[NYTr] Dahr Jamail: Iraq Has Only Militants, No Civilians

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[There really are very few innocent civilians in Amerikkka, either --
unless maybe they are younger than 10 years old, something no one but
Osama & Co, seems aware of or is willing to acknowledge. They pay
their taxes, they continue to vote for the "lesser evils" in the One
Party with Two Names. And they are perpetually surprised by the Bad
Things done in their name and with their tax dollars. -NY Transfer]

TomDispatch - Nov 26, 2007
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174866/tomdispatch_dahr_jamail_how_to_control_the_story_pentagon_style

Iraq Has Only Militants, No Civilians

"Tactical Perception Management" in Iraq

By Dahr Jamail

"Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see
somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him." --
Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H

    Name them. Maim them. Kill them.

    From the beginning of the American occupation in Iraq, air strikes
and attacks by the U.S. military have only killed "militants,"
"criminals," "suspected insurgents," "IED [Improvised Explosive Device]
emplacers," "anti-American fighters," "terrorists," "military age
males," "armed men," "extremists," or "al-Qaeda."

    The pattern for reporting on such attacks has remained the same
from the early years of the occupation to today. Take a helicopter
attack on October 23rd of this year near the village of Djila, north of
Samarra. The U.S. military claimed it had killed 11 among "a group of
men planting a roadside bomb." Only later did a military spokesperson
acknowledge that at least six of the dead were civilians. Local
residents claimed that those killed were farmers, that there were
children among them, and that the number of dead was greater than 11.

    Here is part of the statement released by U.S. military spokeswoman
in northern Iraq, Major Peggy Kageleiry:

        "A suspected insurgent and improvised explosive device cell
member was identified among the killed in an engagement between
Coalition Forces and suspected IED emplacers just north of Samarra....
During the engagement, insurgents used a nearby house as a safe haven
to re-engage coalition aircraft. A known member of an IED cell was
among the 11 killed during the multiple engagements. We send
condolences to the families of those victims and we regret any loss of
life."

    As usual, the version offered by locals was vastly different. Abdul
al-Rahman Iyadeh, a relative of some of the victims, revealed that the
"group of men" attacked were actually three farmers who had left their
homes at 4:30 A.M. to irrigate their fields. Two were killed in the
initial helicopter attack and the survivor ran back to his home where
other residents gathered. The second air strike, he claimed, destroyed
the house killing 14 people. Another witness told reporters that four
separate houses were hit by the helicopter. A local Iraqi policeman,
Captain Abdullah al-Isawi, put the death toll at 16 -- seven men, six
women, and three children, with another 14 wounded.

    As often happens, the U.S. military, once challenged, declared that
an "investigation" of the incident was under way.

    And So It Goes

    On October 21st, two days before that helicopter strike near Djila,
American soldiers, again aided by helicopters, but this time in a
heavily populated urban neighborhood, claimed to have killed 49 "armed
men" in a "gun battle" in Sadr City, a sprawling Shi'ite neighborhood
in eastern Baghdad. Then, too, the military initially insisted "no
civilians were killed or injured." A Shi'ite citizens' council and
other Shi'ite groups responded that many innocent bystanders had died.
Among the 13 dead mentioned in initial reports by local Iraqi police
were three children and a woman. Other Iraqi authorities announced that
69 people had been injured.

    The U.S. military had no explanation for the widely varying
American and Iraqi tallies of casualties.

    The official American account went like this:

        "The operation's objective was an individual reported to be a
long time Special Groups member specializing in kidnapping operations.
Intelligence indicates he is a well-known cell leader and has
previously sought funding from Iran to carry out high profile
kidnappings. Upon arrival, the ground force began to clear a series of
buildings in the target area and received sustained heavy fire from
adjacent structures, from automatic weapons and rocket propelled
grenades, or RPGs. Responding in self-defense, Coalition forces
engaged, killing an estimated 33 criminals. Supporting aircraft was
also called in to engage enemy personnel maneuvering with RPGs toward
the ground force, killing an estimated six criminals. Upon departing
the target area, Coalition forces continued to receive heavy fire from
automatic weapons and RPGs and were also attacked by an improvised
explosive device. Responding in self-defense, the ground force engaged
the hostile threat, killing an additional estimated 10 combatants. All
total, Coalition forces estimate that 49 criminals were killed in three
separate engagements during this operation. Ground forces reported they
were unaware of any innocent civilians being killed as a result of this
operation."

    To be fair, the military admitted that the target of this manhunt
was not, in fact, among those captured or killed.

