Israeli Massacre: Falluja

Officers at Fallujah were trained in Israeli urban warfare tactics

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

BAGHDAD – The U.S. military has employed Israeli urban warfare tactics during the current invasion of the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

U.S. officials acknowledged that hundreds of officers have trained in Israel over the last two years in urban warfare and counter-insurgency. In September, scores of U.S. officers trained at the Adam urban warfare school northeast of Tel Aviv, a facility that contains a mock Arab village.

The U.S. officers trained in Israel relayed their expertise to the U.S. Army's Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, La. Over the last two years, the army center has increased the number of mock Arab villages from four to 18 and employed Arab speakers for urban warfare exercises.

A key Israeli lesson adopted by the U.S. military was the need to maintain surprise during an infantry advance in an Arab urban environment.

Officials said the Army and Marine Corps have employed tactics developed during the Israeli military invasion of West Bank cities in 2002.

They said the Israeli methods helped save soldiers and accelerate the advance through Fallujah.

"We have learned a lot regarding urban warfare tactics in the Middle East from our allies," an official said. "Yes, this includes Israel."

In the Fallujah operation, U.S. troops broke through walls of Iraqi homes to avoid exposure in the city's narrow alleys, believed to have been mined by insurgents.

Another Israeli lesson was the use of air platforms to target enemy combatants during street battles. In Fallujah, the United States has employed AC-130 gunships to target insurgents in downtown Fallujah. In the Gaza Strip, Israel has used the Apache AH-64A attack helicopter to strike insurgents and their vehicles.

On Wednesday, the U.S. military said it has captured 70 percent of Fallujah and killed about 80 insurgents. The military, reporting light casualties, said most of the fighting was taking place in the center of the city.

"The enemy is fighting hard but not to the death," Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the multinational ground force commander in Iraq, said in a Pentagon videoconference broadcast from Iraq. "There is not a sense that he is staying in particular places. He is continuing to fall back or he dies in those positions. I think we're looking at several more days of tough urban fighting."

Another Israeli tactic developed by the U.S. military in Fallujah was the use of a multi-pronged advance on insurgency strongholds in an urban area. Officials said the technique was employed in the Israeli ground offensive on the northern West Bank city of Nablus in April 2002. The U.S. force has also employed armored D-9 bulldozers to clear roads. Israel has provided the United States with 14 armored D-9 bulldozers for the war in Iraq.

Officials said Israel has also provided armor for Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, many of which have been deployed in Fallujah. They said Rafael, Israel Armament Development Authority has sold the reactive armor plates to the U.S. Army.

In Fallujah, the U.S. military also employed an Israeli method of clearing mines. The method called for a tank to fire a barrel of more than a ton of explosives and attached to a 200-meter cord.

The barrel explodes and sets off mines planted in either a field or street.

US claims militants are trapped as air strike hits clinic

11 November 2004

As heavy fighting continued in Fallujah yesterday, US forces claimed they had taken control of 70 per cent of the city and cornered insurgents in a narrow strip of land. But it was impossible to verify the US claims, and Iraqi journalists inside the city said they doubted US forces were in control of as much of the city as they claimed.

Twenty Iraqi doctors and dozens of civilians were killed in a US air strike that hit a clinic in Fallujah, according to an Iraqi doctor who said he survived the strike. There are fears that heavy civilian casualties could be damaging for US-led forces. The US military said it had killed 71 insurgents, and that 10 American soldiers and two members of the Iraqi security forces fighting alongside the Americans had been killed.

"In the early morning the US attacked the clinic, a place that we were using for treating the injured people in the city," Dr Sami al-Jumaili said, describing the air strike. "I really don't know if they want to tackle the insurgents or the innocent civilians from the city."

Witnesses described dead bodies lying in the streets of the Jumhuriya district, with hungry street dogs crowding around them. Reports from inside Fallujah said residents were fast running out of food. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to be still inside the city.

Al-Jazeera television, meanwhile, aired a videotape in which a militant group claimed to have captured 20 Iraqi soldiers during operations in Fallujah. Men wearing Iraqi uniforms were shown with their backs to the camera. A masked militant read a statement on the tape but the Qatar-based station did not broadcast the audio. The station said the militants promised not to kill the prisoners shown on the tape but would kill others captured in the future.

Further south, the Black Watch battle group had its heaviest day of action yesterday since their deployment in support of American troops, facing a series of intense attacks, and becoming engaged, for the first time, in prolonged firefights.

In the space of four hours a pilot was shot and critically injured by a sniper while flying his helicopter, a unit was ambushed and exchanged sustained mortar fire with insurgents, and the base itself, Camp Dogwood, twice came under rocket fire which injured a serviceman and damaged a helicopter.

Before yesterday the British force had already lost four dead and 12 injured. Further attacks had been expected, but mainly on the east bank of the Euphrates where they had extended their mission to intercept resistance fighters escaping from the American onslaught in Fallujah. Instead, the insurgents struck at the supposedly safer west side of the river, and the heart of the Black Watch operations, Camp Dogwood, using snipers, mortars and rockets.

The attack came on the day a group of militias threatened retribution against the US and its allies for the ongoing assault against the rebel stronghold, and showed what has been long believed - that large numbers of the resistance had slipped through the American cordon around Fallujah to regroup and launch attacks elsewhere.

The pilot of the Lynx helicopter was on a routine mission from Camp Dogwood to Baghdad when a bullet tore through the cockpit and hit him.The co-pilot managed to steady the spinning aircraft and headed back to base. The critically injured pilot was flown to Baghdad by an American Blackhawk helicopter from the Medivac unit at the airport.

The attack on the helicopter took place just after 11.20am. Four minutes later Royal Marine Commandos attached to the battle group, on patrol in Warrior armoured cars, came under mortar fire. The attack ceased after they returned fire, but the decision was taken not to find the insurgents due to the possibility of being drawn into another, closer range ambush.

Two hours and 27 minutes later, four rockets landed on Camp Dogwood. The first three exploded on the ground but the fourth hit the helicopter pad, damaging a helicopter and injuring a serviceman.

Two hours later another round of rockets caused more damage. One-third of the battle group had crossed the river, and the base was, at the time, carrying out an emergency exercise against a ground attack.

On Tuesday, British troops discovered 62 mortar rounds secreted near Camp Dogwood to be used, possibly, for attacks on the base. But there is full recognition that there are plenty more supplies as well as plenty more attacks to come.

