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Robert Fisk: Defiant Khatami insists Tehran still supports Hizbollah
...
25 May 2003
Each new mass grave produces some extra helping of wickedness, some tiny, incremental addition to cruelty. In the oven-grey desert west of the Tigris yesterday, it was a gleaming steel rod amid a heap of brown bones and a rag of cheap cloth that symbolised Saddam's rule: a hip replacement. A gravedigger gently tapped at the leg of the decomposing corpse beside it; there was a ghostly, hollow sound. The murdered man had a wooden leg. On the day of their death, these people were hospital patients.
Body number 73 - they are numbered by the diggers according to the chronology of their discovery - even had a hospital tag still tied to a bone. If they still had their identity papers - and Saddam's executioners seemed to care little about such matters - their names were written in crayon on to the white shrouds in which their remains were wrapped. Thus these men's lives were revealed in a stranger's hand.
"Abdul Jalil Kamel Badr" was written on one small heap of bones, hair and decaying flesh. "Student at Kufa University Educational College - Arts Department."
In their white shrouds, more than 80 of them lay like dead sheep, under the midday sun. Others were lined in rows, 470 at the latest count, in the school basketball stadium back in Mutayeb, the scruffy little town on the Tigris where, 12 years ago, Shia Muslims to a man, they all obeyed the order of Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, to assemble for a "meeting". Every man over 17 had to be there, and the few women who watched them gather in their thousands said that at least 40 lorries were waiting for them on the first night, 5 March 1991. The Muslim Shia intifada against Saddam - assiduously encouraged by George Bush senior after the liberation of Kuwait - had just been crushed. The executioners were already waiting at the desert killing fields at Joufer Safa. The name means "beach of rocks".
Many of the just-discovered dead still had their hands - or some hand bones - tied behind their backs. Ahmed Kadum Rassoul had been bound in this way. So had Rada Mohamed Hamza from Hilla, and Ali Hassouni Alwan and Ibrahim Abdul Sadr. So had the unidentified male "wearing dark green military clothing and shoulder patches" who was obviously a deserter from the army who had taken arms for the Shia uprising.
"There are many other sites all round here," a farmer, who was helping in the excavation, told me wearily. "Some of us heard the shots at the time and saw the bulldozer. It was very 'ordered', very routine. We were told that if anyone spoke of it, they would immediately be shot." He pointed to patches of disturbed land to the south - you could see the revetments left by the bulldozers once the deeds were done - and it was only then that the truth became obvious. There were thousands murdered here. Once a mass grave was closed, Saddam's killers simply dug another one.
You imagine a neat hole in the back of the skull. But as the Iraqi villagers in the grave pit brushed away at the grey desert soil yesterday, the heads that emerged were cracked, the bullet having broken open each skull. Nor did the earth always give up its dead so willingly. One gravedigger tugged for minutes with a great rock until it suddenly came away and a skull with dark hair and a shirt with bones spilling from it, sprang towards him.
A clutch of American soldiers, a US Rangers officer, two British forensic scientists and a bossy man from USAid were watching the exhumations. The soil was littered with cheap plastic sandals and sometimes little tufts of hair, like a child's curls on the floor of a barber's shop. Many of the bodies were in dishdash white domestic robes, the clothes they must have been wearing when they were ordered from their homes.
Another corpse had a wristwatch whose date had stopped at 9 March; it had resolutely ticked away on its dead owner's wrist for another five days in the earth.
But mass graves are political as well as criminal affairs. Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law - the man who ordered this slaughter - is the same Hussein Kamel who fled to Jordan and gave away Iraq's chemical weapons secrets.
Before he was lured back to Iraq - to be murdered, of course, by Saddam - Kamel talked to the CIA about Iraq's chemical weapons. Did he talk about this too, about the desert killing fields, about the fate of the men of Mutayeb?
In the children's stadium, the shrouds lay in military lines. Just over 170 had been positively identified. "These people are the victims of Saddam," Riad Abdul Emir, one of the mass grave investigators, said as he walked slowly along the rows of dead.
