An e-mail received by a friend whose nephew is a Marine currently deployed to Iraq.
Subject: #7 THE LAST IRAQ E-MAIL
To All,
This will be my final letter from Iraq. I will be leaving the country in the next week and should be home in the United State soon after. Spring is now here in Iraq. The weather is pleasantly warm with the occasional sunny day. On a recent trip, I flew in a helicopter North of Baghdad over miles of small farms, criss-crossed by irrigation canals, each surrounded by bright green fields. It all gave an impression of timelessness, life unchanging but for the season. In the days since the elections it has been very quiet here and all my Marines remain safe. Everyone is very ready to go home.
Before I give my final impressions of Iraq, I have one final experience to relate. Recently I spent several days in Fallujah. As the largest battle fought in this war and the most brutal fight for the Marine Corps since Vietnam, the name "Fallujah" tends to engender visions of smoke and fire, death in the streets. I cannot speak for the condition of the city before and during the assault but what I witnessed was perhaps the most secure and peaceful urban area I have yet encountered in Iraq, including the Green Zone. For four days on security patrols in and around the city I did not even once hear the report of gunfire in anger or the echo of an explosion.
Of course, when you systematically kill or capture every insurgent in a completely cordoned city and search, blast or burn every single structure, you can expect resistance to become light or nonexistent. My hosts were the warriors of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, who fought along the regiment's right flank during the battle and back-cleared the entire Northern sector of the city following the operation's conclusion. These men fought a grisly, tedious and exhausting battle street-by-street, block-by-block for almost two months. For all my imagination, until I walked the streets, listened to the stories, saw the pictures and read the after action reports I had no concept of what a fight it had been. Covering enemy dead with ponchos as they went, they killed Muj (as they nicknamed the insurgents) in the streets or toppled buildings on top of them with mortars, artillery and aerial bombardment. They shot dogs and cats caught feasting on the dead, found the mutilated corpse of aid worker Margaret Hassan, discovered a torture chamber with full suits of human skin and refrigerated body parts right out of "Silence of the Lambs", opened a cellar with chained men who had starved to death and broke down doors to find rooms full of corpses, hands tied behind their backs, bullet holes in the back of their heads. These are just in the pictures I saw. The enemy they encountered was fanatical and often fought as if pumped up on drugs. His ethnicity was varied and his tactics ranged from insurgents attempting to cross the Euphrates River on inflated beach balls to houses detonated on top of Marines as they entered the first floor.
As I listened to the stories I had visions of Henry V's warning before the walls of Harfleur to "take pity of your town and of your people, whiles yet my soldiers are in my command; whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace o'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds of heady murder, spoil and villany." I thought of all the times in history where invaders had systematically destroyed a city, extinguishing the population and sowing salt in the earth. Yet, for the battle damage on all sides, the city of Fallujah had more children and a more industrious citizenry than any other I encountered here in Iraq. Almost every house had been re-occupied following the invasion, gutters cleaned of garbage, white flags flying over newly patched garden walls, "Family Inside" written in large letters in both English and Arabic. Marines control access to the city; Marines mediate civic disputes; Marines provide food, water and are protecting those who are repairing city infrastructure; Marines patrol the streets, policing both the citizens of Fallujah and the Iraqi Army who sometimes abuse their authority.
Fallujah is a city on lockdown and ironically is probably the safest and most progressive place in Iraq right now. I now understand why the citizens in a nearby neighborhood here in Baghdad worriedly asked the Army command we are attached to "What have we done? Why are Marines here?" when we began to patrol there. With that experience, I more or less close my time here in Iraq. I have a few more hurdles to overcome before I am home but now all tasks are related to ensuring a safe journey there. Reflecting on what I have seen here in Iraq, the overwhelming emotion I feel is of pride, not in myself or even in my Marines, but in being an American. Patriotic sentiments tend to gravitate between cliché and taboo in the sensibilities of popular culture but if I was not defined before as a "patriot", I am now. I am very proud to have been a small part of this effort and to come from a nation where not only could such an effort be sustained but whose aim was the betterment of another people a world away.
A few months ago, I was walking at night through a logistics yard and as I weaved between mountainous stacks of crates stamped with the names of a dozen nations, I was struck by how fortunate I was to be an American. The perspective bordered on the sublime. Just outside the wall lived people in poverty and squalor who had been subjected to their lot by a tyrannical ethnic and political minority who shrugged off human misery with the medieval belief that it was the "will of Allah." Not much has changed in the Middle East in the last few thousands of years, except for the religion and identity of the tyrant in question. Just South of where I sit now, in the city of Babylon in the 5th Century B.C., the Persian Xerxes planned his doomed invasion of Greece, his logisticians collecting mountains of supplies, compiled from the labors of subject millions. There is no difference between that tyrant 2500 years ago and Saddam Hussein whose palaces dot across this country like vainglorious lesions, one built just miles away from here, complete with fresh water dolphins in artificial lakes, observation towers with night clubs, and irrigated tree-lined walks, built in the midst of international sanctions levied against his country.