Israel’s Battle in Fallujah

Rashid Khashana – Al-Hayat 22 Nov. 2004

It has become clear that Israel played a major role in the battle for Fallujah, despite the American concern to conceal this fact. What news leaked of officers, soldiers, and even rabbis of dual citizenships that took part in the battles, some of which were killed by the resistance's bullets, is only the tip of the iceberg. The killing of an Israeli officer in Fallujah exposed the existence of a large number officers, snipers, and paratroopers in Iraq. Based on Israeli press statistics, Israel currently has no fewer than 1,000 officers and soldiers scattered around the American units working in Iraq. In addition, 37 rabbis are operating within the American troops, which leads to believe that the real number is greater; since Ha'aretz admitted that others are concealing their Jewish identities, which makes them self-driven Israeli citizens. Currently, there is a recruitment campaign coinciding with the escalation of the operations in Iraq, which seeks to send further assistance there. Amongst these campaigns is the incitement of Rabbi Irving Elson in his latest speech given in New York to allocate further "Fighting Rabbis" and encourage them to enlist in the American forces, in addition to another rabbi's advisory stating that those killed in Fallujah are "martyrs."

America needs the Israelis' experience in gang wars in order to manage the battles in the Iraqi cities; given that two generations of its armed forces lack this experience since the end of the Vietnam War. However, the Israeli role is neither technical nor complementary to the American plan. Rather, it is part of the vision established by its military and political leadership prior to the launching of the war, which aims at annulling any regional role for Iraq and eliminating any threat it might cause to its future. The Israeli plan became clear due to various headlines, most prominent of which is dispatching Mossad operatives to establish offices and networks in the north, south, eliminate the Iraqi scientists and intensify the real estate purchase of property and land in the north; specifically in Arbil, Kirkuk and Mosul. This comes as a completion of the previous project, launched ten years prior to the fall of Baghdad, through Jewish Turks.

Israel encourages the Kurdish leaderships to decentralize from Baghdad in administering their regions but at the same time, it aims at having the Kurdish parties play a pivotal role in the post-war Iraq due to the historical relations that it had established with the Kurds. More likely, Israel has advanced in developing the plan announced previously by the minister of infrastructure Joseph Paritzky that aims at laying oil pipelines from Iraq to Israel passing through Jordan; since a Turkish security report recently published by Jumhuriyet confirmed Israel's attempts to activate the line towards Haifa as soon as possible. Based on this vision, the Israelis believe that the American forces are incapable of imposing security and stability in Iraq. This obliged the Israelis to develop their own channels with the local powers beginning at the fulcrum point in the north and advancing in the implementation plan, which they had prepared prior to the fall of the former regime. However, they are now avoiding a confrontation with Turkey, which is worried from their expansion in the north.

In this course, Israel incites the Iraqi Jews to the forefront in order to head the bridge of organizing the relations with the new government and specifically intensify the trade initiatives with Iraq through Jordan. It also wants it to have a word in Iraq's destiny through the indirect influence at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit, which infuriated both Syria and Turkey. The vast and unexpected expansion of the Israeli role in various fields in Iraq, confirms that Israel is the major beneficiary in the continuity of the war, same as it is the first beneficiary from the American escalation with Iran regarding its nuclear file. Iraq is not Russia, and Iran is not China, hence they cause no threat to the U.S., nevertheless, they both represent a threat to the Hebrew state. In conclusion, it is possible to say that the Likudniks, who control decision-making posts in America, are using Bush's campaign against terrorism as a cover-up to accomplish Israel's objectives in Iraq. Hence, the purpose of the Fallujah battle is to break the backbone of the resistance and pave the way for the completion of the Israeli plan.

Are Israeli Terror Cells--Informed by Franklin/AIPAC--Ambushing our Troops in Iraq?

Seymour Hersh recently said in a speech:

"We patrol, which is stupid to begin with. What good does that do? They go down roads, certain fixed roads, certain times, certain places, usually in groups of three, four, five Humvees, Bradley tanks, Strikers, other heavy vehicles. One gets blown up. The Americans start screaming in pain. The other vehicles stop, run out...and they shoot at anything that runs. And that's the war.

"In one case...digital pictures emailed me...soldiers ran out, saw some people running, opened up fire. It was a bunch of boys playing soccer...in the videos you see everybody standing around...the body parts, the legs and boots of the Americans pulling bodies together. Young kids, I don’t know how old, 13, 15, I guess. And then you see soldiers dropping R.P.G.'s, which are rocket-launched grenades around them. And then they're called in as an insurgent kill...I'm sure it's briefed. Everybody remembers how My Lai was briefed as a great victory, “128 Vietcong killed.”...I think it was another day in the war. And even to write about it in a professional way would name names..."

When the pattern is so predictable, why would Iraqis keep provoking massacres on their own children?

Catherine M. Hanna, an FBI counterespionage agent (a colleague of the assassinated Brad Doucette) stated in support of the arrest warrant that Larry Franklin gave the Israelis information relating to potential attacks on US forces in Iraq, information that "could be used" by a foreign country (Israel) "to injure the United States, jeopardizing the continued viability of sources and methods" of American military intelligence in Iraq.

The Israelis are thus capable of knowing in advance every move of the US forces in Iraq. They are capable of ambushing them at will and placing landmines on their routes. Would they do it?

It was the Israelis who kindled the fires of the Iraq war because they wanted Americans to kill Arabs. They would want to keep the war fires going, wouldn't they?

Think about it. In addition to some Iraqi resistance, maybe it is Israeli terror cells--well-informed by Franklin/AIPAC--who are ambushing our troops in Iraq, and causing the daily massacres mentioned by Hersh.

Hersh also says that the Iraqi resistance is begging to talk to the Americans. They don't want civilian massacres.

It is so predictable. Why would Iraqis blow up one American military vehicle when they are sure that the others will massacres their kids, wives and mothers in the next moment. It does not make sense.

