March 19, 2006
What
happened in the village of Isahaqi, north of Baghdad, on Ides of March?
The murk of war – the natural blur of unbuckled event, and its
artificial augmentation by professional massagers – shrouds the details
of the actual operation. But here is what we know.
We know that U.S. forces conducted a raid on a house in the village on March 15. We know that the Pentagon said
the American troops were "targeting an individual suspected of
supporting foreign fighters for the al-Qaeda in Iraq terror network,"
when their team came under fire, and that the troops "returned fire.
utilizing both air and ground assets." We know that the Pentagon said
that "only" one man, two women and one child were killed in the raid,
which destroyed a house in the village.
We know from photographic evidence that the corpses of two men, four shrouded figure s (women, according to the villagers), and five children – all of them apparently
under the age of five, one as young as seven months – were pulled from
the rubble of the house and laid out for burial beneath the bright,
blank desert sky. We know that an Associated Press reporter on the
scene saw the ruined house, and a photographer for Agence France Presse
took the pictures of the bodies.
We
know that two Iraqi police officials, Major Ali Ahmed and Colonel
Farouq Hussein – both employed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government –
told Reuters that the 11 occupants of the house, including the five
children, had been bound and shot in the head before the house was blown up.
We know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police told Reuters that an American
helicopter landed on the roof in the early hours of the morning, then
the house was blown up, and then the victims were discovered. We know
that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police said that an autopsy performed on the
bodies found that "all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head." We
know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police said they found "spent
American-issue cartridges in the rubble."
We
know that Ahmed Khalaf, brother of house's owner, told AP that nine of
the victims were family members and two where visitors, adding, "the
killed family was not part of the resistance, they were women and
children. The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only
death."
We know from the photographs that one child, the youngest, the baby, has a gaping wound in his forehead. We can
see that one other child, a girl with a pink ribbon in her hair, is
lying on her side and has blood oozing from the back of her head. The
faces of the other children are turned upwards toward the sun; if they
were shot, they were shot in the back of the head and their wounds are
not evident. But we can see that their bodies, though covered with dust
from the rubble, are otherwise unmarked; they were evidently not
crushed in the collapse of the house during, say, a fierce firefight
between U.S. forces and an "al Qaeda facilitator." They died in some
other fashion.
We
know from the photographs that two of the children – two girls, still
in their pajamas – are lying with their dead eyes open. We can see that
the light and tenderness that animate the eyes of every young child
have vanished; nothing remains but the brute stare of nothingness into
nothingness. We can see that the other three children have their eyes
closed; two are limp, but the baby has one stiffened arm raised to his
cheek, as if trying to ward off the blow that gashed and pulped his
face so terribly.
These
facts are what we know from American officials, American-backed Iraqi
officials and reporters for Western press associations on the scene.
This is probably all we will ever know for certain about what happened
in Isahaqi on March 15. The rest will remain obscured by the murk
instigated by U.S. military spokesmen, who are evidently not telling
the truth about the body count of the raid, and by the natural
confusion that must attend the villagers' description of an attack that
struck without warning in the middle of the night. But beyond this
cloud of unknowing, there are a few other facts relevant to the case
that can be clearly established.
For
instance, we know that the American troops who caused the deaths of
these children – either by tying them up and shooting them, an
unspeakable atrocity, or else "merely" by storming or bombing a house
full of civilians in a night raid "with both air and ground assets" –
were sent to Iraq on a demonstrably false mission to "disarm" weapons
that did not exist and take revenge for 9/11 on a nation that had
nothing to do with the attack. And we now know that the White House –
and George W. Bush specifically – knew all along that the intelligence
did not and could not support the public case he had made for the war.
We
know that the only reason that this dead baby has his arm frozen to his
lifeless face is that three years ago this week, George W. Bush gave
the order to begin the unprovoked, unjust and unnecessary invasion of
Iraq. He hasn't fired a single shot or launched a single missile; he
hasn't tortured or killed any prisoners; he hasn't kidnapped or
beheaded civilians or planted bombs along roadsides, in mosques or
marketplaces. Yet every single atrocity of the war – on both sides –
and every single death caused by the war, and every act of religious
repression perpetrated by the extremist sects empowered by the war, is
the direct result of the decision made by George W. Bush three years
ago. Nothing he says can change this fact; nothing he does, or causes
to be done, for good or ill, can wash the blood of these children – and
the tens of thousands of other innocent civilians killed in the war –
from his hands.
And anyone who knows these facts, who sees these facts, and fails to cry out against them – if only in your own heart – will be forever tainted by this same blood.
*Our
webmaster, Rich Kastelein, has provided his usual sterling service in
finding all the available photos of the Isahaqi victims and piecing
them together with the stories on the case. You can find that package here.*
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