Ms Mulhearn, 34, said the situation in Fallujah was reaching the point of an humanitarian crisis.

Many families were stuck there with few supplies because US soldiers would not allow them to leave, she said.

"Even during a so-called ceasefire, Fallujah was under siege with bombing, missiles and mortar attacks," she said.

"But the worst form of attack was the US snipers hiding on rooftops who kill hundreds of civilians as they tried to move about the city."

http://web.archive.org/web/20100717032839/http://www.pacifica.org/programs/reportfromiraq/PacInIraq-20040413.html

The official number killed in Fallujah is 600, but the total number of civilian casualties is likely much higher. The official tally only reflects those deaths reported by the cities mosques and clinics. But American snipers and bombers have killed many people while they are inside their homes.

The doctor says his ambulance was attacked multiple times as it sought to bring aid to residents stranded in their homes. Once when it was trying to retrieve dead bodies for burial and a second time when it was attempting to bring food aid to homes cut off by American snipers

"I see people carrying a white flag and yelling for us saying 'We are here' just try to save us but we cannot save them because whenever we open the ambulance they will shoot us. We try to carry food or water by constrainers. As soon as you carry food or water, the snipers shot the containers of food.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0423-12.htm

Abu Muher said US warplanes were bombing the city heavily last Saturday prior to his departure, and that Marine snipers continued to take their toll, shot after shot, on residents of the besieged city. "There were so many snipers, anyone leaving their house was killed," he recalled.

Abu Muher, along with two other men from Fallujah who arrived in Baghdad last weekend, said American warplanes had dropped cluster bombs on a road behind their houses in Fallujah. One of the men was too afraid to permit his name to be used in this article. "My neighbors saw the bomblets," he said, "and I heard the horrible sound that only the cluster bombs make when they are dropped on us. My home was hit by their shrapnel. I was too afraid to leave my home to look for myself because of the snipers."

Abdul Aziz, the 15 year-old son of Abu Muher, stated, "I saw two of my neighbors shot by US snipers when I went outside one time. I also saw some of the small cluster bombs on the ground that were dropped by the warplanes of the Americans. Most times, we were too afraid even to look out of our windows."

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=04/04/15/5024786

MR Now, we have been hearing there is a cease-fire. Is there a cease-fire in effect?

LG No, quite the opposite. Effectively they are fighting. The US has snipers around the city from the West into the center, in houses all around the main streets and are picking off people on the streets, cars and ambulances.

MR Do you mean they are actually firing on ambulances?

LG Yeah, I mean, indeed. My colleague and I and some international volunteers from the United Kingdom and the US had to take over the responsibility for getting patients out of bomb damaged hospitals to one of the remaining make-shift hospitals, which is actually a converted doctors surgery effectively - because the ambulances were being shot at by the US forces. In fact, my colleague who is not very far away from me at the moment, was in one of the last functioning ambulances in Fallujah when he was sniped driving. I think they fired four or five rounds at it, just missing him, I think the ambulance was destroyed. When we left, that was this morning, that was the last ambulance - more or less - in Fallujah.
...
MR What's the scene been like today? You said you left Fallujah this morning, what was it like?

LG The hospital I was at this morning had a normal night. There were Drones and Helicopters overhead scoping targets, shelling and bombing, mainly of houses in civilian areas. The wounded trickle in, but at a slow rate, it's what people can bring in. There aren't any ambulances so, if anyone has a car and can make it through the snipers, they can get someone to hospital where there are some, some, equipment, but not very much. I am now standing in the office of an Italian NGO trying to rustle up some medical aid and we have boxes of surgical equipment which they desperately need in Fallujah. They don't even have scalpels, few bandages, they don't even have anesthetics. On the question of the cease-fire, for instance, it was called on Friday just in time for noontime prayer, about 12 - 12.30. About a half an hour after cease-fire had been called I was standing outside the hospital and I saw an Iraqi man of 28 years old who was an Iraqi nurse come from another city to try and help people in Fallujah, shot through the liver by a sniper as he was unloading an ambulance. He was dragged into the hospital and they tried to operate on him and sew up his wound. They had no painkillers, only the painkillers, um the parecetamol, that I could give them from my own bag. Um and we were told that unless we could get him to a hospital in Baghdad within an half an hour, he would die. Of course there was no way out of the city, and he did die.
...
MR Do you have the feeling that American commanders are in control of their forces there?

LG You know it's incredibly difficult to tell. Just moving about is, is - literally just stepping out of the hospital is hazardous. There is one sniper that has been positioned a few hundred yards from the hospital on the main street, for the last few days.

MR An American?

LG Yeah, of course, yeah. So at the moment there are snipers in houses all around the center of Fallujah. Marines are positioned in houses just west of the center, so just moving about is extremely dangerous. Drones, unmanned aircraft, can be heard overhead, and helicopters at high altitudes spotting for targets. So people aren't keen on moving about, so gathering information about what is going on, outside one's own immediate neighborhood is extremely difficult.

Edited by HenryKrinkle (Feb. 3, 2013 12:17:51)

Wow. I didn't know there would be so many stupid people in this country. Oh we'll, better buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride to socialism.

discipline posted:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/researchers-studying-high-rates-of-cancer-and-birth-defects-in-iraq-a-873225.html

It sounds at first as if the old man were drunk. Or perhaps as though he had been reading Greek myths. But Askar Bin Said doesn't read anything, especially not books, and there is no alcohol in Basra. In fact, he says, he saw the creatures he describes with his own eyes: "Some had only one eye in the forehead. Or two heads. One had a tail like a skinned lamb. Another one looked like a perfectly normal child, but with a monkey's face. Or the girl whose legs had grown together, half fish, half human."

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.

"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.

HenryKrinkle posted:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301431_pf.html

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.

"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.

one time in college i was listening to the bill hicks ARENT YALL FUCKIN HIRED KILLERS bit and my roommates gf walked out of the house all buttmad

Goethestein posted:

HenryKrinkle posted:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301431_pf.html

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.

"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.

one time in college i was listening to the bill hicks ARENT YALL FUCKIN HIRED KILLERS bit and my roommates gf walked out of the house all buttmad

this is the first time in the history of the english language the words "i was listening to bill hicks" and "girlfriend" have ever been used in the same sentence