As I stood dwarfed by piles of water bottles and phone cable I realized two distinctions. The first is this: as countless millions of dollars are spent, what American citizen can truly point to the cost that this war has had on his quality of living? What a magnificent nation we live in where we can wage so massive an effort without bankrupting our citizenry in the process. The second contrast is our motive: for all the insinuations of imperialism, corporate benefit and hawkish war-mongering, the most dramatic moments I witnessed here revolved around an election not an exploitation.
What other nation would spend such sums to give a people so far away self-determination? I am not advocating war. Being so far from home for so long, smelling and seeing the dead and placing Marines in harm's way are not truly enjoyable experiences. Yet I agree wholeheartedly with the much-criticized statement by General Mattis, it IS fun to wage war against a foe who seeks only his own self-gratification, who tortures, murders and abuses the weak. You can opine all day long about Wilsonian self- determination, but without the will to do what is necessary to make such visions reality, they remain mere words.
In short, as I give my farewell to this country in the next week, I leave with overwhelming pride in being an American and an unshakable belief, based in what I have seen here, that this effort will not fail. Whatever comes in Iraq, the impact of this invasion will not be as that of every other conqueror, relegated to a wind worn mound of stones in the desert.
I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to read these often-verbose letters. Just being able to write to this audience has been a great stress relief. I especially want to express my gratitude to those who have written to me both electronic and snail mail, sent care packages and kept me in their thoughts and prayers. This was without a doubt the best experience of my life thus far and would have not been so without the support and generosity you have shown my Marines and I. Once I leave the country I will no longer be able to access this e-mail address.
Semper Fi!
Out.
The Last Iraq E-Mail (Warning: Long, but worth the read)
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glauber
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I heard on the radio today that the average wait for a prostetic leg in Iraq is 6 months, but soon it won't matter much, because the main orthopedic hospital in the country is about to close because of lack of materials to build the prosthetics.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!
--Wellsprings--
--Wellsprings--
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glauber
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That's why i love this place. There are political threads, joke threads, and from time to time, a thread like this, with such fascinating insights into a psychopathic mind. Great stuff!
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!
--Wellsprings--
--Wellsprings--
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jGilder
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I think it's only fair to post a veiw from another person's perspective. Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist from Alaska who has spent over 8 months in occupied Iraq reporting on how the brutal, bloody, unlawful occupation has affected the Iraqi people. Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself. Here's a report he submitted about Fallujah.
=====================================
These are the stories that will continue to emerge from the rubble of Fallujah for years. No, for generations:
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the doctor sits with me in a hotel room in Amman, where he is now a refugee. He'd spoken about what he saw in Fallujah in the UK, and now is under threat by the US military if he returns to Iraq.
"I started speaking about what happened in Fallujah during both sieges in order to raise awareness, and the Americans raided my house three times," he says, talking so fast I can barely keep up. He is driven to tell what he's witnessed, and as a doctor working inside Fallujah, he has video and photographic proof of all that he tells me.
"I entered Fallujah with a British medical and humanitarian convoy at the end of December, and stayed until the end of January," he explains, "But I was in Fallujah before that to work with people and see what their needs were, so I was in there since the beginning of December."
When I ask him to explain what he saw when he first entered Fallujah in December he says it was like a tsunami struck the city.
"Fallujah is surrounded by refugee camps where people are living in tents and old cars," he explains, "It reminded me of Palestinian refugees. I saw children coughing because of the cold, and there are no medicines. Most everyone left their houses with nothing, and no money, so how can they live depending only on humanitarian aid?"
The doctors says that in one refugee camp in the northern area of Fallujah there were 1,200 students living in seven tents.
"The disaster caused by this siege is so much worse than the first one, which I witnessed first hand," he says, and then tells me he'll use one story as an example.
"One story is of a young girl who is 16 years old," he says of one of the testimonies he video taped recently, "She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters. She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything."
The girl managed to hide behind the refrigerator with her brother and witnessed the war crimes first-hand.
"They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head," he said. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead.
"She continued hiding after the soldiers left and stayed with her sisters because they were bleeding, but still alive. She was too afraid to call for help because she feared the soldiers would come back and kill her as well. She stayed for three days, with no water and no food. Eventually one of the American snipers saw her and took her to the hospital," he added before reminding me again that he had all of her testimony documented on film.
He briefly told me of another story he documented of a mother who was in her home during the siege. "On the fifth day of the siege her home was bombed, and the roof fell on her son, cutting his legs off," he says while using his hands to make cutting motions on his legs, "For hours she couldn't go outside because they announced that anyone going in the street would be shot. So all she could do was wrap his legs and watch him die before her eyes."
He pauses for a few deep breaths, then continues, "All I can say is that Fallujah is like it was struck by a tsunami. There weren't many families in there after the siege, but they had absolutely nothing. The suffering was beyond what you can imagine. When the Americans finally let us in people were fighting just for a blanket."
"One of my colleagues, Dr. Saleh Alsawi, he was speaking so angrily about them. He was in the main hospital when they raided it at the beginning of the seige. They entered the theater room when they were working on a patient; he was there because he's an anesthesiologist. They entered with their boots on, beat the doctors and took them out, leaving the patient on the table to die."