    After the "operation," television news outlets broadcast images of
grieving families in the streets of Sadr City. One man reported that
his neighbor's 6-year-old child had been killed, and a 2-year-old
wounded. Arab television outlets caught scenes of ambulances with
wailing sirens carrying the injured to the Imam Ali hospital, the
largest in Sadr City, where doctors were shown treating the casualties,
including children.

    Typically with such incidents, those 49 dead "criminals" turned
back into civilians when local police began checking, including two
(not three) children in their final count.

    Iraqi Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki vowed an investigation for
which U.S. military officials offered to form a joint committee; but,
as is so often the case in such "investigations," there have been no
follow-up reports. In this "incident," the U.S. military, as far as we
know, still stands by its assertion that no civilians were killed or
wounded.

    Two months earlier, in a similar incident, the U.S. military
claimed 32 "suspected insurgents" killed during an air strike, also in
Sadr City, a claim disputed by Iraqis in the neighborhood, followed by
the usual promise of an investigation -- of which, once again, nothing
more was heard.

    "Tactical Perception Management"

    For perspective, let me take you back to Iraq in November 2003. I
had been there less than a week on my first visit to that occupied
country when the U.S. military reported a raging firefight between
American forces and 150 of Saddam Hussein's former Fedayeen
paramilitary fighters. According to General Peter Pace, then vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, American soldiers, on being
attacked by the group, had responded fiercely and killed 54 of them.
"They attacked and they were killed, so I think it will be instructive
to them," General Pace had smugly observed.

    Most of the Western media simply chalked up the number of
"insurgent" dead at 54 and left it at that. Local media in Baghdad, as
well as outlets like Al-Jazeera, were, however, citing very different
figures taken directly from the hospital in Samarra where the wounded
were being treated. Doctors there announced a count of eight killed in
the incident, including an Iranian pilgrim, and 50 Iraqis wounded.

    I traveled to Samarra that week, visited the morgue at Samarra
General Hospital, spoke with wounded Iraqis at the hospital, and
interviewed one of the leading sheikhs of the city as well as several
eyewitnesses to the event. What I found was general agreement that a
U.S. patrol had, in fact, come under attack -- but by only two gunmen
while delivering money to a downtown bank. Jumpy American soldiers had
responded with a spray of fire that had killed neither of the
attackers, but eight civilians, while wounding 50 others. The streets
in the city center, where the firing took place, were riddled with
bullets.

    The military, nonetheless, stood by their figure -- 54 dead -- and
insisted that the enormous force of "insurgents" had attacked with
mortars, grenades, and automatic weapons.

    A man I interviewed, who had been in his tea stall in the vicinity
and witnessed most of the incident, summed up the local reaction this
way:

        "The Americans say the people who fought them are al-Qaeda or
fedayeen. We are all living in this small city here. Why have we not
seen these foreign fighters and strangers in our city before or after
this battle? Everyone here knows everyone, and none have seen these
strangers. Why do they tell these lies?"

    Another man, at the scene had drawn my attention to a parked car
scarred with 112 bullets. As I was photographing it, a man with two
children at his side approached. They were, he said, the children of
his brother who had been killed by the gunfire.

        "This little boy and girl, their father was shot by the
Americans. Who will take care of this family? Who will watch over these
children? Who will feed them now? Who? Why did they kill my brother?
What is the reason? Nobody told me. He was a truck driver. What is his
crime? Why did they shoot him? They shot him with 150 bullets! Did they
kill him just because they wanted to shoot a man? That's it? This is
the reason? Why didn't anyone talk to me and tell me why they have
killed my brother? Is killing people a normal thing now, happening
every day? This is our future? This is the future that the United
States promised Iraq?"

    My life as an independent reporter in his country was just
beginning and his questions felt like so many blows to the gut. Of
course, I was the only American reporter there to hear him and I was
then writing for an email audience of under 200. This is what it means,
in Pentagon terms, to dominate not only the battlefield, but the media
landscape in which that battlefield is reported. And that sort of
domination was, it turned out, very much on Pentagon minds in that
period.

    Within days of the incident, for instance, the New York Times
published an article about how the Pentagon had awarded a contract to
SAIC, a private company, which was to investigate ways the Department
of Defense could use propaganda for more "effective strategic
influence" in the "war on terror." The Pentagon referred to this
potential propaganda blitz (which would eventually come back to haunt
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) as a "tactical perception
management campaign." The title of the document SAIC produced was
"Winning the War of Ideas."