It's a tactic the Israelis use all the time. They blow up something, they say the Palestinians did it, then they massacre Palestinians. Except here American soldiers are being played by Israeli puppetmasters

Of the MOSSAD, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act." [Washington Times September 10, 2001]

The Phony (Mossad)

Al Qaeda Cell in Palestine

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ... said that al-Qaeda militants were operating in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. "We know that they are there. We know that they are in Lebanon, working closely with Hezbollah. We know that they are in the region," he said. [BBC News - 12/5/2002] Does he mean these "al Qaeda militants" who were detained in December 2002? Mossad agents arrested by the PA for attempting to set up phony 'al Qaeda' cells in the Gaza Strip. The full story... larouchepub.com - Mossad Exposed in Phony 'Palestinian Al-Qaeda' Caper antiwar.com - By Way of Deception, by Justin Raimondo khilafah.com - PA uncovers Israelis posing as Al-Qaeda smh.com.au - Palestinians arrest al-Qaeda 'poseurs' Ha'Aretz - Ibrahim, the Shin Bet wants you to join Qaida!

How many phony 'al Qaeda' cells have Mossad agents successfully set up around the world?

See Also:

Israeli suspected to be a member of al-Qaeda arrested in the Philippines
Is 'Al Qaeda' the modern incarnation of 'Emmanuel Goldstein'?
A "Palestinian Terrorist" Wearing the Star of David
The 5 Dancing Israelis Arrested on 9/11

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1650005,00.html

Good fallujah articles

YIGAL SCHLEIFER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

ISTANBUL - The war in Iraq has ended, and the Kurds in the country's north emerge as one of the war's great victors, liberating themselves from Saddam Hussein's oppressive rule and declaring an independent state.

To the world's surprise, it turns out that one of the Kurds' top leaders is actually Jewish and that, as a result, the nascent Kurdish country will forge a close alliance with Israel, giving the Jewish state another toehold in the Middle East and access to the oil riches of the Iraqi north.

A far-fetched fantasy? Perhaps, but in the last few weeks, a scenario similar to that has been discussed in various articles in the mainstream press in Turkey, a country watching developments in northern Iraq with great worry.

Turkey has a Kurdish minority estimated at more than 10 million people and only a few years ago ended a decade-long battle with Kurdish separatists in the country's southeast that claimed some 30,000 lives. Turkish leaders fear that any move toward independence by Kurds in Iraq could lead to a revival of the separatist movement among Turkey's Kurds.

As a result, Turkey has been building up its military presence along the Iraqi border, ostensibly to stem a possible flood of refugees from Iraq - but also to pressure the Iraqi Kurds to stay quiet.

In the weeks leading up to the war, the Turkish press was filled with various articles reporting, mostly with suspicion, about the Iraqi Kurds' postwar plans.

A Feb. 17 article in the respected daily newspaper Hurriyet offered an interesting take on the situation: Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish De-mocratic Party, one of two political factions that control the autonomous Kurdish area of northern Iraq, is Jewish and comes from a long line of Kurdish rabbis, the article claimed.

The article was based on information taken from "The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews," a 1982 anthology that discusses a Kurdish rabbinic family named Barzani, and from work done by a Turkish researcher who found Ottoman documents that refer to a 19th-century Kurdish rabbi also named Barzani.

In the article, the researcher said Barzani's "Jewish roots" should lead to a different understanding of the region and its history, since the Hebrew Bible states that the Jewish "Promised Land" stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates, an area that would include Kurdish territory in northern Iraq.

A series of articles and columns in the Haber Turk newspaper, printed after the Hurriyet story ran, took things even further.

"Brothers, we should quit the stories of Mosul and Kirkuk belonging to us," said one column, referring to two oil-rich northern Iraqi cities that some Turks believe were unfairly taken from Turkey when the Ottoman Empire was divided up after World War I. "The real owners have started to come out. I am sure you understand who they are.

"Turkey, don't be asleep!" the column warned.

Yona Sabar, a Kurdish Jewish professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at UCLA and author of "The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews," said the articles are based on an inaccurate reading of Kurdish Jewish history.

According to Sabar, a 16th-century Kurdish rabbi named Shamuel Adoni also was given the name "Barzani" to signify that he came from the town of Barzan. He was followed by a string of well-known rabbis with the Barzani name, including Asenath Barzani, a woman who was ordained as a rabbi in the 17th century.

But Sabar said it is unlikely that Massoud Barzani is connected to that family.

The imaginary State of Kurdistan

Bush studies the Talmud

Thursday, May 12, 2005 ...Operation Matador

From an article (or here) by James Janega from Knight Ridder (which remains the only honest newspaper chain in the United States; my emphasis in bold):

"The Marines who swept into the Euphrates River town of Ubaydi confronted an enemy they had not expected to find - and one that attacked in surprising ways.

As they pushed from house to house in early fighting, trying to flush out the insurgents who had attacked their column with mortar fire, they ran into sandbagged emplacements behind garden walls. They found a house where insurgents were crouching in the basement, firing upwards through slits hacked at ankle height in the ground-floor walls, aiming at spots that the Marines' body armor did not cover.

The shock was that the enemy was not supposed to be in this town at all. Instead, American intelligence indicated that the insurgency had massed on the other side of the river. Marine commanders expressed surprise Monday not only at the insurgents' presence but also the extent of their preparations, as if they had expected the Marines to come."

How do the insurgents always know when the Americans will show up? How did they know just what hotel room to fire at when Wolfowitz was in Baghdad? How do they know exactly when and where to deploy their improvised explosive devices so they are in place just before the Americans drive by?

Larry Franklin talked to the AIPAC dudes almost two years ago. What's the one thing he could have told them two years ago which would be still grievously affecting the ability of the American army to deal with the insurgency in Iraq? The Israelis are able to assist the insurgents because they know the details of the Saddam-era and post-Saddam-era American counterintelligence operations in Iraq. As the spies for the insurgency are able to avoid the American counterintelligence assets in Iraq (and may have even 'turned' some of them), the Americans have no way to root out those who are gathering information on American plans. The agents of the insurgency are able to consistently spy on the American occupying army, and know what the Americans are going to do before most of the Americans know. This explains why the insurgents are clearly winning.

