Robert Fisk: In Iraq, The Killing Of 18 Teenagers Is A Horrible Routine

[Hissyspit]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2311301.ece

Robert Fisk: In Iraq, the killing of 18 teenagers is a horrible routine
Published: 28 February 2007

This is a story with a caution. Eighteen teenagers were killed on Monday at a football field east of Baghdad. On Sunday, equally young students of Mustansiriya University - the oldest in Baghdad - were blown up by a suicide bomber. It has become a routine, at one and the same time more horrible and more normal each day. Only two years ago, a suicide bomber drove into an American convoy in Baghdad, killing 27 civilians, half of them children taking sweets from American soldiers. What price innocence?

- snip -

But exactly what happened in Ramadi remained suspiciously unclear. The football stadium where the 18 youths were reported to have been killed was near a US base. But there are no American troops on the campus at Mustansiriya. There was talk yesterday that a local Sunni imam in Ramadi had denounced al-Qa'ida - which operates in loose co-operation with Sunni insurgent groups - and that this might have prompted a revenge attack by the organisation.

- snip -

Ramadi is a no-go area for every Westerner, including most US troops. So who set off the truck bomb near a mosque in the city which killed 52 people on Saturday? Or the ambulance outside a police station near Ramadi, which killed 14 people on Monday? Shia militiamen seeking further blood in their war on Sunni fighters? Sunni groups trying to implicate Shia? Al-Qa'ida? Or the other shadowy groups who have affiliations with the American-supported Iraqi government, with the ministries of interior or health or "defence"?

The reality is that Iraq's war now exists in a fog through which we can see only vague figures. They may be insurgents or they may be soldiers. Or they may, for all the Iraqis know, be units from the 120,000 - yes, 120,000 - Western mercenaries now believed to be operating in Iraq for any number of legal and quasi-legal organisations. These hired gunmen constitute a force almost equal to the entire US contingent in Iraq. Who do they work for? What are their rules? The answer to the first may be "everyone". The answer to the second question? None.

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[w8liftinglady]

1. my kid will be in Ramadi tomorrow-I posted this earlier

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x305153

[Hissyspit]

4. I'm so sorry to hear that, w8liftinglady. I wish he was back home.

I k & r'd your post. Recommend mine if you thing it might help and we'll see if we can get one of them on the Greatest Page.

Did you see the cover of the issue?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=306687&mesg_id=306687

[w8liftinglady]

5. yes...and I saw it fall off the radar-makes us look guilty.

[ninkasi]

7. I pray for you and your son

Your son, like the other troops, should be brought back to this country ASAP. This war is lunacy, and at my age, it's agonizing to realize that our country has been taken over by sociopaths and corrupt, greedy cronies of Bush and Cheney. I will probably never meet you. If I passed you, or your son on the street, I wouldn't recognize you.

That doesn't matter, though, because you are another human being, as is your son, and as all of the innocent Iraqis whose country is being destroyed are. Just exactly how much more do they want? They exempt themselves from as many taxes as they can, they send our jobs overseas, they create tax free havens in offshore accounts, and even so, they keep demanding our children's blood in order to profit even MORE!

I am appalled that a certain number of our fellow citizens seem to think that Bush/Cheney are doing a good job of running this country. That's nothing more than a sick joke, something in the worst of taste, that they parrot on talk shows, and write in right-wing screeds. We are disgraced in the world's viewpoint, we are the aggressors, and the country which is bellicose, and liable to start unprovoked wars.

I'm sorry to go off on a rant...I'm not trying to divert this thread. It's just that your child, and other parent's children, other people's spouses, other people's children, also have loved ones in Iraq, in harm's way, and our government's response is to rename "stay the course" as a "surge",
and keep on doing the same tired, old, shopworn tactics. I hope, and pray, that your child will return safe, and unharmed, just as I hope that the rest of the causalities of Bush's war of choice are returned safely to their families.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. You must be so worried. Please let us know when you hear from him again.

[aquart]

2. Teenagers: warrior age males.

If you think about it with ice in your veins, it is a completely practical elimination of likely enemies.

What a wonderful world we created for Iraqi children.

[w8liftinglady]

3. I can't help but think about their parents

[puebloknot]

6. K&R With deep concern for all who have loved ones in Iraq. nt

[GreenZoneLT]

8. There aren't anywhere near 120,000 contract "gunmen"

That 120,000 number includes ALL civilian contractors. Most of them are unarmed janitors, truck drivers, cooks, mechanics, retail clerks, translators and in other service jobs. Many of them are Iraqis. A sizable minority are armed security guards, most of whom don't travel around but just guard facilities. An even smaller minority are armed security guards who act as convoy and VIP bodyguards, and they do occasionally shoot people who shouldn't have been shot. But there aren't any "mercenary" military units wandering around setting off bombs; that's a stupid and intentional distortion by Fisk.

We know very well who set off that bomb outside the Habbaniyah mosque; it was the Sunni hardliners that the imam had criticized at Friday prayers the day before, who are probably linked to the Al Qaeda foreigners that make up the vast majority of the suicide bombers. They hate Shiites and the Shiite-dominated elected government as much as they hate us. Check out a few jihadist websites if you don't believe it.

http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=ar%7Cen&u=http://www.almokhtsar.com/html/admin/37.php&prev=/language_tools

[ClayZ]

9. K and R

:cry: