Atrocities ... ... .. be a long summer. We're almost at its midpoint, but it seems as if the days were just crawling slowly. It is a combination of heat, flies, the hours and hours without electricity and the corpses which keep appearing everywhere.
one day before yesterday was catastrophic. It began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen entered cars in the morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in homes. They began pulling people into the street and checking their identity cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then took the Sunnis and killed some were executed there. The media is playing it down and talk about 37 dead but the locals said that the number is closer to 60
The most horrible massacres is that the area had been isolated for nearly two weeks by forces Interior Ministry security and Americans. Last week a car bomb was placed outside a mosque "Sunni" visited by people from the area. The night before the slaughter, a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite Husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for people in the area. Nobody knows for sure why Americans and the troops of the Ministry of Interior did not respond immediately. They stayed there for about sitting on the edge of the area and let the slaughter happen.
At about two o'clock in the afternoon, we received terrible news. We lost a friend in the killings. T. was a 26 year old engineer working with a group of friends in a consulting office in Jadriya. The last time I saw him was a week ago. Had come to our house to tell us that his sister had promised and had brought some pictures of the last project I was working half-collapsed school building outside of Baghdad.
usually left his house 7 in the morning to avoid traffic jams and heat. Yesterday, he decided to stay home because he had promised his mother he would bring Abu Kamal to fix the generator that had stopped suddenly at his home last night. His parents say that T. was leaving the area on foot when the attack occurred and was shot twice in the head. His brother could only identify him by the shirt he wore short sleeve stained with blood.
The people of the area is at home and no one dares to enter, so do not even begun ahn wakes for people who have been massacred. I have not seen his family and I'm not sure you have the courage or energy give my condolences. I feel like I've said the traditional words of condolences a thousand times in the past few months, "baqiya ib il akhira ahzan hayatkum ... ..." or "Let this be the last of your sorrows" It's just empty words because as we know that in today's Iraq, any suffering, no matter how big it is, not the last.
There was also an attack yesterday in Ghazaliya though we have not heard of casualties. People are saying it is the militia Sadr, the Mahdi Army, who is behind the killings. The news the world hears about Iraq and the situation in the country are absolutely different. People are being dragged by force from their homes and areas and murdered in the streets, and Americans, the Iranians and the Puppets talk of national conferences and progress.
It is as if Baghdad was no longer a city, a dozen smaller cities each infected with its own form of violence. Has reached the point where I fear sleeping because the morning always brings bad news. The television shows the images and the broadcast stations. The newspapers show images of corpses and angry words jump on you from its pages, "civil war ... death ... killing ... bombs ... rape ..."
Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Although it is certainly not the last, is just the most publicized being. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor the last. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Here, families do not report rape, come. We've been hearing rumors the last three years of rape in prisons controlled by the Americans and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra. The naiveté of Americans who can not believe that their "heroes" committed such atrocities is ridiculous "" Who ever heard of an army violations by the occupying??. If you're a country, why not people?
In the News estimated his age at 24 years but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14. Imagine your sister, your daughter 14 or 14 years. Imagine it being gang raped by a gang of psychopaths, and is then killed and burned to conceal the rape. In the end, her parents and a sister five years of age were also killed. Hail! American Heroes ... lift up your heads high supporters of the "liberation" - can be proud of your troops today. I do not think the troops should be brought to justice. I think that should be delivered to residents of the area and only then would be true justice. And the ass of our Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an "independent investigation", tucked safely in your residential area protected by the Americans, because it was your daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from falling into the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.
fills me with rage to hear and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops are gone. Has been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and murder. I see them in their armored vehicles and, to be honest, I can not take me to worry about if they have 19 or 39, I can not take me to worry about if you go home alive, I can not take me to worry more about the parents or children have left behind. I look and I just wonder how many innocents have been killed and many more kill before returning home. How many more young Iraqi women raped?.
Why Americans do not go home? Have done enough damage and we hear of how things in Iraq would collapse if "cut and were" but the fact is that things are not going anything right now. How worse to wear? People are being murdered on the streets and in their own homes-what is being done about it? Nothing. It is convenient for them-Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit and watch the bloodshed-unless they want to join with murder and rape.
Buses, planes and taxis leaving the country to Syria and Jordan are sold to the end of summer. People are buying and leaving en masse and most plan to stay outside the country. Life here has become unbearable because there is already a life as people living abroad. It's just a matter of survival, to get a fix overnight in one piece and coping with the loss of loved ones and friends-friends like T.
is hard to believe. T. really gone ... I was checking my email today and I saw three unopened emails in my own inbox. For a giddy moment I thought heart stopped was alive. T. was alive and it was all a terrible mistake! I got carried away by the wave of giddy disbelief for a few precious seconds before falling when my eyes fell on the date of the e-mails, had sent the night before he was killed. One of the emails was a collection of jokes, one was a compilation of photographs of cats, and the third was a poem in Arabic about Iraq under American occupation. Had highlighted a few lines describing the beauty of Baghdad despite the war ... And while I always thought that Baghdad was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I'm finding it very difficult at this moment see any beauty in a city stained with the T. Blood and so many other innocents.
- posted by river @ 11:43 PM
promises 
