As I've said before,
Rahul Mahajan has written movingly about the barbarity of U.S. military tactics in putting down the Iraqi insurrection and impact on the civilian population. In particular, he has written about what is occurring in
Fallujah:
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"A gentle, urbane man who spoke fluent English, Al-Nazzal was beside himself with fury at the Americans' actions (when I asked him if it was all right to use his full name, he said, "It's ok. It's all ok now. Let the bastards do what they want.") With the "ceasefire," large-scale bombing was rare. With a halt in major bombing, the Americans were attacking with heavy artillery but primarily with snipers.
Al-Nazzal told us about ambulances being hit by snipers, women and children being shot. Describing the horror that the siege of Fallujah had become, he said, "I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to believe in European and American civilization."
I had heard these claims at third-hand before coming into Fallujah, but was skeptical. 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 designed to kill the drivers."
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Obviously, fewer and fewer Iraqi civilians will believe Bush's mantra of democracy deliverance. With every innocent person killed, the resistance to the U.S. occupation grows. But, it now appears U.S. tactics are alienating another group of people in Iraq. High level British officers are expressing their displeasure with American tactics:
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