red onion

Thursday, June 19, 2003

A tale of two countries.

There are protests in Baghdad, and riots in Michigan. I see a painful relationship between the two. The most recent protest in Baghdad occurred on Wednesday, and resulted in a "nervous" soldier shooting into the crowd and killing two people. What were they protesting?

They were unemployed soldiers who haven't been payed since March. One unemployed soldier said bluntly, "The Americans are going to get hurt if the situation remains as it is."

What is the unemployment level in the 92% black Benton, Michigan, site of the recent riots? The unemployment level in Benton, Michigan is 25%. That's right. 25%. Contrast it with 90% white city of St. Joseph just across the river, with an unemployment rate of 2%.

The two cities were chronicled by Alex Kotlowitz in this 1999 book, The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America's Dilemma, an account of a mysterious drowning of a black teenager from St. Joseph.

The 25% unemployed on Benton must see St. Joseph just across the river as a constant reminder of what they don't have,and may never have: jobs and a secure future. The Iraqi protesters marching to the Republican Palace, site of the U.S. headquarters and round-the-clock meetings behind heavy barbed wire, must see the off-limits U.S. officials behind the barbed wire as holding the key to the end of their suffering, and refusing to share it.

Is Michigan a sign of things to come in this country? Will we follow the path of civil unrest in Iraq? People hungry become desperate people. People with no hope become desperate people. Is this an administration that can offer hope to the unemployed people of Iraq, and the unemployed people of America?

Their record holds no promise for this.

# posted by scorpiorising : 11:23 AM |

The Rabbit Hole.

Anyone scanning the articles on Iraq the last few days must have experienced an acute case of cognitive dissonance. Today, we are in a guerrilla war, from FinancialTimes.com:

US forces are facing a "guerrilla war" in Iraq but the American public is prepared to accept the growing death toll, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

Yesterday, we were fighting the "dying remnants" of the past regime, according to the U.S. military :

Deadly attacks on Americans in Iraq - the latest killing a soldier on Wednesday - are carried out by regional groups with no national network, an Iraqi police official said. The U.S. military insisted the resistance is the "last dying breath" of enemy forces.

Today, Rumsfeld is comparing the murder rate of Baghdad to that of Washington D.C., in an effort to downplay the violence in Iraq:

You've got to remember that if Washington, D.C., were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month," Rumsfeld said. "There's going to be violence in a big city."

If I were the parents, wives, sons and daughters of the soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq, I'd be hopping mad at that ludicrous comment. If I were the mayor of D.C., I'd ask for military assistance to stem the violence.

# posted by scorpiorising : 7:21 AM |

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

So-called sporadic attacks

Salam Pax of Where is Raed?, examines the claims that attacks on Americans are unorganized and sporadic, from the point of view of someone living in the eye of the storm, Baghdad:http:

To get back to the “sporadic attacks”.
Take the events in Mushaheda village: Nine U.S. Soldiers Are Wounded Battling Pockets of Iraqi
[NY Times, requires registration]
A convoy goes thru the village and gets attacked, RPGs or Kalashnikovs are fired. It is night and the visibility is pretty low, as a retaliation and self-defence you have the convoy shooting left and right down the road for the next couple of kilometers (that if if they didn’t decide to stop and go into attack-mode - see what happened in Hir).
Now when you go ask the people in the village, district or neighborhood about the attacks they tell you the attackers were strangers, not from the area.
Think of it for a moment. If I wanted to instigate anti-american sentiments in a neighborhood which was until now indifferent towards the Americans what would be the best thing to do?
I would find a way to get the Americans to do bad things in that neighborhood, for example shoot indiscriminately at houses and shops
Sabaa Khalifa Makhmoud, 26, had finished cleaning his blue and white bus on the opposite side of the road from the American convoy and had just stepped out of the vehicle when the soldiers began shooting in response to the attack. One of his daughters, a toddler, was outside with him, and he scooped her up and ran inside their house. The shooting blasted out two windows in his bus and left a ragged hole in one of the bus curtains.
make them go on house to house searches, tie up the men and put sacks on their heads and scare all the children.
this would tilt your American-o-meter from the “I-don’t-really-care” position to the “what-the-fuck-do-they-think-they-are-doing?” position.
take a look at the attacks the last week and their aftermath. This sort of thing repeats itself and kind of snowballs from grumbles to calls for Jihad, just like what happened in the Adhamiya district near the abu-Hanifa mosque after the confrontation between Iraqis and American soldiers ended with two dead Iraqis.