    On December 2, 2005, the U.S. military would admit that the Lincoln
Group, which described itself as "a strategic communications & pubic
relations firm providing insight & influence in challenging & hostile
environments," had been hired by the Pentagon to plant pro-American
good-news articles in the new Iraqi "free" press that the Bush
administration was just then touting. This was exposed during a
briefing with Senator John Warner of Virginia, head of the Senate Armed
Services Committee.

    The admission would not, as one might have expected, prove a step
towards deterrence. Not only did the Lincoln Group get further
contracts, but a wide range of similar tactics continue to be employed
by the military in Iraq today with even greater impunity. In Iraq, the
propaganda and misinformation have, in fact, been continual and on a
massive scale. And, of course, the regular announcements of Iraqi
"insurgent" or "criminal" deaths in American operations have never
stopped, nor have the announcements of "investigations," when those
claims are seriously challenged on the ground -- investigations which,
except in a few cases, are never heard of again. All this is a reminder
of something George W. Bush once said: "See, in my line of work you got
to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to
sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

    The Military Wrist is Slapped

    Even when one of those investigations did lead somewhere, that
somewhere was almost invariably a dead end. Take Haditha. Witnesses
told reporters that, on November 19, 2005, in the western town of
Haditha, 24 Iraqi civilians had been slaughtered by U.S. Marines. It
was no secret that the Marines had shot men, women, and children at
close range in retaliation for a roadside bombing that killed one of
their own.

    The Washington Post quoted Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who was
watching from his home as Marines went from house to house killing
members of three families. He had heard Younis Salim Khafif, his
neighbor across the street, plead in English for his life and the lives
of his family members. "I heard Younis speaking to the Americans,
saying: ‘I am a friend. I am good,'" Fahmi said. "But they killed him,
and his wife and daughters."

    A Post special correspondent and U.S. investigators in Washington
reported that some of the dead were women attempting to shield their
children. According to death certificates, the girls killed in Khafif's
house were aged 14, 10, 5, 3, and 1.

    After the news broke in the U.S., the military ordered a probe of
the incident. An Iraqi had actually managed to film the interiors of
the blood-soaked houses as well as scenes of the wounded at the Haditha
hospital, and had recorded statements of eyewitnesses to the massacre.

    Even now, two years after the massacre, investigations continue.
Anonymous Pentagon officials having admitted to reporters that there is
an abundance of evidence to support charges against the accused Marines
of deliberately shooting civilians, including unarmed women and
children. Currently, Marine Corps and Navy prosecutors are reviewing
the evidence, and will likely ask for further probes.

    As for the charges levied against the soldiers involved in the
massacre, on April 2nd of this year, all of the charges against Sgt.
Sanick P. Dela Cruz, who was accused of killing five civilians, were
dropped as part of a decision that granted him immunity to testify in
potential courts-martial for seven other Marines charged in the attack
and in its alleged cover-up. On August 9th, all murder charges against
Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt and charges of failing to investigate the
incident against Capt. Randy Stone were dropped by Lt. Gen. James
Mattis, well-known for claiming of fighting in Afghanistan, "It's fun
to shoot some people." On August 23th, the investigating officer
suggested that charges against Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum be dropped as
well. On October 19th, Tatum's commanding officers decided the charges
should be lowered to involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment,
and aggravated assault. More recently, on September 18th, all charges
against Capt. Lucas McConnell were dropped, and the investigating
officer recommended that charges be similarly dropped against Lance
Cpl. Stephen Tatum.

    On October 3rd, an investigating officer of an Article 32 hearing
(a proceeding similar to a civilian grand jury) recommended that Staff
Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich be tried for negligent homicide in the deaths of
two women and five children, and that the murder charges for his
involvement in the killing of 17 innocent civilians, be dropped. In
other words, so far, no one has gone to jail for the massacre in
Haditha.

    It is now commonplace for such investigations, regarding heinous
crimes against Iraqi civilians, to drag on for months or even years.
Equally commonplace: On completion of these investigations, the
low-level soldiers, who are charged with the crimes, are often either
cleared entirely or given laughably light sentences by military courts.

    On November 8th, for instance, Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley, a
sniper, was found not guilty by military judges on three charges of
premeditated murder for killing three Iraqi civilians. He was instead
convicted only of placing an AK-47 rifle with the remains of a dead
Iraqi during one of his missions -- as evidence that the man was an
"insurgent."

