...of MASS US CASUALTIES IN IRAQ.
www.globalresearch.ca
Centre for Research on Globalisation
Assassination of Reuters Cameraman, who had uncovered evidence of Mass US Casualties in Iraq
Recipe for Terror
by Felicity Arbuthnot
Common Dreams, 20 November 2003
www.globalresearch.ca 27 November 2003
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ARB311A.html "...With the death toll of US soldiers having exceeded, in just seven months, that of the first three years of Vietnam it is worth asking if even these figures are the full truth. Many of those who have joined the military in Iraq, do not hold American passports, but were, broadly, promised that they would be given them on return, for their efforts against the 'war on terrorism'. According to Dr Rokke, should they die, their deaths are not factored in to 'U.S.' casualties. Further, Mazen Dana, the Award winning Reuters camera man, shot dead by US troops whilst filming outside Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison in August - with full permission and press accreditation from the US Authorities in Baghdad - told his brother Nazmi, a chilling tale days before he died.
"Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by U.S. troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks," Nazmi said. "He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his finding."
"All international and local news agencies sent cables of condolences to his family, lauding his ...... determination to uncover the truth wherever it was", recorded veteran Middle East correspondent Awed Al Ragoub. Truth is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to record in Iraq. Last week, reported the Boston Globe, thirty major news gathering outlets wrote to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film. The circumstances of the death of ITN's Terry Lloyd and disappearance of his colleagues is still obscured by the US Administration as has been the US tank attack on the Palestine Hotel with deaths of three journalists. Journalists' protection, under the Geneva Convention is absolute.
Iraq is now a vast Guantanamo Bay, with the disappeared unaccounted for, which was why Mazen Dana was filming outside Abu Ghraib. Even prisoners under Saddam, were more accounted for. The full number of both prison camps and prisoners are simply unknown. With the bombing of the Red Cross building in Baghdad and resultant pull out of staff, the last shred of accountability for the detained has been removed. The Red Cross is enshrined in the Geneva Convention as the neutral body who can interview and account for prisoners in war, held as hostage or in conflict zones. The tragedy of the Red Cross attack had a coincidental convenience for a U.S. human rights time bomb. The Geneva Convention also has emotive words regarding environmental destruction. Viet Nam with Agent Orange, torching of villages, rapes and even the decapitation of a baby by a US soldier to steal her necklace, has been recently chillingly revisited by a stunning, painstaking two year investigation by journalists at the extraordinarily committed but relatively small town Toledo Blade newspaper..."
According to the narrator, it is possible Dana was killed because he had found out that a recent 'mortar' attack on the prison did not happen. He believed that something had happened inside the prison and then the occupation forces targeted the prisoners while they were in their tents. If this is true, not only did US troops murder Dana, they also murdered in cold blood, Iraqi prisoners.
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/mazen_dana.mpg more
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1777420
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