what else?
There are rumors that a couple of high-tension electricity towers in the north have been sabotaged. Electricity has gotten worse, we get 5 hours of electricity a day in my neighborhood; it was so much better one week ago. People start grumbling again about the promises the Americans made and have not fulfilled.

more?

Two tank mines exploded on the streets of Baghdad, this is the third one. They are putting them in black garbage bags, the first exploded under a truck which was part of an Army convoy. One soldier got hurt.
The other two both exploded yesterday. The first in an underpass right in the middle of baghdad’s Tahrir square. It exploded under a taxi, no one was killed but two people got injured. The second exploded in Ghazalia district killing a girl and injuring her mother. Now this second mine was laid on the street after the American check point left that same street and the people there are saying that the mine was left by the Americans, which is complete bullshit.

(Sorry, I am all over the place and I was never too good in formulating an argument, but I hope I am making some sense there)
What I want to say is that these attacks might be sporadic and unorganized; but they do what the Ba’athists want to do, creating a very tough situation for the American administration to do anything good or to keep their promises, changing people's sentiments. adding more heat to a summer which is too hot already.
:: salam 8:59 PM [+] :: ...

# posted by scorpiorising : 4:52 PM |

Weapons of Mass Depression

Arriana Huffington has the digs on the psychology of fanaticism, and the weapons of mass depression, from Alternet:

HUFFINGTON: WMDs and the Psychology of Fanaticism

By Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
June 18, 2003

By all accounts, the behind-the-scenes battle within the Bush administration over just what information should be used, or spun, or hidden, to make the case that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to America and the rest of the world was a knockdown, drag-out fight between the facts and a zealous, highly politicized, "who needs proof?" mindset. And, at the end of the day, the truth was left writhing on the floor.

Hey, why let the facts get in the way of a perfectly good war?

This pathological pattern of disregarding inconvenient reality is not just troubling – it's deadly. And it's threatening to drag us into a Sisyphean struggle against evildoers in Syria, Iran, North Korea, or whatever locale Karl Rove thinks would best advance "Operation Avoid 41's Fate."

Since I'm not a psychiatrist, I consulted the work of various experts in the field in order to get a better understanding of the fanatical mindset that is driving the Bush administration's agenda – and scaring the living daylights out of a growing number of observers.

Dr. Norman Doidge, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, has identified among the telltale symptoms of fanatics: an intolerance of dissent, a doctrine that is riddled with contradictions, the belief that one's cause has been blessed or even commanded by God, and the use of reinforcement techniques such as repetition to spread one's message.

Sound like anyone you know? George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle... come on down!

According to Doidge, one of the essential features of fanatics is their certainty that not only is their cause good "but that it is the only good, an absolute good." Or as President Bush famously declared: "There is no in-between, as far as I'm concerned. Either you're with us, or you're against us."

This absolute intolerance of dissent, says Doidge, often extends beyond the fanatics' enemies – frequently leading to a "campaign of terror" against those within their own ranks. If you're wondering what this has to do with the Bush administration, you might want to give a call to Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and George Voinovich.

After having the temerity to question the wisdom of the president's massive tax cut plan, the senatorial pair became the targets of withering TV attack ads, sponsored by allies of the White House, that portrayed them as "so-called Republicans" and compared their opposition to the latest round of tax cuts to France's opposition to the war in Iraq. It was a Night of the Long Knives, GOP-style.

