Remembering Fallujah

Mass Murder in Fallujah: Old News Makes the Rounds
Kurtnimmo.com
March 18, 2005


Here’s one of the reasons the U.S. military has targeted al-Jazeera over the years: it tells the truth and the truth—at least when it comes to US atrocities—is strictly verboten. For instance, al-Jazeera has posted an article on its web site documenting war crimes in Fallujah. “The picture [independent journalists] are painting is of US soldiers killing whole families, including children, attacks on hospitals and doctors, the use of napalm-like weapons and sections of the city destroyed.” In the feature, al-Jazeera quotes Dahr Jamail, who reported about the war crimes in Fallujah weeks ago. Also quoted is Dr. Salem Ismael, another witness to war crimes who told his story weeks ago as well.

For some reason al-Jazeera wonders why none of these stories—including the use of “weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud” and “bombs [that] exploded into large fires that burned peoples’ skin even when water was dumped on their bodies, which is the effect of phosphorous weapons, as well as napalm—are not addressed by the corporate media. Naturally, this is a no-brainer—the corporate media is complicit with the Bushcons and the Pentagon in perpetuating war crimes against the Iraqi people. It is their job to ignore crimes against humanity and repeat verbatim Bush’s nonsense about democracy.

Most Americans know absolutely nothing about what happened in Fallujah, essentially a textbook repeat of what the Israelis did in Jenin, only on a much larger scale (the United States likes to do things in a big way). Precious few Americans have seen the photographs from Fallujah of rotted bodies, bloated and grotesque, some with entire limbs gnawed off by starving animals. See Dahr Jamail’s pictures of the horrific death and carnage inside Fallujah here. Jamail’s images are not ready for primetime and never will be.

Meanwhile, those of us who understand what is really going on in Iraq, are living through a nightmarish ethical dilemma. How can we continue to live in this country and pay our taxes—more akin to ransom—and attempt to maintain the semblance of a normal life while tens of thousands of Iraqis die horrifically? It is nearly impossible. Meanwhile, there will be demonstrations soon on the anniversary of Bush’s invasion, demos that will likely be attended by hundreds of thousands but demos that will do absolutely nothing to put an end to the Pentagon’s murderous rampages. Bush, Congress, and the Pentagon are well beyond demonstrations, demonstrations seriously downplayed by the corporate media and easily ignored by the masters of war. Demos will change nothing and the carnage and mass murder will continue.

It appears the insanity will only stop when the empire crumbles or the military engages in mutiny. It appears the former is well under way with a troubled dollar and an absurdly unimaginable debt. If China and Asia stop financing the debt of the United States, the country is screwed. In short order, as the financial machinery slowly grinds to a halt, the war machine will cease to pose a threat to the world. Americans may suffer privations worse than those suffered during the so-called Great Depression, but it will be, to paraphrase Madeline Albright, a price worth paying. Americans may lose their jobs and go hungry, but at least Iraqi children and mothers will be safe from marauding yahoo soldiers with trigger fingers and hatred for “towel heads” they apparently are able to now easily kill.



March 17, 2005
Israel Approves of Wolfowitz as World Bank Head Honcho
Not surprisingly, Israel likes the idea of Paul Wolfowitz heading up the World Bank. “Senior Israeli officials reacted with satisfaction Wednesday to news that US President George W. Bush tapped Paul Wolfowitz as his choice to be the next head of the World Bank,” writes the neocon Jerusalem Post. “Wolfowitz’s appointment to head the World Bank will have significance for Israel since the World Bank is expected to play a key economic role in Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal… The World Bank is expected to supervise the implementation of hundreds of million of dollars worth of projects to rebuild Gaza. One official said that Wolfowitz would likely ensure that the Palestinians fulfill strict conditions regarding reform and democratization in order to get the money.”

In other words, rebuild what the IDF has destroyed over the years. Of course, this rebuilding will not be in the interest of the Palestinians, but Wall Street bankers and multinational corporations. The World Bank and the IMF are all about increasing poverty through so-called structural adjustment policies: decrease domestic consumption and shift scarce resources into production of cash crops for export—once the World Bank and the IMF sink their teeth into a country, state-owned companies and many state services are privatized, civil services are drastically downsized, and health and education expenditures are cut and restructured. “The absolute number of people living in poverty rose in the 1990’s in Eastern Europe, South Asia, Latin America the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa—all areas that came under the sway of adjustment programs. What’s more, the World Bank has an astounding 65-70 per cent failure rate of its projects in the poorest countries,” writes CorpWatch.

In fact, the World Bank is a scam set up to enrich multinational corporations at the expense of poor people. “If the world’s poor are the losers in World Bank/IMF programs-a fact recognized not only by critics but even some Bank officials—then corporations are the winners. Each year, the World Bank awards some 40,000 contracts to private firms. And the US Treasury Department calculates that for every US $1 Washington contributes to international development banks, US corporations receive more than double that amount in bank-financed procurement contracts.”

Gazans are a prefect target for Wall Street bankers and multinational corporations, since the World Bank and the IMF pick on the most impoverished people in the world. “The Palestinian recession is among the worst in modern history,” writes Electronic Intifada. “Average personal incomes have declined by more than a third since September 2000, and nearly a half of Palestinians now live below the poverty line.” Imposing further “austerity measures” on Gazans—the hallmark of the World Bank and the IMF—would verge on institutional sadism.

Thus the Zionist Wolfowitz is a perfect choice to head up the World Bank. For a minute there I thought the World Bank had lost its mind—mulling over appointing the rock star Bono to the post—but now it is firmly back on track, delving the depths in search of the most ruthless individuals to impoverish even more people and thus enrich the already stinking rich.