Miles Teg
11-12-2003, 05:59 PM
Lemonde.fr
Le prix des morts inutiles
During the war and after, in Nassiriya, as in the suburbs of Baghdad or the bastion sunnite of Fallouja, out of the thousands of civil were killed. The families show brutal and "bunkerized", deprived American soldiers interpreters, and especially badly prepared to fight in urban environment. Return on burs.
The war is a dirty business. There are Iraqis for which one should not speak about "war of liberation". The face of Daham is contracted to avoid the sobs. Its fingers are tight around a cigarette, which it smokes frantically. In the glance, in the speech, one does not feel hatred.
The engineer, very worthy, rather appears to be a man who did not return yet from his surprise. "How this army it arrived from there there?, question it. Why such a moral fall?" Transpierced in three places by American balls, cut down by a leg, Daham Kassim especially lost, "without reason", says it, which it had moreover expensive, his/her children... The war is always a dirty business, and Daham was not unaware of it. No Iraqi, citizen of an alive country in a state of war since 1980, was unaware of it.
The war is a history of violence, and the military victory a question of supremacy. For the American conquerors as for the Iraqis, it is an obviousness. The political aspects, such as "the release" of the country, "the battle for the hearts and the spirits" of the population, do not prevent the war from being what it always was, a business of violence, blood and tears.
The colonel Bryan P. McCoy, the American officer who conquered, April 9, with the head of a unit of navy, the center of Baghdad, and which is responsible for the fall of the statue of Saddam Hussein, place Al-Ferdaous, did not hide it by mentioning a question of "brutal domination". Violent one and intelligent, effective, therefore good soldier, McCoy became famous because, beyond the fact of being the symbol of the military victory, it accepted that journalists not embedded (not integrated in an army corps) follow his crossing of the country.
Its epic was thus reported by Peter Maass and Laurent Van Der Stockt in the New York Times Magazine, Simon Robinson de Time Magazine, Gary Knight de Newsweek, inter alia. Its "feats of arms" and its frankness are worth to him from now on to be quoted by certain pacifist organizations or of defense of the humans right as "war criminal" (the quotations of colonel McCoy reported in this article either were collected by the World in Baghdad, or borrowed from these three American magazines).
What tells colonel McCoy when it is with the face and that it speaks without net, without set language, summarizing perfectly the state of mind in the American army? "It will be finished when the last guy combatant for Saddam has flies crossing his ocular spheres. Sherman said that the war, it is cruelty. There is no reason to redefine it. Crueler it is, more quickly it is finished."
On the animosity of civil Iraqi towards the methods of its navy, McCoy is very clear. "They do not have to appreciate us. To like has nothing to do with the war. The Yankees want always to be loved, but that does not go always thus." The war, still says it, "it is murder, carnage!" Daham Kassim was not unaware of it, but that did not prevent it from being favorable to the idea of a fall of Saddam Hussein, of a radical change in Iraq.
What it was unaware of, it is that the murder could be practised without military justification. A few days before colonel McCoy does not illustrate himself while entering the suburbs of Baghdad, at the price of many civil victims close to the bridge of Diyala, another unit of navy used identical methods in the town of Nassiriya.
THE DRAMA OF NASSIRIYA
It was on March 25... Daham Kassim orders to its family to pack the bags and decides to take along his wife and her four children out of Nassiriya. "a bomb had fallen the day before in our street. I wanted to put my family at the shelter in the village of my mother. I thought that the road would be, put aside the air raids, without danger." Daham, engineer and director of a power station, do not want to drive its Jeep of function, in the event of meeting with the American forces, because it knows that the fedayins of Saddam Hussein use this type of vehicle. It also asks his wife and her children to dress itself in clear colors. It does not want to take any risk. It leaves its Peugeot 306 white the court. It crosses the bridge which leads to the entry of Nassiriya, envisaging to fork then towards the desert.
"I initially did not see the American tanks posted 200 meters after the bridge. It only arrived at 60 meters of them that I saw them. I immediately stopped the car. I was with the stop, asking to me whether I were to make signs or a half-turn, when the shootings resounded. A long gust, tens of balls... My wife and me, with front, were touched several balls in the chest, the legs and the arms, without being killed. Of my four children, with the back, two, Mawra, 9 years, and Zehra, 3 years, died instantaneously. American soldiers arrived and left us the car. They tried to help my son Mohammed, 6 years, which failed. It died five minutes later. Then the soldiers took us along, my wife and me, like my last alive child, my daughter Zainab, 5 years, in a building occupied by their army."