# posted by scorpiorising : 4:28 PM |

Censorship in Iraq

It is outrageous how it is going in Iraq. It is outrageous that this war ever happened based on the flimsiest of sand castles. It is outrageous this link posted by the Agonist, from the CS Monitor, that Bremer has decreed press censorship for budding newspapers in Iraq. And I am disappointed that Ichtaca of the Agonist would describe the language of outrage at this censorship, as "incendiary", and not the action of censorship itself (and to be fair, he seems to be quoting directly from the article, although he doesn't credit it):

"L. Paul Bremer, the top US official in Iraq, says a new edict prohibiting the local media from inciting attacks on other Iraqis - and on the coalition forces - is not meant to put a stopper on the recently uncorked freedom of speech. Iraqi journalists are not taking kindly to the restrictions. In a front-page editorial Wednesday, widely-read broadsheet As-Saah's senior editor let readers know what he thought of the country's liberators: "Bremer is a Baathist," the headline reads.

In an interview, editor Ni'ma Abdulrazzaq says the press edict decreed by Bremer lays out restrictions similar to those under Mr. Hussein. Not long ago, an uppity writer could easily be accused of being an agent for America or Israel.

"Now they put plastic bags on our heads, throw us to the ground, and accuse us of being agents of Saddam Hussein," the editorial reads. "In other words, if you're not with America, you're with Saddam."

"Mr. Bremer, you remind us of Saddam," the column continues. "We've waited a long time to be free. Now you want us to be slaves." It is not clear whether or not such incendiary language would be considered a violation of the new media policy that Bremer recently introduced.
Ichtaca @ 04:43 PM EDT | Visit News Board | TrackBack

Here is the article itself from the CS Monitor:

In volatile Iraq, US curbs press

US issues an order against inciting attacks on minorities or US troops.

By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – The once occasional attacks on US soldiers here are growing deadlier, and more frequent: Wednesday, a US soldier was killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting. And outside the former Republican Palace, now the headquarters of the US administration, US troops killed two Iraqis during a protest by former Iraqi soldiers that spiraled out of control.
At least some of the fuel for the anti-American fire, US officials here charge, is being pumped out by new Iraqi media outlets.

Paul Bremer, the top US official here, says a new edict prohibiting the local media from inciting attacks on other Iraqis - and on the coalition forces - is not meant to put a stopper on the recently uncorked freedom of speech.

"It is intended to stop ... people who are trying to incite political violence, and people who are succeeding in inciting political violence here, particularly against women," Bremer said at a press conference Tuesday.

Iraqi journalists are not taking kindly to the restrictions. Among the scores of new publications that have flooded Iraq's newsstands since the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, the broadsheet As-Saah is one of the most widely read. In a front-page editorial Wednesday, the paper's senior editor let readers know what he thought of the country's liberators: "Bremer is a Baathist," the headline reads.

In an interview, editor Ni'ma Abdulrazzaq says the press edict decreed by Bremer lays out restrictions similar to those under Mr. Hussein. Not long ago, an uppity writer could easily be accused of being an agent for America or Israel. "Now they put plastic bags on our heads, throw us to the ground, and accuse us of being agents of Saddam Hussein," the editorial reads. "In other words, if you're not with America, you're with Saddam."

"Mr. Bremer, you remind us of Saddam," the column continues. "We've waited a long time to be free. Now you want us to be slaves."

It is not clear whether or not such incendiary language would be considered a violation of the new media policy that Bremer, as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), recently introduced. According to CPA Order Number 14, media are prohibited from broadcasting or publishing material that incites violence against any individual or group "including racial, ethnic, religious groups, and women"; encourages civil disorder; or "incites violence against coalition forces." Violators, if convicted, will be fined up to $1,000 or sentenced to up to one year in prison.