"But they are also victims of the Arab regimes who co-operated with Saddam, and of the West which supported him - because our 1991 intifada could have succeeded were it not for the interference of the American administration. They let Saddam do this, because it was in their interests at the time."
The presence of eight Egyptian bodies - apparently truck drivers working in Iraq who may have tried to fight on the Shia side or merely been freed from prison in the initial days of the uprising - suggested that other foreigners may soon be found.
Where, for example, are the more than 600 Kuwaiti prisoners who never returned from Iraq in 1991?
Mohamed Ahmed was vainly searching through the corpses for his brother's remains. "These dead people had rights," he said. "But how can we ensure that they get their rights?"
Each new mass grave produces some extra helping of wickedness, some tiny, incremental addition to cruelty. In the oven-grey desert west of the Tigris yesterday, it was a gleaming steel rod amid a heap of brown bones and a rag of cheap cloth that symbolised Saddam's rule: a hip replacement. A gravedigger gently tapped at the leg of the decomposing corpse beside it; there was a ghostly, hollow sound. The murdered man had a wooden leg. On the day of their death, these people were hospital patients.
Body number 73 - they are numbered by the diggers according to the chronology of their discovery - even had a hospital tag still tied to a bone. If they still had their identity papers - and Saddam's executioners seemed to care little about such matters - their names were written in crayon on to the white shrouds in which their remains were wrapped. Thus these men's lives were revealed in a stranger's hand.
"Abdul Jalil Kamel Badr" was written on one small heap of bones, hair and decaying flesh. "Student at Kufa University Educational College - Arts Department."
In their white shrouds, more than 80 of them lay like dead sheep, under the midday sun. Others were lined in rows, 470 at the latest count, in the school basketball stadium back in Mutayeb, the scruffy little town on the Tigris where, 12 years ago, Shia Muslims to a man, they all obeyed the order of Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, to assemble for a "meeting". Every man over 17 had to be there, and the few women who watched them gather in their thousands said that at least 40 lorries were waiting for them on the first night, 5 March 1991. The Muslim Shia intifada against Saddam - assiduously encouraged by George Bush senior after the liberation of Kuwait - had just been crushed. The executioners were already waiting at the desert killing fields at Joufer Safa. The name means "beach of rocks".
Many of the just-discovered dead still had their hands - or some hand bones - tied behind their backs. Ahmed Kadum Rassoul had been bound in this way. So had Rada Mohamed Hamza from Hilla, and Ali Hassouni Alwan and Ibrahim Abdul Sadr. So had the unidentified male "wearing dark green military clothing and shoulder patches" who was obviously a deserter from the army who had taken arms for the Shia uprising.
"There are many other sites all round here," a farmer, who was helping in the excavation, told me wearily. "Some of us heard the shots at the time and saw the bulldozer. It was very 'ordered', very routine. We were told that if anyone spoke of it, they would immediately be shot." He pointed to patches of disturbed land to the south - you could see the revetments left by the bulldozers once the deeds were done - and it was only then that the truth became obvious. There were thousands murdered here. Once a mass grave was closed, Saddam's killers simply dug another one.
You imagine a neat hole in the back of the skull. But as the Iraqi villagers in the grave pit brushed away at the grey desert soil yesterday, the heads that emerged were cracked, the bullet having broken open each skull. Nor did the earth always give up its dead so willingly. One gravedigger tugged for minutes with a great rock until it suddenly came away and a skull with dark hair and a shirt with bones spilling from it, sprang towards him.
A clutch of American soldiers, a US Rangers officer, two British forensic scientists and a bossy man from USAid were watching the exhumations. The soil was littered with cheap plastic sandals and sometimes little tufts of hair, like a child's curls on the floor of a barber's shop. Many of the bodies were in dishdash white domestic robes, the clothes they must have been wearing when they were ordered from their homes.
Another corpse had a wristwatch whose date had stopped at 9 March; it had resolutely ticked away on its dead owner's wrist for another five days in the earth.
But mass graves are political as well as criminal affairs. Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law - the man who ordered this slaughter - is the same Hussein Kamel who fled to Jordan and gave away Iraq's chemical weapons secrets.