This story has already been reported in the Arab media.
The doctor tells me of the bombing of the Hay Nazal clinic during the first week of the siege.
"This contained all the foreign aid and medical instruments we had. All the US military commanders knew this, because we told them about it so they wouldn't bomb it. But this was one of the clinics bombed, and in the first week of the siege they bombed it two times."
He then adds, "Of course they targeted all our ambulances and doctors. Everyone knows this."
The doctor tells me he and some other doctors are trying to sue the US military for the following incident, for which he has the testimonial evidence on tape.
It is a story I was told by several refugees in Baghdad as well; at the end of last November while the siege was still in progress.
"During the second week of the siege they entered and announced that all the families have to leave their homes and meet at an intersection in the street while carrying a white flag. They gave them 72 hours to leave and after that they would be considered an enemy," he says.
"We documented this story with video-a family of 12, including a relative and his oldest child who was 7 years old. They heard this instruction, so they left with all their food and money they could carry, and white flags. When they reached the intersection where the families were accumulating, they heard someone shouting 'Now!' in English, and shooting started everywhere."
The family was all carrying white flags, as instructed, according to the young man who gave his testimony. Yet he watched his mother and father shot by snipers-his mother in the head and his father shot in the heart. His two aunts were shot, then his brother was shot in the neck. The man stated that when he raised himself from the ground to shout for help, he was shot in the side.
"After some hours he raised his arm for help and they shot his arm," continues the doctor, "So after awhile he raised his hand and they shot his hand."
A six year-old boy of the family was standing over the bodies of his parents, crying, and he too was then shot.
"Anyone who raised up was shot," adds the doctor, then added again that he had photographs of the dead as well as photos of the gunshot wounds of the survivors.
"Once it grew dark some of them along with this man who spoke with me, with his child and sister-in-law and sister managed to crawl away after it got dark. They crawled to a building and stayed for 8 days. They had one cup of water and gave it to the child. They used cooking oil to put on their wounds which were of course infected, and found some roots and dates to eat."
He stops here. His eyes look around the room as cars pass by outside on wet streets; water hissing under their tires.
He left Fallujah at the end of January, so I ask him what it was like when he left recently.
"Now maybe 25% of the people have returned, but there are still no doctors. The hatred now of Fallujans against every American is incredible, and you cannot blame them. The humiliation at the checkpoints is only making people even angrier," he tells me.
"I've been there, and I saw that anyone who even turns their head is threatened and hit by both American and Iraqi soldiers alike; one man did this, and when the Iraqi soldier tried to humiliate him, the man took a gun of a nearby soldier and killed two ING, so then of course he was shot."
The doctor tells me they are keeping people in the line for several hours at a time, in addition to the US military making propaganda films of the situation.
"And I've seen them use the media-and on January 2nd at the north checkpoint in the north part of Fallujah, they were giving people $200 per family to return to Fallujah so they can film them in the line; when actually, at that time, nobody was returning to Fallujah," he says. It reminds me of the story my colleague told me of what he saw in January. At that time a CNN crew was escorted in by the military to film street cleaners that were brought in as props, and soldiers handing out candy to children.
"You must understand the hatred that has been caused; it has gotten more difficult for Iraqis, including myself, to make the distinction between the American government and the American people," he tells me.
His story is like countless others.
"My cousin was a poor man in Fallujah," he explains, "He walked from his house to work and back, while living with his wife and five daughters. In July of 2003, American soldiers entered his house and woke them all up. They drug them into the main room of the house, and executed my cousin in front of his family. Then they simply left."
He pauses then holds up his hands and asks, "Now, how are these people going to feel about Americans?"
=====================================
More about Dahr Jamail:
His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource and he is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The NewStandard and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald and Islam Online, to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Indonesian, French, Chinese and Arabic. On the radio, Dahr is a special correspondent for Flashpoints and reports for the BBC, Democracy Now!, and numerous other stations around the globe.
=====================================
These are the stories that will continue to emerge from the rubble of Fallujah for years. No, for generations:
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the doctor sits with me in a hotel room in Amman, where he is now a refugee. He'd spoken about what he saw in Fallujah in the UK, and now is under threat by the US military if he returns to Iraq.
"I started speaking about what happened in Fallujah during both sieges in order to raise awareness, and the Americans raided my house three times," he says, talking so fast I can barely keep up. He is driven to tell what he's witnessed, and as a doctor working inside Fallujah, he has video and photographic proof of all that he tells me.
"I entered Fallujah with a British medical and humanitarian convoy at the end of December, and stayed until the end of January," he explains, "But I was in Fallujah before that to work with people and see what their needs were, so I was in there since the beginning of December."
When I ask him to explain what he saw when he first entered Fallujah in December he says it was like a tsunami struck the city.
"Fallujah is surrounded by refugee camps where people are living in tents and old cars," he explains, "It reminded me of Palestinian refugees. I saw children coughing because of the cold, and there are no medicines. Most everyone left their houses with nothing, and no money, so how can they live depending only on humanitarian aid?"