To be sure, many papers are full of scathing rebuke for the US forces, and sometimes peppered with far-fetched and incendiary reports. The average Iraqi reader might be led to believe that American soldiers are raping Iraqi girls, and undressing Iraqi women with night-vision goggles. Other reports allege that soldiers steal money during house searches.

For decades, Iraqis have lived in a state in which all news outlets were controlled by Mr. Hussein, and by his son Uday in particular. Testing the waters, the first papers to start publishing after the regime's fall tended to be affiliated with formerly exiled political parties. But now the market is awash in newspapers, some of them put out by journalistic novices. "Candy merchants in the markets have become publishers, and junior writers have become senior editors," says Mr. Abdulrazzaq, sitting in his newspaper office, his television tuned to al-Manar, a satellite channel run by Lebanon's Hizbullah movement.

Not unlike al-Manar, which reports with a fundamentalist Islamic slant, As-Saah was founded in late April under the aegis of a Muslim religious movement. But the paper recently decided to break away from the Unified National Movement, a Sunni Muslim group, says Abdulrazzaq, so it could be totally independent of pressures to conform to its outlook.

For Abdulrazzaq, working as a journalist under Hussein's regime was like writing in a self-imposed straight jacket. Abdulrazzaq says he was arrested "only" twice. Reporters knew where the red lines were and wouldn't dare cross them, he says, but even reporters who praised Hussein would sometimes wind up in jail - or dead. Now, he fears, journalists who should be learning how to break out of the boundaries of the past are learning to keep practicing self-censorship.

For example, he says, he had already pulled two articles which he feared would result in action against his newspaper. A story he postponed but plans to run this Saturday, he says, centers on "American soldiers saying bad things about the Koran and insulting it."

Criticism of the new guidelines has grown, although some of the frustration may be based more on rumor about what the policy entails, rather than on reality. The edict on "Prohibited Media Activity" was released last week in English - but only Wednesday in Arabic.

Bremer has reiterated that the point of the new press policy is not to hamper free speech or stifle criticism of the US-led administration here. "We very much believe that the freedom of expression should apply to Iraq," Bremer said. "But we need to balance that with a need to protect minorities from violence."

# posted by scorpiorising : 3:30 PM |

Secret Agreements

What do Egypt, Mongolia, Nicaragua, the Seychelles and Tunisia have in common? They have all signed a secret agreement with the United States exempting U.S. personnel from prosecution in the International Criminal Court, according to a state department document, via Reuters:

"The State Department said last week that several governments that signed the agreements had asked not to be named. Their identities will become public at some stage because the administration has to inform the U.S. Congress.

Congressional sources said the administration had already informed Congress of the agreement with Egypt, which they said was signed on March 5. Congress has not received notice of any other agreements, the sources said.

The Egyptian Embassy declined to comment on the report. Officials at the other embassies had no immediate comment or were not immediately available.

A State Department official said Togolese Foreign Minister Roland Kpotsra signed a public agreement with U.S. ambassador Gregory Engle in Lome last Friday.

That would bring to 44 the number of governments that have exempted U.S. personnel from prosecution in the court, set up to try war crimes and acts of genocide.

The Bush administration objects to the court on the grounds it could launch politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. civilian and military leaders. But other countries see it as a powerful tool for enforcing the rules of war.

The United States is seeking similar agreements, known as Article 98 agreements after the relevant article in the law setting up the court, with as many countries as possible.

Under the American Service Members Protection Act of 2002, many countries that recognise the International Criminal Court will not be eligible for U.S. military assistance, unless the president issues a waiver on grounds of national security.

The other countries which have signed agreements are: Albania, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, East Timor, El Salvador, Madagascar, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Israel, the Maldives, the Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Micronesia, Nauru, Nepal, Palau, the Philippines, Romania, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda and Uzbekistan."