Before he was lured back to Iraq - to be murdered, of course, by Saddam - Kamel talked to the CIA about Iraq's chemical weapons. Did he talk about this too, about the desert killing fields, about the fate of the men of Mutayeb?
In the children's stadium, the shrouds lay in military lines. Just over 170 had been positively identified. "These people are the victims of Saddam," Riad Abdul Emir, one of the mass grave investigators, said as he walked slowly along the rows of dead.
"But they are also victims of the Arab regimes who co-operated with Saddam, and of the West which supported him - because our 1991 intifada could have succeeded were it not for the interference of the American administration. They let Saddam do this, because it was in their interests at the time."
The presence of eight Egyptian bodies - apparently truck drivers working in Iraq who may have tried to fight on the Shia side or merely been freed from prison in the initial days of the uprising - suggested that other foreigners may soon be found.
Where, for example, are the more than 600 Kuwaiti prisoners who never returned from Iraq in 1991?
Mohamed Ahmed was vainly searching through the corpses for his brother's remains. "These dead people had rights," he said. "But how can we ensure that they get their rights?"
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If the Americans expected submission, they didn't get it in Beirut yesterday afternoon. President Mohammad Khatami of Iran – whose election gave him a far more convincing majority than George Bush received in America – insisted that Tehran's support for the Lebanese Hizbollah would remain firm, that Israel must leave the last square miles of Lebanese territory and that – here was the old, familiar Khatami refrain – there must be a "dialogue" of civilisations.
The Shia Muslims of Lebanon, the largest if largely unacknowledged community in the country, flocked to see their hero in Beirut, women in chadors and great bearded men weeping with delight at the mere sight of the thin, ascetic but humane cleric who once offered a real hope of democracy in Iran.
Alas for hopes. The religious hierarchy in Tehran has crushed President Khatami's spirit of freedom – it tore up two parliamentary bills demanding yet more freedoms this week – but his message to the Lebanese contains a powerful emotional charge: don't give in, trust in God, believe in humanism. It is very much the message of the Renaissance with which the West was blessed but of which the Middle East – we are talking here about Islam – was deprived. Vincent Battle, America's unimaginative ambassador to Lebanon, has been preaching the lessons of Israeli submission to the Lebanese for weeks: disarm the Hizbollah fighters, put the Lebanese army on the border with Israel, learn the lessons of the "war on terror".
In this particular conflict – the American version of it as it supposedly applies to Lebanon – Hizbollah must be forced to surrender, Israel's northern border must be left untouched (forgetting the little matter of Shebaa farms) and Lebanese soldiers must protect Israel's frontier. Talks between US and Iranian officials had suggested President Khatami might make some allusion to Washington's demands.
Not so. He has praised Hizbollah, recalled its courage in forcing an Israeli retreat in 2000 and given Iran's continued support to the Lebanese – and pro-Syrian – government in Beirut. At a rally in the great sports stadium of west Beirut tonight, he repeated all these themes – to the infinite relief of Hizbollah, which feared that a new, post-Iraq world order might have sidelined its resistance movement.
But the days are young and Syria's gentle sidelining of "terrorist" Palestinian groups in Damascus may yet reflect painfully on Beirut. If Hizbollah are "terrorists" – America's faithful parroting of Israel – and if they are the "A team of terrorism", the cliche adopted by Colin Powell's faithful State Department protégé Richard Armitage, who knows what pressures may be placed on Tehran in the coming months?
One thought in Beirut is that the US nurtures the idea that a peaceful, pliable, Islamic Iran could take up the Shah's old role of policeman of the Middle East, controlling the wayward Shia Muslim majority of Iraq, maintaining the loyalty of Saudi Arabia's Shia Muslim population over the Saudi oil fields and generally ensuring that the Arab Gulf states don't go to war with each other.
But President Khatami – perhaps the only truly democratically elected leader in the Muslim Middle East – seems in no mood for such a place in history. His lecture to Lebanese academics and preachers yesterday morning was one of peace and compromise. Politicians – he did not identify them though we could guess – "exploit science, morality, literature and art for their individual interests, at their own will, under their talons of power", he said. He wanted a new, spiritual life – capable "of establishing the foundation for the most profound of all dialogues between cultures and civilisations and religions" – that recognised no geographical boundaries. Human rights "in all aspects of man's material and spiritual life" were what he wanted.