Why would supposed American ally Israel want to help the insurgency, or at least part of it? Based on the ideas of Oded Yinon, the plan is to break Iraq up into small, unthreatening mini-states. The Israelis are trying to start an Iraqi civil war. To this end, the Israelis are hoping to pin the Americans in Iraq for as long as possible in a vain attempt to prevent this war. The Americans will only pull out when civil war is inevitable, which will be another huge embarrassment for the Pentagon. On top of that, the slow American defeat in Iraq, based on the perfidity of the Israelis in supporting the insurgency and undermining American counterintelligence in Iraq, is gradually destroying the American military (although no one in the Bush Administration will admit it). This effort means the Israelis are effectively currently engaged in war operations against the United States. This undeclared war by the greatest ingrate in the world, Israel - hundreds of billions of dollars in aid from American taxpayers to Israel, and this is the thanks they get! - has made the paleocons furious, and explains why the neocons have been unable to stop the AIPAC investigation.

Zarqawi: Israelis in Fallujah
20/01/2005 16:29 - (SA)

Dubai - Al-Qaeda's Iraq frontman Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi claimed 800 Israeli soldiers as well as Jordanian troops took part in the US-led assault on Fallujah in November, according to an audiotape posted on the internet on Thursday.

"It is known that 800 Israeli soldiers ... participated in the battle; just like the participation by the Jordanian military, whose officers contributed to the planning and the military assault against the city," he said.

The authenticity of the 75-minute tape, posted on the first day of the Muslim holidays of Eid al-Adha, could not be verified.

US and Iraqi forces retook the rebel stronghold of Fallujah, west of the Iraqi capital, from insurgents in an all-out assault last November.

Iraq's most wanted man also claimed that Israeli soldiers in Fallujah "were accompanied by 18 rabbis, some of whom were killed, as newspapers and Israeli media announced".

"The battle of Fallujah removed the ugly mask of the doomed 'Rafidha' (a derogatory term for Muslim Shiites), whose hatred (for Sunnis) was manifested in this battle," Zarqawi said.

"They participated in the military campaign for the battle against Fallujah with the blessing of the imam of infidelity and apostasy, Sistani," he added, in reference to Iraqi Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

"They played a big role in the massacre, the looting, the sabotage and the spilling of innocent blood among children, women and the elderly," he added.

The speaker charged that Shiites "occupied (Sunni) mosques, sticking on their walls photos of their Satan, Sistani, and writing 'Today (we take) your territory, and tomorrow your honour' with hate".

"Ninety percent of the (Iraqi) national guard is composed of hateful Rafidha and 10% peshmerga (Kurdish fighters),"

Israeli Operatives Working
In Occupied Iraq

By Jon Elmer

08 July, 2004
The New Standard

Further evidence of the presence of Israeli operatives in Iraq arose this weekend when the general formerly in charge of the US-run Iraqi prison system, herself considered partly responsible for torture at Abu Ghraib and other prisons under her command, told the BBC that she met an Israeli interrogator working in a US-run "intelligence center" in Baghdad. Brigadier General Janet Karpinski told BBC Radio in an interview on Saturday that she met with a man who claimed to be Israeli and that he "did some of the interrogation" at the facility.

Karpinski is the highest-ranking official to confirm an Israeli presence in Iraq. As the head of the 800th Military Police Brigade, Karpinski was responsible for all of Iraq’s 17 US-run prison facilities. She was suspended in May for her role in the systemic torture carried out by personnel under her command in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.

Disclosures suggesting Israeli involvement in the ongoing occupation of Iraq are damaging to the US’s already meagre credibility in the Middle East. Anger toward Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, which the US has backed since 1967, as well as its own human rights abuses and reputation for torturing Arab prisoners, render suspicion of Israeli involvement in Iraq an explosive issue throughout much of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Kamal Muhammad, the manager of al-Aswar furniture shop in Baghdad gave a predictable reaction to the Jerusalem Post. "The Americans and the Israelis are one," he said. "They are the same enemy. Israel is just the baby of the US with the same policies."

In an interview last week with The Signal, a newspaper in Santa Clarita, California, Karpinski said she was "shocked" by the Israeli interrogator’s presence, and that the development struck her as "unusual."

But a mounting body of evidence indicates that the presence of Israeli operatives working in Iraq is not at all unusual.

New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh told the BBC that his sources -- which include high ranking Lebanese and Turkish officials -- confirm the presence of Israeli agents in Iraq. Hersh said it is his understanding that one of the Israeli aims was to gain access to detained members of the secret Iraqi intelligence unit who specialized in Israeli affairs, the BBC reports on its website.

In an article last month, Hersh quoted a senior CIA official and Israeli intelligence officer describing how agents of Israeli’s Mossad intelligence service were active in Iraq, while Israeli commandos were training militants in the Kurdish areas of Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Hersh found this information to be "widely known" in the US intelligence community.

A top US military official quoted in the Washington Post on Sunday denied claims of Israeli presence in Iraq, calling the story an "urban legend."

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom similarly dismissed Gen. Karpinski's claims as "completely baseless," telling Israel’s Army Radio: "We are not involved in any way in Iraq. We are not involved in training or in interrogations, or in anything else. The whole claim is preposterous."

The Foreign Minister’s assertion is contradicted by significant documentation of Israeli-American "strategic cooperation" with regard to intelligence sharing and training in Iraq.

A December article in the Guardian described how Israeli advisers are involved in training US special operations troops in counter-insurgency tactics to be used in Iraq. The operations being trained are said to include the use of assassination against resistance leaders. Quoting US intelligence and military sources, Guardian writer Julian Borger reported that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US Army Special Forces.

On that same day, the Associated Press ran a story under the headline "US employs Israeli tactics in Iraq," in which American and Israeli officials publicly noted "high-level meetings" and "strategic cooperation" between the two countries on the subject of operations in Iraq.

In a July letter in Army Magazine, Brigadier General Michael Vaneter, the deputy chief of staff at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, acknowledged that he had "recently travelled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counter-terrorist operations in urban areas."

In relation to the presence of Israeli interrogators and contractors working within US prisons in Iraq, the torture report by General Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq. A company at the center of the scandal, CACI International, which has extensive links to the IDF and Israeli military intelligence.

Israelis train American soldiers in 'Gaza-storming' methods
IAN BRUCE
The Herald, 18 November 2002

ISRAEL says it is playing a key, secret role in preparations for war against
Iraq by training US troops in urban combat techniques, stockpiling equipment
and supplies, and carrying out reconnaissance missions in Saddam Hussein's
backyard.

Some of the controversial support means US infantry are benefitting from
Israel's practical experience in storming the warrens of alleyways in
Palestinian refugee towns such as Jenin and Gaza last summer.

The incursions, made in response to suicide attacks on Israeli civilian
targets, were condemned internationally at the time.