    In January 2004, 19 year-old Zaidoun Hassoun, and his cousin Marwan
Fadil were forced off a ledge into the Tigris River in Samarra at
gunpoint by U.S. soldiers. Fadil survived. He testified that the
soldiers, after forcing the two into the water, had stood by laughing
as Hassoun drowned.

    Sgt. 1st Class Tracy Perkins was the only soldier tried in the
case. Defense attorney Captain Joshua Norris suggested that Perkins
could not be convicted of manslaughter because there was "no body, no
evidence, no death." He was, in fact, cleared of the involuntary
manslaughter charge in a military court on January 9, 2005 and instead
was reduced in rank by one grade and sentenced to six months in a
military prison for assault.

    Similarly, on June 6, 2006, three British soldiers were cleared of
charges of killing 15-year-old Ahmed Jabber Kareem in May 2003 by
forcing him into a Basra canal.

    Iraqis Dehumanized

    None of this -- from the unending "incidents" themselves to the way
the Pentagon has dominated the reporting of them -- would have been
possible without a widespread dehumanization of Iraqis among American
soldiers (and a deep-set, if largely unexpressed and little considered,
conviction on the American "home front" that Iraqi lives are worth
little). If, four decades ago, the Vietnamese were "gooks," "dinks,"
and "slopes," the Iraqis of the American occupation are "hajis,"
"sand-niggers," and "towel heads." Latent racism abets the
dehumanization process, ably assisted by a mainstream media that tends,
with honorable exceptions, to accept Pentagon announcements as at least
an initial approximation of reality in Iraq.

    Whether it was "incidents" involving helicopter strikes in which
those on the ground who died were assumed to be enemy and evil, or the
wholesale destruction of the city of Fallujah in 2004, or the massacre
at Haditha, or a slaughtered wedding party in the western desert of
Iraq that was also caught on video tape (Marine Major General James
Mattis: "How many people go to the middle of the desert.... to hold a
wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization? These were more than
two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive."), or killings at
U.S. checkpoints; or even the initial invasion of Iraq itself, we find
the same propaganda techniques deployed: Demonize an "enemy"; report
only "fighters" being killed; stick to the story despite evidence to
the contrary; if under pressure, launch an investigation; if still
under pressure, bring only low-level troops up on charges; convict a
few of them; sentence them lightly; repeat drill.

    At the time of this writing, the group Just Foreign Policy has
offered an estimate of Iraqis killed since the U.S.-led invasion and
occupation. Their number: 1,118,846. Consider that possibility in the
context of the latest round of news from Iraq about lessening violence.

    The estimate is based on figures from a study conducted by
researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. and
al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, and published in October 2006 in
the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, which found 655,000 Iraqis had
died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation.
The report methodology has been called "robust" and "close to best
practice" by Sir Roy Anderson, the chief scientific advisor to
Britain's Ministry of Defense. Since that time, in addition to Just
Foreign Policy, the British research polling agency Opinion Research
Business has extrapolated a figure of 1.2 million deaths in Iraq. Based
on this, veteran Australian born journalist John Pilger wrote recently,
"The scale of death caused by the British and U.S. governments may well
have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, making it the biggest
single act of mass murder of the late 20th century and the 21st
century."

    It is an indication of the success of an effective Pentagon
"tactical perception management campaign," of the way the Bush
administration has continued to "catapult propaganda," and of the
dehumanization of Iraqis that has gone with it, that the possibility of
the number of dead Iraqis being in this range has largely been
dismissed (or remained generally undealt with) in the mainstream media
in the United States. Add to that the refusal of the U.S. military to
bring justice to those charged with some of these heinous crimes, the
lack of accountability, and an establishment media which has regularly
camouflaged the true nature of the occupation, and we have the perfect
setting for a continuance of industrial-scale slaughter in Iraq, even
while the news highlights the likes of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan
and their adventures in various rehab clinics.

    In what could reasonably serve as a summary of the American
occupation of Iraq, the eighteenth century philosopher Voltaire wrote,
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless
they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

[Dahr Jamail. an independent journalist, is the author of the
just-published Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded
Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported
from occupied Iraq for eight months as well as from Lebanon, Syria,
Jordan, and Turkey over the last four years. He writes regularly for
Tomdispatch.com, Inter Press Service, Asia Times, and Foreign Policy in
Focus. He has contributed to The Sunday Herald, The Independent, The
Guardian, and The Nation, among other publications. He maintains a
website, Dahr Jamail's Mideast Dispatches, with all his writing, at
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/ ]

Copyright 2007 Dahr Jamail