Was this what America was asking for in Iraq? Yes, he wanted an American withdrawal from Iraq. And why not? After all, US troops are now in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and in the Gulf. Iran is surrounded. Which, one supposes, is why the Hizbollah in Lebanon – a country once described by a Hizbollah cleric as "the lung through which Iran breathes" – is so important to the Islamic Republic. Not to mention Syria and Lebanon itself.
This is how the reasoning goes: if Hizbollah was disarmed, there is no reason why Syria should expect Israel to give back the occupied Golan Heights to Damascus. If Lebanon disarms Hizbollah, there is no reason why it should not sign a peace treaty with Israel, abandoning its claim – justified in international law – to the still-occupied Shebaa farms. The last disciplined, armed group opposed to Israel – and forget, here, the ragtag Palestinian militias – would be closed down. No wonder they cheered President Khatami last night. But did they realise that only a few metres away lay the slums of the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps, whose population was first slaughtered by Israel's brutal allies – and then by Lebanese Shias loyal to the present Speaker of Parliament who himself held warm talks with Mr Khatami only a few hours earlier?
The Shia Muslims of Lebanon, the largest if largely unacknowledged community in the country, flocked to see their hero in Beirut, women in chadors and great bearded men weeping with delight at the mere sight of the thin, ascetic but humane cleric who once offered a real hope of democracy in Iran.
Alas for hopes. The religious hierarchy in Tehran has crushed President Khatami's spirit of freedom – it tore up two parliamentary bills demanding yet more freedoms this week – but his message to the Lebanese contains a powerful emotional charge: don't give in, trust in God, believe in humanism. It is very much the message of the Renaissance with which the West was blessed but of which the Middle East – we are talking here about Islam – was deprived. Vincent Battle, America's unimaginative ambassador to Lebanon, has been preaching the lessons of Israeli submission to the Lebanese for weeks: disarm the Hizbollah fighters, put the Lebanese army on the border with Israel, learn the lessons of the "war on terror".
In this particular conflict – the American version of it as it supposedly applies to Lebanon – Hizbollah must be forced to surrender, Israel's northern border must be left untouched (forgetting the little matter of Shebaa farms) and Lebanese soldiers must protect Israel's frontier. Talks between US and Iranian officials had suggested President Khatami might make some allusion to Washington's demands.
Not so. He has praised Hizbollah, recalled its courage in forcing an Israeli retreat in 2000 and given Iran's continued support to the Lebanese – and pro-Syrian – government in Beirut. At a rally in the great sports stadium of west Beirut tonight, he repeated all these themes – to the infinite relief of Hizbollah, which feared that a new, post-Iraq world order might have sidelined its resistance movement.
But the days are young and Syria's gentle sidelining of "terrorist" Palestinian groups in Damascus may yet reflect painfully on Beirut. If Hizbollah are "terrorists" – America's faithful parroting of Israel – and if they are the "A team of terrorism", the cliche adopted by Colin Powell's faithful State Department protégé Richard Armitage, who knows what pressures may be placed on Tehran in the coming months?
One thought in Beirut is that the US nurtures the idea that a peaceful, pliable, Islamic Iran could take up the Shah's old role of policeman of the Middle East, controlling the wayward Shia Muslim majority of Iraq, maintaining the loyalty of Saudi Arabia's Shia Muslim population over the Saudi oil fields and generally ensuring that the Arab Gulf states don't go to war with each other.
But President Khatami – perhaps the only truly democratically elected leader in the Muslim Middle East – seems in no mood for such a place in history. His lecture to Lebanese academics and preachers yesterday morning was one of peace and compromise. Politicians – he did not identify them though we could guess – "exploit science, morality, literature and art for their individual interests, at their own will, under their talons of power", he said. He wanted a new, spiritual life – capable "of establishing the foundation for the most profound of all dialogues between cultures and civilisations and religions" – that recognised no geographical boundaries. Human rights "in all aspects of man's material and spiritual life" were what he wanted.
