REPORTS FROM THE FRONT

Prologue: This war is not going the way Bush fantasized that it would. The ugly truth is starting to emerge, despite the best efforts of State Media. But in response to this growing concern, Bush and the incompetent Tommy Franks (why hasn't anyone reported that his fellow officers wanted to have him removed for incompetence after Afghanistan?) are leaning on US forces for results. The result is becoming a bloodbath that will leave horrible scars, not just in Iraq but on our young soldiers.

Reports are now emerging that Americans are no longer discriminating in their targets - in bombing or on the ground and the civilian death count - and suffering - is rising. But these are not "savage babykillers" - they are exhausted, unbelievably stressed young people (for the most part) who have never experienced anything like this, let alone so far away from home. They are, in short, snapping. And it will get much worse before it gets better, and then, for some, it will never get better again.

Some years ago I did much research into PTSD and did an extensive article on Vietnam vets and the syndrome, which I will reprint here in a few days. During this time, I had two PTSD vets living with me. One of them, a gifted artist, twenty years after the war, was a tormented shadow of a man. I remember during the six weeks he stayed with us, waiting to enter the PTSD program at Togus one of the handful of units in the US)how he'd wake up screaming from hideous nightmares of the dead and dying. I was sitting up late in the kitchen one night, writing...I'll never forget his hollow face and flickering, haunted eyes when he came into the kitchen for some water to take his sleeping pill. Or how he was still shaking from the nightmare when I hugged him, trying, futiley to comfort him. And this was twenty years after the war.

Yet so many Americans are cheering the troops on - straight into hell.

As in Every War: One Way or Another, Combatants and Civilians Become a Blur

From the Guardian: "Iraqi health minister, Umeed Madhat Mubarak, told reporters in Baghdad today that the attacking forces did not discriminate between civilians and soldiers."Most of these martyrs and victims are children, women and elderly people who cannot afford to protect themselves," he said. Sky News, quoting an Iranian journalist working in Baghdad, said some terrified civilians were attempting to flee the capital, but were being prevented from leaving by Iraqi forces."

Of course, meanwhile, back in Basra, US troops are preventing Iraqis from fleeing. These people are trapped in the insane cross-fire. This is liberation?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,923662,00.html

From the Miami Herald: Marines Fire at Anything that Moves in An Nasjariya

"U.S. Marines, moving through this still-contested city, opened fire at anything that moved Tuesday, leaving dozens of dead in their wake, at least some of them civilians... U.S. casualties appeared light, but it was likely that many civilians had been killed. U.S. troops searching houses found one woman with her husband, who was wounded, and her two sons, who were dead. All had been hit by stray bullets."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/5483028.htm

Horror in the streets: from the Independent - by Robert Fisk (one of the most powerful, conscience-driven journalists of modern times)

"It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car.Two missiles from an American jet killed them all – by my estimate, more than 20 Iraqi civilians, torn to pieces before they could be 'liberated' by the nation that destroyed their lives. Who dares, I ask myself, to call this 'collateral damage'?".....

"It's a dirt-poor neighbourhood, of mostly Shia Muslims, the same people whom Messrs Bush and Blair still fondly hope will rise up against President Saddam Hussein, a place of oil-sodden car-repair shops, overcrowded apartments and cheap cafés. Everyone I spoke to heard the plane. One man, so shocked by the headless corpses he had just seen, could say only two words. "Roar, flash," he kept saying and then closed his eyes so tight that the muscles rippled between them."

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=391165

American War Dead Filmed by Iraqis Were Dead Left Behind on Battlefield by their own Troops - Balochistan Post:, Central Asian

The Western media was fanning the reports, fed by the Pentagon, that there was an uprising in Basra against Iraqi government. However, these reports could not be confirmed as the Iraqi troops supported by paramilitary forces and volunteers pushed the besieging British troops away from the city. The Irqis captured several prisoners of war and broadcast the film of dead who were left in the battle field by their retreating comrades. This film, later broadcast by Al-Jazeera network, created stir in the ranks and files of the invading troops. Britain newspaper The Mirror reported that many British soldiers, particularly those from the same formation, were seen weeping and crying while remembering their fellows and the stiff resistance they met at the hands of the Iraqi troops.

http://www.balochistanpost.com/item.asp?ID=3582

Humanitarian Aid Still Just a Bush "Check in the Mail"

As I feared - Bush's continuous promises of "imminent aid" to Iraq are nothing more than the corporate "checks in the mail" ploy, and his "shock, awe and starvation" scheme is progressing on plan, undeterred by serious aid.

They can't bring air cargo loads in because that would completely upset the Bush plan. As to trucks, one tiny convoy has made it through - and this not until yesterday. And as to the food ships, first it was mines, then it was weather, and now they claim more mines.

The much-touted dispersing of aid we have been shown on State TV was not aid provided specifically for the Iraqis. It was a hastily put together show using food rations from the troop supply convoy. The bottom line, of course, is that it is clear Bush had absolutely no prior plan in place for providing aid to the Iraqis and is only now doing ANYTHING because of public pressure.

