More 'liberation'
david_michael
28 March 2003
By Robert Fisk
Baghdad - Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small
Iraqi girl - victim of an Anglo-America air strike - is brought to
hospital with her intestines spilling our of her stomach, a terribly
wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to take off her black
dress.
An Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands
in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly
in Iraqi hands.
The unedited Al-Jazeera videotape - filmed over the past 36 hours and
newly arrived in Baghdad - is raw, painful, devastating.
It is also proof that Basra - reportedly "captured'' and "secured'' by
British troops last week - is in fact under the control of Saddam
Hussein's forces. Despite claims by British officers that some form of
uprising has broken out in Basra, cars and buses continue to move
through the streets while Iraqis queue patiently for gas bottles as
they are unloaded from a government truck.
A blue-uniformed doctor pours water over the little girl's guts
A remarkable part of the tape shows fireballs blooming over western
Basra and the explosion of incoming - and presumably British - shells.
The short sequence on the dead British soldiers for the public showing
of which Tony Blair expressed such horror on Thursday - is little
different from dozens of similar clips of dead Iraqi soldiers shown on
British television over the past 12 years, pictures which never drew
any expressions of condemnation from the British Prime Minister.
The two Britons, still in uniform, are lying on a roadway, arms and
legs apart, one of them apparently hit in the head, the other shot in
the chest and abdomen.
Far more terrible than the pictures of the dead British soldiers,
however, is the tape from Basra's largest hospital as victims of the
Anglo-America bombardment are brought to the operating rooms shrieking
in pain.
A little girl aged perhaps four is brought into the operating room on
a trolley, staring at a heap of her own intestines protruding from the
left side of her stomach.
This is the nearest to independent evidence we have
A blue-uniformed doctor pours water over the little girl's guts and
then gently applies a bandage before beginning surgery.
A woman in black with what appears to be a stomach wound cries out as
doctors try to strip her for surgery.
The Al-Jazeera tapes - most of which have never been seen - are the
first vivid proof that Basra remains totally outside British control.
Mohamed al-Abdullah, Al-Jazeera's correspondent in Basra, must be the
bravest journalist in Iraq right now. In the sequence of three tapes,
he can be seen conducting interviews with families under fire and
calmly reporting the incoming British artillery bombardment.
One tape shows that the Sheraton Hotel, near the Shatt al-Arab River,
has sustained shell damage. On the edge of the river Basra residents
can be seen filling jerry cans from the sewage-polluted river.
Five days ago the Iraqi government said 30 civilians had been killed
in Basra and another 63 wounded.
On Thursday it said more than 4 000 civilians had been wounded in Iraq
since the war began and more than 350 killed.
Al-Abdullah's tape shows at least seven more bodies brought to the
Basra hospital mortuary over the past 36 hours. One of them, his head
still pouring blood on to the mortuary floor, was identified as an
Arab correspondent for a western news agency.
Other harrowing scenes show the partially-decapitated body of a little
girl, her red scarf still wound round her neck. Another small girl was
lying on a stretcher with her brain and left ear missing.
There was no indication whether American or British ordnance had
killed these children.
The tapes give no indication of Iraqi military casualties. But at a
time when the Iraqi authorities will not allow Western reporters to
visit Basra this is the nearest to independent evidence we have of
continued resistance in the city and the total failure of the British
to capture it.
For days the Iraqis have been denying optimistic reports from
"embedded'' reporters - especially on the BBC - who gave the
impression that Basra was "secured'' or otherwise effectively under
British control.
The tape also has a sequence showing two men - both black - who are
claimed by Iraqi troops to be United States prisoners of war. No
questions are asked of the men.
Both appear on the tape nervous and looking at the camera crew and
Iraqi troops who are crowded behind them.
Of course, it is still possible that some small-scale opposition to
the Iraqi regime broke out in the city, as British officers have
claimed. But, seeing the tapes, it is hard to imagine that it amounted
- if it existed at all - to anything more than a brief gun battle.
The unedited reports therefore provide damaging proof that
Anglo-America spokespersons have not been telling the truth about the
battle for Basra. And in the end this is far more devastating to the
invading armies than the sight of two dead British soldiers or - since
Iraqi lives are as sacred as British lives - than the pictures of dead
Iraqi children.
This article was originally published on page 2 of The Daily News on
28 March 2003
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message <b7fe1abc.03032...@posting.google.com>:
>Daily News (South Africa)
>28 March 2003
Funny how these revisionists appear to have a collective contempt for
the concept of intellectual property.
What, exactly, does your infringement of copyright have to do with the
historicity of the Holocaust and the denial thereof?
Sara Salzman
Roger <roger@.> wrote:
Just in case you were wondering, I've just returned from London. Dr.
Homeland stayed in hiding from me.
Sara
--
If Ernst Zundel is a refugee, Daffy Duck is Albert Einstein. Some
propositions are so ludicrous that they are a betrayal of common
sense and human dignity if allowed a moment's oxygen.
- REX MURPHY, The Globe and Mail
steve wolk
"Sara Salzman" <cata...@concentric.net> wrote in message
news:catamont-B82E5A...@tribune.sj.sys.us.xo.net...
> In article <e381b67537494b7f...@news.teranews.com>,
> Roger <roger@.> wrote:
>
> > In one age, called the Second Age by some,
> > (an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
> > someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
> > in message <b7fe1abc.03032...@posting.google.com>:
> >
> > >Daily News (South Africa)
> > >28 March 2003
> >
> > Funny how these revisionists appear to have a collective contempt for
> > the concept of intellectual property.
> >
> > What, exactly, does your infringement of copyright have to do with the
> > historicity of the Holocaust and the denial thereof?
>
> Just in case you were wondering, I've just returned from London. Dr.
> Homeland stayed in hiding from me.
If you'd taken a flying tour of the country, you'd have found him. His
presence would have been marked by a large yellow area right on the border
with Scotland.
Jason James
"Sara Salzman" <cata...@concentric.net> wrote in message
news:catamont-B82E5A...@tribune.sj.sys.us.xo.net...
> Roger <roger@.> wrote:
>
> > In one age, called the Second Age by some,
> > (an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
> > someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
> > in message <b7fe1abc.03032...@posting.google.com>:
> >
> > >Daily News (South Africa)
> > >28 March 2003
> >
> > Funny how these revisionists appear to have a collective contempt for
> > the concept of intellectual property.
> >
> > What, exactly, does your infringement of copyright have to do with the
> > historicity of the Holocaust and the denial thereof?
>
> Just in case you were wondering, I've just returned from London. Dr.
> Homeland stayed in hiding from me.
>
> Sara
Weren't interested in a 'face to face' David?
Jason James
Gord McFee
2003 03:35:22 GMT, Sara Salzman <cata...@concentric.net> wrote:
> In article <e381b67537494b7f...@news.teranews.com>,
> Roger <roger@.> wrote:
>
> > In one age, called the Second Age by some,
> > (an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
> > someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
> > in message <b7fe1abc.03032...@posting.google.com>:
> >
> > >Daily News (South Africa)
> > >28 March 2003
> >
> > Funny how these revisionists appear to have a collective contempt for
> > the concept of intellectual property.
> >
> > What, exactly, does your infringement of copyright have to do with the
> > historicity of the Holocaust and the denial thereof?
>
> Just in case you were wondering, I've just returned from London. Dr.
> Homeland stayed in hiding from me.
No one is surprised. He was hanging out here in the newsgroup, getting
his jollies about September 11.
--
Gord McFee
I'll write no line before its time
Visit the Holocaust History Project
http://www.holocaust-history.org