Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning Re: Fallujah

Hi Carl,

Yes indeed. Being from the UK I'm neither democrat
nor republican. I usually vote for a smaller party
here anyway (the green party) rather than the main ones.

But I think whatever his party, President Bush is in
serious trouble, or should be, if these allegations
are true and it turns out that he knew about them.
If they are true and he didn't know then he
should be in serious trouble of another nature.

At least, maybe it is forward for me to speak
about the US president as a UK resident.
US residents have to decide such issues.

But anyway if it turns out that our prime
minister knew about these details of the US
strategy and said nothing about it, I think personally
that it would be more than adequate grounds to demand
his resignation. And I'm somewhat more in sympathy with
his party than the other main UK party for what
it is worth and though many of us don't approve
of our Prime minister's actions in many areas
he has been on the whole a decent PM as they go.
(though I'd not vote for either party)

So this is totally non political.

I'm concerned enough to have added a link
about it to one of my web sites.

http://www.musicandvirtualflowers.co.uk

It is simply not being reported at all
here in the UK now, though
they do say before every report from Iraq
that the reporters "may be under military
reporting restrictions". Apart from that
they follow the US and the Iraqi prime minister's
line that the only casualties are "insurgents".
Perhaps it is a new definition of the term
- that a casualty of a US weapon in Fallujah
is by definition an insurgent??

Robert

🔗Manuel Op de Coul <manuel.op.de.coul@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

Hi Manuel,

I meant particularly if it is true about the
current attack on Fallujah that the US military
did turn back civilians who were fleeing the war
zone, which is a war crime under the Geneva
convention, and if they did prevent the civilians from access
to the hospital, and if they did prevent the two ambulances
and car from being used to assist civilian casualties,
and did target a clinic and kill
doctors and patients in the clinic, and if
it is true that this was a predetermined part of
the plan to suppress news of civilian casualties
and if our prime minister knew about it in advance
- lots of ifs there - but if all that were indeed
true I don't see how he could continue to serve
as prime minister. Deliberate humanitarian
war crimes are very serious indeed,
much more so even than invading a country and starting
a war without provocation, I believe, though
unprovoked conquest of a country to depose
their leadership - I don't know if that contravenes
the Geneva convention or not but that also is
surely something that has always been accepted
as one of the givens of internatinal relations
that you don't invade a country just because you
don't like their regime, if they haven't invaded
first - its just the same as Iraq invading
Kuwait for the US to invade Iraq.

But countries can do that I think without commiting a war
crime as such, it is just an unprovoked act
of war, such as Iraq did with Kuwait - invading
Kuwait wasn't strictly speaking a war crime as such,
I don't think, though it is quite possible that there
were war crimes as part of the campaign.

So, the big allegation there is that
Blair mislead our country in order to start
a war - so the thing that he is accused of
there is of deception with intent to start
a war, rather than the intent to war as such.
I haven't followed the details, but there has been a
big fuss about it here in politics, that
he said that there was clear evidence
of WMD when his advisors had told him that
the evidence was only suggestive. However
that wasn't enough to force resignation
as he maintained that he acted
sincerely and no-one can prove
otherwise. It may be true as far as I know
though I feel personally that there was
at least a strong element of spin involved
- but the presentation at the UN which they
had briefly on the radio just now was such
as I could imagine could convince someone
genuinely who wanted to be convinced and they
could then genuinely overplay the evidence
in their own mind and not be deliberately
spinning it so he could be telling the truth
about that. Since he says he was sincere
and no-one has come up with any real evidence
that he wasn't, one has to go along with that
(innocent until proved guilty, here in UK
at least).

But if it were true that he
knew in advance and cooperated in the
conduct of a war crime that would
be very serious indeed, far more serious.
i'm not suggesting he has, just said it
as a way of indicating how serious
I think these allegations are if true.

It is serious of course because we know
so well from history what happens if
people go along with war crimes without
protest - it leads to more and worse
such in an endless spiral - think how
the current US soldiers in Iraq are
being habituated to violence - if true
that they have been told by their commanders
to fire on clinics and ambulances, and turned
back refugees freeing from a war zone, and they
have done so without resigning on the spot,
then they must have got so habituated to such
violence to no longer care in any way about civilians
in another country - and what will they do next
either later on in this war or in future
wars?

