yes_justice | May. 12th, 2006

The occupation Iraq is as FUBAR as it is criminal.

Eight more soldiers slain in Iraq, that's 12 this week.

Dozens of Iraqi citizens slain Thursday and Dozens and dozens and dozens of Iraqi citizens are slain on a daily basis.

The area is rife with assassinations.
More Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad during the first three months of this year than at any time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime — at least 3,800, many of them found hogtied and shot execution-style.

Others were strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, garroted or hanged. Some died in bombings. Many bore signs of torture such as bruises, drill holes, burn marks, gouged eyes or severed limbs.

Every day, about 40 bodies arrive at the central Baghdad morgue, an official said. The numbers demonstrate a shift in the nature of the violence, which increasingly has targeted both sides of the country's Sunni Shiite sectarian divide.
RPG's are taking out Lynx Mark 7 helicopters, a "lucky shot" that ended the lives of five British soldiers and set off a street fight between Basra citizens and British forces. The people threw molotov cocktails and rocks and set tanks and SUV on fire.

A T.V. reporter is slain by gunfire. Another top television anchor woman is beheaded. Four reporters have been slain in the last month.
"No profession, no individual, is immune from violent death in Iraq. This is simply how things are now," Zayer said. "But targeting journalists escalates this another step because we are the ones who are supposed to tell the truth. When you fear for your life, the story doesn't always get told."
In April, at least 1100 people were slain in Baghdad

"At one point during that presentation in Austin, I attempted in vain to describe to the audience what life in Baghdad is like. It was in vain, because how can anyone in the United States begin to imagine what it is like to be invaded, to have our infrastructure shattered, to have occupying soldiers photographing detained Americans in forced humiliating sexual acts and then to have these displayed on television, to have our churches raided and worshippers therein shot and killed by occupation troops?

It is only when more people in the US begin to fathom the totality of the destruction in Iraq that one may expect to hear the public outcry and uprising necessary to end the occupation and bring to justice the war criminals responsible for these conditions. Until that happens, make no mistake: all of us participate in a new Iraq, our hands dyed in the blood of innocents." - Dahr Jamail