The highly-sensitive support is designed to help shorten any conflict and
allow Israel to avoid direct involvement that might undermine already
lukewarm Arab regional support for American policy.

Army sources say two mock "cities" with mosques, washing lines festooned
with laundry and typical Arab houses with rooms leading off a central
corridor have been built to allow US soldiers to practice street fighting
Baghdad-style in realistic weather conditions.

Instructors from the IDF, the Israeli army, are teaching groups of US
infantry and marines to cope with built-up areas where every rooftop, cellar
and sewer poses a potential sniper threat.

The Israelis have also made six storage depots available for the stockpiling
of ammunition, fuel, rations and spare parts.

Israeli commandos from the elite Sayeret special forces have also conducted
close reconnaissance missions into western Iraq to identify and map
potential Scud missile launch sites in the desert bordering Jordan.

They found concrete pads prepared to allow mobile missile launchers to
deploy from the desolate area away from well-known Iraqi air defence
complexes. All were within range of Israeli cities. The Pentagon has
promised to send in its Delta Force teams to eliminate the missile threat.

An IDF source said: "The Americans asked us to maintain a low profile for
obvious reasons. Saddam's missiles, possibly tipped with chemical or
biological warheads, are a major threat to our cities."

Published on Sunday, December 7, 2003 by the New York Times

Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns

by Dexter Wilkins

ABU HISHMA, Iraq, Dec. 6 — As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire. An Iraqi man named Tariq muttered in anger "I see no difference between us and the Palestinians," he said. "We didn't expect anything like this after Saddam fell." The practice of destroying buildings where Iraqi insurgents are suspected of planning or mounting attacks has been used for decades by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli Army has also imprisoned the relatives of suspected terrorists, in the hopes of pressing the suspects to surrender. The Israeli military has also cordoned off villages and towns thought to be hotbeds of guerrilla activity, in an effort to control the flow of people moving in and out. In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in. The Americans embarked on their get-tough strategy in early November, goaded by what proved to be the deadliest month yet for American forces in Iraq, with 81 soldiers killed by hostile fire. The response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the occupied territories. So far, the new approach appears to be succeeding in diminishing the threat to American soldiers. But it appears to be coming at the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win over. Abu Hishma is quiet now, but it is angry, too. In Abu Hishma, encased in a razor-wire fence after repeated attacks on American troops, Iraqi civilians line up to go in and out, filing through an American-guarded checkpoint, each carrying an identification card printed in English only. "If you have one of these cards, you can come and go," coaxed Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander whose men oversee the village, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "If you don't have one of these cards, you can't." The Iraqis nodded and edged their cars through the line. Over to one side, an Iraqi man named Tariq muttered in anger. "I see no difference between us and the Palestinians," he said. "We didn't expect anything like this after Saddam fell." The practice of destroying buildings where Iraqi insurgents are suspected of planning or mounting attacks has been used for decades by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli Army has also imprisoned the relatives of suspected terrorists, in the hopes of pressing the suspects to surrender. The Israeli military has also cordoned off villages and towns thought to be hotbeds of guerrilla activity, in an effort to control the flow of people moving in and out. American officials say they are not purposefully mimicking Israeli tactics, but they acknowledge that they have studied closely the Israeli experience in urban fighting. Ahead of the war, Israeli defense experts briefed American commanders on their experience in guerrilla and urban warfare. The Americans say there are no Israeli military advisers helping the Americans in Iraq. Writing in the July issue of Army magazine, an American brigadier general said American officers had recently traveled to Israel to hear about lessons learned from recent fighting there. "Experience continues to teach us many lessons, and we continue to evaluate and address those lessons, embedding and incorporating them appropriately into our concepts, doctrine and training," Brig. Gen. Michael A. Vane wrote. "For example, we recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas." General Vane is deputy chief of staff for doctrine concepts and strategy, at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. American officers here say their new hard-nosed approach reflects a more realistic appreciation of the military and political realities faced by soldiers in the so-called Sunni triangle, the area north and west of Baghdad that is generating the most violence against the Americans. Underlying the new strategy, the Americans say, is the conviction that only a tougher approach will quell the insurgency and that the new strategy must punish not only the guerrillas but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating. "You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face." Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military commander in Iraq, announced the get-tough strategy in early November. After the announcement, some American officers warned that the scenes that would follow would not be pretty. Speaking today in Baghdad, General Sanchez said attacks on allied forces or gunfights with adversaries across Iraq had dropped to under 20 a day from 40 a day two weeks ago. "We've considerably pushed back the numbers of engagements against coalition forces," he said. "We've been hitting back pretty hard. We've forced them to slow down the pace of their operations." In that way, the new American approach seems to share the successes of the Israeli military, at least in the short term; Israeli officers contend that their strategy regularly stops catastrophes like suicide bombings from taking place. "If you do nothing, they will just get stronger," said Martin van Creveld, professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He briefed American marines on Israeli tactics in urban warfare in September. The problems in Abu Hishma, a town of 7,000, began in October, when the American military across the Sunni triangle decided to ease off on their military operations to coincide with the onset of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In Abu Hishma, as in other towns, the backing off by the Americans was not reciprocated by the insurgents. American troops regularly came under mortar fire, often traced to the surrounding orchards. Meanwhile, the number of bombs planted on nearby roads rose sharply. Army convoys regularly took fire from a house a few miles away from the village. The last straw for the Americans came on Nov. 17, when a group of guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the front of a Bradley armored personnel carrier. The grenade, with an armored piercing tip, punched through the Bradley's shell and killed Staff Sgt. Dale Panchot, one of its crewmen. The grenade went straight into the sergeant's chest. With the Bradley still smoldering, the soldiers of the First Battalion, Eighth Infantry, part of the Fourth Infantry Division, surrounded Abu Hishma and searched for the guerrillas. Soldiers began encasing the town in razor wire. The next day, an American jet dropped a 500-bomb on the house that had been used to attack them. The Americans arrested eight sheiks, the mayor, the police chief and most members of the city council. "We really hammered the place," Maj. Darron Wright said. With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them. US Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman Two and a half weeks later, the town of Abu Hishma is enclosed in a barbed-wire fence that stretches for five miles. Men ages 18 to 65 have been ordered to get identification cards. There is only way into the town and one way out. "This fence is here for your protection," reads the sign posted in front of the barbed-wire fence. "Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot." American forces have used the tactic in other cities, including Awja, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. American forces also sealed off three towns in western Iraq for several days. "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," Colonel Sassaman said. The bombing of the house, about a mile outside the barbed wire, is another tactic that echoes those of the Israeli Army. In Iraq, the Americans have bulldozed, bombed or otherwise rendered useless a number of buildings which they determined were harboring guerrillas. In Tikrit, residents pointed out a home they said had been bulldozed by American tanks. The occupants had already left, they said. "I watched the Americans flatten that house," said Abdullah al-Ajili, who lives down the road. American officers acknowledge that they have destroyed buildings around Tikrit. In a recent news conference, General Sanchez explained the strategy but ignored a question about parallels to the Israeli experience. "Well, I guess what we need to do is go back to the laws of war and the Geneva Convention and all of those issues that define when a structure ceases to be what it is claimed to be and becomes a military target," General Sanchez said. "We've got to remember that we're in a low-intensity conflict where the laws of war still apply." In Abu Hishma, residents complain that the village is locked down for 15 hours a day, meaning that they are unable to go to the mosque for morning and evening prayers. They say the curfew does not allow them time to stand in the daylong lines for gasoline and get home before the gate closes for the night. But mostly, it is a loss of dignity that the villagers talk about. For each identification card, every Iraqi man is assigned a number, which he must hold up when he poses for his mug shot. The card identifies his age and type of car. It is all in English. "This is absolutely humiliating," said Yasin Mustafa, a 39-year-old primary school teacher. "We are like birds in a cage." Colonel Sassaman said he would maintain the wire enclosure until the villagers turned over the six men who killed Sergeant Panchot, though he acknowledged they may have slipped far away. Colonel Sassaman is feared by many of Abu Hishma's villagers, who hold him responsible for the searches and razor wire around the town. But some said they understood what a difficult job he had, trying to pick out a few bad men from a village of 7,000 people. "Colonel Sassaman, you should come and live in this village and be a sheik," Hassan Ali al-Tai told the colonel outside the checkpoint. The colonel smiled, and Mr. Tai turned to another visitor. "Colonel Sassaman is a very good man," he said. "If he got rid of the barbed wire and the checkpoint, everyone would love him." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