For aid update see: http://society.guardian.co.uk/aidforiraq/story/0,12972,923722,00.html

From San Luis News: Humanitarian Aid efforts Chaotic, Grossly Inadequate

"There were the dirty-faced kids fighting over bottles of water and juice boxes torn from plastic shopping bags.There was the slight woman with sad brown eyes wordlessly begging anyone to get her some food.And there were the young men stacking food-filled boxes on wheelbarrows and hauling them away a half-mile to their dusty town in this hard land.This was the scene Wednesday when three Kuwait semi-trucks full of boxes of food and water, among the first large-scale shipments of humanitarian aid to arrive in southern Iraq, pulled over the Iraq border Wednesday and were immediately mobbed by several hundred residents on the southern outskirts of Safwan.The chaotic conditions that confronted aid workers could serve as a warning of what might lie ahead in the immense project to deliver humanitarian supplies to Iraq's hard-pressed population."

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/5488610.htm

Aid to Veterans Slashed by Bush Henchmen in Congress

Alas, Bush doesn't even care about American soldiers, once he had hoodwinked the nation into firing the first shots. In fact, his henchmen in Congress are, this week, as our soldiers die and suffer, are slashing future aid to these same soldiers:

3/26: "Common Dreams" news:

"House Republicans are cutting, of all things, veterans benefits. The message, evidently, is God bless our troops when they are dodging bullets but God help them when they come home. Once, a grateful nation offered vets free medical care. Now, the Republicans want to charge premiums to ''well-to-do'' vets -- with well-to-do defined as earning $26,000 a year. All told, the House budget cuts an amazing $14.6 billion in vets' programs, including money for disabilities caused by war wounds, rehabilitation and health care, pensions for low income veterans, education and housing benefits, and even -- nice touch -- burial benefits. After World War II, we welcomed back vets with a huge program of education, health, and housing -- the justly celebrated GI Bill of Rights. This time, returning military personnel will not only face cuts in their own benefits as veterans; their kids will face cuts in education and health aid as well. "

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0326-10.htm

WHERE IS AMERICA'S REAL SUPPORT FOR TROOPS???

Americans in general and the media in particular REALLY wanted to support the troops, they would be doing something meaningful to insure this travesty is exposed and averted. You can't eat flags or pay for years of post-war medical care with yellow ribbons.

Naive, easily duped Americans waking up and smelling Bush coffee

"I think I was living in a pipe dream thinking no one would get killed," Shirley Johnson, 79, a registered Republican from Davenport, Iowa, said in a follow-up interview. "But all of a sudden people were getting killed, and I was horrified."....Pam Wallman, 60, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said, "I think the American public was duped into believing that our troops could just go in there, clean everything up and come home in 10 days." - from NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/26/international/worldspecial/26POLL.html?ex=1049709377&ei=1&en=7bd1eca6f1737529

Pentagon admits Lying

Pentagon admits that the report it circulated of 8,000 troops captured was false and that said 8,000 troops are now fighting Americans. This admission isn't a surprise - I mean, how long can you "hide" the absence of 8,000 warm bodies?

The Incompetent Tommy Franks: Depsite His Personal Fantasies, Franks Is No Patton and His "Progress" In Iraq Is No Third Army Race Across Europe

First, an interesting inside tidbit: The real reason Bush is keeping Tommy "I think I'm George Patton but I'm really Gen. Custer" Franks aboard to the detriment of Iraqi civilians, US troops and the world is that Franks went to High school with Laura Bush. Bush, in an infantile way, thus imagines that this is a "loyalty bond" and ignores all other reason and advice. He has populated his entire administration with people who either worked with his dad, went to school with family members or had some often bizarrely strained "loyalty bond." Competence and appropriateness for their jobs play a secondary role.

Franks actually is a good foil for Bush. Bush imagines he is a "great spiritual messiah" leading the march against the Evildoers of Babylon, while Franks imagines he is Gen. Patton, racing across Europe with the Third Army as the world cheers him on. But Patton was far more savvy than Franks by about a thousand miles. Patton's "Race" was staged across terrain where there was no opposition, few population centers - "open ground" as they call it. It came to a screeching halt when concentrations of German troops were encountered. Franks imagined that he could stage such a race across the no-fly zone of southern Iraq, with the same effect. But Patton was chasing a retreating army of invaders across territory that had already been exhaustively covered by fighting troops. Franks' is leading an invading army into a relatively unknown terrain of determined defenders - a completely, fatally different, dynamic.

So Franks wants to be compared to Patton, while Blair's PR people float comparisions between Tony and Churchill to the British press. ...... Little men hoping that by comparison to giants they might look an inch or two bigger.

PROPAGANDA-PUSHING US MEDIA CAN BE PROSECUTED FOR THEIR SILENCE UNDER US LAW

Case Law: "Silence can only be equated with fraud when there is a legal or moral duty to speak, or when an inquiry left unanswered would be intentionally misleading... We cannot condone this shocking conduct... If that is the case we hope our message is clear. This sort of deception will not be tolerated and if this is routine it should be corrected immediately" U.S. v. Tweel 550 F2d 297, 299-300. (thanks to the American Patriot Friends Network legal expert)

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Or, sometimes it sucks to be right: http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/index.php?function=edit&id=3446