Was this what America was asking for in Iraq? Yes, he wanted an American withdrawal from Iraq. And why not? After all, US troops are now in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and in the Gulf. Iran is surrounded. Which, one supposes, is why the Hizbollah in Lebanon – a country once described by a Hizbollah cleric as "the lung through which Iran breathes" – is so important to the Islamic Republic. Not to mention Syria and Lebanon itself.
This is how the reasoning goes: if Hizbollah was disarmed, there is no reason why Syria should expect Israel to give back the occupied Golan Heights to Damascus. If Lebanon disarms Hizbollah, there is no reason why it should not sign a peace treaty with Israel, abandoning its claim – justified in international law – to the still-occupied Shebaa farms. The last disciplined, armed group opposed to Israel – and forget, here, the ragtag Palestinian militias – would be closed down. No wonder they cheered President Khatami last night. But did they realise that only a few metres away lay the slums of the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps, whose population was first slaughtered by Israel's brutal allies – and then by Lebanese Shias loyal to the present Speaker of Parliament who himself held warm talks with Mr Khatami only a few hours earlier?
Again let me say thank you, Robert Fisk, for another highly informative article.
OK lets just change the words slightly to show they are rubbish
"President Husein of Iraq whos election gave him a far more convincing majority than President Mohammad Khatami of Iran"
Ahh that Fisk again had produced a strong argument why each side must fight untill the other one has been removed from the face of the earth as "why would they compromise if we arent killing them?"
he obviously went to the Hitler school of foreign policy.
"President Husein of Iraq whos election gave him a far more convincing majority than President Mohammad Khatami of Iran"
Ahh that Fisk again had produced a strong argument why each side must fight untill the other one has been removed from the face of the earth as "why would they compromise if we arent killing them?"
he obviously went to the Hitler school of foreign policy.
This dude is like, so last week. Another Self-important asshat.
And I am like, so last month.
With all due respect there is nothing "last week" about Robert Fisk.
He has won every major newspaper award, he is read all over the world, and in these troubled times he is perhaps one of a handful of war correspondents who has intelligence, compassion, and honesty.
Of course, intelligence, compassion, and honesty give rise to his villification by those who've never written a dispatch from anywhere, much less the Middle East and probably don't even know what a dispatch is..
He has won every major newspaper award, he is read all over the world, and in these troubled times he is perhaps one of a handful of war correspondents who has intelligence, compassion, and honesty.
Of course, intelligence, compassion, and honesty give rise to his villification by those who've never written a dispatch from anywhere, much less the Middle East and probably don't even know what a dispatch is..
Fisk is excellent. His coverage in Iraq had no competition - literally, no one even came close to the quality of his coverage, due in part to his life long experience in the area, as well as of the history of the region, which most reporters no nothing about. They were too busy scrambling around for freshly positioned spy propaganda in bombed-out offices.
When Fisk was exposing Iraqi crimes in the 1980s, the RWPS (Right Wing Pieces of Shit) attacked him for being a tool of the ayatollahs.
The RWPS never refute Fisk; they just hurl windy, unfunny diatribes in his face.
Slime him all you want, RWPS. He's writing it down.
History belongs to those who write well. And RWPS can't write. So they're fucked.
The RWPS never refute Fisk; they just hurl windy, unfunny diatribes in his face.
Slime him all you want, RWPS. He's writing it down.
History belongs to those who write well. And RWPS can't write. So they're fucked.
The only articles I read during the course of this attack on Iraq - or as Angie says "terrorist attack" - were by Robert Fisk. Each day I read his stories and was plucked into the horrors of this unjustified ".war" where "victims" became names and human beings.
We here in Canada are blessed to have CBC News, which had NO "embedded" journalists (nor was Robert Fisk embedded). Thus our reporters had a more credible outlook.
For a lot of our background info we had Gwynne Dyer, brilliant military analyst, author, journalist, international columnist, etc., and I challenge anyone to attack his credentials.