ISTANBUL -- The war in Iraq has ended, and the Kurds in the country's north emerge as one of the war's great victors, liberating themselves from Saddam Hussein's oppressive rule and declaring an independent state.

To the world's surprise, it turns out that one of the Kurds' top leaders is actually Jewish and that, as a result, the nascent Kurdish country will forge a close alliance with Israel, giving the Jewish state another toehold in the Middle East and access to the oil riches of the Iraqi north.

A far-fetched fantasy? Perhaps, but in the last few weeks, a similar scenario similar has been discussed in various articles in the mainstream press in Turkey, a country watching developments in northern Iraq with great worry.

Turkey, which has a close strategic relationship with Israel, has a Kurdish minority estimated at more than 10 million and only a few years ago ended a decade's battle with Kurdish separatists in the country's southeast that claimed some 30,000 lives.

Turkish leaders fear that any move toward independence by Kurds in Iraq could lead to a revival of the separatist movement among Turkey's Kurds.

As a result, Turkey has been building up its military presence along the Iraqi border, ostensibly to stem a possible flood of refugees from Iraq -- but also to pressure the Iraqi Kurds to stay quiet.

In the weeks leading up to the war, the Turkish press was filled with various articles reporting, mostly with suspicion, about the Iraqi Kurds' postwar plans.

A Feb. 17 article in the respected daily newspaper Hurriyet offered an interesting take on the situation: Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of two political factions that control the autonomous Kurdish area of northern Iraq, is Jewish and comes from a long line of Kurdish rabbis, the article claimed.

The article was based on information taken from "The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews," a 1982 anthology that discusses a Kurdish rabbinic family named Barzani, and from work done by a Turkish researcher who found Ottoman documents that refer to a 19th-century Kurdish rabbi also named Barzani.

In the article, the researcher -- a history instructor named Ahmet Ucar -- said Barzani's "Jewish roots" should lead to a different understanding of the region and its history, since the Hebrew Bible states that the Jewish "Promised Land" stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates, an area that would include Kurdish territory in northern Iraq.

A series of articles and columns in the Haber Turk newspaper, printed after the Hurriyet story ran, took things even further.

"Brothers, we should quit the stories of Mosul and Kirkuk belonging to us," said one column, referring to two oil-rich northern Iraqi cities that some Turks believe were unfairly taken from Turkey when the Ottoman Empire was divided up after World War I. "The real owners have started to come out. I am sure you understand who they are.

"Turkey, don't be asleep!" the column warned.

Yona Sabar, a Kurdish Jewish professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at UCLA and author of "The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews," said the articles are based on an inaccurate reading of Kurdish Jewish history.

According to Sabar, a 16th-century Kurdish rabbi named Shamuel Adoni also was given the name Barzani to signify that he came from the town of Barzan. He was followed by a string of well-known rabbis with the Barzani name, including Asenath Barzani, a woman who was ordained as a rabbi in the 17th century.

But Sabar said it is unlikely that Massoud Barzani is connected to that family.

"Barzan is a very well-known Kurdish tribe, and the Jews who lived in that area were very few," he said.

The Kurdish Jewish population in Iraq, Iran and Turkey probably reached 25,000 at its peak, though almost the entire community left for the Jewish state soon after Israel's 1948 War of Independence. There is no discernible Jewish community left in the area today.

Rifat Bali, a Jewish historian in Istanbul, said the Barzani story is part of a larger theory circulating for the past few years that has particularly strong popular support in Turkey's conservative nationalist and Islamist circles.

"Islamists here always say that Israel has a Kurdish card it wants to play -- that it has good relations with the Kurds and it wants to create a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates, and that includes the Kurdish area," Bali said.

"It's fueled, first of all, by the obsession that Jews are behind everything, and that they use in front of them a crypto-Jew," Bali said. "There is also a Turkish fear that the world is looking from the outside and trying to divide Turkey up."

Indeed, a book titled "Israel's Kurdish Card,'' which describes the possibility of Israel expanding its borders through an alliance with the Kurds, has been sold in Turkey for the last few years.

