How can the US ever win, when Iraqi children die like this?, page 1
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Topic started on 14-8-2005 @ 08:31 AM by Souljah
There's the wreckage of a car bomb that killed seven Americans on the corner of a neighbouring street. Close by stands the shuttered shop of a phone supplier who put pictures of Saddam on a donkey on his mobiles. He was shot three days ago, along with two other men who had committed the same sin. In the al-Jamia neighbourhood, a US Humvee was purring up the road so we gingerly backed off and took a side street. In this part of Baghdad, you avoid both the insurgents and the Americans - if you are lucky.


Yassin al-Sammerai was not. On 14 July, the second grade schoolboy had gone to spend the night with two college friends and - this being a city without electricity in the hottest month of the year - they decided to spend the night sleeping in the front garden. Let his broken 65 year-old father Selim take up the story, for he's the one who still cannot believe his son is dead - or what the Americans told him afterwards.

"It was three-thirty in the morning and they were all asleep, Yassin and his friends Fahed and Walid Khaled. There was an American patrol outside and then suddenly, a Bradley armoured vehicle burst through the gate and wall and drove over Yassin. You know how heavy these things are. He died instantly. But the Americans didn't know what they'd done. He was lying crushed under the vehicle for 17 minutes. Um Khaled, his friends' mother, kept shouting in Arabic: "There is a boy under this vehicle!"

According to Selim al-Sammerai, the Americans' first reaction was to put handcuffs on the two other boys. But a Lebanese Arabic interpreter working for the Americans arrived to explain that it was all a mistake. "We don't have anything against you," she said. The Americans produced a laminated paper in English and Arabic entitled "Iraqi Claims Pocket Card" which tells them how to claim compensation.

The unit whose Bradley drove over Yassin is listed as "256 BCT A/156 AR, Mortars". Under "Type of Incident", an American had written: "Raid destroyed gate and doors." No one told the family there had been a raid. And nowhere - but nowhere - on the form does it suggest that the "raid" destroyed the life of the football-loving Yassin al-Sammerai.

"The Americans came back with an officer two days later," Selim al-Sammerai continues. "They offered us compensation. I refused. I lost my son, I told the officer. 'I don't want the money - I don't think the money will bring back my son.' That's what I told the American." There is a long silence in the room. But Selim, who is still crying, insists on speaking again.

"I told the American officer: 'You have killed the innocent and such things will lead the people to destroy you and the people will make a revolution against you. You said you had come to liberate us from the previous regime. But you are destroying our walls and doors.'"

Source:
Independant Online by Robert Frisk in Baghdad

Indeed - how can the US Ever Win this War, when the majority of the People that die each and everyday in Iraq are Innocent Civilans - most of the time Children.

How do you Expect the Iraq Father to Forget such an "Accident"?

Would You, as a Father, Forget it?

[edit on 14/8/05 by Souljah]


reply posted on 14-8-2005 @ 09:02 AM by DARKJEDIG
nothing intentional no, but this iraq war is not going to be won with errant raiding tactics like this. I seem to remember Bush saying that the U.S. and its allies will win this war by "capturing the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people"
That does not seem to be the case, however. I recently saw a short 42 min video from Germany, (please let me know if anyone here has seen it also) it was about a group of german journalists following American soldiers and their "peace keeping" duties. The Americans took over someones apartment and used it as a sniping post to shoot ANYONE that had an AK-47, or similar arms. They also rammed a house with a group of elderly people in it, destroying their gate, and arresting the men who they suspected as recent bombers. They were shouting "we are old men, what did we do, what did we do? The journalists asked about the damage done to the house and how it would be fixed and the Americans said "we do nothing" These families were pissed, and this gives them more fueled anger against the occupying forces, which is BAD new, I mean it is common sense. The Journalists also asked a soldier what he thought about America's foreign policy, and he said "I would change a lot of things, this is all just about oil, from what I have seen" Now, I'm going to be fair here, and say that there is also a lot of stories about the soldiers, treating the Iraqis well, and looking after children, etc,but it is the cases of sheer ignorance of these people's supposed civil rights that is fueling the Iraqis to join the insurgency. If the soldiers take away these civil rights,then the Iraqis have nothing to live for anyway, and wouldn't care if they get killed by an American raid on their home, or an American shot to the head during an insurgent battle.


reply posted on 14-8-2005 @ 01:23 PM by Souljah
I will just add this from the original Article:

Inside Yassin's father's home yesterday, Selim shakes with anger and then weeps softly, wiping his eyes. "He is surely in heaven," one of his surviving seven sons replies. And the old man looks at me and says: "He liked swimming too."

I suddenly realise that Selim al-Sammerai has straightened up on his seat and his voice is rising in strength. "Do you know what the American said to me? He said, 'This is fate.' I looked at him and I said, 'I am very faithful in the fate of God - but not in the fate of which you speak.'"

This is Fate?

In the heat, we slunk out of al-Jamia yesterday, the place of insurgents and Americans and grief and revenge. "When the car bomb blew up over there," my driver says, "the US Humvees went on burning for three hours and the bodies were still there. The Americans took three hours to reach them. All the people gathered round and watched." And I look at the carbonised car that still lies on the road and realise it has now become a little icon of resistance. How, I ask myself again, can the Americans ever win?

I wish the American President would see this Pictures and read this Stories, that I have shared with you all. Those who don't like them and want to Ignore them with petty insults upon me, who have just delivered the message - shame on you. THIS Story is also Iraq Today - Iraq that the United States created. The most Dangerous City in the World. And you won't hear this kind of news on CNN.




[edit on 14/8/05 by Souljah]
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