The doctors says that in one refugee camp in the northern area of Fallujah there were 1,200 students living in seven tents.
"The disaster caused by this siege is so much worse than the first one, which I witnessed first hand," he says, and then tells me he'll use one story as an example.
"One story is of a young girl who is 16 years old," he says of one of the testimonies he video taped recently, "She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters. She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything."
The girl managed to hide behind the refrigerator with her brother and witnessed the war crimes first-hand.
"They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head," he said. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead.
"She continued hiding after the soldiers left and stayed with her sisters because they were bleeding, but still alive. She was too afraid to call for help because she feared the soldiers would come back and kill her as well. She stayed for three days, with no water and no food. Eventually one of the American snipers saw her and took her to the hospital," he added before reminding me again that he had all of her testimony documented on film.
He briefly told me of another story he documented of a mother who was in her home during the siege. "On the fifth day of the siege her home was bombed, and the roof fell on her son, cutting his legs off," he says while using his hands to make cutting motions on his legs, "For hours she couldn't go outside because they announced that anyone going in the street would be shot. So all she could do was wrap his legs and watch him die before her eyes."
He pauses for a few deep breaths, then continues, "All I can say is that Fallujah is like it was struck by a tsunami. There weren't many families in there after the siege, but they had absolutely nothing. The suffering was beyond what you can imagine. When the Americans finally let us in people were fighting just for a blanket."
"One of my colleagues, Dr. Saleh Alsawi, he was speaking so angrily about them. He was in the main hospital when they raided it at the beginning of the seige. They entered the theater room when they were working on a patient; he was there because he's an anesthesiologist. They entered with their boots on, beat the doctors and took them out, leaving the patient on the table to die."
This story has already been reported in the Arab media.
The doctor tells me of the bombing of the Hay Nazal clinic during the first week of the siege.
"This contained all the foreign aid and medical instruments we had. All the US military commanders knew this, because we told them about it so they wouldn't bomb it. But this was one of the clinics bombed, and in the first week of the siege they bombed it two times."
He then adds, "Of course they targeted all our ambulances and doctors. Everyone knows this."
The doctor tells me he and some other doctors are trying to sue the US military for the following incident, for which he has the testimonial evidence on tape.
It is a story I was told by several refugees in Baghdad as well; at the end of last November while the siege was still in progress.
"During the second week of the siege they entered and announced that all the families have to leave their homes and meet at an intersection in the street while carrying a white flag. They gave them 72 hours to leave and after that they would be considered an enemy," he says.
"We documented this story with video-a family of 12, including a relative and his oldest child who was 7 years old. They heard this instruction, so they left with all their food and money they could carry, and white flags. When they reached the intersection where the families were accumulating, they heard someone shouting 'Now!' in English, and shooting started everywhere."
The family was all carrying white flags, as instructed, according to the young man who gave his testimony. Yet he watched his mother and father shot by snipers-his mother in the head and his father shot in the heart. His two aunts were shot, then his brother was shot in the neck. The man stated that when he raised himself from the ground to shout for help, he was shot in the side.
"After some hours he raised his arm for help and they shot his arm," continues the doctor, "So after awhile he raised his hand and they shot his hand."
A six year-old boy of the family was standing over the bodies of his parents, crying, and he too was then shot.
"Anyone who raised up was shot," adds the doctor, then added again that he had photographs of the dead as well as photos of the gunshot wounds of the survivors.
"Once it grew dark some of them along with this man who spoke with me, with his child and sister-in-law and sister managed to crawl away after it got dark. They crawled to a building and stayed for 8 days. They had one cup of water and gave it to the child. They used cooking oil to put on their wounds which were of course infected, and found some roots and dates to eat."
He stops here. His eyes look around the room as cars pass by outside on wet streets; water hissing under their tires.
He left Fallujah at the end of January, so I ask him what it was like when he left recently.
"Now maybe 25% of the people have returned, but there are still no doctors. The hatred now of Fallujans against every American is incredible, and you cannot blame them. The humiliation at the checkpoints is only making people even angrier," he tells me.
"I've been there, and I saw that anyone who even turns their head is threatened and hit by both American and Iraqi soldiers alike; one man did this, and when the Iraqi soldier tried to humiliate him, the man took a gun of a nearby soldier and killed two ING, so then of course he was shot."
The doctor tells me they are keeping people in the line for several hours at a time, in addition to the US military making propaganda films of the situation.
"And I've seen them use the media-and on January 2nd at the north checkpoint in the north part of Fallujah, they were giving people $200 per family to return to Fallujah so they can film them in the line; when actually, at that time, nobody was returning to Fallujah," he says. It reminds me of the story my colleague told me of what he saw in January. At that time a CNN crew was escorted in by the military to film street cleaners that were brought in as props, and soldiers handing out candy to children.
"You must understand the hatred that has been caused; it has gotten more difficult for Iraqis, including myself, to make the distinction between the American government and the American people," he tells me.
His story is like countless others.