People such as Robert Fisk, Gwynne Dyer, John Pilger, Israel Shamir are individuals. They haven't become adjuncts of the US State Department or any other State Department.
Who, if given a choice, would watch anything as innane as CNN? War is not entertainment, and somone should have told the mainstream media in the US that.
God bless you, Robert Fisk. Don't ever stop doing what you do better than anyone else.
We here in Canada are blessed to have CBC News, which had NO "embedded" journalists (nor was Robert Fisk embedded). Thus our reporters had a more credible outlook.
For a lot of our background info we had Gwynne Dyer, brilliant military analyst, author, journalist, international columnist, etc., and I challenge anyone to attack his credentials.
People such as Robert Fisk, Gwynne Dyer, John Pilger, Israel Shamir are individuals. They haven't become adjuncts of the US State Department or any other State Department.
Who, if given a choice, would watch anything as innane as CNN? War is not entertainment, and somone should have told the mainstream media in the US that.
God bless you, Robert Fisk. Don't ever stop doing what you do better than anyone else.
As indicated below, Fisk not only reports the news, he makes it - he's the one who identified the number and thus, made history.
http://www.independent.co.uk
The proof: marketplace deaths were caused by a US missile
By Cahal Milmo
02 April 2003
An American missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis.
The codes on the foot-long shrapnel shard, seen by the Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu'ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by Ray- theon, the world's biggest producer of "smart" armaments.
The identification of the missile as American is an embarrassing blow to Washington and London as they try to match their promises of minimal civilian casualties with the reality of precision bombing.
Both governments have suggested the Shu'ale bombing - and the explosion at another Baghdad market that killed at least 14 people last Wednesday - were caused by ageing Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday it was "increasingly probable" the first explosion was down to the Iraqis and Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, suggested on BBC's Newsnight last night that President Saddam sacked his head of air defences because they were not working properly.
But investigations by The Independent show that the missile - thought to be either a Harm (High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile) device, or a Paveway laser-guided bomb - was sold by Raytheon to the procurement arm of the US Navy. The American military has confirmed that a navy EA-6B "Prowler" jet, based on the USS Kittyhawk, was in action over the Iraqi capital on Friday and fired at least one Harm missile to protect two American fighters from a surface-to-air missile battery.
The Pentagon and Raytheon, which last year had sales of $16.8bn (£10.6bn), declined to comment on the serial number evidence last night. A US Defence Department spokeswoman said: "Our investigations are continuing. We cannot comment on serial numbers which may or may not have been found at the scene."
An official Washington source went further, claiming that the shrapnel could have been planted at the scene by the Iraqi regime.
On Saturday, Downing Street disclosed intelligence that linked the Wednesday attack - and by implication Friday's killings - on Iraqi missiles being fired without radar guidance and falling back to earth. The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "A large number of surface-to-air missiles have been malfunctioning and many have failed to hit their targets and have fallen back on to Baghdad. We are not saying definitively that these explosions were caused by Iraqi missiles but people should approach this with due scepticism."
The Anglo-American claims were undermined by the series of 25 digits and letters on the piece of fuselage shown to Mr Fisk by an elderly resident of Shu'ale who lived 100 yards from the site of the 6ft crater made by the explosion.
The numbers on the fragment - retrieved from the scene and not shown to the Iraqi authorities - read: "30003-704ASB7492". The letter "B" was partially obscured by scratches and may be an "H". It was followed by a second code: "MFR 96214 09."
An online database of suppliers maintained by the Defence Logistics Information Service, part of the Department of Defence, showed that the reference MFR 96214 was the identification or "cage" number of a Raytheon plant in the city of McKinney, Texas.
The 30003 reference refers to the Naval Air Systems Command, the procurement agency responsible for furnishing the US Navy's air force with its weaponry.
The Pentagon refused to disclose which weapon was designated by the remaining letters and numbers, although defence experts said the information could be found within seconds from the Nato database of all items of military hardware operated across the Alliance, "from a nuclear bomb to a bath plug", as one put it.
Raytheon, which also produces the Patriot anti-missile system and the Tomahawk cruise missile, lists its Harms and its latest Paveway III laser-guided bombs, marketed with the slogan "One bomb, one target", as among its most accurate weaponry.
