Photos from Fallujah

[pricescope]

http://fallujapictures.blogspot.com/

Real war blogging: Taking Falluja.

One Iraqi reaction.

 

[AGBF]

Oh, Leonid. I am so sad. But thank you for posting. I know this is just a tiny glimpse of the *real* face of war, but for a country (the US, that is) where even the sight of American caskets returning home is barred from television, it does give the war more of a real face. It cannot come close to the reality of being there, though.

 

[jenwill]

 

[moremoremore]

Leonid. I would STRONGLY suggest putting a disclaimer on your post. Some of us can't handle shots like that emotionally. I didn't expect it to be so graphic and I'm very disturbed right now. I know it's real world and I know that's the reality of this war...but I would have chosen not to look if I thought it was that graphic. I know, I know, it's real world...but it's more real world than I can handle...Thanks.

 

[pricescope]

Date: 11/19/2004 12:36:16 PM
Author: moremoremore
Leonid. I would STRONGLY suggest putting a disclaimer on your post. Some of us can''t handle shots like that emotionally. I didn''t expect it to be so graphic and I''m very disturbed right now. I know it''s real world and I know that''s the reality of this war...but I would have chosen not to look if I thought it was that graphic. I know, I know, it''s real world...but it''s more real world than I can handle...Thanks.

Sorry

These recent links do not have pictures. Another viewpoints.

Juan Cole: More on Marine Mosque Killing

I don''t like the timing of the Fallujah mission. I don''t like all the mistakes made along the way, which produced this operation. I don''t like its tactics. I don''t like the way it put so many civilians in harm''s way. I don''t like the violations of international law (targetting the hospital, turning away the Red Crescent, killing wounded and disarmed combatants), etc. I protest the latter. I don''t know enough about military affairs to offer an alternative on the former issues, and don''t mind admitting my technical ignorance. You can''t do everything.

But the basic idea of attacking the guerrillas holding up in that city is not in and of itself criminal or irresponsible. A significant proportion of the absolutely horrible car bombings that have killed hundreds and thousands of innocent Iraqis, especially Shiites, were planned and executed from Fallujah. There were serious and heavily armed forces in Fallujah planning out ways of killing hundreds to prevent elections from being held in January. These are mass murderers, serial murderers. If they were fighting only to defend Fallujah, that would be one thing; even the Marines would respect them for that. They aren''t, or at least, a significant proportion of them aren''t. They are killing civilians elsewhere in order to throw Iraq into chaos and avoid the enfranchisement of the Kurds and Shiites.

Some of my readers still want good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats. That''s not the way the world is. It is often grey, and very bleak.

Times: Final steps of dead men walking

In the south of Fallujah yesterday, US Marines found the armless, legless body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out. Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the US Navy Corps, said that she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two. The woman was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was unclear if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both were married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in Baghdad last month.

US and Iraqi troops have discovered kidnappers¹ lairs filled with corpses or emaciated prisoners half-mad with fear, and piles of bodies of men who had refused to fight with the insurgents. As the guerrillas run their last sprint from death, sympathy for their cause is running out among Iraqis.

....

When not disemboweling Iraqi women, these killers hide in mosques and hospitals, booby-trap dead bodies, and open fire as they pretend to surrender. Their snipers kill U.S. soldiers out of nowhere. According to one account, the Marine in the videotape had seen a member of his unit killed by another insurgent pretending to be dead. Who from the safety of his Manhattan sofa has standing to judge what that Marine did in that mosque?

....

In a more grateful age, this would be hailed as one of the great battles in Marine history -- with Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Hue City and the Chosin Reservoir. We''d know the names of these military units, and of many of the soldiers too. Instead, the name we know belongs to the NBC correspondent, Kevin Sites.
We suppose he was only doing his job, too. But that doesn''t mean the rest of us have to indulge in the moral abdication that would equate deliberate televised beheadings of civilians with a Marine shooting a terrorist, who may or may not have been armed, amid the ferocity of battle.

 

[moremoremore]

Hi Leonid! You didn''t have to remove the pix! Just put a warning that they are horribly graphic. The pictures are important and real. It''s just that some of us don''t want to view them

 

[Rank Amateur]

Needs some pics of the Kurds Saddam gassed.

Or maybe some of those are them?

 

[AGBF]

I am sure that there was another way than this to help the Kurds to defend against poison gas. I am also sure that defending the Kurds never crossed the mind of George W. Bush. I have resisted pacifism, but my parents are Quakers. They do not believe in inaction, but they believe in peaceful action. They quote, "There is no way to peace; peace is the way."

It''s easier to argue about things in the abstract in this forum than to look at these pictures and think about the havoc now being wreaked in Iraq. My question is: was there no other way?