"My cousin was a poor man in Fallujah," he explains, "He walked from his house to work and back, while living with his wife and five daughters. In July of 2003, American soldiers entered his house and woke them all up. They drug them into the main room of the house, and executed my cousin in front of his family. Then they simply left."
He pauses then holds up his hands and asks, "Now, how are these people going to feel about Americans?"
=====================================
More about Dahr Jamail:
His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource and he is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The NewStandard and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald and Islam Online, to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Indonesian, French, Chinese and Arabic. On the radio, Dahr is a special correspondent for Flashpoints and reports for the BBC, Democracy Now!, and numerous other stations around the globe.
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Wombat
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Iraq played Australia in a soccer international in Melbourne over Easter. A lot of Iraqi expats came along to support them and the match was played in a great spirit throughout. Supporters of both teams mingled in a friendly way throughout. Australia won 2-1 but the Iraqis had some good chances and could have won.
The Iraqi team was remarkably skilled and cohesive given the extraordinarily difficult circumstances they must have faced in preparing. Nobody was killed during the game but the Australian coach was accused after the match of having assaulted a reporter. He denied the charge. I have no idea what the reporter said.
The Iraqi team was remarkably skilled and cohesive given the extraordinarily difficult circumstances they must have faced in preparing. Nobody was killed during the game but the Australian coach was accused after the match of having assaulted a reporter. He denied the charge. I have no idea what the reporter said.
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GaryKelly
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That's just typical of the kind of imperialist oppression we've sadly come to expect from 'Straylian footy coaches. Clearly this attack was just a poorly-disguised attempt at grabbing the reporter's natural resources, and had bugger-all to do with any alleged WMD that 'Straylian journalism might allegedly possess, even if it was mentioned as an excuse or not.Wombat wrote:Nobody was killed during the game but the Australian coach was accused after the match of having assaulted a reporter. He denied the charge. I have no idea what the reporter said.
Let's be realistic here, it's all about the pens and notepads.
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner-
Wombat
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I think he might have had a camera. Pretty lethal if you get the right angle.GaryKelly wrote:That's just typical of the kind of imperialist oppression we've sadly come to expect from 'Straylian footy coaches. Clearly this attack was just a poorly-disguised attempt at grabbing the reporter's natural resources, and had bugger-all to do with any alleged WMD that 'Straylian journalism might allegedly possess, even if it was mentioned as an excuse or not.Wombat wrote:Nobody was killed during the game but the Australian coach was accused after the match of having assaulted a reporter. He denied the charge. I have no idea what the reporter said.
Let's be realistic here, it's all about the pens and notepads.
I hate to think what the reaction would have been if Australia had lost.
Actually it now appears that the altercation might have only been verbal. But then the first casualty in sport is truth.
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GaryKelly
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"To War!" (in a Christopher Lee voice)Wombat wrote:I think he might have had a camera. Pretty lethal if you get the right angle. I hate to think what the reaction would have been if Australia had lost.
Oh that's such a blatant coverup! Talk about plausible denial!Wombat wrote:Actually it now appears that the altercation might have only been verbal.
Nuts. I should've read to the end of the post before expostulating. It's just that on this side of the pond we're getting ready for the truth to be among the first casualties when England meets Australia for the Ashes.Wombat wrote: But then the first casualty in sport is truth.
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin MilnerAnd speaking of the Iraqi soccer team, here's a sample of what life used to be like for their squad.
Soccer Players Describe Torture by Hussein's Son(May 6, 2003)
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By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
www.nytimes.com
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BAGHDAD, Iraq — It was little surprise that Habib Jaafer, star midfielder of the Iraqi national soccer team for the past 17 years, stiffened as he approached the National Olympic Committee.
He had come to point out the scenes of his humiliations by the man every Iraqi still refers to simply as "Mr. Uday" — Saddam Hussein's eldest son.
Mr. Jaafer, 36, is a small, wiry man, and by his own profession a bantam in defending himself, on or off the field. That, fellow players on the national squad said, made him Uday's preferred target for punishment whenever the team failed to win.
The Olympic committee headquarters, near the Canal Expressway on the eastern side of Baghdad, is a burned-out shell now, its torture chambers in the basement flooded with water, every floor a wasteland of charred furniture and twisted steel. Out front, the gold-painted statue of Saddam Hussein lies prone on the ground. Its head was cut off with axes and carried away.
Nothing could more perfectly represent the end of Mr. Hussein's rule, and the loathing for his son. But Mr. Jaafer, the midfielder, paused at the gateway, reluctant to enter.
"Just coming to this gate fills me with fear," he said. "So often, when I came here, I knew that days of punishment lay ahead."
Told that he had no reason to fear Uday any longer, Mr. Jaafer demurred. "You say he's gone, but can you tell me where he is?" he said. "Can you be certain he will not come back? As long as Saddam Hussein and his sons are still alive, they are dangerous."
His fear is understandable. This building was equipped with torture contraptions that included a sarcophagus, with long nails pointing inward from every surface, including the lid, so victims could be punctured and suffocated.
Another device, witnesses said, was a metal framework designed to clamp over a prisoner's body, with footrests at the bottom, rings at the shoulders and attachment points for power cables, so the victim could be hoisted and subjected to electric shocks.
