purporting to describe "Arab psychology"
...the home of Yasseen Taha, a 33 year-old farmer who attended evening classes at the University of Baghdad's Islamic Studies program.
"On October 17, Yasseen's brother, Aziz, and his wife, Majida, were shot and killed by troops from Lt. Col. Sassaman's base, according to Yasseen's uncle, Muhnna Azazzal, who spoke with us. On that day at about 4:00 p.m., U.S. troops and tanks stationed at the former Iraqi airfield three kilometers south of the Taha home, came from that direction toward the village, 'firing randomly,' said Azazzal.
"Yasseen's younger brother, Aziz, a fourth-year student in the University of Baghdad's English Studies department, was struck by one of the bullets and mortally wounded. Yasseen's wife, Majida, knelt to help her brother-in-law and was hit by a bullet and killed instantly. She left three children, the youngest 15 days old. Aziz died within two hours, but in the meantime, Azazzal said, U.S. soldiers surrounded the scene, telling neighbors to keep back and denying Aziz any first-aid. Aziz's sister, Asmaa, said that she witnessed the carnage that day. Seeing her brother shot and bleeding to death, she began to cry hysterically. An American soldier responded by firing his rifle into the ground near Aziz' dying body 'to mock my grief,' she said."
Ten days after these horrific murders, Yasseen was arrested by U.S. troops. It seems that the "liberators" had been recently attacked in the vicinity � gee, who would thought? � and Yasseen was a prime suspect, "having lost two family members to Army shootings." As of February, Yasseen was still rotting in Abu Ghraib prison. He is not allowed any visitors, and, although no formal charges have been filed, his uncle says he heard from released detainees that Yasseen stands accused of "terrorist acts."
One needn't make any overt move to resist the terroristic sadism of the occupiers to be labeled a "terrorist." The potential is sufficient. This is a "preemptive war" � with a vengeance.
Another piece by Ferner documents the razing of Abou Siffa, a village 30 miles north of Baghdad, in a campaign that resembles nothing so much as a Nazi pogrom. I have been skeptical of allusions to the Third Reich in describing acts carried out by U.S. soldiers in this war, just as I have long thought comparisons of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Adolph Hitler are over the top, But what, I ask you, does the following account, rendered by one Mohammed Al Taai, remind you of?:
"'On December 16, at 2:00 am, on a rainy night, all the houses in this village, about two dozen, were surrounded by U.S. troops in tanks and humvees. They surrounded the fields of the farmers by tanks and they destroyed the fences of the fields,' Mohammed tells the six people from Christian Peacemaker Teams who have come to document detainees' stories.
"'They destroyed the doors of the houses and of the rooms. At night usually the doors of the bedrooms are locked, so they kicked the doors in and destroyed them by their weapons. After that they gathered the men, beating them severely. One was an old man and they smashed his glasses, and for that old man they had to guide him.'"
It is a reenactment of scene that might first have been played out in Central Europe during World War II:
"Rounded up in the raid were two attorneys, 15 schoolteachers, men in their 80's, a blind man, an elderly man so frail he had to be carried by the soldiers � virtually all the men of Abou Siffa. They even apprehended police officers and three children."
Every dinar and dime was stolen from the detainees, and all were transported to the Abu Ghraib prison, where, as of early February, most remained.
Justin Raimondo/antiwar.com May.07.04
