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Video by Lucas Gray.
Music by Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam).
Link thanks to Austro-Athenian Empire 2007-02-01 and out of step 2007-01-29.
Two detainees who escaped after last-minute struggles with the Iraqi death squads told of stumbling into the night while a full moon shone down on a ghostly landscape dotted with mass graves and bullet-riddled corpses. Their testimony was the first eyewitness account of mass killings during Saddam’s 1988
Anfalcampaign against Iraq’s Kurdish minority, during which prosecutors allege that 182,000 people were slaughtered.Speaking anonymously from behind a screen, two Kurdish men described how they and their fellow camp inmates were driven to the desert in stinking trucks, stained with urine and faeces.
It was an unpaved road. Our vehicle got stuck in the sand … and we heard gunfire. It wasn’t that close, it was far from us, but we heard screaming and gunfire,one said.
Then it was dark, and they brought a group of people in front of a vehicle. The drivers got out of our vehicles and turned on the headlights, put three lines or four lines of people in front of our vehicle and opened fire.–The News – International (2006-10-19): Kurds tell of mass murder by Saddam death squads
It was dark when they brought a group of people (prisoners) in front of the vehicle. The drivers got out of our vehicles and turned on the headlights,the man said.It was really unbelievable, the number of people being killed like this.He said some prisoners tried to snatch an automatic rifle from one of their guards, but the prisoners failed to grab the gun because
we were so weak.He said soldiers opened fire, spraying the prisoners with bullets.
I ran and fell into a ditch. It was full of bodies. I fell on a body. It was still alive. It was his last breath,he said.He was lightly wounded. He took off his clothes in the ditch, thinking he was more likely to blend into the color of the sand if he were naked. He then began running again.
As I was running, I saw many pits, I saw many mounds, and I saw lots of people who had been shot,he said.The desert was full of mounds that had people buried underneath.
AUSTRALIA intervened to stop key US military strikes against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, fearing they might constitute a war crime.
Major General Maurie McNarn, then a brigadier and commander of Australian forces in Iraq, on several occasions played a
red cardagainst the American plans, which included hits on individuals. His objections drew anger from some senior US military figures.In one instance, Major General McNarn vetoed a US plan to drop a range of huge non-precision bombs on Baghdad, causing one angry US Air Force general to call the Australian a
pencil dick.However, US military command accepted Major General McNarn’s objection and the US plans were scrapped.
The revelation of how Australia actively and successfully used its veto power in the 2003 invasion of Iraq is contained in a new book on the US-Australian alliance, The Partnership, by The Weekend Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan.
… The book reveals that Major General McNarn — now the head of the Defence Intelligence Organisation — delivered a
great shockto the US when he first used the red card and then put his objections to the proposed US military strike in writing.
Shit,exclaimed one American when he saw the document.What if this leaks?Major General McNarn replied that if the US did not take the illegal action, it would not matter.As coalition forces prepared plans to take Baghdad, Major General McNarn vetoed three of five proposed US Air Force weapon systems — mostly huge bombs — on the grounds that they were not accurate for a radius of less than 16m and, as a result, were unsuitable for use in a built-up area.
–Cameron Stewart, The Australian (2006-07-29): Aussie veto stopped US war crimes
A collection of anti-war cultural artifacts.