After the Olympic building burned, reporters visiting the ruins found the sarcophagus with nails abandoned out back, as if dragged there by the looters who emptied the building of its furniture before it burned.
The metal framework used for administering electric shocks turned up two weeks later at Al Hekmah mosque in Saddam City, the Baghdad neighborhood now renamed Al-Sadr City, where Muslim clerics said it had been taken by looters who had removed it from the Olympic building. The framework is now a display item at the mosque, symbolizing the repression of Iraqi Shiites by Saddam Hussein.
Tramping through the ruins of the Olympic building, one finds charred letters to Uday from senior officials of the International Olympic Committee, including Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Spaniard who was long its president.
They show no trace of any effort by the international committee's headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to distance itself from the Iraqi committee and its head, despite years of reports by Western human rights organizations that the Baghdad building was being used for torture and killing.
Right up to the Winter Games in Salt Lake City last year, the correspondence from Lausanne was about the need for Iraq, like other countries, to prepare for the new "disciplines," like the women's bobsled competition, being introduced at the Utah Games.
One letter, from the International Olympic Committee's Fair Play Commission, spoke of the "universal humanistic sports values" of the Olympic movement; another of the "global society" that would be represented by the Olympic Village at Salt Lake City.
As president of Iraq's Olympic committee, the president's son was the country's sports czar. According to several accounts from players, he turned his sadistic obsessions on the national soccer team.
After drawing or losing games, players were punished. A missed penalty or other poor play entailed a ritual head shaving at the Stadium of the People, or being spat on by Uday's bodyguards.
A series of poor passes, carefully counted, could result in a player's being forced to stand before the president's son in the dressing room, hands at his side, while he was punched or slapped in the face an equal number of times.
But those were the lesser miseries. Some players endured long periods in a military prison, beaten on their backs with electric cables until blood flowed. Other punishments included "matches" kicking concrete balls around the prison yard in 130-degree heat, and 12-hour sessions of push-ups, sprints and other fitness drills, wearing heavy military fatigues and boots.
The story of the 38-year-old Uday, whose whereabouts are unknown, is only part of the horrors that tumble every day now out of American-ruled Iraq. It is a story that exceeds the worst that human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch chronicled in the years before American troops toppled Mr. Hussein's government last month.
Those reports suggested that the victims of Mr. Hussein's terror, over 24 years, ran into the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. On the basis of the horrors now being disclosed, many Iraqis fear that the figure may run much higher still.
The role of Uday is likely to receive special attention. His brutality, as recounted by people who watched him at close quarters over the years, was of a particular kind.
His father used murder on a mass scale as a political tool, to create the fear that discouraged challenges to his power. Uday appears to have inflicted pain and death mostly for pleasure.
Many Iraqis believe that it was Uday's excesses, including shooting dead one of Saddam Hussein's bodyguards, that caused his father to sideline him as his political heir in the late 1990's in favor of his cooler but equally deadly younger brother, Qusay.
All three men, if still alive, are fugitives now, hunted by vigilante groups that have formed among the relatives of the men they killed and sought by American Special Operations teams that watch safe houses in Baghdad neighborhoods with pockets of support for Saddam Hussein.
By any realistic measure, the family's power is finished. Uday, survivor of an assassination attempt while driving his Porsche through Baghdad in 1996, is said by members of the national soccer team to be so disabled that he shuffles when he walks.
But as long as the father and the sons remain uncaptured — or not proved to be dead — they will continue to cast a shadow because of the fear they once instilled.
Many soccer players seem to have been punished in part because they were Shiite Muslims living under a government dominated by Sunni Muslims. It was from refuse-strewn back alleys of what used to be called Saddam City, a Shiite area, that many of Iraq's best players came.
Emmanuel Baba Dano, known throughout Iraq as Amu Baba, the Pelé of Iraqi soccer, served as the national coach for most of the last three decades. He said he had argued with Uday repeatedly over team selections, with the president's son favoring less talented players who were from the same Sunni minority in Iraq as the Husseins over the talented young Shiites from Saddam City.
"I told him, `If you want oil, you go to an oilfield,' " Mr. Dano said. " `In soccer, our oilfield is Saddam City.' "
Such comments would provoke threats to extract Mr. Dano's tongue. From a member of the Hussein family, it was no idle threat.
After hours listening to Mr. Jaafer and other members of the soccer team describe the humiliations they suffered under Uday, the question persisted: why?
Why would a man in his 20's and 30's so cosseted that he had his own palaces, a fleet of Rolls-Royces, Ferraris and Porsches, a yacht on the Tigris and, until the 1996 bid to kill him, the opportunity to roam the world as an honored Olympic figure, turn to torture and murder?
It is a question for psychiatrists, but Mr. Dano hinted at a partial answer when he spoke of Uday's insistent quest for love and adoration from Iraqis, and his fury when it was denied him.
"When we won a game," Mr. Dano said, "he would turn to me like a child and say: `See how the people of Baghdad fire in the air when we win? They love me so much.'
