I protest.

War crimes.

via Billmon: U.S. Looks for New Solution in Cease-Fire.

About 60 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since April 4, when Marines launched their operation to regain control of Fallouja and militiamen loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr began attacking police posts and government buildings in southern Iraq.

Sixty in eight days. And that is just the American casualties. As terrible as that is for the individuals and their families, it is insignificant compared to the human suffering in Falloujah. Hundreds dead, and if you believe that the dead are all "insurgents" then you're believing a lie. This is warfare in which the "enemy" is mixed in with their families, their mothers, wives, children. Those mothers, wives and children are the ones who are caught in the middle.

Jeanne in her article "Civilian casualties in Fallujah also mentions a few atrocities and war crimes. She links to "Report from Fallujah -- Destroying a Town in Order to Save it," which has this to say:

Al-Nazzal told us about ambulances being hit by snipers, women and children being shot. Describing the horror that the siege of Fallujah had become, he said, "I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to believe in European and American civilization."

I had heard these claims at third-hand before coming into Fallujah, but was skeptical. It's very difficult to find the real story here. But this I saw for myself. An ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have hit the driver's chest (the snipers were on rooftops, and are trained to aim for the chest). Another ambulance again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield. There's no way this was due to panicked spraying of fire. These were deliberate shots designed to kill the drivers.

The ambulances go around with red, blue, or green lights flashing and sirens blaring; in the pitch-dark of blacked-out city streets there is no way they can be missed or mistaken for something else). An ambulance that some of our compatriots were going around in, trading on their whiteness to get the snipers to let them through to pick up the wounded was also shot at while we were there.

Emphasis mine. So the snipers are picking off the ambulance drivers. Not to mention the women and children who get in the way and are indiscriminately slaughtered.

Note well: I am not criticizing the Marines in Falloujah. These are young people, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, placed into a situation that is utterly incomprehensible to them and to anyone reading about it here. They have been given a task which is simply impossible and they are dying in the process of trying to perform that task. Hell, I'm 44, old enough to know better, and I don't know but that I might behave the same in the same circumstance. No, the people I am criticizing are Brigadier General Mark Kimmit. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Assistant Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Proconsul L. Paul Bremer. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. Vice President Dick Chaney. President George W. Bush.

They are the ones responsible. When will they be held accountable for their actions?