Now, what do the USA, China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen have in common? They all voted against the ratification of the International Criminal Court in Rome in 1998:

A substantial amount of criticism of the ICC came, surprisingly for many, from the United States, who are proud to proclaim themselves as upholders of democracy and freedom. In that context, some in the U.S. point out that their own insitutions are strong enough to handle issues that an ICC would handle. The irony of this though, is that on the international level, they don't wish to support such an institution. Many raised fears that the U.S. has been trying to become more isolationist by appearing to refuse to take part in, or undermine, yet another international treaty. It should be stressed that this has not been a clear cut issue in the U.S., (or in any other nation). Many in the U.S. have also supported it as well. Even the U.S. President at the time, Bill Clinton, was facing growing pressure from the Republicans as well as military/Pentagon to oppose the ICC.

It was even more ironic when you realize that the ICC was given the vote by 120 to 7. The seven who voted against were USA, China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen. All of USA's allies voted for the ICC and some of the nations that the United States has branded as "rogue states" were on par with the US on this issue. (This article, as well as the previous link offers a different perspective to how we define a "rogue state" and who else would therefore fit into such labels.)

# posted by scorpiorising : 6:49 AM |

Monday, June 16, 2003

Major Barbara, the tireless worker

Gotta say this, Major Barbara has been tirelessly tracking who's making a killing on killing in Iraq, even before the war started, when the vultures (Halliburton, Bechtel, etc.) were starting to circle. Here he posts on Iraq as a goldmine for the middleman, via the Wall Street Journal:

"Mr. McClelland describes himself as a "bit player" in the Iraq gold rush. But even for the bit players, there's the potential for big money. "If 10 percent of the projects come through, I'll have made enough to retire twice over," he says. A couple of big ones, such as the food contract, could make his year.

"Middlemen and go-betweens with strong military contacts always appear wherever there's a war and wherever there's money to be made supplying the U.S. armed forces. What makes Iraq different is the size of the rebuilding effort the U.S. has taken on and the huge number of U.S. troops involved. The U.S. government is spending several billion dollars a month on troop support, fuel, equipment and, to a lesser extent, reconstruction

# posted by scorpiorising : 5:29 PM |

The Unbranding of America

I was cruising top blogs, and stumbled upon this site through Warren Ellis (die puny humans blog). The Unbranding of America speaks to my heart and my head, and my core belief that in order to address the root of the "problems" we are dealing with, Iraq, the Middle East, environmental degradation, the rich versus the poor and the poor in ever greater numbers, we must address the core of our own society: Consumerism and global capitalism.

Do we really want a global economy based on greed? If capitalism is based on the American model as practiced today, greed is its driving force. Not every country that practices capitalism is fashioned after the American model. Sweden for instance. Can I say that dirty word, socialism? (I saw Bulworth recently.) We must be unafraid to speak of a form of socialism that will address the needs of our community, that will address the chasm between the rich and the poor. We can't go on like this folks. We are destroying our earth for the sake of a certain way of life. We are victimizing our most vulnerable, our children our elderly, our chronically poor, for the sake of the right of a few individuals to accumulate vast amounts of wealth. It is a form of insanity that the earth's eco-structure will not tolerate much longer. It is what I wanted to address in my sacrifice post.

Geez I'm tired. Little sleep last night. But this is an issue I am going to address. It is why I am drawn to Kucinich as a presidential candidate. I think he offers real hope for core value changes, though not everyone, of course, is responsive to this need for change.

# posted by scorpiorising : 4:46 PM |

Sunday, June 15, 2003

War crimes?

I am going to print this article in its entirety, in case it disappears from the online nethersphere. From yahoo, a story of Iraqis handcuffed and shot in the back of the head after an American raid. Thanks to Mike Jones and his 18and1/2 Minute Gap blog for the article:

Mideast - AFP

US army kills 82 fighters in Iraqi training camp: witnesses
Sat Jun 14, 9:22 PM ET Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo!

SAHL, Iraq (AFP) - A massive US army attack on a desert training camp in Iraq (news - web sites) earlier this week killed 82 fighters, some of who appeared to have been summarily executed, according to witness reports.