"But if we drove anywhere together where there was a crowd, I would slump down in my seat, because the people used to cheer me, not him. And then he would threaten to have me killed."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Direct Link:
--http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/inter ... 6TORT.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Soccer Players Describe Torture by Hussein's Son(May 6, 2003)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
www.nytimes.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BAGHDAD, Iraq — It was little surprise that Habib Jaafer, star midfielder of the Iraqi national soccer team for the past 17 years, stiffened as he approached the National Olympic Committee.
He had come to point out the scenes of his humiliations by the man every Iraqi still refers to simply as "Mr. Uday" — Saddam Hussein's eldest son.
Mr. Jaafer, 36, is a small, wiry man, and by his own profession a bantam in defending himself, on or off the field. That, fellow players on the national squad said, made him Uday's preferred target for punishment whenever the team failed to win.
The Olympic committee headquarters, near the Canal Expressway on the eastern side of Baghdad, is a burned-out shell now, its torture chambers in the basement flooded with water, every floor a wasteland of charred furniture and twisted steel. Out front, the gold-painted statue of Saddam Hussein lies prone on the ground. Its head was cut off with axes and carried away.
Nothing could more perfectly represent the end of Mr. Hussein's rule, and the loathing for his son. But Mr. Jaafer, the midfielder, paused at the gateway, reluctant to enter.
"Just coming to this gate fills me with fear," he said. "So often, when I came here, I knew that days of punishment lay ahead."
Told that he had no reason to fear Uday any longer, Mr. Jaafer demurred. "You say he's gone, but can you tell me where he is?" he said. "Can you be certain he will not come back? As long as Saddam Hussein and his sons are still alive, they are dangerous."
His fear is understandable. This building was equipped with torture contraptions that included a sarcophagus, with long nails pointing inward from every surface, including the lid, so victims could be punctured and suffocated.
Another device, witnesses said, was a metal framework designed to clamp over a prisoner's body, with footrests at the bottom, rings at the shoulders and attachment points for power cables, so the victim could be hoisted and subjected to electric shocks.
After the Olympic building burned, reporters visiting the ruins found the sarcophagus with nails abandoned out back, as if dragged there by the looters who emptied the building of its furniture before it burned.
The metal framework used for administering electric shocks turned up two weeks later at Al Hekmah mosque in Saddam City, the Baghdad neighborhood now renamed Al-Sadr City, where Muslim clerics said it had been taken by looters who had removed it from the Olympic building. The framework is now a display item at the mosque, symbolizing the repression of Iraqi Shiites by Saddam Hussein.
Tramping through the ruins of the Olympic building, one finds charred letters to Uday from senior officials of the International Olympic Committee, including Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Spaniard who was long its president.
They show no trace of any effort by the international committee's headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to distance itself from the Iraqi committee and its head, despite years of reports by Western human rights organizations that the Baghdad building was being used for torture and killing.
Right up to the Winter Games in Salt Lake City last year, the correspondence from Lausanne was about the need for Iraq, like other countries, to prepare for the new "disciplines," like the women's bobsled competition, being introduced at the Utah Games.
One letter, from the International Olympic Committee's Fair Play Commission, spoke of the "universal humanistic sports values" of the Olympic movement; another of the "global society" that would be represented by the Olympic Village at Salt Lake City.
As president of Iraq's Olympic committee, the president's son was the country's sports czar. According to several accounts from players, he turned his sadistic obsessions on the national soccer team.
After drawing or losing games, players were punished. A missed penalty or other poor play entailed a ritual head shaving at the Stadium of the People, or being spat on by Uday's bodyguards.
A series of poor passes, carefully counted, could result in a player's being forced to stand before the president's son in the dressing room, hands at his side, while he was punched or slapped in the face an equal number of times.
But those were the lesser miseries. Some players endured long periods in a military prison, beaten on their backs with electric cables until blood flowed. Other punishments included "matches" kicking concrete balls around the prison yard in 130-degree heat, and 12-hour sessions of push-ups, sprints and other fitness drills, wearing heavy military fatigues and boots.
The story of the 38-year-old Uday, whose whereabouts are unknown, is only part of the horrors that tumble every day now out of American-ruled Iraq. It is a story that exceeds the worst that human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch chronicled in the years before American troops toppled Mr. Hussein's government last month.
Those reports suggested that the victims of Mr. Hussein's terror, over 24 years, ran into the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. On the basis of the horrors now being disclosed, many Iraqis fear that the figure may run much higher still.
The role of Uday is likely to receive special attention. His brutality, as recounted by people who watched him at close quarters over the years, was of a particular kind.
His father used murder on a mass scale as a political tool, to create the fear that discouraged challenges to his power. Uday appears to have inflicted pain and death mostly for pleasure.
Many Iraqis believe that it was Uday's excesses, including shooting dead one of Saddam Hussein's bodyguards, that caused his father to sideline him as his political heir in the late 1990's in favor of his cooler but equally deadly younger brother, Qusay.
All three men, if still alive, are fugitives now, hunted by vigilante groups that have formed among the relatives of the men they killed and sought by American Special Operations teams that watch safe houses in Baghdad neighborhoods with pockets of support for Saddam Hussein.
