I am just flabbergasted by this. TalkLeft links, uncritically, to this report that “Americans are slaughtering civilians” in what Jeralynn calls the ‘Fallujah Massacre.’
C’mon, Jeralynn- I know you have google. The author of the report is Dahr Jamail, Indymedia hero, a pretty well known anti-western activist/indpendent journalist. What does Jamail charge? Some tidbits:
– American soldiers have bombed a hospital and are sniping people who try to enter and leave hospitals
– American soldiers are sniping ambulances
– American planes are dropping cluster bombs on civilians
– Americans are shooting women and children (Jamail noted this in between gloating about how Americans would react to the armed children he was praising)
– Americans are shooting old men
– There is and never has been a cease fire
– This is just an excuse to kill Iraqis under the guise of arresting those who killed the Blackwater men.
Go read the report yourself– and then go check out Mr. Jamail’s other writings.
I guess ‘supporting our troops’ has now morphed from marching with ANSWER, voting for ‘Anyone but Bush,’ and passing on, uncritically, propaganda from dubious and unreliable sources that our troops are actively committing war crimes.
Do you honestly believe this report, Jeralynn?
capt joe
can’t wait for Oliver to drive by and call you a name and say that the talkleft stuff is true.
This is usually his clue for crassness.
mark
It is getting harder and harder for me to even read the left’s sites anymore. They are all becoming the same load of crap.
And the sad thing is, in the comment section of this post you linked to, one person questioned the source, and he was dismissed as a pro-war troll.
TalkLeft
I have no idea if it’s true. I didn’t vouch for it or even comment on it. I thought it was newsworthy because it was a first hand account from Fallujah and there are so few of them. He had pictures on his website to support some of what he said.
The mainstream media has also reported 600 dead–you don’t think that’s a massacre?
JPS
“The mainstream media has also reported 600 dead–you don’t think that’s a massacre?”
“Massacre” doesn’t, I suppose, have to connote the murder of innocents, but in common usage it does, more than it simply refers to a large number.
So I for one would be interested to know how many of them were shooting, as opposed to taking cover, before applying such a morally loaded term.
Eric Sivula
massacre – the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty – http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=massacre
I though where is the atrocity? Which of the RPG weilding thugs is helpless or unresisting? Why is the US to blame when TERRORISTS use women and children as cover?
Patrick
I have two things to say; bullshit and good.
Bullshit – for most of it. Americans don’t rip babies from mothers, shoot women and children, et al.
Good – if a person, including a woman or child is carrying a weapon in a war zone and takes their chances at threatening American service members, they die. The peripheral wounds were not caused by American snipers. One shot – one kill. More likely shot by the numbnuts running around firing AKs in the air and spraying the countryside with bullets.
John Cole
A.) By calling it an eyewitness account and not raising any questions- you have uncritically endorsed it.
B.) I call it combat, not a massacre.
C.) I have no doubt there are some innocents who have been hurt- but to suggest they are actively being targeted, sniping hospitals and ambulances, and the other obscene chargesare a touch beyond that.
Jeff G
I like Jeralynn’s disingenuous “I didn’t vouch for it or even comment on it” bit, as if all of a sudden she’s simply a neutral transom through which information just happens to flow. Like a medium, or something — Whoopie Goldberg in Ghost, only white and achingly earnest.
Give us a break, honey. You title your post “Eyewitness Account from Fallujah” and don’t vet the source. You cannily try to distance yourself from criticism by presenting the “eyewitness account” without commentary, but your lack of commentary precisely belies your agenda. Rhetorically, you’re saying “this speaks for itself.” And every blogger who’s familiar with the structural semiotic of blogging knows what you’re up to.
The story’s bullshit, and your defense of posting it as you did is more bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself. Really.
John Cole
Jeralynn-
I also must note that this is a strikingly peculiar defense for you- as you and I generally have the same opinion about ‘eyewitness testimony’ in criminal cases.
Why the difference here?
SAO
I don’t think anyone here knows to what degree of “combat” or “slaughter” the situation in Falluja is. I do believe the story is newsworthy, but coming from this guy- he’s obviously apt to describe Americans as murdererous villians, it fits his agenda.
My best guess is that the Marines are being less-than-careful in their approach to the insurgency, leading to more collateral damage and less US casualties.
The far-left is eager to jump behind the Iraqi insurgents and label them an “Iraqi Intifada” ala Palestine. A massacre as this could be would provide the moral impetus to fully back the insurgency.
TalkLeft
Still have to disagree with you all, and Jeff from Protein Wisdom, why do you have to be so nasty?
Common Dreams just published the eyewitness account as an article
here and says of the author:
“Rahul Mahajan is publisher of the weblog “Empire Notes”. He was in Fallujah recently and is currently writing and blogging from Baghdad. His most recent book is “Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond.”
For John, the problems with eyewitness testimony pertain to eyewitness identification of a person, not reporting of events one observed firsthand.
CleverNameHere
Being an antiwar activist, Rahul Mahajan is hardly an objective voice. Though I have to say I don’t really doubt that we’re sniping ambulances. It’s the unfortunate result of the Islamic extremist penchant for using those vehicles as “troop transports”.
Perhaps I’m irredeemably (and unfashionably) patriotic, but given the tremendous restraint we’ve exhibited in Iraq, don’t you think our soldiers deserve at least a TINY smidgen of the benefit of the doubt? Maybe just a SMALL disclaimer that breathless “eyewitness accounts” from dubious sources, detailing horrific war crimes, ought not to be completely accepted at face value?
Kimmitt
“given the tremendous restraint…”
Um, wasn’t the whole point of the Iraq war to trade American lives for Iraqi ones — that is, wasn’t this “restraint” the whole idea?
Anastasia
The saddest part is some people actually believe this garbage. That is what frightens me – that people are sssssooooooo stupid!
CleverNameHere
Um, wasn’t the whole point of the Iraq war to trade American lives for Iraqi ones — that is, wasn’t this “restraint” the whole idea?
Well, no, the whole point of the war WASN’T to trade American lives for Iraqi lives. Bush (along with just about every other world leader) actually thought Saddam had WMD, and that he was a serious threat to the US.
But in the course of dealing with that threat, we did not wish to abandon our national morals, one of which is to keep collateral damage minimized. We did this even to the point of placing our soldiers at greater bodily risk, though it’s certainly true that the eventual success of the mission, the flowering of democracy, depended upon maintaining some level of relationship with the common Iraqis.
I’m not saying our soldiers are perfect. I AM saying that given the fact that this “source” opposed the dethroning of Saddam, perhaps his “reports” are not to be accepted uncritically.
Jennifer Byers
Our troops need the support of ALL americans. They are keeping life as you know it (Freedom) for us in this Great United States. Do not bash the war until you have fought the war. Our President is one of the most honest and one of the Greatest of all times. There is a time of War and a time for Peace. Now is a time for War and our military including my SON needs everyones support. If we do not fight this war now….Five years from now the United States will have a bigger problem with terrorist. We dont need another 9/11. This problem should have been resolved years ago.