700 families in Samarra driven from their homes...no aid available yet.

[madfloridian]

I gather this happened to more families when we bombed the hell out of Fallujah.
They had to run from their cities into the desert just like the people in Samarra.
What are we doing? We just keep on running people out of their cities with no aid available.

What are we doing? I believe someday people will have to held to account for this invasion. We may never leave, but there will be no victory there.


http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/633fb060ca280e5379fc5d914e5471ce.htm

BAGHDAD, 19 March (IRIN) - Hundreds of families have fled the city of Samarra, some 120 km northwest of the capital, Baghdad, after US coalition and Iraqi forces launched the biggest air offensive in the country since 2003.

"We have sent volunteers from the disaster department to monitor the situation and we are preparing ourselves for an emergency," said Ferdous al-Abadi, spokesperson for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) in Baghdad.

IRCS volunteers working in the Salahuddine governorate, where Samarra is located, said more than 700 families had left the city and no one had received aid so far.

"We have informed the IRCS's office in the capital about the critical situation and they are going to send a convoy to the area. The main requirements are blankets, tents, food supplies, potable water and medicine," explained Ahmed Tikrit, a volunteer for the IRCS and resident of Samarra.

This paragraph stuck with me. This is my country doing this in my name, with the support of many in my party. I am angry, and I am very bitter.

"When they started to hit our city I didn't take anything. I just took my family and ran like hell. We don't have anything to eat or wear," urged Barakat Muhammad, a resident and father of five in Samarra."

But it gets worse:

""We have run out of supplies and if the operation continues we need urgent surgical materials and pain killers to offer treatment to the innocent victims," Dr Ibraheem Mahmoud, of the emergency department at the local hospital in Samarra, said."

[skooooo]

1. Remember at the beginning of the war...

..there was talk of mass refugee numbers? That's what everyone was REALLY afraid of. When it didn't happen, Bush was given credit for being successful.

[madfloridian]

4. Fallujah was a city of a quarter million, or half a million.

Do you remember how many were driven out? I remember reading on the Iraqi blogs and some websites that there were many more.

I just did a search, and I can not believe that nothing much showed up. Mostly propaganda about rebuilding.

[cantstandbush]

2. The Iraqis will soon come together to fight the US. They will soon lay

aside their sectarian differences to unify and fight the US. If they don't they will lose their country forever.

[allalone]

3. no aid yet in most of LA either

[madfloridian]

5. Because we are spending money running Iraqis from their homes.

So we don't have any money to spend here, and knowing this bunch they would not bother anyway.

[madfloridian]

6. In memory of Iraqis who have died in Iraq...known ones that is.

The Independent UK has been keeping a list of over 3000. These appear to be part of the innocents.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article352384.ece

In memory of those who have died in Iraq
No official organisation has collated the Iraqi dead. Here we list the 3,000 people known to have died - just one tenth of the most conservative estimates
Published: 20 March 2006

The list is quite long. I almost hope we never really get a complete count, as I am not sure our minds would accept it. Yet both parties voted for this invasion.

Take time to read some of the list.

"ATWAR BAHJAT

"A prominent Iraqi journalist born of a Shia-Sunni mixed marriage, she was murdered along with two colleagues as they reported on the destruction of the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra in February. "She never talked about Kurds, Shias and Sunnis," said a colleague. "She always talked about Iraqis."

More about Atwar in this article in the Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002874782_iraqjournalist19.html

A light fades over Samarra

BAGHDAD, Iraq — As the light faded from the wintry sky over Samarra that day, Atwar Bahjat looked into the camera with a somber face and implored her country to stay calm.

"Whether you are Sunni or Shia, Arab or Kurd, there is no difference between Iraqis," said the Iraqi war correspondent. " united in fear for this nation."

There was every reason to be afraid. They were coming for her already.

The gunmen arrived in a pickup truck, hunting for Bahjat and her crew from satellite news channel Al-Arabiya. They seized Bahjat, her cameraman and her engineer. Their bodies were discovered the next morning laced with bullets, dumped in the dirt on the outskirts of Samarra."

[madfloridian]

7. Something smells fishy here. The Time article sounds misleading.

The article I posted above from Reuters with quotes from the Red Cross sounds more convincing. We must be bombing the city, yet the Time article does not mention that.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1174448,00.html

"With the Interior Ministry's Samarra commando battalion, the soldiers had found some 300 individual pieces of weaponry like mortars, rockets and plastic explosives in six different locations inside the sparsely populated farming community of over 50 square miles and about 1,500 residents. The raids also uncovered high-powered cordless telephones used as detonators in homemade bombs, medical supplies and insurgent training manuals.

Before loading up into the helicopters for a return trip to Baghdad, Iraqi and American soldiers and some reporters helped themselves to the woman’s freshly baked bread, tearing bits off and chewing it as they wandered among the cows. For most of them, it was the only thing worthwhile they’d found all day. "

This sounds like propaganda to me.