I protest.

Anyone could have predicted it.

Well, I guess I was right. On May 26, 2003, I wrote an article here entitled "Remember Viet Nam?" I said that Iraq will be worse and that

We as a country will deeply regret the actions that we have taken over the last few months. It has already begun. Unfortunately those responsible will not be the ones who pay for our national arrogance with their lives.

It seems that the Marines in Fallujah are currently paying with their lives. Not to mention dozens if not hundreds of Iraqis, both combatants and noncombatants. Men, women and children.

Go over and read what Billmon has to say. Just start at the top and work down. Then come back and try to argue that Iraq isn't Bush's version of Viet Nam. Only quite likely worse. Possibly much worse. The British took three years to unite the Sunni and Shia against them. Looks like we beat their time.

Update 20:00: The folks on Air America just mentioned Riverbend. She has this to say:

And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi'a alike, are calling for Jihad...

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?

The Easter that George made.

Via Jeanne at Body and Soul: Brooke Biggs has a description by British activist Jo Wilding of Easter in Fallujah. She went in to help those trapped in the town.

After reading it, I retract my previous statement, that I am not criticizing the Marines. The more I read the more it becomes apparent that they are, indeed, committing atrocities. Even a youth of 19 should know better than to shoot unarmed women and children. Emphasis in all cases mine:

… Maki, a consultant and acting director of the clinic, brings me to the bed where a child of about 10 is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in the next bed. A US sniper hit them and their grandmother as they left their home to flee Fallujah. … "Come," says Maki and ushers me alone into a room where an old woman has just had an abdominal bullet wound stitched up. Another in her leg is being dressed, the bed under her foot soaked with blood, a white flag still clutched in her hand and the same story: I was leaving my home to go to Baghdad when I was hit by a US sniper. Some of the town is held by US Marines, other parts by the local fighters. Their homes are in the US-controlled area and they are adamant that the snipers were US Marines.

The next day

We go again, Dave, Rana and me, this time in a pick up. There are some sick people close to the Marines' line who need evacuating. No one dares come out of their house because the Marines are on top of the buildings shooting at anything that moves. Saad fetches us a white flag and tells us not to worry, he's checked and secured the road, no Mujahedin will fire at us, that peace is upon us. He is an 11 year old child, his face covered with a keffiyeh but for his bright brown eyes, his AK-47 almost as tall as he is. … First we go down the street we were sent to. There's a man, face down, in a white dishdasha, a small round red stain on his back. We run to him. Again the flies have got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I'm by his knees and as we reach to roll him onto the stretcher Dave's hand goes through his chest, through the cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatly through his back and blew his heart out.

There's no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive, his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed, they scream. He was unarmed. He just went out the gate and they shot him. None of them have dared come out since. No one had dared come to get his body, horrified, terrified, forced to violate the traditions of treating the body immediately. The family couldn't have known we were coming, so it's inconceivable that anyone came out and retrieved a weapon but left the body.

He was unarmed, 55 years old, shot in the back.

What a brave Marine, to, from a rooftop, shoot an unarmed 55-year-old man in the back.

Back in Baghdad,

… the satellite news says the cease-fire is holding and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, "I know what we're doing in Iraq is right." Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their family home is right? Shooting grandmothers with white flags is right? Shooting at women and children who are fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is right?

Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalize people so much that they've nothing left to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anesthetic because the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and the city's under siege and aid isn't getting in properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your head, even though you're in an ambulance. I know what it looks like when a man's chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house.

It's a crime and it's a disgrace to us all.

There is little I can add to that. Go and read the whole thing. And if you're one of those who agrees with George that what we are doing there is "right," you're a fool, or worse. If you say that it is the mujahedin committing all of these atrocities, you are twice a fool!

Today, again, I am ashamed to be an American. I am ashamed that I share a nationality, a language, a skin color with the people committing these atrocities, but most especially that I share those things with the one who is responsible for those people being there in the first place. The one who claimed, from a comfortable room in Washington, D.C. and far, far away from the smell of gunpowder and blood, that "what we are doing in Iraq is right."

If that is "right," I'll take wrong.

Rigging an election.

I saw this on the Risks Digest tonight: Republicans Walk Out of Federal Hearing on Voting Machines, While Some Civil Rights Groups Support "Paperless" Elections. It appears that when the United States Commission on Civil Rights met on April 9 to "examine the 'Integrity, Security and Accessibility in the Nation's Readiness to Vote,'" four of the commissioners, three Republican and one conservative Independent, walked out before their six invitees were able to speak.

Two scientists and four representatives of civil rights organizations were invited to brief the Commission. But, before the panelists had a chance to share their views, three Republican commissioners and one (notably conservative) Independent commissioner walked out, ostensibly over a personnel dispute. But, others are not so sure. It appears that voting technology is a topic that the Republican leadership wants to tightly control. It is without doubt that Republicans own most of the companies that manufacture, sell, and service voting machines. And President Bush and the Republican Congress appear determined to control and limit oversight of the elections industry. The Bush Administration has stacked the Election Assistance Commission with supporters of paperless voting technology, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) got walloped with a $22 million budget cut in fiscal 2004, which means that NIST will have to cut back substantially on its cyber security work, as well as completely stop all work on voting technology for the Help America Vote Act. … at Friday's hearing, Republican members of the Commission of Civil Rights decided that the issue of voting — the lynchpin of democracy — should take a back seat to employee contract buyouts.