For more JTA stories, go to http://www.jta.org

This is your last chance, Fallujah rebels are told as US prepares ground attack
By Toby Harnden in Ramadi
(Filed: 29/10/2004)

Iraq's government yesterday offered the leaders of rebel-held Fallujah a "last" chance to negotiate as an American military commander described the city as a cancer that had to be dealt with.

Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, indicated that time was fast running out for those who were harbouring insurgents there.

"This chance could be the last," he said in a statement, imploring "the leaders and notables of Fallujah to use it to find a political solution".

But with military preparations at an advanced stage and American officials suggesting a major offensive could begin next week, there appeared little hope of a deal.

"Fallujah is a cancer," said Maj Gen Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, who would lead any ground attack. "We can't have a sanctuary for the enemy and expect to make progress."

He said he had received no request from the Iraqi government to carry out military operations and offered no opinion on whether a peaceful solution was possible. "I don't know who they're negotiating with."

But he made clear that his men were ready for action in Fallujah. "It's a rats' nest but if we have to go in and clear it out we will." He urged the foreign elements in Fallujah and those loyal to Saddam Hussein's regime to come out and fight.

"We can take these guys on if they show their faces. Not a problem whatsoever. That's why they've resorted to the tactics they have [suicide bombings and landmines] because they know every time we face them we kill them."

Speaking in his headquarters at Ramadi, 30 miles west of Fallujah, he said the insurgents appeared to be preparing for battle. "There's some indications they are fortifying." Intelligence reports have suggested that elaborate booby traps have been laid.

In recent weeks, fighting has intensified in Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province. At least two Iraqis were killed and eight wounded in clashes in the city yesterday.

But Maj Gen Natonski said: "Ramadi's not going to fall. We don't have to worry about that. We've had some tough fights here, especially lately, but we've taken the fight to the enemy."

Violence has surged in Iraq in the past few months and during the holy month of Ramadan, which ends in just over two weeks. Yesterday, two American soldiers were killed in rocket and bomb blasts.

A group calling itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna issued a statement saying it had killed 11 kidnapped members of the Iraqi National Guard, beheading one and shooting the other 10.

At the weekend, at least 49 members of the new Iraqi army were summarily executed by the side of a remote road after being ambushed.

In signs of tensions between the Iraqi government and the United States, Mr Allawi accused the Americans of negligence in failing to protect the soldiers.

After his comments were reported, aides sought to play them down, emphasising that Mr Allawi would await the outcome of an investigation into the atrocity, which appeared to have been carried out with inside information.

But Maj Gen Natonski said American and Iraqi forces would fight side by side if there was a battle for Fallujah, and there was no doubt who would win.

28 October 2004: Troops head for danger zone

Interrogation room has brains all over the walls

The real truth The Iraqi " Interrogators " were civilians trained in Israel. They were SLA personnel that ran the Khiam prison for Israel where Palestinians were sent.

Two American companies acted as cover

CACI is controlled by the Herb Karr and Harry Markowitz family. Run by a Jack London an honored Israelite. Titan is the Jewish Edward H. Bersoff who is a celebrity is Israel Job offers Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Central Command, said there were 37 contract interrogators used in Abu Ghraib. The two named contractors, CACI and Titan, have close ties to the Israeli military and technology communities. Source

Khiam prison provided the experts

	History of Khiam Israel ran the prison using the militia they had created from the Maronite Christian community - the SLA. The SLA provided Khiams guards and interrogators whilst Israelis trained the torturers and lead the torture sessions. They paid the salaries and provided all the equipment. --- Khiam Prison
General Lahad
	This piece of sh*it ran Khiam prison in So Lebanon untill the jews pulled out. He is a multi millionaire living in Paris.
5/ 2 / 2000 ....SLA retreats from Lebanon
	Israel decided to pull out of Lebanon and the SLA knew they would be mince meat. On May 23, 2000 the Hizballah approached and the 2500 guards at Khiam fled. Later a total of 6000 ( guards and their families fled to Israel )
	A picture of an proud Israeli interrogator at the prison

WND Article

SLA Article

Lahad

Israeli interogators

ww

US snipers in Falluja shoot unarmed man in the back, old woman with white flag, children fleeing their homes and the ambulance that we were going in to fetch a woman in premature labour.

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway east to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that’s not burnt, stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of people and a few possessions, heading the other way, past the improvised refreshment posts along the way where boys throw food through the windows into the bus for us and for the people inside still inside Falluja.

Screaming women come in, praying, slapping their chests and faces. Ummi, my mother, one cries. I hold her until Maki, a consultant and acting director of the clinic, brings me to the bed where a child of about ten is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in the next bed. A US sniper hit them and their grandmother as they left their home to flee Falluja.

Lawyer decries alleged Israeli involvement in Iraq

(Al-Mashriq) – Iraqi Lawyers’ Union leader Kamal Hamdoon said “The American authorities of occupation are planning to make some Israelis participate in voting in the forthcoming elections in Iraq under the pretext that they are of Iraqi origins.” He added that “insistence of the occupation authorities and the Iraqi government to open the door for participation of Iraqis abroad in elections aims at covering the large boycott inside [the country] and allowing Israelis to participate.” Hamdoon also said, “Opening the door for Iraqis abroad to vote will open the door largely for forgery to serve the Iraqi government list supported by the occupation”. The Lawyers’ Union is sure Israeli snipers participated in the battle over Fallujah because Iraqi media outlets published photographs of Israeli dead in coffins wrapped with the Israeli flag.

The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local sheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin and has cleared this with them. The reason I’m on the bus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my door at about 11 at night telling me things were desperate in Falluja, he’d been bringing out children with their limbs blown off, the US soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were being stopped at the US military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down.

He said aid vehicles and the media were being turned away. He said there was some medical aid that needed to go in and there was a better chance of it getting there with foreigners, westerners, to get through the american checkpoints. The rest of the way was secured with the armed groups who control the roads we’d travel on. We’d take in the medical supplies, see what else we could do to help and then use the bus to bring out people who needed to leave.

I’ll spare you the whole decision making process, all the questions we all asked ourselves and each other, and you can spare me the accusations of madness, but what it came down to was this: if I don’t do it, who will? Either way, we arrive in one piece.

We pile the stuff in the corridor and the boxes are torn open straightaway, the blankets most welcomed. It’s not a hospital at all but a clinic, a private doctor’s surgery treating people free since air strikes destroyed the town’s main hospital. Another has been improvised in a car garage. There’s no anaesthetic. The blood bags are in a drinks fridge and the doctors warm them up under the hot tap in an unhygienic toilet.