I think that a soldier is surely
within his right to dissobeay an order to
commit a war crime, and would be well
within his rights as a soldier to
resign from the army on the spot if his
commanding officer orders him to
commit a war crime. They would probably
have difficutlies conducting the court
martial!

It doesn't look good but it could be possible
that the independent reporters in Iraq who reported
these things were somehow mislead, or that our
prime minister wasn't in the know about these
particular plans. Even possible, even if they are
true, that President Bush didn't know but that
would suggest extreme incompetence on his part
if true, that he can lead an army and not
know about these types of details of their
strategy, and I'd have thought that
one wouldn't want to have someone
as the leader of ones country who is so little
respected by the military if they did it without
his go-ahead.

I don't know, but I feel that when the
dust settles, if these reports turn out to
be true and substantiated, then someone
should be in serious trouble. Unless they
are just ignored. But there was some
mentino in the paper today about the
reports of civilian casualties by the
few independent reporters in Iraq
- no mention of war crimes though. But I have
little experience of politics not following
it much.

Robert

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

Hi there

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000121.php#more

Sorry to go on about it but it seems so terrible to me.
Maybe we have no influence directly but just by talking
about it - if there are e-mails zipping arond about
it then maybe that may make a difference somehow.
It is kind of urgent as people are dying right now
civiilian wounded and trapped in rubble if the
independent journalist reports are to be believed.
The US military should at the very least call
an immediate cease fire right now, let the
red crescent and Red cross in and let them
tend the injured and free as many as they
can from the rubble. Whatever war objectives
they may have are of no concern at all
compared with that. The reports of
chemical weapons (phospphorus bombs)
and cluster bombs dropped by the US
are quite horrific and I see no reason at
all why they would be invented.

Robert

🔗Jon Szanto <jonszanto@...>

Robert,

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Walker" <robertwalker@n...>
wrote:
>
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000121.php#more
>
> Sorry to go on about it but it seems so terrible to me.

No need for you to be sorry - it *is* horrific. A world that breaks
the sound barrier 10 times over, and slaughters innocent civilians.
Where new antiviral vaccines promise an end to (one form of) cancer,
and an angel of caring, having given 30 years of her life to help the
Iraqi people, is murdered.

Insane.

> Maybe we have no influence directly but just by talking
> about it - if there are e-mails zipping arond about
> it then maybe that may make a difference somehow.

Here is where *I* say sorry: while I don't have a good answer, I am so
tired of the river of emails that don't do anything at all, short of
making us a teeny bit more comfortable that we're doing something. We
just saw an election of an idiot in this country, and the kind of
electronic marshalling of forces to keep him from being re-elected was
extraordinary. And ineffective, to boot. I happen to think that the
ease of sitting in one's own home, typing typing typing, isn't nearly
as effective as getting out in the physical world.

Then again, I said I didn't have the answers, and I don't. Hell, a
fellow committed suicide at the site of the 9/11 attacks, grieving
over the fact that Bush won. If people killing themselves doesn't get
the attention of the parties involved, what will?

This is all seeming so very hopeless these days...

Jon

🔗Kurt Bigler <kkb@...>

on 11/17/04 2:44 PM, Jon Szanto <jonszanto@...> wrote:

> http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000121.php#more
>>
>> Sorry to go on about it but it seems so terrible to me.
>
> No need for you to be sorry - it *is* horrific. A world that breaks
> the sound barrier 10 times over, and slaughters innocent civilians.
> Where new antiviral vaccines promise an end to (one form of) cancer,
> and an angel of caring, having given 30 years of her life to help the
> Iraqi people, is murdered.
>
> Insane.
>
>> Maybe we have no influence directly but just by talking
>> about it - if there are e-mails zipping arond about
>> it then maybe that may make a difference somehow.
>
> Here is where *I* say sorry: while I don't have a good answer, I am so
> tired of the river of emails that don't do anything at all, short of
> making us a teeny bit more comfortable that we're doing something. We
> just saw an election of an idiot in this country, and the kind of
> electronic marshalling of forces to keep him from being re-elected was
> extraordinary. And ineffective, to boot. I happen to think that the
> ease of sitting in one's own home, typing typing typing, isn't nearly
> as effective as getting out in the physical world.

Gotta do what you can, anyway. The emails are easy. They don't do
*nothing*. Especially it can be valuable for say a Senator who already
wants to do a certain thing but to be able to say "I received 5000 emails"
helps justify it to a constituency that may be divided, or in the fact of
other political pressures.

