can pass the message on, two
explosions scatter the crowd in the side street back
into their houses.

Rana’s with the marines evacuating the family from the
house they’re occupying. The pick up isn’t back yet.
The families are hiding behind their walls. We wait,
because there’s nothing else we can do. We wait in no
man’s land. The marines, at least, are watching us
through binoculars; maybe the local fighters are too.

I’ve got a disappearing hanky in my pocket so while
I’m sitting like a lemon, nowhere to go, gunfire and
explosions aplenty all around, I make the hanky
disappear, reappear, disappear. It’s always best, I
think, to seem completely unthreatening and completely
unconcerned, so no one worries about you enough to
shoot. We can’t wait too long though. Rana’s been gone
ages. We have to go and get her to hurry. There’s a
young man in the group. She’s talked them into letting
him leave too.

A man wants to use his police car to carry some of the
people, a couple of elderly ones who can’t walk far,
the smallest children. It’s missing a door. Who knows
if he was really a police car or the car was
reappropriated and just ended up there? It didn’t
matter if it got more people out faster. They creep
from their houses, huddle by the wall, follow us out,
their hands up too, and walk up the street clutching
babies, bags, each other.

The pick up gets back and we shovel as many onto it as
we can as an ambulance arrives from somewhere. A young
man waves from the doorway of what’s left of a house,
his upper body bare, a blood soaked bandage around his
arm, probably a fighter but it makes no difference
once someone is wounded and unarmed. Getting the dead
isn’t essential. Like the doctor said, the dead don’t
need help, but if it’s easy enough then we will. Since
we’re already OK with the soldiers and the ambulance
is here, we run down to fetch them in. It’s important
in Islam to bury the body straightaway.

The ambulance follows us down. The soldiers start
shouting in English at us for it to stop, pointing
guns. It’s moving fast. We’re all yelling, signalling
for it to stop but it seems to take forever for the
driver to hear and see us. It stops. It stops, before
they open fire. We haul them onto the stretchers and
run, shove them in the back. Rana squeezes in the
front with the wounded man and Dave and I crouch in
the back beside the bodies. He says he had allergies
as a kid and hasn’t got much sense of smell. I wish,
retrospectively, for childhood allergies, and stick my
head out the window.

The bus is going to leave, taking the injured people
back to Baghdad, the man with the burns, one of the
women who was shot in the jaw and shoulder by a
sniper, several others. Rana says she’s staying to
help. Dave and I don’t hesitate: we’re staying too.
“If I don’t do it, who will?” has become an accidental
motto and I’m acutely aware after the last foray how
many people, how many women and children, are still in
their houses either because they’ve got nowhere to go,
because they’re scared to go out of the door or
because they’ve chosen to stay.

To begin with it’s agreed, then Azzam says we have to
go. He hasn’t got contacts with every armed group,
only with some. There are different issues to square
with each one. We need to get these people back to
Baghdad as quickly as we can. If we’re kidnapped or
killed it will cause even more problems, so it’s
better that we just get on the bus and leave and come
back with him as soon as possible.

It hurts to climb onto the bus when the doctor has
just asked us to go and evacuate some more people. I
hate the fact that a qualified medic can’t travel in
the ambulance but I can, just because I look like the
sniper’s sister or one of his mates, but that’s the
way it is today and the way it was yesterday and I
feel like a traitor for leaving, but I can’t see where
I’ve got a choice. It’s a war now and as alien as it
is to me to do what I’m told, for once I’ve got to.

Jassim is scared. He harangues Mohammed constantly,
tries to pull him out of the driver’s seat wile we’re
moving. The woman with the gunshot wound is on the
back seat, the man with the burns in front of her,
being fanned with cardboard from the empty boxes, his
intravenous drips swinging from the rail along the
ceiling of the bus. It’s hot. It must be unbearable
for him.

Saad comes onto the bus to wish us well for the
journey. He shakes Dave’s hand and then mine. I hold
his in both of mine and tell him “Dir balak,” take
care, as if I could say anything more stupid to a
pre-teen Mujahedin with an AK47 in his other hand, and
our eyes meet and stay fixed, his full of fire and
fear.

Can’t I take him away? Can’t I take him somewhere he
can be a child? Can’t I make him a balloon giraffe and
give him some drawing pens and tell him not to forget
to brush his teeth? Can’t I find the person who put
the rifle in the hands of that little boy? Can’t I
tell someone about what that does to a child? Do I
have to leave him here where there are heavily armed
men all around him and lots of them are not on his
side, however many sides there are in all of this? And
of course I do. I do have to leave him, like child
soldiers everywhere.

The way back is tense, the bus almost getting stuck in
a dip in the sand, people escaping in anything, even
piled on the trailer of a tractor, lines of cars and
pick ups and buses ferrying people to the dubious
sanctuary of Baghdad, lines of men in vehicles queuing
to get back into the city having got their families to
safety, either to fight or to help evacuate more
people. The driver, Jassim, the father, ignores Azzam
and takes a different road so that suddenly we’re not
following the lead car and we’re on a road that’s
controlled by a different armed group than the ones
which know us.

A crowd of men waves guns to stop the bus. Somehow
they apparently believe that there are American
soldiers on the bus, as if they wouldn’t be in tanks
or helicopters, and there are men getting out of their
cars with shouts of “Sahafa Amreeki,” American
journalists. The passengers shout out of the windows,
“Ana min Falluja,” I am from Falluja. Gunmen run onto
the bus and see that it’s true, there are sick and
injured and old people, Iraqis, and then relax, wave
us on.

We stop in Abu Ghraib and swap seats, foreigners in
the front, Iraqis less visible, headscarves off so we
look more western. The American soldiers are so happy
to see westerners they don’t mind too much about the
Iraqis with us, search the men and the bus, leave the
women unsearched because there are no women soldiers
to search us. Mohammed keeps asking me if things are
going to be OK.

“Al-melaach wiyana, “ I tell him. The angels are with
us. He laughs.

And then we’re in Baghdad, delivering them to the
hospitals, Nuha in tears as they take the burnt man
off groaning and whimpering. She puts her arms around
me and asks me to be her friend. I make her feel less
isolated, she says, less alone.

And the satellite news says the cease-fire is holding
and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday
that, “I know what we’re doing in Iraq is right.”
Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their family
home is right. Shooting grandmothers with white flags
is right? Shooting at women and children who are
fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is
right?

Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like
when you brutalise people so much that they’ve nothing
left to lose. I know what it looks like when an
operation is being done without anaesthetic because
the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and
the city’s under siege and aid isn’t getting in
properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what
it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your
head, even though you’re in an ambulance. I know what
it looks like when a man’s chest is no longer inside
him and what it smells like and I know what it looks
like when his wife and children p