I am providing links to three eyewitness reports from Fallujah. Aaron Glantz, Dahr Jamail, and Rahul Mahajan all paint essentially the same picture. No one will be surprised that this is not the picture we are getting through our mainstream media.
First some essential background.
On Sunday, April 11, the New York Times ran the following story:
U.S. Prepares a Prolonged Drive to Suppress the Uprisings in Iraq
By THOM SHANKER
American commanders are preparing for a prolonged campaign to quell the twin uprisings in Iraq, issuing orders to attack any members of a rebellious Shiite militia in southern cities relentlessly while moving methodically to squeeze Sunni fighters west of Baghdad until they lay down their arms.
Billmon explaines the stakes for the U.S. right now.
If they don't go and get Sadr, and finish the reduction of Fallujah, everybody in Iraq is going to understand that the U.S. doesn't have the stomach for a fight to the finish - that this isn't so different from Mogadishu after all. And all the players are going to adjust their strategies accordingly.
Feyad, a pro-occupation Iraqi blogger reports the use of
Cluster Bombs in Fallujah. This is confirmed by eyewitnesses as cited below.
Fallujah. Russian Press reports via Al-Jazeera that US mil have been air-dropping cluster-bombs inside the city (perhaps after some of the civilians were allowed to leave) . That would explain high level of casualities.
The indispensable Robert Fisk puts it in context:
...Not a single American journalist has investigated the links between the Israeli army's "rules of engagement"--so blithely handed over to US forces on Sharon's orders--and the behaviour of the US military in Iraq. The destruction of houses of "suspects", the wholesale detention of thousands of Iraqis without trial, the cordoning off of "hostile" villages with razor wire, the bombardment of civilian areas by Apache helicopter gunships and tanks on the hunt for "terrorists" are all part of the Israeli military lexicon.
In besieging cities--when they were taking casualties or the number of civilians killed was becoming too shameful to sustain--the Israeli army would call a "unilateral suspension of offensive operations". They did this 11 times after they surrounded Beirut in 1982. And yesterday, the American army declared a "unilateral suspension of offensive operations" around Fallujah.
Not a word on this mysterious parallel by America's reporters, no questions about the even more mysterious use of identical language. And in the coming days, we shall--perhaps--find out how many of the estimated 300 dead of Fallujah were Sunni gunmen and how many were women and children. Following Israel's rules is going to lead the Americans into the same disaster those rules have led the Israelis.
Eyewitness #1
Aaron Glantz
Aaron Glantz reports live from Baghdad this morning (via cell phone to WBAI radio) that the "most important thing for listeners to know is that the cease fire in Fallujah is a lie". This, from his discussions with Iraqis who have fled Fallujah for Baghdad.
Also Glantz:
Massacre in Fallujah: Over 600 Dead, 1,000 Injured, 60,000 Refugees
Democracy Now
Monday, April 12th, 2004
The U.S. siege of Fallujah continues and reports are emerging of a massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of U.S. troops. We go to Iraq to get a report from Free Speech Radio News' Aaron Glantz who interviews Iraqis fleeing Fallujah as well as a producer with Al-Jazeera television who says he and fellow journalists were targeted by U.S. snipers in the town.
Eyewitness # 2
Dahr Jamail
Americans Slaughtering Civilians in Falluja
April 11, 2004
...The city itself was virtually empty, aside from groups of mujahedeen standing on every other street corner. It was a city at war. We rolled towards the one small clinic where we were to deliver our medical supplies from INTERSOS, an Italian NGO. The small clinic is managed by Mr. Maki Al-Nazzal, who was hired just 4 days ago to do so. He is not a doctor.
Ambulances in Falluja are being shot by American snipers. ...
Iraqi woman wounded in the neck by an American sniper. Doctors predicted the wound would be fatal.
As I was there, an endless stream of women and children who'd been sniped by the Americans were being raced into the dirty clinic, the cars speeding over the curb out front as their wailing family members carried them in.
... We ran for a nearby wall to hunker down, afraid it was dropping cluster bombs. There had been reports of this, as two of the last victims that arrived at the clinic were reported by the locals to have been hit by cluster bombs -- they were horribly burned and their bodies shredded.
... What I can report from Falluja is that there is no ceasefire, and apparently there never was.
Eyewitness #3
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Fallujah
April 11, 2004
It's very difficult to find the real story here. But this I saw for myself. An ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have hit the driver's chest (the snipers were on rooftops, and are trained to aim for the chest). Another ambulance again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield. There's no way this was due to panicked spraying of fire. These were deliberate shots to kill people in driving the ambulances.
... Among the more laughable assertions of the Bush administration is that the mujaheddin are a small group of isolated "extremists" repudiated by the majority of Fallujah's population. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, the mujaheddin don't include women or very young children (we saw an 11-year-old boy with a Kalashnikov), old men, and are not necessarily even a majority of fighting-age men. But they are of the community and fully supported by it. ....
... Nothing could have been easier than gaining the good-will of the people of Fallujah had the Americans not been so brutal in their dealings. Now, a tipping-point has been reached. Fallujah cannot be "saved" from its mujaheddin unless it is destroyed.