While this is only to be expected of today's Republicans, it also appears that some so-called "civil rights" organizations are also opposed to free and open elections. At the hearing, it became clear that the League of Women Voters of Georgia, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the American Association of People with Disabilities and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials all support "paperless" voting technology. This is the technology that provides an unverifiable, unauditable voting mechanism in which it is impossible to perform a meaningful recount and which is essentially trivial for anyone so inclined to pervert.

The article goes into much more detail and while it certainly reflects the writer's opposition to unverifiable voting mechanisms, it still provides a lot of information. The bottom line, though, is that the current crop of electronic voting machines are, in a word, untrustworthy. As an experienced software engineer, I wouldn't trust the software in those things for an instant (and anyone who might call me "paranoid" or "uninformed" is either an idiot speaking out of complete ignorance or is lying in order to discredit me and others who criticize these machines).

I will not use such a machine and I oppose their adoption at any level!

Lies.

OpenDemocracy published Jo Wilding's account of her trip to Fallujah in "Inside the fire," after which their editor requested that the Pentagon respond to the article. Here is how they responded:

Dear Mr Henderson

There are those who falsely report that US forces are targeting non-combatants. The truth is, US forces have attempted to protect civilians to the best of their ability. When US forces are attacked we apply the appropriate, proportionate combat power to eliminate that resistance. With respect to the Marines in Fallujah, they are being very deliberate and precise in the application of their combat power to prevent non-combatant casualties in the area.

Respectfully,

Bruce Frame
Capt, U.S. Marines
CENTCOM Spokesperson

I find their respond stunningly unsurprising. Could anyone possibly expect them to admit that the Marines in Fallujah have been targeting civilians? Of course they say whatever they're supposed to say, whatever will make them look good in the eyes of the American public. They call Jo Wilding a liar, yet why would she lie about such things? What does she stand to gain? On the other hand, it is easy to see what the Pentagon stands to gain by lying. As well, soldiers have targeted noncombatants before in similar situations, so why should we see this situation as different from those?

Reading their claim that they "apply the appropriate, proportionate combat power" and that the Marines in Fallujah "are being very deliberate and precise," all I can think is that these people believe that we are fools. Only a fool would believe such lies. "Appropriate, proportionate combat power" goes out the window when one is under fire from all sides, and when any male over the age of thirteen may be a Mujahedin how can any Marine remain "deliberate and precise?"

They've done this very thing before, when soldiers were destroying villages in order to "save" them and when atrocities such as the one in Mai Lai were taking place. A veteran, Wayne Standiford, writes about that latter incident and has this to say in summation:

The lessons of Mai Lai are painful and hard to digest. As we fight another guerilla war in Iraq and other places we must hope our soldiers can withstand the frustration of this type of warfare. The line grunt's temptations is to "Kill em all and let God sort em out". It is a temptation we as a nation must not succumb to and we must pray or warriors can stay on the right side of sanity as they chase killer ghosts who plant bombs, fire missiles at our helicopters and drive cars full of explosives.

It looks like Mr. Standiford's worst fears are realized. Not only have we crossed his "break over point into the bottomless pit where the monsters steal honor," those who should know better, those who should have learned the lessons of Viet Nam, are denying it, even as those actually there are reporting it. Someone please tell me just why Jo Wilding would lie about this and the Pentagon would not.

Mr. Standiford ends with a quote from Pubilius Syrus:

What is left when honor is lost?

For the men on the ground in Fallujah, horror, blood, death and loss of humanity. They will pay for this time with the rest of their lives, just as the veterans who returned from Viet Nam have paid.

For the rest of us, shame that we allowed this to happen. It is our fault, for we as a people did not stand up against those who made this happen even though we knew it was wrong. We, too, will pay, in one way or another. It could be by losing more of our children to an endless war in the Middle East, it could be by losing our own lives in a terrorist attack in the United States, or it could simply be by losing the respect of those of other nations. When last I was in China, people were attracted to me simply because I am an American. The next time, will they shun me for the same reason?

For those who lead us into these atrocities, nothing at all, for they are utterly without honor. Having never known honor, they fail to understand, or even notice, when it is lost by those who follow them. And this is the worst of all, for in all likelihood those who are most to blame for these atrocities are the least likely to pay for their crimes.

Appropriate apologies.

Via Orcinus, this label:

Translated, that bit at the bottom says,

We are sorry our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him.

I laughed out loud. Go buy something from them to support their sense of humor and to piss off the freepers, who are, of course, organizing a boycott.

Your tax dollars at work.

From The Seattle Times via Sysiphus Shrugged.

The Dover AFB photos.

As the Memory Hole is very neary unreachable due to the overwhelming traffic they have received, I have mirrored the archive of photographs at the Memory Hole Mirror: Military Coffins.

The Pentagon is having a serious hissy over this one. Good!