Eyewitness account of Iraq.
We turn now to Iraq. An article in the British newspaper the Guardian titled "This Is Our Guernica" reads:
"In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade"s unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity."
Those are the words of journalist Dahr Jamil. He spent many months in Iraq as one of the only independent, unembedded journalists there. He published his reports on a blog called DahrJamailIraq.com and was a regular guest on Democracy Now! He joins us in our firehouse studio today.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now!
DAHR JAMAIL: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It's very good to have you with us. Can you talk more about this image of the Guernica, and what Iraq and specifically Fallujah has meant?
DAHR JAMAIL: Fallujah, which was the symbol of the resistance in Iraq to the U.S. occupation and throughout the Middle East at that point is now 70% estimated to be bombed to the ground, no water, no electricity. People who want to go back into that city have to get retina scans, all ten fingers fingerprinted, then they're issued an ID card. People inside the city are referring to it as a big jail. It is a horrendous situation, and we still have hundreds of thousands of refugees as a result. And the goal of the mission of sieging Fallujah as announced by the U.S. military was to capture the phantom Zarqawi and to bring security and stability for the elections, and what's left is a situation where Fallujah is in shambles, and the resistance has spread throughout the country.
AMY GOODMAN: Who is doing the retina scans, the fingerprinting?
DAHR JAMAIL: The U.S. military is doing all of this.
AMY GOODMAN: And how many people are kept out of Fallujah now? How many people actually live there? How many were there to begin with?
DAHR JAMAIL: The latest estimate is of a city of 350,000 people, that 50,000 now have returned back inside the city.
AMY GOODMAN: And what's happened? Where have the others gone?
DAHR JAMAIL: They are still in refugee camps. There are refugee camps all around the outskirts of Fallujah, throughout many areas of Baghdad, even parts of Iraq south of the capital city. They are living in, of course, horrible conditions. There's running water at some of these refugee camps, none at others. No electricity. They are depending primarily on other Iraqis for aid, which is a very difficult situation, because now we have an estimated 65% unemployment in Iraq. Basic infrastructure remains in shambles. And this is a community then that is trying to support over 300,000 refugees at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: Now that you have come back, what is the contrast or the difference between what you learn about Iraq when you are here versus when you are there on the ground?
DAHR JAMAIL: Well, watching the corporate media back here, I see the disparity between that and what's actually happening on the ground continue to grow. If we look at corporate media, we're led to believe that after the January 30 elections, things are better in Iraq. We have a democracy there. Yes, it's -- there's still a little chaos, but things are getting better, but that is not the facts at all when we look at just the numbers. We have still an average of over a soldier a day dying, ten times that number wounded, infrastructure in shambles, and things continue to get worse. At least a car bomb a day in Baghdad and insecurity throughout most of the rest of the country.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Dahr Jamail, unembedded reporter in Iraq, now back in the United States. We'll come back to talk with him in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest in studio, Dahr Jamail, who runs the blog, DahrJamailIraq.com, just returned from Iraq, was there for eight months and reported to us on a somewhat regular basis. You are talking about Fallujah. What about the use of chemical weapons there? Last November, you reported the U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah. How do you know this?
DAHR JAMAIL: Many of the refugees I interviewed throughout November, just after the beginning of the siege, and then people who had been coming out of the city even into December, continued to report the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah, but really, one of the most important sources I have for this is an Iraqi doctor that I interviewed on the outskirts of Fallujah, and he said that he had worked as a medic during the Iran-Iraq War, he had treated Iraqi soldiers who had been hit with Iranian chemical weapons, so he knew what these types of injuries look like. And he said that he had treated people from Fallujah with the same types of injuries, as well as another Iraqi man that I had interviewed who went into the city, brought in by U.S. soldiers to help bury bodies, and that he had seen many bodies that he believed to have been hit by chemical weapons.
more... http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/1346252
"In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade"s unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity."
Those are the words of journalist Dahr Jamil. He spent many months in Iraq as one of the only independent, unembedded journalists there. He published his reports on a blog called DahrJamailIraq.com and was a regular guest on Democracy Now! He joins us in our firehouse studio today.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now!
DAHR JAMAIL: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It's very good to have you with us. Can you talk more about this image of the Guernica, and what Iraq and specifically Fallujah has meant?
DAHR JAMAIL: Fallujah, which was the symbol of the resistance in Iraq to the U.S. occupation and throughout the Middle East at that point is now 70% estimated to be bombed to the ground, no water, no electricity. People who want to go back into that city have to get retina scans, all ten fingers fingerprinted, then they're issued an ID card. People inside the city are referring to it as a big jail. It is a horrendous situation, and we still have hundreds of thousands of refugees as a result. And the goal of the mission of sieging Fallujah as announced by the U.S. military was to capture the phantom Zarqawi and to bring security and stability for the elections, and what's left is a situation where Fallujah is in shambles, and the resistance has spread throughout the country.
AMY GOODMAN: Who is doing the retina scans, the fingerprinting?
DAHR JAMAIL: The U.S. military is doing all of this.
AMY GOODMAN: And how many people are kept out of Fallujah now? How many people actually live there? How many were there to begin with?
DAHR JAMAIL: The latest estimate is of a city of 350,000 people, that 50,000 now have returned back inside the city.
AMY GOODMAN: And what's happened? Where have the others gone?
DAHR JAMAIL: They are still in refugee camps. There are refugee camps all around the outskirts of Fallujah, throughout many areas of Baghdad, even parts of Iraq south of the capital city. They are living in, of course, horrible conditions. There's running water at some of these refugee camps, none at others. No electricity. They are depending primarily on other Iraqis for aid, which is a very difficult situation, because now we have an estimated 65% unemployment in Iraq. Basic infrastructure remains in shambles. And this is a community then that is trying to support over 300,000 refugees at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: Now that you have come back, what is the contrast or the difference between what you learn about Iraq when you are here versus when you are there on the ground?
DAHR JAMAIL: Well, watching the corporate media back here, I see the disparity between that and what's actually happening on the ground continue to grow. If we look at corporate media, we're led to believe that after the January 30 elections, things are better in Iraq. We have a democracy there. Yes, it's -- there's still a little chaos, but things are getting better, but that is not the facts at all when we look at just the numbers. We have still an average of over a soldier a day dying, ten times that number wounded, infrastructure in shambles, and things continue to get worse. At least a car bomb a day in Baghdad and insecurity throughout most of the rest of the country.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Dahr Jamail, unembedded reporter in Iraq, now back in the United States. We'll come back to talk with him in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest in studio, Dahr Jamail, who runs the blog, DahrJamailIraq.com, just returned from Iraq, was there for eight months and reported to us on a somewhat regular basis. You are talking about Fallujah. What about the use of chemical weapons there? Last November, you reported the U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah. How do you know this?
DAHR JAMAIL: Many of the refugees I interviewed throughout November, just after the beginning of the siege, and then people who had been coming out of the city even into December, continued to report the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah, but really, one of the most important sources I have for this is an Iraqi doctor that I interviewed on the outskirts of Fallujah, and he said that he had worked as a medic during the Iran-Iraq War, he had treated Iraqi soldiers who had been hit with Iranian chemical weapons, so he knew what these types of injuries look like. And he said that he had treated people from Fallujah with the same types of injuries, as well as another Iraqi man that I had interviewed who went into the city, brought in by U.S. soldiers to help bury bodies, and that he had seen many bodies that he believed to have been hit by chemical weapons.
more... http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/1346252
posted by Christy at 3:59 PM
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