Empire Notes

In Fallujah during the April attack, I saw awful things: women and children shot by U.S. snipers, ambulances shot at, the main hospital effectively closed, so that doctors were forced to set up shop in makeshift clinics across the city. In this, as in almost any other U.S. assault, the laws of war were violated.

In this assault, however, I have reason to believe that troops were deliberately and specifically told that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.

First, they made Fallujah General Hospital a primary initial target, because, according to one Marine officer, it was a “center of propaganda.” The “propaganda” referred to was the reports on civilian casualties compiled by doctors and administrators at the hospital.

So-called “military age males,” those aged 15 to 55, have not been allowed to leave the town under any circumstances. The AP reports, “A stream of refugees, about 300 men, women and children, were detained by American soldiers as they left southern Fallujah by car and on foot. The women and children were allowed to proceed. The men were tested for any residues left by the handling of explosives. All tested negative, but they were sent back.”

Without powder residues, the men were clearly noncombatants, and keeping them from fleeing a battle scene is a war crime, as a legal adviser to the generally circumspect Human Rights Watch, has already agreed.

An Iraqi photographer for the AP in the city reported seeing people, including a family of five, being gunned down by American forces as they tried to flee across the Euphrates. Another said, "People are afraid of even looking out the window because of snipers. The Americans are shooting anything that moves."

Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor, embedded with troops in Fallujah, agreed: “And in fact, when anyone does poke their head up, they're almost universally considered to be a target.”

Another embed, Jackie Spinner of the Washington Post said, “There are parts of the city that the soldiers are describing are just, you know, piles of rubble.”

When I was in Fallujah in April, I saw individual buildings damaged and destroyed, but I never saw neighborhoods that had been reduced to rubble.

Aid from the Iraqi Red Crescent has been impounded at the hospital and U.S. troops have refused to allow it into the city. The Geneva Conventions specifically give the Red Cross and by extension the Red Crescent the right to provide humanitarian aid.

This is no accident. From the British Daily Telegraph, we can see the rules of engagement as related to soldiers by Marine Lt. Col Pete Newell:

"We don't want to rubble the city. .. We want Fallujah to understand what democracy's all about.'' But he added: "That doesn't mean you have to tolerate any [expletive deleted] from second-floor windows." The battle would be "personal" because of the losses the unit had already sustained. "That pile of crap has got to be cleaned out," he said.

Going further: If firing was identified from a house, then artillery fire should be called in to "pancake the building". Moving vehicles should be destroyed as potential suicide bombs.

The artillery strikes include those from the formidable Paladin, whose shells have a “kill radius” of 55 yards and are bound to cause “collateral damage.” Even though all moving vehicles were to be destroyed, no ambulanced were attacked because U.S. forces seized and grounded all of them.

Rory McCarthy of the Guardian suggests that the civilian death toll in Fallujah may be far higher than reported. Expect American forces to cover it up the way Israeli soldiers did in Jenin. Frequent reports of American plans for immediate “reconstruction” in Fallujah more likely mean plans to bulldoze the truth.

Bush has claimed his new mandate, his Mandate of Heaven, and exercised it to the full in Fallujah. No longer will there be even a pretense of civilization. When Germany invaded Belgium to begin World War I, it said its treaty of neutrality was only a piece of paper. The Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights are just pieces of paper to the those who represent the real threat to our freedom.