"In total 82 people died in the camp" including at least one non-Iraqi, AFP was told by the imam of the main mosque in the village of Rawa, near the camp at Sahl, near Iraq's border with Syria.

Rawa villagers who went to the camp had found the corpses of seven people who had been handcuffed and shot in the forehead, chest or in the back of the head, the imam, Sheikh Gharbi Abdul Aziz, said.

He said the villagers had found another 50 bodies all in a line at the camp, which appears to have been used as a training ground by die-hard supporters of ousted leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

"What I saw was unspeakable. I can't get over the sight of all these young people dead. Some were handcuffed," Abd al-Wujud, a driver who said he helped carry the corpses out of the camp, told AFP.

The imam said he had taken part in the burial of the 82 bodies, "some were in pieces or totally burnt".

The fighting erupted at dawn on Thursday at the camp, which included an arms dump, and lasted 13 hours, according to residents from Rawa, 350 kilometers (210 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

They said the camp had been bombed and that a gunbattle between US troops and the fighters had followed shortly afterwards.

The US army had fired at least six cluster bombs, they added.

The imam said villagers had carried 60 bodies from the camp and seven more from a site nearby, where a US helicopter had come down on Thursday. They were all buried at Rawa cemetery.

An AFP correspondent saw 15 more graves at the camp marked by wooden sticks.

"When the bombing stopped on Thursday and when the Americans left, residents came and picked up loads of flesh and gore," said Abd al-Hadi Mahmud, a local garage owner.

"Some bodies were completely torn to pieces -- feet, legs, skulls."

"When they came to the village, they never did us any harm. They were polite," he added.

Bloodstained mattresses and pieces of discarded weaponry seen at the camp testified to the remorselessness of the attack.

The 15 graves seen at the camp were marked by bottles bearing the names of those among the dead whose bodies had been identified.

They included Osama Mahfudh Salem from Yemen and Abd as-Sattar Mohammad from Fallujah, a conservative Sunni Muslim town west of the Iraqi capital, which has seen sustained anti-US violence.

# posted by scorpiorising : 9:44 AM |

Thousands of Tragedies

If there is anyone who doubts that our integrity has been stripped by the horrors of this war, read this, from the Washington Post. The last shreds of our humanitarian beliefs and intentions in Iraq are being destroyed and reduced to the wailings of the relatives of the dead:

THULUYA, Iraq -- Along orange groves and orchards of figs and pears watered by the timeless churn of the Tigris River, Hashim Mohammed Aani often sat before a bird cage he built of scrap wood and a loose lattice of chicken coop wire.

A chubby 15-year-old with a mop of curly black hair and a face still rounded by adolescence, he was quiet, painfully shy. Awkward might be the better word, his family said. For hours every day, outside a house perched near the riverbank, the youngest of six children languidly watched his four canaries and nightingale. Even in silence, they said, the birds were his closest companions.

On Monday morning, after a harrowing raid into this town by U.S. troops that deployed gunships, armored vehicles and soldiers edgy with anticipation, the family found Aani's body, two gunshots to his stomach, next to a bale of hay and a rusted can of vegetable oil. With soldiers occupying a house nearby, his corpse lay undisturbed for hours under a searing sun.

Lt. Arthur Jimenez, who commanded a platoon of the 4th Infantry Division near the house, said he did not know the details of Hashim's death. But he feared the boy was unlucky. "That person," he said, "was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Are we winning over the Iraqi people? In my view, anyone still asking this question, and expecting an affirmative, is simply not in touch with their own basic humanity. From the same article:

By this weekend, the largest military operation since the war's end -- one involving 4,000 troops -- had wound down in this prosperous village 40 miles northwest of Baghdad, with no U.S. soldiers killed and little resistance. But in the aftermath, Thuluya has become a town transformed.