By any realistic measure, the family's power is finished. Uday, survivor of an assassination attempt while driving his Porsche through Baghdad in 1996, is said by members of the national soccer team to be so disabled that he shuffles when he walks.
But as long as the father and the sons remain uncaptured — or not proved to be dead — they will continue to cast a shadow because of the fear they once instilled.
Many soccer players seem to have been punished in part because they were Shiite Muslims living under a government dominated by Sunni Muslims. It was from refuse-strewn back alleys of what used to be called Saddam City, a Shiite area, that many of Iraq's best players came.
Emmanuel Baba Dano, known throughout Iraq as Amu Baba, the Pelé of Iraqi soccer, served as the national coach for most of the last three decades. He said he had argued with Uday repeatedly over team selections, with the president's son favoring less talented players who were from the same Sunni minority in Iraq as the Husseins over the talented young Shiites from Saddam City.
"I told him, `If you want oil, you go to an oilfield,' " Mr. Dano said. " `In soccer, our oilfield is Saddam City.' "
Such comments would provoke threats to extract Mr. Dano's tongue. From a member of the Hussein family, it was no idle threat.
After hours listening to Mr. Jaafer and other members of the soccer team describe the humiliations they suffered under Uday, the question persisted: why?
Why would a man in his 20's and 30's so cosseted that he had his own palaces, a fleet of Rolls-Royces, Ferraris and Porsches, a yacht on the Tigris and, until the 1996 bid to kill him, the opportunity to roam the world as an honored Olympic figure, turn to torture and murder?
It is a question for psychiatrists, but Mr. Dano hinted at a partial answer when he spoke of Uday's insistent quest for love and adoration from Iraqis, and his fury when it was denied him.
"When we won a game," Mr. Dano said, "he would turn to me like a child and say: `See how the people of Baghdad fire in the air when we win? They love me so much.'
"But if we drove anywhere together where there was a crowd, I would slump down in my seat, because the people used to cheer me, not him. And then he would threaten to have me killed."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Direct Link:
--http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/inter ... 6TORT.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IRTradRU?
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jGilder
- Posts: 3452
- Joined: Thu Dec 16, 2004 11:25 pm
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 1
- Location: San Francisco
- Contact:
It makes you wonder why the US government played such a pivotal role in bringing Saddam's party to power in 1963, and then eventually assisting in bringing Saddam himself to power in 1979. And you have to also wonder why the US propped up and supported his regime even during his most heinous crimes against his people. It's no wonder that Iraqis are so suspicious of the US coming over and taking out Saddam and occupying their country. I'm sure they're glad we have stopped supporting the dictator they hated, but the US suffers from guilt by association with Saddam's crimes. Now with the experiences like Fallujah, and the fact that the real WMDs are the US and British military that has killed over 100,000 Iraqis -- I'm sure they just wish we'd take our dictator and go home.IRTradRU? wrote:And speaking of the Iraqi soccer team, here's a sample of what life used to be like for their squad.
Soccer Players Describe Torture by Hussein's Son(May 6, 2003)
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dubhlinn
- Posts: 6746
- Joined: Sun May 23, 2004 2:04 pm
- antispam: No
- Location: North Lincolnshire, UK.
Wombat wrote:I'd be tempted to say 'tell us something we don't already know' if it weren't for the fact that you'd probably take me up on the offer.IRTradRU? wrote:And speaking of the Iraqi soccer team, here's a sample of what life used to be like for their squad.
Slan,
D.
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
W.B.Yeats
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
W.B.Yeats
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Sunnywindo
- Posts: 615
- Joined: Sun Mar 17, 2002 6:00 pm
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 1
- Location: Earth
(We inturrupt this thread to bring you an important message.)
Oh say, what is truth?
How do you know? How do you decide? How can you be sure?
In a world where people strive to make truth complex and relative....
When it could be so simple, if only people loved truth more than lies.
Guess it's just easier to keep flinging mud?
Some days I feel like we are so busy fighting about who started the fire and the best way to safely evacuate and put out the flames that we fail to notice the building burning down around us ready to fall on our heads.
("We" being the world in general, the country, even us as individuals.)
If I didn't believe in the ultimate judgement of a just God in the eternal scheme of things I think I'd go mad.
Sara (*who is not siding with anyone... just trying to make a point*)
(We now return you to your regularly scheduled insanity.)
Oh say, what is truth?
How do you know? How do you decide? How can you be sure?
In a world where people strive to make truth complex and relative....
When it could be so simple, if only people loved truth more than lies.
Guess it's just easier to keep flinging mud?
Some days I feel like we are so busy fighting about who started the fire and the best way to safely evacuate and put out the flames that we fail to notice the building burning down around us ready to fall on our heads.
("We" being the world in general, the country, even us as individuals.)
If I didn't believe in the ultimate judgement of a just God in the eternal scheme of things I think I'd go mad.
Sara (*who is not siding with anyone... just trying to make a point*)(We now return you to your regularly scheduled insanity.)
'I wish it need not have happend in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'
-LOTR-
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'
-LOTR-