The lights go out, the fan stops and in the sudden quiet someone holds up the flame of a cigarette lighter for the doctor to carry on operating by. The electricity to the town has been cut off for days and when the generator runs out of petrol they just have to manage till it comes back on. Dave quickly donates his torch. The children are not going to live.

“Come,” says Maki and ushers me alone into a room where an old woman has just had an abdominal bullet wound stitched up. Another in her leg is being dressed, the bed under her foot soaked with blood, a white flag still clutched in her hand and the same story: I was leaving my home to go to Baghdad when I was hit by a US sniper. Some of the town is held by US marines, other parts by the local fighters. Their homes are in the US controlled area and they are adamant that the snipers were US marines.

Snipers are causing not just carnage but also the paralysis of the ambulance and evacuation services. The biggest hospital after the main one was bombed is in US territory and cut off from the clinic by snipers. The ambulance has been repaired four times after bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streets because no one can go to collect them without being shot.

Some said we were mad to come to Iraq; quite a few said we were completely insane to come to Falluja and now there are people telling me that getting in the back of the pick up to go past the snipers and get sick and injured people is the craziest thing they’ve ever seen. I know, though, that if we don’t, no one will.

He’s holding a white flag with a red crescent on; I don’t know his name. The men we pass wave us on when the driver explains where we’re going. The silence is ferocious in the no man’s land between the pick up at the edge of the Mujahedin territory, which has just gone from our sight around the last corner and the marines’ line beyond the next wall; no birds, no music, no indication that anyone is still living until a gate opens opposite and a woman comes out, points.

We edge along to the hole in the wall where we can see the car, spent mortar shells around it. The feet are visible, crossed, in the gutter. I think he’s dead already. The snipers are visible too, two of them on the corner of the building. As yet I think they can’t see us so we need to let them know we’re there.

“Hello,” I bellow at the top of my voice. “Can you hear me?” They must. They’re about 30 metres from us, maybe less, and it’s so still you could hear the flies buzzing at fifty paces. I repeat myself a few times, still without reply, so decide to explain myself a bit more.

“We are a medical team. We want to remove this wounded man. Is it OK for us to come out and get him? Can you give us a signal that it’s OK?”

I’m sure they can hear me but they’re still not responding. Maybe they didn’t understand it all, so I say the same again. Dave yells too in his US accent. I yell again. Finally I think I hear a shout back. Not sure, I call again.

“Hello.”

“Yeah.”

“Can we come out and get him?”

“Yeah,”

Slowly, our hands up, we go out. The black cloud that rises to greet us carries with it a hot, sour smell. Solidified, his legs are heavy. I leave them to Rana and Dave, our guide lifting under his hips. The Kalashnikov is attached by sticky blood to is hair and hand and we don’t want it with us so I put my foot on it as I pick up his shoulders and his blood falls out through the hole in his back. We heave him into the pick up as best we can and try to outrun the flies.

I suppose he was wearing flip flops because he’s barefoot now, no more than 20 years old, in imitation Nike pants and a blue and black striped football shirt with a big 28 on the back. As the orderlies form the clinic pull the young fighter off the pick up, yellow fluid pours from his mouth and they flip him over, face up, the way into the clinic clearing in front of them, straight up the ramp into the makeshift morgue.

We wash the blood off our hands and get in the ambulance. There are people trapped in the other hospital who need to go to Baghdad. Siren screaming, lights flashing, we huddle on the floor of the ambulance, passports and ID cards held out the windows. We pack it with people, one with his chest taped together and a drip, one on a stretcher, legs jerking violently so I have to hold them down as we wheel him out, lifting him over steps.

The hospital is better able to treat them than the clinic but hasn’t got enough of anything to sort them out properly and the only way to get them to Baghdad on our bus, which means they have to go to the clinic. We’re crammed on the floor of the ambulance in case it’s shot at. Nisareen, a woman doctor about my age, can’t stop a few tears once we’re out.

Marines ambush ambulances

The doctor rushes out to meet me: “Can you go to fetch a lady, she is pregnant and she is delivering the baby too soon?”

Azzam is driving, Ahmed in the middle directing him and me by the window, the visible foreigner, the passport. Something scatters across my hand, simultaneous with the crashing of a bullet through the ambulance, some plastic part dislodged, flying through the window.

We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings. Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the window, past my head. Some, it’s hard to tell, are hitting the ambulance I start singing. What else do you do when someone’s shooting at you? A tyre bursts with an enormous noise and a jerk of the vehicle.

I’m outraged. We’re trying to get to a woman who’s giving birth without any medical attention, without electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you’re shooting at us. How dare you?

How dare you?

Azzam grabs the gear stick and gets the ambulance into reverse, another tyre bursting as we go over the ridge in the centre of the road , the sots still coming as we flee around the corner. I carry on singing. The wheels are scraping, burst rubber burning on the road.

The men run for a stretcher as we arrive and I shake my head. They spot the new bullet holes and run to see if we’re OK. Is there any other way to get to her, I want to know. La, maaku tarieq. There is no other way. They say we did the right thing. They say they’ve fixed the ambulance four times already and they’ll fix it again but the radiator’s gone and the wheels are buckled and se’s still at home in the dark giving birth alone. I let her down.

We can’t go out again. For one thing there’s no ambulance and besides it’s dark now and that means our foreign faces can’t protect the people who go out with us or the people we pick up. Maki is the acting director of the place. He says he hated Saddam but now he hates the Americans more.

We take off the blue gowns as the sky starts exploding somewhere beyond the building opposite. Minutes later a car roars up to the clinic. I can hear him screaming before I can see that there’s no skin left on his body. He’s burnt from head to foot. For sure there’s nothing they can do. He’ll die of dehydration within a few days.

Another man is pulled from the car onto a stretcher. Cluster bombs, they say, although it’s not clear whether they mean one or both of them. We set off walking to Mr Yasser’s house, waiting at each corner for someone to check the street before we cross. A ball of fire falls from a plane, splits into smaller balls of bright white lights. I think they’re cluster bombs, because cluster bombs are in the front of my mind, but they vanish, just magnesium flares, incredibly bright but short-lived, giving a flash picture of the town from above.