With grief over the death of Hashim and two others, the Sunni Muslim population here speaks of revenge. Those sentiments are mixed with confusion. A vast majority belonged to the Baath Party and now worry about how far the United States will cast a net to root out its former members. Bound together by clan and tribe, many have been uneasy since the U.S. forces tapped informers from Thuluya. One of them wore a burlap bag over his head as he fingered residents for the troops to question, igniting vows of bloody vendettas.

"I think the future's going to be very dark," said Rahim Hamid Hammoud, 56, a soft-spoken judge, as he joined a long line in paying his respects to Hashim this week. "We're seeing each day become worse than the last."

The echoes of Apache helicopters and F-16, A-10 and AC-130 warplanes soon after midnight Monday woke the four families of Hashim's relatives and signaled the start of the military thrust, dubbed Operation Peninsula Strike. The goal was to find elements of resistance fighters who have been ambushing U.S. troops, the military said. Within minutes, armored vehicles plowed down the dirt road to the families' compound. Humvees and troop transports followed.

From the other direction, on the banks of the Tigris near a reed-shrouded island, soldiers hurried from camouflage boats. They ran up a hill, near a small garden of okra and green beans and past a patch of purple flowers known as "prophet's carpet."

"We came here ready to fight," Jimenez recalled.

At the sound of their arrival, Hashim's cousin, Asad Abdel-Karim Ibrahim, said he went outside the gate with his parents, brother and two sisters. In his arms was his 7-month-old niece, Amal. They raised a white head scarf, but soldiers apparently did not see it. Ibrahim was shot in the upper right arm. He dropped the baby, who started screaming. Days later, Ibrahim was still wearing a piece of soiled tape placed on his back by the soldiers that read: "15-year-old male, GSW [gunshot wound] @ arm."

"The Americans were shouting in English, and we didn't know what they were saying," he said.

Around the corner, residents said soldiers searched the house of Fadhil Midhas, 19. Mentally retarded, he started shouting when soldiers put tape over his mouth, fearful that he would suffocate. Women there tried to explain -- more with hand gestures than words -- and residents said soldiers finally splashed water over Midhas's face in an attempt to quiet him.

In the commotion, Hashim ran away, headed toward the thick groves behind his house. Relatives said he was unarmed.

"He was trying to hide," said his brother, Riyadh, who was detained for four days. "He didn't know what to do."

U.S. troops and residents say about 400 residents were arrested in the sweep. By week's end, residents said, all but 50 were released from a makeshift detention center at an abandoned air base known as Abu Hleij, seven miles to the north. At the entrance, guarded by two soldiers who said no one was available to comment, graffiti painted in English read, "Welcome to Camp Black Knight."

U.S. officials described Operation Peninsula Strike as the centerpiece of a newly aggressive military campaign in a region of northwestern Iraq dominated by Sunni Muslims, who have long played a leadership role in Iraq and were the backbone of ousted president Saddam Hussein's three-decade rule. Since the beginning of May, 11 U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been killed in action, many of them in sniper shootings, hit-and-run attacks and ambushes along the Sunni crescent, which stretches west along the Euphrates and north along the Tigris.

"We understand animosity can be a result, but as we get bad actors and the quality of life improves, people will understand what we're trying to do," a U.S. military spokesman said today.

In Thuluya, many residents complained that the entire town felt punished by the operation. In their conversations about the wadhaa, or situation, there was a hint of anxiety over their future. While Iraq's Shiite majority often looks to its clergy, and the Kurds in the north are represented by two parties with warm relations with the United States, Sunnis are, to a degree, disenfranchised, many falling back on tribes whose authority has risen over the past decade.

"They carried out the raid here because we're Sunni and because Saddam was Sunni," said Ibrahim Ali Hussein, 60, a farmer with a white scarf tied loosely over his head. "After this operation, we think 100 Saddams is better than the Americans."

"We're not criminals," added Hussein Hamoud Mohammed, 54, a veterinarian and Baath Party member. "If they don't come in peace, then we'll attack them with our fists and feet. We'll even bite them."

# posted by scorpiorising : 9:11 AM |