5/3: Recent Photos Shows U.S. Military Brutality in Iraq
By: Peace No War Network
May 3, 2004
URL: www.PeaceNoWar.net

Please Visits: http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/Photos-Iraq.htm

Even though it is horrific that over 740 U.S, soldiers have died since last year in Iraq, and another hundreds of U.S. contractors, and coalition forces has been killed. But someone has point out that there's around 10,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed by U.S. troop since the invasion one year ago, and according from recent Associated Press investigation, 1,361 Iraqis Killed in April, many of them children and women at Fllujah.

More shockingly (but not surprisingly) the surface of U.S. soldiers torture Iraqi prisoners yet another proofs that not only Bush plans on Iraq has failed, but also shown U.S. invaders and occupiers in Iraq are truly aggressors and does not post any credibility to any Iraqis.

Just like what happened in Vietnam 30 years ago, we are heading to a military disaster, with U.S. causalities everyday, military and government want to not let us see the photos of Dead U.S. Soldiers Returning Home.

Commentary by
Peace No War Network

U.S. Military Abuses in Abu Ghraib Prison
http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/April%2004-Photos/Abu%20Ghraib.htm

U.S. Attacks in Fllujah
http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/April%2004-Photos/Fllujah.htm

Photos of Dead U.S. Soliders Returning Home
http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/April%2004-Photos/Coffin.htm

For more news from Iraq
http://www.peacenowar.net/#Iraq
and
http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/March%2020%2004--News.htm

Commentary:
How long would Nightline have to broadcast if it was Iraqis' named?
Date: 5/2/2004
From: italysbadboy@yahoo.com

Even though it is horrific that over 740 US soldiers have died, with more every day. And there has been over 850 coalition forces dead and mounting, the numbers are staggering when you consider the Iraqi body count. According to http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ , there's a 8979 lives lost minimum and maximum of 10,833.

So I got to thinking how long is this in comparison to the Nightline story. Nightline used 40 minutes to read off the names and show the pictures of the soldiers. Go at the same pace, how long would it take to do the same for the Iraqi dead? Here's what I came up with,

Minimum of 485 minutes or a little over 8 hours, or
Maximum of 586 minutes or 9.8 hours

AP Toll Says 1,361 Iraqis Killed in April
By LEE KEATH The Associated Press
Friday, April 30

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Volunteers hunting for bodies in Fallujah find a woman and her daughter in their home, killed in the siege but undiscovered for days. Chanting mourners bury two boys caught in the crossfire of a Baghdad gunfight. A morgue in Basra overflows with torn and burned bodies from a suicide bombing.

Victims - young and old, women and men, insurgents and innocents - have been piling up day by day, making April the deadliest month for Iraqis - and Americans - since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago.

Official and complete death counts for Iraqis nationwide are unavailable. But a count by The Associated Press found that around 1,361 Iraqis were killed from April 1 to April 30 - 10 times the figure of at least 136 U.S. troops who died during the same period.

The Iraqi tally was compiled from daily records of violence reported by AP based on statements issued by the U.S. military, Iraqi police and local hospitals. The count includes civilians, insurgents and members of the Iraqi security forces, though a detailed breakdown was not possible. The Iraqi health ministry and the Red Crescent could not be reached Friday.

Also, the tally is likely incomplete, because witnesses reported deaths in some attacks that could not be confirmed by a hospital, the Iraqi police or U.S. officials.

The daily carnage, seen by Iraqis before their own eyes and in bloody images and photos transmitted around the country by Arab television and Iraqi newspapers, has heightened anti-U.S. sentiment across the country - even when the deaths were caused by insurgent attacks. The siege of Fallujah, where Americans unleashed their arsenal of warplanes and tanks, became a symbol of resistance that rallied many Iraqis - Shiite and Sunni - to the anti-occupation cause.

And the sheer variety of violence - car suicide bombs, roadside bombs, insurgent rocket and mortar attacks on civilian neighborhoods, gunbattles - has deepened Iraqis' sense of instability and left them skeptical of U.S. promises of peace and prosperity.

"For this to be happening a year after Saddam fell, Iraqis are shocked," said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the U.S.-picked Governing Council.