One could believe the martyrdom of Daham, Gufran and Zainab, mitraillés with the stop, 60 meters, at 13 hours, finished. But Daham Kassim raises the hand to the sky and continues its account. "We remained all the night in this building without receiving care, reason for which, according to a doctor, I lost my leg, which could have been saved. We were transferred the following day towards a military hospital, where they extracted a ball which my Zainab daughter had in a corner of the head. Then, the evening, apparently because of an arrival of wounded American soldiers, an officer gave the order that all the Iraqi casualties are taken along out of the hospital, in front of the door, by ground, in the desert. They needed beds. However it was very cold outside. My daughter cried. We asked to be lengthened in a corridor, or that us covers be given. Nothing. Zainab cried more and more. She said: "I am cold, dad, I am so cold." My wife and me were immobilized by our wounds, incompetents to even hold it in our arms. I pissed myself above. My daughter cried... "
Daham loses consciousness during the night. When it awakes, at dawn, it is on a stretcher, to be embarked in a helicopter. "They took us along, my wife and me, on a boat-hospital with broad of Koweït. It is there, later, than we received a letter of my brother teaching us that Zainab had died the morning of our departure." Daham retains its tears. "It is the cold which killed it, Sir, it is the cold. The surgical operation had succeeded, it was alive. It is this night in the desert, in front of the door of the hospital, without very a cover, which killed it." Daham Kassim crushes a cigarette end and lights another cigarette at once. "Here is how, Sir, without reason, the American army killed all my children..."
The war in Iraq was the occasion to see the American army in action. Whereas it had especially employed these last years the air force (Kosovo), sometimes supported by the deployment of units of the special forces (Afghanistan), this time, it sent 130 000 soldiers to the attack of Iraq and gained the war in three weeks, without too much concern. It should have fought only very rare battles, of which maddest place with Nassiriya had. It lost only 138 men, 114 in engagements and 24 in accidents. The military countryside promised to be instructive, and it was it.
The first report is that the American army does not respect one of the cardinal laws of the war, the proportioned use of the force. Washington as the officers of ground repeat, certainly, that the Iraqi combatants even less than them respected the laws of the war, which is true. The latter are vêtus civil clothes, involving tragic confusions, and used without shame of the civil positions, houses, factories, schools, cars, even hospitals and ambulances. It is known in addition that no army respects the proportioned use of the force if its men are in danger. An army privileges always, or almost always, its own safety, and the return of its healthy and safe soldiers to the fold. One also knows that the disproportionate use of the force, even leading to a terrible carnage, is sometimes proposed politically, in particular when it allows to stop suddenly a conflict (Hiroshima).
One of the problems is that the army of a democratic country is supposed, from the point of view of the public opinions, to respect the laws of the war more that the killers of Slobodan Milosevic, Oussama Ben Laden or Saddam Hussein. The other problem, more pragmatic, is that in Iraq, during the war as during the post-war period, one can wonder whether the disproportionate use of the force does not make "useless" victims militarily and politically, even if it is not one of the major causes of the prolongation of the conflict.
Which is thus the face which the United States offers this year to the Iraqi people, certainly relieved to be released of the tyrant, but sincerely surprised and offusqué by the behavior of the GI? Many the soldiers are seen as of the "Rambo" having two missions on Earth: to avenge America for the affront of September 11, 2001 and, more generally, to embank the Evil. The military culture inculcated in the GI is, since always, that of combatants of the Good, and, since the war of Vietnam, that of the duty of invincibility.
This culture, transformed into military doctrines, generates all excesses, in particular, curiously for a very "coloured" and multiethnic army, racism (the day of the soldier is punctuated of "****ing Iraqis!" and of "****ing Arabs!", not making any distinction between Iraqi people, in favour of Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaida, like elsewhere of "****ing Afghan!"...) and the improper use of the force. Contrary to a European army, and in particular to the British army in Iraq, the American soldiers live "bunkerized".
They have only few contacts with the population, perceived like hostile, are vêtus true carapaces, helmets and bulletproof jackets, keep the finger on the trigger, rifle directed, even when they speak to a child or will buy a pizza pie. They do not have of anything the attitude "liberators", and the psychological effect is devastator.
Colonel Bryan McCoy had predicted it as of the fall of Baghdad, while its men were greeted by a merry crowd. "Between the statute of hero and that of scorned occupant, it is only one question of time. If we must become the unpleasant American, that will occur extremely quickly."
