H-Net* Robert Fisk:Something terrible happened on Highway 8...
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Robert Fisk: Something terrible happened on Highway
8...
by Robert Fisk, DissidentVoice.org Friday April 11,
2003 at 09:33 PM
...
'We're Here to Fight the Regime, Not Civilians, But I
Had to Save My Men'
by Robert Fisk
in Doura, Baghdad
Dissident Voice
April 11, 2003
Something terrible happened on Highway 8. Some say a
hundred civilians died there. Others believe that only
40 or 50 men, women and children were cut to pieces by
American tank fire when members of the 3rd Infantry
Division's Task Force 315 were ambushed by the
Republican Guard.
Many of their corpses still lie rotting in their
incinerated cars, a young woman, burnt naked, slumped
face down over the rear seat on the Hillah flyover
bridge next to half of a male corpse that is hanging
out of the driver's door. Blankets cover a pile of
civilian dead, including a cremated child, a few
metres away. A red car, shot in half by an American
tank shell, lies on its side with the lower half of a
human leg, still in a black shoe, beside the left
front wheel.
No one disputes that the American troops were ambushed
here or that the battle only ended late on Wednesday
afternoon. On the flyover, I found a dead Iraqi
Republican Guard in uniform, his blood draining into
the gutter, one foot over the other, shot in the head.
A hundred metres away lay a car with an elderly
civilian man dead under the chassis. Two fuel trucks
one of them still burning lay in a field. An
incinerated passenger bus stood beside the motorway.
Hundreds of Iraqis stared at the corpses in horror,
most of them holding handkerchiefs to their faces and
swatting the flies that moved between the living and
the dead.
Captain Dan Hubbard, commanding the 315th's Bravo
Company whose 10 tanks and four Bradley Fighting
Vehicles hold the flyover bridge, described to me how
his men came under fire "from 360 degrees" with
rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles at 7am when
civilian traffic was moving along the motorway.
"We're here to fight the Iraqi regime, not the
civilians," he said. "There were cars on the road when
we were ambushed and we fired over their heads two or
three times to get them to stop. Ninety per cent of
the vehicles turned away after a warning shot." Here
the captain paused for a moment. "A lot of things go
on in people's heads at such times," he said. "A lot
of people speed up ... I had to protect my men. We
tried our very best to minimise any kind of injuries
and death to civilians. I have got to protect my
soldiers because we don't know if it's a car-load of
explosives or RPGs [rocket- propelled grenades]. We'll
have the cars removed. The bodies will be taken care
of."
Captain Hubbard was a thoughtful man, a 34-year-old
from Tennessee who named his tank Rhonda Denise after
his wife, who is "the toughest woman I've ever met"
though what she would make of the civilian horror on
Highway 8 doesn't bear thinking about.
Clearly the Iraqi Republican Guard also have a
responsibility for this carnage since they started
their ambush knowing full well that civilians would be
on the motorway.
Two American soldiers were killed in the battle and up
to 30 wounded. Six US vehicles were destroyed,
including two tanks. Many families had come to find
their dead relatives and bury them but I counted at
least 16 civilian bodies and parts of bodies still
on the highway, several of them women.
And of course, this killing field raised a now
familiar question. Americans fired tank shells at
civilian motorists. Still their bodies lay beside the
road with the dead soldier and still no one had
buried them. Sure, the Americans tried not to kill
civilians. But all would have been alive today had
President George Bush not ordered his army to invade
their country.
Robert Fisk is an award winning foreign correspondent
for The Independent (UK), where this article first
appeared. He is the author of Pity Thy Nation: The
Abduction of Lebanon (The Nation Books, 2002 edition).
Posted with authors permission.
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H-Net* Robert Fisk: Intentional Bombing of the Mansur residential neighborhood is a war crime
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Robert Fisk: Intentional Bombing of the Mansur
residential neighborhood is a war crime
by Robert Fisk, Independent.co.uk Saturday April 12,
2003 at 03:11 AM
A young woman's severed head and torso and a small
boy's body were pulled Tuesday from a smoking crater
carved into the earth by four U.S. bombs, so powerful
they yanked orange trees from their roots. Once again,
civilians had suffered. When the broken body of the
20-year-old woman was brought out torso first, then
the head her mother started crying uncontrollably,
then collapsed. She was helped into a car by two male
relatives. -- Hamza Hendawi, AP,
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/098/world/Death_fear_grief_at_Baghdad_bo:.shtml
We journalists have been co-operating, too, with a
further collapse of morality in this war. Take, for
example, the ruthless bombing of the residential
Mansur area of Baghdad last week. The Anglo-American
armies or the "coalition", as the BBC still
stubbornly and mendaciously calls the invaders
claimed they believed that Saddam and his two evil
sons Qusay and Uday were present there. So they bombed
the civilians of Mansur and killed at least 14 decent,
innocent people, almost all of them and this would
obviously be of interest to the religious feelings of
Messrs Bush and Blair Christians.