The company's sales description for its anti-radar missile says: "Harm was designed with performance and quality in mind. In actual field usage, Harm now demonstrates reliability four times better than specification. No modern weapons arsenal is complete without Harm in its inventory."
Faced with apparent proof that one of its missiles had been less accurate than specification, Raytheon was more coy on the capabilities of its products. A spokeswoman at the company's headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, said: "All questions relating to the use of our products in the field are to be handled by the appropriate military authority."
Defence experts said the damage caused at Shu'ale was consistent with that of Paveway or, more probably, a Harm weapon, which carries a warhead designed to explode into thousands of aluminium fragments and has a range of 80km.
Despite its manufacturer's claims, it also has a record of unreliability when fired at a target which "disappears" if, as the Iraqi forces do, the target's operators switch their radar signal rapidly on and off. Nick Cook, of Jane's Defence Weekly, said: "The problem with Harms is that they can be seduced away from their targets by any sort of curious transmission. They are meant to have corrected that but there have been problems." During the Kosovo conflict four years ago, a farmer and his daughter were badly injured when a missile exploded in their village. A shard of the casing was found near by with a reference very similar to that found in Baghdad: "30003 704AS4829 MFP 96214."
The American navy confirmed that one of its Prowler jets, which is used to jam enemy radar, had been over an unspecified area of Baghdad on Friday night. A pool reporter on the carrier USS Kittyhawk was told that the Prowler squadron had fired its first Harm on Friday evening in response to an air-defence unit that was threatening two F/A-18 Hornet jets. Lieutenant Rob Fluck told the journalist that the crew had not seen where their missile had landed.
http://www.independent.co.uk
The proof: marketplace deaths were caused by a US missile
By Cahal Milmo
02 April 2003
An American missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis.
The codes on the foot-long shrapnel shard, seen by the Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu'ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by Ray- theon, the world's biggest producer of "smart" armaments.
The identification of the missile as American is an embarrassing blow to Washington and London as they try to match their promises of minimal civilian casualties with the reality of precision bombing.
Both governments have suggested the Shu'ale bombing - and the explosion at another Baghdad market that killed at least 14 people last Wednesday - were caused by ageing Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday it was "increasingly probable" the first explosion was down to the Iraqis and Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, suggested on BBC's Newsnight last night that President Saddam sacked his head of air defences because they were not working properly.
But investigations by The Independent show that the missile - thought to be either a Harm (High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile) device, or a Paveway laser-guided bomb - was sold by Raytheon to the procurement arm of the US Navy. The American military has confirmed that a navy EA-6B "Prowler" jet, based on the USS Kittyhawk, was in action over the Iraqi capital on Friday and fired at least one Harm missile to protect two American fighters from a surface-to-air missile battery.
The Pentagon and Raytheon, which last year had sales of $16.8bn (£10.6bn), declined to comment on the serial number evidence last night. A US Defence Department spokeswoman said: "Our investigations are continuing. We cannot comment on serial numbers which may or may not have been found at the scene."
An official Washington source went further, claiming that the shrapnel could have been planted at the scene by the Iraqi regime.
On Saturday, Downing Street disclosed intelligence that linked the Wednesday attack - and by implication Friday's killings - on Iraqi missiles being fired without radar guidance and falling back to earth. The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "A large number of surface-to-air missiles have been malfunctioning and many have failed to hit their targets and have fallen back on to Baghdad. We are not saying definitively that these explosions were caused by Iraqi missiles but people should approach this with due scepticism."
The Anglo-American claims were undermined by the series of 25 digits and letters on the piece of fuselage shown to Mr Fisk by an elderly resident of Shu'ale who lived 100 yards from the site of the 6ft crater made by the explosion.
The numbers on the fragment - retrieved from the scene and not shown to the Iraqi authorities - read: "30003-704ASB7492". The letter "B" was partially obscured by scratches and may be an "H". It was followed by a second code: "MFR 96214 09."
An online database of suppliers maintained by the Defence Logistics Information Service, part of the Department of Defence, showed that the reference MFR 96214 was the identification or "cage" number of a Raytheon plant in the city of McKinney, Texas.