But I've been told that calling Senators is hightly effective. It is easy
to do. In the case of California:

Senator Dianne Feinstein
Washington, DC: 202-224-3841
Local Phone: 310-914-7300

Senator Barbara Boxer
Washington, DC: 202-224-3553
Local Phone: 415-403-0100

and I've been told that calling the DC number is more effective. In any
case I've done quite a bit of Senator calling, and when I was doing a lot of
it, a couple years ago, I got to know the people who answered the phones.
The implication is that there is not a huge phone-answering staff. That
implies to me a relatively lot of potential weight per phone call. Thus
1000 phone calls is pretty big for a small issue, and 5000 is pretty big,
period. That's my impression, anyway. And its easy to do.

-Kurt

🔗Jon Szanto <jonszanto@...>

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Kurt Bigler <kkb@b...> wrote:
> Gotta do what you can, anyway.

I understand. I'm losing faith, however, that anything I might do
would make any difference whatsoever in the direction that both our
country and the world is going. And as for doing something, I'm trying
to be active on local scales (cliche as that may seem) so that I know
my effort isn't wasted, and my life has some value.

> The emails are easy.

I think that is part of the problem1

> They don't do *nothing*.

I'm not convinced of that.

> Especially it can be valuable for say a Senator who already
> wants to do a certain thing but to be able to say "I received 5000
emails"
> helps justify it to a constituency that may be divided, or in the
fact of
> other political pressures.

I believe that time has passed. Mass email campaigns have become so
commonplace that the currency, if you will, has devalued. I've got a
friend working in Sen. Kennedy's office, I'll see if she can give an
objective view about how much stock is put in email in this manner.
>
> But I've been told that calling Senators is hightly effective. It
is easy
> to do.

Absolutely, and I did quite a bit of that this year! Naturally, our
two Senators are in the minority right now...

> The implication is that there is not a huge phone-answering staff. That
> implies to me a relatively lot of potential weight per phone call. Thus
> 1000 phone calls is pretty big for a small issue, and 5000 is pretty
big,
> period. That's my impression, anyway. And its easy to do.

Well put. Doesn't help Robert, on the other side of one of the oceans,
but maybe we should put in calls in his behest!

Cheers,
Jon

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Jon Szanto <jonszanto@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

Hi Jon,

Sorry, I'm wondering if some of the reports may be a bit
exagareted. Jeff has found out that the phosphorus
bombs are used for smoke screens and though they
do burn on contact they are not used as chemical
weapons and are generally used in warfare.

Also he found out that the clinic that was bombed
was a temporary one that was set up after the
hospital was closed. So it may be that it
was completley unintentinal which I hope.
I interpolated that from teh web site
assuming that they US must have known
where the clinics were as they would
only need to ask any doctor. But the
web site now that I htink of it didn't
say as such that the US must have known
what the clinic was.

Not to say that there have been atrocities
and it is pretty clear that Iraqis have
been left wounded and untreated and
such like, and that there must have
been many civilian casualties I'm sure.
But it makes me wonder if the war crime
allegations are entirely correct and
whether we need to jsut see what happens.

I do feel it is extremely urgent that the
Red Cross and Red Crescent are permitted
to enter the city and treat casualties
and free those trapped in the rubble
as best they can.

I also feel with so many civilians
remaining in the city and so many air
strikes by powerful weapons,
the civilian casualties just must
be high whatever the military say.

Anyway interested what anyone else
here is thinking.

Robert

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

Hi Jon,

> I have the morning off, and I will call both of my representatives in
> the Senate, and I will mention friends from beyond our borders. I promise.

Thanks, let me know what they say. Hope the confusions and possible exaggarations
on some of those sites weren't a problem. The main thing is the call to make
it safe for the Red Crescent and Red Cross to free trapped civilians
and to tend the wounded, which applies whatever.

Maybe this is a fairly balanced independent news report:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3610537&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

Reason for thinking that is that it seems a normal type mainstream newspaper, and New Zealand has no
involvement in the war at all and has every reason to be friendly towards the UK and US.

Thanks,

Robert

Re: Fallujah

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Manuel Op de Coul <manuel.op.de.coul@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Jon Szanto <jonszanto@...>

🔗Kurt Bigler <kkb@...>

🔗Jon Szanto <jonszanto@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Jon Szanto <jonszanto@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>