Now one might have expected the BBC World Service
Radio next morning to question whether the bombing of
civilians did not constitute a bit of an immoral act,
a war crime perhaps, however much we wanted to kill
Saddam. Forget it. The presenter in London described
the slaughter of these innocent civilians as "a new
twist" in the war to target Saddam as if it was
quite in order to kill civilians, knowingly and in
cold blood, in order to murder our most hated tyrant.
The BBC's correspondent in Qatar where the Centcom
boys pompously boasted that they had "real-time"
intelligence (subsequently proved to be untrue) that
Saddam was present used all the usual military
jargon to justify the unjustifiable. The "coalition",
he announced, knew it had "time-sensitive material"
ie that they wouldn't have time to know whether they
were killing innocent human beings in the furtherance
of their cause or not and that this "actionable
material" (again I quote this revolting BBC dispatch)
was not "risk-free".
And then he went on to describe, without a moment of
reflection, on the moral issues involved, how the
Americans had used four 2,000lb "bunker-buster bombs
to level the civilian homes". These are, of course,
the very same pieces of ordnance that the same US air
force used in their vain effort to kill Osama bin
Laden in the Tora Bora mountains. So now we use them,
knowingly, on the flimsy homes of civilians of Baghdad
folk who would otherwise be worthy of the
"liberation" we wished to bestow upon them in the
hope that a gamble, a bit of faulty "intelligence"
about Saddam, will pay off.
The Geneva Conventions have a lot to say about all
this. They specifically refer to civilians as
protected persons, as persons who must have the
protection of a warring power even if they find
themselves in the presence of armed antagonists. The
same protection was demanded for southern Lebanese
civilians when Israel launched its brutal "Grapes of
Wrath" operation in 1996. When an Israeli pilot, for
example, fired a US-made Hellfire missile into an
ambulance, killing three children and two women, the
Israelis claimed that a Hezbollah fighter had been in
the same vehicle. The statement proved to be totally
untrue. But Israel was rightly condemned for killing
civilians in the hope of killing an enemy combatant.
Now we are doing exactly the same. And Ariel Sharon
must be pleased. No more namby-pamby western criticism
of Israel after the bunker-busters have been dropped
on Mansur.
More and more, we are committing these crimes. The
mass slaughter of more than 400 civilians in the
Amariyah air raid shelter in Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf
War was carried out in the hope that it would kill
Saddam. Why? Why cannot we abide by the rules of war
we rightly demand that others should obey? Why do we
journalists yet again, war after war connive in
this immorality by turning a ruthless and cruel and
illegal act into a "new twist" or into "time-sensitive
material"?
Wars have a habit of turning normally sane people into
cheerleaders, of transforming rational journalists
into nasty little puffed-up fantasy colonels. But
surely we should all carry the Geneva Conventions into
war with us, along with that little book from the City
University. For the only pe
H-Net* Mastika Hadith - Jilid 1 - Bab 2 - Fasa 1 - Hadith 13.
Mastika Hadith - Jilid 1 Bab 2 : Beriman Kepada Rasul-rasul ALLAH. Fasal 1: Kerasulan Nabi Muhammad s.a.w. Hadith 13 Dari Jabir r.a., dari Nabi s.a.w., (mengenai peristiwa) ketika Umar datang mengadap baginda s.a.w., lalu berkata: "(Ya Rasulullah!) Kami ada mendengar cerita-cerita dan nasihat pengajaran yang menarik hati dari orang-orang yahudi, maka bagaimana fikiran tuan, bolehkah kami menulis sebahagian daripadanya?" (Mendengarkan yang demikian) Baginda s.a.w. bersabda: "Adakah kamu merasa ragu-ragu dan serba salah (dalam ajaran agama kamu) sebagaimana kaum yahudi dan nasara yang telah ragu-ragu dan meraba-raba (dalam ajaran agama mereka)? Demi sesungguhnya! Aku telah membawa kepada kamu agama Islam dengan keadaannya yang jelas nyata dan bersih suci (dari sebarang perkara syirik dan penyelewengan), dan kalaulah Nabi Musa masih hidup lagi, (sudah tentu) tidak ada jalan lain baginya selain daripada menurut ku." (HR Imam Ahmad dan al-Baihaqi) Muslimin dan muslimat yang dirahmati Allah. Alhamdulillah, lafaz syukur kita panjatkan ke hadrat Allah SWT yang mempertemukan kita semula dalam alam cyber ini, bagi meneruskan lagi perbahasan di dalam kitab Mastika Hadith Jilid 1. Kali ini kita sambung perbahasan pada hadith yang ke13. Dalam hadith ini, Jabir r.a. menceritakan bagaimana diceritakan oleh Nabi s.a.w. kepadanya tentang satu hari Saidina Umar al-Khatab datang berjumpa Nabi s.a.w.. Dia jumpa tu untuk tanya pada Rasulullah, "Ya Rasulullah! Kami orang-orang muhajirin/ansar ini dok dengar banyak dah tentang cerita-cerita, nasihat-nasihat dan hikayat-hikayat yang dibaca oleh orang yahudi. Jadi, boleh tak kami tulis sebahagian daripada nasihat dan hikayat itu untuk dijadikan pedoman?"