"This shows that the United States cannot rule Iraqi properly. They thought they could do a better job than if they created an Iraqi government right from the start."

The majority of Iraqi deaths likely took place in the Marine siege of Fallujah, but the toll there has been a source of controversy. The head of Fallujah's hospital, Rafie al-Issawi, said Friday his records show 731 killed and around 2,800 wounded since the Marine siege began on April 1, though he could not immediately provide a breakdown on how many were women or children. His number is factored into the AP count.

The Iraqi health minister, Khudayer Abbas, gave a much lower number on April 22, saying 271 people were killed in the city. He also put the total number of Iraqi dead for the month so far, including Fallujah, at 576 - far lower than the AP count.

U.S. officials have said they do not have a count of Iraqi civilians killed this month. On April 20, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said troops had killed 1,000 insurgents in April. That number was not factored into the AP count because it was not known what specific battles he was referring to.

By comparison, the next deadliest month for Iraqis since the start of the U.S. occupation was March, when 301 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to the Brookings Institution, which keeps a rough but widely respected monthly tally.

The Brookings number does not include insurgent or Iraqi police deaths, as the AP's April tally does. But at the most, a few dozen armed Iraqis died in March, not nearly enough to reach the number of April's dead.

The April toll still falls short of the number of Iraqi deaths during the U.S. invasion. An AP survey of records from 60 of Iraq's 124 hospitals found that at least 3,240 civilians died from March 20, 2003, to April 20, 2003; the complete number during that period is sure to be significantly higher.

The AP count includes single attacks that caused large numbers of casualties. In Basra, 74 people were killed when suicide attackers set off five car bombs nearly simultaneously outside police stations on April 21. A day earlier, a mortar barrage by guerrillas against Baghdad's largest prison, Abu Ghraib, killed 22 prisoners, all of them detainees held on suspicion of being members of the insurgency.

It also includes U.S. reports of insurgents killed in fighting with American troops. The military said 100 Sunni guerrillas were killed in a fierce battle April 12-13 in the village of Karma, outside Fallujah, and that 64 Shiite militiamen died Monday in U.S. airstrikes and a firefight outside Najaf, south of Baghdad.

But many of the deaths came in small incidents around Baghdad or scattered around the country as violencestretched from the far north to the far south.

A volley of mortars hit the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City on Saturday, some hitting a market, killing six people. Another shell pierced a home, went through two floors and tore a woman sleeping in her bed to pieces.

In Baghdad on Thursday, Mostapha Fadhl, 6, and Mostapha Salah, 7, were playing near a road in western Baghdad when insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol nearby. In the gunbattle that ensued, the boys were wounded and later died.

The carnage in Fallujah, where U.S. Marines battled to uproot Sunni insurgents from their greatest stronghold, traumatized an entire city. Residents blame many of the deaths on Marine snipers or bombings by warplanes, including fearsome AC-130 gunships and F-18s dropping 500-pound bombs.

Two football fields were turned into cemeteries, with hundreds of freshly dug graves, marked with wooden planks scrawled with names - some with names of women, some marked specifically as children. At one of the fields, an AP reporter was told by volunteer gravediggers on April 11 that more than 300 people had been buried there.

On Friday, with the U.S. military trying to implement a tentative deal to lift the siege, volunteers drove around looking for the dead that never made it to hospitals or graveyards. At least eight highly decomposed bodies were loaded into station wagons, including those of a woman and her daughter found in a home in the Golan neighborhood, scene of heavy fighting
this week.

During the height of the siege, residents were unable to get outside, so an unknown number of dead were buried in backyards.

"We buried two of my relatives at home," said Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali, a doctor at one of five local clinics in Fallujah that have been treating the wounded and counting the dead. "We cannot give the total number of martyrs."

AP correspondents Abdul-Qader Saadi and Bassem Mroue in Fallujah contributed to this report.

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Photos of Dead U.S. Soliders Returning Home

http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/April%2004-Photos/Coffin.htm

For more news from Iraq

http://www.peacenowar.net/#Iraq

and

http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/March%2020%2004--News.htm