Le prix des morts inutiles
During the war and after, in Nassiriya, as in the suburbs of Baghdad or the bastion sunnite of Fallouja, out of the thousands of civil were killed. The families show brutal and "bunkerized", deprived American soldiers interpreters, and especially badly prepared to fight in urban environment. Return on burs.
The war is a dirty business. There are Iraqis for which one should not speak about "war of liberation". The face of Daham is contracted to avoid the sobs. Its fingers are tight around a cigarette, which it smokes frantically. In the glance, in the speech, one does not feel hatred.
The engineer, very worthy, rather appears to be a man who did not return yet from his surprise. "How this army it arrived from there there?, question it. Why such a moral fall?" Transpierced in three places by American balls, cut down by a leg, Daham Kassim especially lost, "without reason", says it, which it had moreover expensive, his/her children... The war is always a dirty business, and Daham was not unaware of it. No Iraqi, citizen of an alive country in a state of war since 1980, was unaware of it.
The war is a history of violence, and the military victory a question of supremacy. For the American conquerors as for the Iraqis, it is an obviousness. The political aspects, such as "the release" of the country, "the battle for the hearts and the spirits" of the population, do not prevent the war from being what it always was, a business of violence, blood and tears.
The colonel Bryan P. McCoy, the American officer who conquered, April 9, with the head of a unit of navy, the center of Baghdad, and which is responsible for the fall of the statue of Saddam Hussein, place Al-Ferdaous, did not hide it by mentioning a question of "brutal domination". Violent one and intelligent, effective, therefore good soldier, McCoy became famous because, beyond the fact of being the symbol of the military victory, it accepted that journalists not embedded (not integrated in an army corps) follow his crossing of the country.
Its epic was thus reported by Peter Maass and Laurent Van Der Stockt in the New York Times Magazine, Simon Robinson de Time Magazine, Gary Knight de Newsweek, inter alia. Its "feats of arms" and its frankness are worth to him from now on to be quoted by certain pacifist organizations or of defense of the humans right as "war criminal" (the quotations of colonel McCoy reported in this article either were collected by the World in Baghdad, or borrowed from these three American magazines).
What tells colonel McCoy when it is with the face and that it speaks without net, without set language, summarizing perfectly the state of mind in the American army? "It will be finished when the last guy combatant for Saddam has flies crossing his ocular spheres. Sherman said that the war, it is cruelty. There is no reason to redefine it. Crueler it is, more quickly it is finished."
On the animosity of civil Iraqi towards the methods of its navy, McCoy is very clear. "They do not have to appreciate us. To like has nothing to do with the war. The Yankees want always to be loved, but that does not go always thus." The war, still says it, "it is murder, carnage!" Daham Kassim was not unaware of it, but that did not prevent it from being favorable to the idea of a fall of Saddam Hussein, of a radical change in Iraq.
What it was unaware of, it is that the murder could be practised without military justification. A few days before colonel McCoy does not illustrate himself while entering the suburbs of Baghdad, at the price of many civil victims close to the bridge of Diyala, another unit of navy used identical methods in the town of Nassiriya.
THE DRAMA OF NASSIRIYA
It was on March 25... Daham Kassim orders to its family to pack the bags and decides to take along his wife and her four children out of Nassiriya. "a bomb had fallen the day before in our street. I wanted to put my family at the shelter in the village of my mother. I thought that the road would be, put aside the air raids, without danger." Daham, engineer and director of a power station, do not want to drive its Jeep of function, in the event of meeting with the American forces, because it knows that the fedayins of Saddam Hussein use this type of vehicle. It also asks his wife and her children to dress itself in clear colors. It does not want to take any risk. It leaves its Peugeot 306 white the court. It crosses the bridge which leads to the entry of Nassiriya, envisaging to fork then towards the desert.
"I initially did not see the American tanks posted 200 meters after the bridge. It only arrived at 60 meters of them that I saw them. I immediately stopped the car. I was with the stop, asking to me whether I were to make signs or a half-turn, when the shootings resounded. A long gust, tens of balls... My wife and me, with front, were touched several balls in the chest, the legs and the arms, without being killed. Of my four children, with the back, two, Mawra, 9 years, and Zehra, 3 years, died instantaneously. American soldiers arrived and left us the car. They tried to help my son Mohammed, 6 years, which failed. It died five minutes later. Then the soldiers took us along, my wife and me, like my last alive child, my daughter Zainab, 5 years, in a building occupied by their army."