...Bila sebut "Saidina Umar dengar daripada orang yahudi", maka cam lah kita bahwa hadith ini berlaku di Madinah kerana memang cukup ramai pun orang-orang yahudi di Madinah ketika itu. Masa tu, ! orang-orang yahudi ni, mereka bersembang dalam perkara-perkara yang ada kebenaran, terutamanya cerita-cerita dalam kitab Taurah, yang pada waktu itu masih ada yang memegangnya dengan kebenaran. Sahabat-sahabat ni pun macam kita la jugak, sambil-sambil dok berjalan beli ikan, beli sayur, beli buah tamar, sekali-sekala berenti kena teh tarik jugak. Bila berenti kena teh tarik, tepi-tepi tu ada la semeja dua orang-orang yahudi duduk. Jadi sambil-sambil dok pekena kopi tarik, teh tarik, orang-orang yahudi ni pun sembang-sembanglah tentang nasihat-nasihat atau cerita-cerita dalam kitab Taurah. Masa yahudi dok bersembang tu, orang Ansar dan orang Muhajirin pasang telinga. Sebab itu kita rasa tak heran bila ulama` bahas perbezaan macamana orang Muhajirin masuk Islam dan macamana orang Ansar masuk Islam. Orang-orang Ansar melihat Islam dan melihat Rasulullah s.a.w. hasil daripada pendengaran mereka bila yahudi bersembang dan berborak tentang ciri-ciri Muhammad nabi akhir zaman ni s! epertimana yang disebut dalam kitab Taurah. Dok pasang telinga orang-o rang Ansar ni. Ini cara depa nak dapat hidayah. Depa tak pernah jumpa Nabi, kecualilah 72 orang yang mengikat janji dalam Bai`atul Aqobah, setahun sebelum hijrah. Depa tu saja yang tengok Nabi s.a.w., yang lain tak tengok. Yang tak tengok ni hanya dok pasang telinga saja dengaq yahudi kata Muhammad lagu tu lagu ni. Akhirnya datang hidayah pada mereka. Tapi orang Muhajirin, depa masuk Islam kerana Nabi s.a.w. bersama mereka. Dengan melihat akhlak dan kepimpinan Rasulullah, maka terus Allah campakkan hidayah pada orang-orang Muhajirin. Inilah perbezaan bagaimana Ansar dan Muhajirin dapat hidayah. Kembali pada hadith tadi. Sekarang kita tengok sebab apa Saidina Umar r.a. minta izin daripada Nabi s.a.w. nak tulis sebahagian daripada cerita-cerita orang yahudi tu?...Apa lagi kalau bukan sebab nakkan ilmu. Dalam satu hadith Nabi s.a.w., baginda pernah berkata, "Bandingan ilmu yang kita belajar adalah umpama pemburu pergi memburu binatang di hutan. Bila dah dapat binatang yang diburu, pemburu tu kena ikat hasil buruannya itu supaya tidak terlepas lari. Bila dah ikat, baru boleh buru binatang yang lain. Yang dimaksudkan dengan ikatan disini adalah tulisan atau catatan."...Maknanya bila kita baca buku, itulah tamsilannya kita pergi memburu. Bila dah dapat binatang, kita kena ikat. Ikat itu ialah menulis. Sebab itu bila baca buku, kita kena sulam dengan menulis, ambik point-point penting. Kalau tidak, dibimbangi kita akan lupa. Sebenarnya yang menulis tu ialah akal kita, bukannya tangan. Tangan hanya ikut apa saja yang dipandu oleh akal. ! Inilah cara cpu (akal) kita lakukan exercise, yang akan menghasilkan satu memori yang cukup kuat. Okay bila Saidina Umar r.a. minta izin daripada Nabi s.a.w. nak tulis cerita-cerita orang yahudi, maka Nabi s.a.w. pun jawab, "Adakah kamu merasa ragu sepertimana ragu-ragunya orang yahudi dan nasara terhadap agama mereka?..Sesungguhnya aku telah membawa kepada kamu suatu ugama (Islam) yang bersih dan suci daripada sebarang penyelewengan. Dan aku nak bagitau kamu wahai
H-Net* Syabas! ...wira Syiah Iraq.
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Ada juga pejuang Iraq Syiah yang betul-betul anti-Amerika. Dia
kembali ke tanahairnya untuk meniupkan semangat anti-penjajah
bagi menentang pencerobohan Amerika.
Opposition Leaders Flock Home
In the meantime, a number of the national Iraqi exiles came home to
heal the rift and help regroup Iraqs mosaic powers to stand up to
the invaders and force them out.
Rakabi said that Mohammed Baqir An-Nasiri, a prominent Shiite figure,
came back to his home town of An-Nasiriyah, where he was given a
welcome reception.
His comeback would definitely produce a ground-shaking effect since
he is one of Iraqs national icons, who vehemently oppose colonialism
and the U.S. presence in Iraq. He would boost the morale of the Iraqis
and make them act in unison in the face of the occupying forces, he
said.
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