The 30003 reference refers to the Naval Air Systems Command, the procurement agency responsible for furnishing the US Navy's air force with its weaponry.
The Pentagon refused to disclose which weapon was designated by the remaining letters and numbers, although defence experts said the information could be found within seconds from the Nato database of all items of military hardware operated across the Alliance, "from a nuclear bomb to a bath plug", as one put it.
Raytheon, which also produces the Patriot anti-missile system and the Tomahawk cruise missile, lists its Harms and its latest Paveway III laser-guided bombs, marketed with the slogan "One bomb, one target", as among its most accurate weaponry.
The company's sales description for its anti-radar missile says: "Harm was designed with performance and quality in mind. In actual field usage, Harm now demonstrates reliability four times better than specification. No modern weapons arsenal is complete without Harm in its inventory."
Faced with apparent proof that one of its missiles had been less accurate than specification, Raytheon was more coy on the capabilities of its products. A spokeswoman at the company's headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, said: "All questions relating to the use of our products in the field are to be handled by the appropriate military authority."
Defence experts said the damage caused at Shu'ale was consistent with that of Paveway or, more probably, a Harm weapon, which carries a warhead designed to explode into thousands of aluminium fragments and has a range of 80km.
Despite its manufacturer's claims, it also has a record of unreliability when fired at a target which "disappears" if, as the Iraqi forces do, the target's operators switch their radar signal rapidly on and off. Nick Cook, of Jane's Defence Weekly, said: "The problem with Harms is that they can be seduced away from their targets by any sort of curious transmission. They are meant to have corrected that but there have been problems." During the Kosovo conflict four years ago, a farmer and his daughter were badly injured when a missile exploded in their village. A shard of the casing was found near by with a reference very similar to that found in Baghdad: "30003 704AS4829 MFP 96214."
The American navy confirmed that one of its Prowler jets, which is used to jam enemy radar, had been over an unspecified area of Baghdad on Friday night. A pool reporter on the carrier USS Kittyhawk was told that the Prowler squadron had fired its first Harm on Friday evening in response to an air-defence unit that was threatening two F/A-18 Hornet jets. Lieutenant Rob Fluck told the journalist that the crew had not seen where their missile had landed.
At least we know why certain people constantly vilify Robert Fisk. They can't stand to be told the truth.
Happily they are outnumbered by those of us who insist on the truth, the whole truth.
Happily they are outnumbered by those of us who insist on the truth, the whole truth.
from "Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Finds Muslim World Unity a Cry in the Wilderness"
by Siavosh Ghazi, Agence France Presse, 30 May 2003
"...Another subject where there was a gaping lack of consensus was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and notably on the internationally-drafted road map to peace. Iranian officials have been hostile to the plan, and President Mohammed Khatami called in his opening speech for “steadfast support to the Palestinian resistance, which is an unmistakable example of a liberation movement against organised state terrorism.”
However OIC Secretary-General Abdulwahed Belkeziz had a different spin, as did delegates from around a dozen OIC states — who were no doubt intrigued by the murals across Tehran calling for Israel’s destruction. “We should closely monitor the road map drawn up by the quartet as a solution to the Palestinian issue, making sure that it is not distorted, altered or obstructed by preconditions to its implementation,” Belkeziz said.
by Siavosh Ghazi, Agence France Presse, 30 May 2003
"...Another subject where there was a gaping lack of consensus was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and notably on the internationally-drafted road map to peace. Iranian officials have been hostile to the plan, and President Mohammed Khatami called in his opening speech for “steadfast support to the Palestinian resistance, which is an unmistakable example of a liberation movement against organised state terrorism.”
However OIC Secretary-General Abdulwahed Belkeziz had a different spin, as did delegates from around a dozen OIC states — who were no doubt intrigued by the murals across Tehran calling for Israel’s destruction. “We should closely monitor the road map drawn up by the quartet as a solution to the Palestinian issue, making sure that it is not distorted, altered or obstructed by preconditions to its implementation,” Belkeziz said.
For more information:
http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=26810
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