One could believe the martyrdom of Daham, Gufran and Zainab, mitraillés with the stop, 60 meters, at 13 hours, finished. But Daham Kassim raises the hand to the sky and continues its account. "We remained all the night in this building without receiving care, reason for which, according to a doctor, I lost my leg, which could have been saved. We were transferred the following day towards a military hospital, where they extracted a ball which my Zainab daughter had in a corner of the head. Then, the evening, apparently because of an arrival of wounded American soldiers, an officer gave the order that all the Iraqi casualties are taken along out of the hospital, in front of the door, by ground, in the desert. They needed beds. However it was very cold outside. My daughter cried. We asked to be lengthened in a corridor, or that us covers be given. Nothing. Zainab cried more and more. She said: "I am cold, dad, I am so cold." My wife and me were immobilized by our wounds, incompetents to even hold it in our arms. I pissed myself above. My daughter cried... "
Daham loses consciousness during the night. When it awakes, at dawn, it is on a stretcher, to be embarked in a helicopter. "They took us along, my wife and me, on a boat-hospital with broad of Koweït. It is there, later, than we received a letter of my brother teaching us that Zainab had died the morning of our departure." Daham retains its tears. "It is the cold which killed it, Sir, it is the cold. The surgical operation had succeeded, it was alive. It is this night in the desert, in front of the door of the hospital, without very a cover, which killed it." Daham Kassim crushes a cigarette end and lights another cigarette at once. "Here is how, Sir, without reason, the American army killed all my children..."
The war in Iraq was the occasion to see the American army in action. Whereas it had especially employed these last years the air force (Kosovo), sometimes supported by the deployment of units of the special forces (Afghanistan), this time, it sent 130 000 soldiers to the attack of Iraq and gained the war in three weeks, without too much concern. It should have fought only very rare battles, of which maddest place with Nassiriya had. It lost only 138 men, 114 in engagements and 24 in accidents. The military countryside promised to be instructive, and it was it.
The first report is that the American army does not respect one of the cardinal laws of the war, the proportioned use of the force. Washington as the officers of ground repeat, certainly, that the Iraqi combatants even less than them respected the laws of the war, which is true. The latter are vêtus civil clothes, involving tragic confusions, and used without shame of the civil positions, houses, factories, schools, cars, even hospitals and ambulances. It is known in addition that no army respects the proportioned use of the force if its men are in danger. An army privileges always, or almost always, its own safety, and the return of its healthy and safe soldiers to the fold. One also knows that the disproportionate use of the force, even leading to a terrible carnage, is sometimes proposed politically, in particular when it allows to stop suddenly a conflict (Hiroshima).
One of the problems is that the army of a democratic country is supposed, from the point of view of the public opinions, to respect the laws of the war more that the killers of Slobodan Milosevic, Oussama Ben Laden or Saddam Hussein. The other problem, more pragmatic, is that in Iraq, during the war as during the post-war period, one can wonder whether the disproportionate use of the force does not make "useless" victims militarily and politically, even if it is not one of the major causes of the prolongation of the conflict.
Which is thus the face which the United States offers this year to the Iraqi people, certainly relieved to be released of the tyrant, but sincerely surprised and offusqué by the behavior of the GI? Many the soldiers are seen as of the "Rambo" having two missions on Earth: to avenge America for the affront of September 11, 2001 and, more generally, to embank the Evil. The military culture inculcated in the GI is, since always, that of combatants of the Good, and, since the war of Vietnam, that of the duty of invincibility.
This culture, transformed into military doctrines, generates all excesses, in particular, curiously for a very "coloured" and multiethnic army, racism (the day of the soldier is punctuated of "****ing Iraqis!" and of "****ing Arabs!", not making any distinction between Iraqi people, in favour of Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaida, like elsewhere of "****ing Afghan!"...) and the improper use of the force. Contrary to a European army, and in particular to the British army in Iraq, the American soldiers live "bunkerized".
They have only few contacts with the population, perceived like hostile, are vêtus true carapaces, helmets and bulletproof jackets, keep the finger on the trigger, rifle directed, even when they speak to a child or will buy a pizza pie. They do not have of anything the attitude "liberators", and the psychological effect is devastator.
Colonel Bryan McCoy had predicted it as of the fall of Baghdad, while its men were greeted by a merry crowd. "Between the statute of hero and that of scorned occupant, it is only one question of time. If we must become the unpleasant American, that will occur extremely quickly."