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CounterPunch
March 31,
2003
"This is
a Crime"
Blood and Bandages for the Innocent
By ROBERT FISK
Shu'ale, a suburb of Baghdad
The piece of metal is only a foot high, but the
numbers on it hold the clue to the latest atrocity in Baghdad.
At least 62 civilians had died by yesterday
afternoon, and the coding on that hunk of metal contains the
identity of the culprit. The Americans and British were doing
their best yesterday to suggest that an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile
destroyed those dozens of lives, adding that they were "still
investigating" the carnage. But the coding is in Western
style, not in Arabic. And many of the survivors heard the plane.
In the Al-Noor hospital yesterday morning,
there were appalling scenes of pain and suffering. A two-year-old
girl, Saida Jaffar, swaddled in bandages, a tube into her nose,
another into her stomach. All I could see of her was her forehead,
two small eyes and a chin. Beside her, blood and flies covered
a heap of old bandages and swabs. Not far away, lying on a dirty
bed, was three-year-old Mohamed Amaid, his face, stomach, hands
and feet all tied tightly in bandages. A great black mass of
congealed blood lay at the bottom of his bed.
 This is a hospital without computers, with only
the most primitive of X-ray machines. But the missile was guided
by computers and that vital shard of fuselage was computer-coded.
It can be easily verified and checked by the Americans--if they
choose to do so. It reads: 30003-704ASB 7492. The letter "B"
is scratched and could be an "H". This is believed
to be the serial number. It is followed by a further code which
arms manufacturers usually refer to as the weapon's "Lot"
number. It reads: MFR 96214 09. The piece of metal bearing the
codings was retrieved only minutes after the missile exploded
on Friday evening, by an old man whose home is only 100 yards
from the 6ft crater. Even the Iraqi authorities do not know that
it exists. The missile sprayed hunks of metal through the crowds--mainly
women and children--and through the cheap brick walls of local
homes, amputating limbs and heads. Three brothers, the eldest
21 and the youngest 12, for example, were cut down inside the
living room of their brick hut on the main road opposite the
market. Two doors away, two sisters were killed in an identical
manner.
"We have never seen anything like
these wounds before," Dr Ahmed, an anaesthetist at the Al-Noor
hospital told me later. "These people have been punctured
by dozens of bits of metal." He was right. One old man I
visited in a hospital ward had 24 holes in the back of his legs
and buttocks, some as big as pound coins. An X-ray photograph
handed to me by one of his doctors clearly showed at least 35
slivers of metal still embedded in his body.
Like the Sha'ab highway massacre on Thursday--when
at least 21 Iraqi civilians were killed or burned to death by
two missiles fired by an American jet--Shu'ale is a poor, Shia
Muslim neighbourhood of single-storey corrugated iron and cement
food stores and two-room brick homes. These are the very people
whom Messrs Bush and Blair expected to rise in insurrection against
Saddam. But the anger in the slums was directed at the Americans
and British yesterday, by old women and bereaved fathers and
brothers who spoke without hesitation--and without the presence
of the otherwise ubiquitous government "minders".
"This is a crime," a woman
muttered at me angrily. "Yes, I know they say they are targeting
the military. But can you see soldiers here? Can you see missiles?"
The answer has to be in the negative. A few journalists did report
seeing a Scud missile on a transporter near the Sha'ab area on
Thursday and there were anti-aircraft guns around Shu'ale. At
one point yesterday morning, I heard an American jet race over
the scene of the massacre and just caught sight of a ground-to-air
missile that was vainly chasing it, its contrail soaring over
the slum houses in the dark blue sky. An anti-aircraft battery--manufactured
circa 1942--also began firing into the air a few blocks away.
But even if the Iraqis do position or move their munitions close
to the suburbs, does that justify the Americans firing into those
packed civilian neighbourhoods, into areas which they know contain
crowded main roads and markets--and during the hours of daylight?
Last week's attack on the Sha'ab highway
was carried out on a main road at midday during a sandstorm--when
dozens of civilians are bound to be killed, whatever the pilot
thought he was aiming at. "I had five sons and now I have
only two--and how do I know that even they will survive?"
a bespectacled middle-aged man said in the bare concrete back
room of his home yesterday. "One of my boys was hit in the
kidneys and heart. His chest was full of shrapnel; it came right
through the windows. Now all I can say is that I am sad that
I am alive." A neighbour interrupted to say that he saw
the plane with his own eyes. "I saw the side of the aircraft
and I noticed it changed course after it fired the missile."
Plane-spotting has become an all-embracing
part of life in Baghdad. And to the reader who thoughtfully asked
last week if I could see with my own eyes the American aircraft
over the city, I have to say that in at least 65 raids by aircraft,
I have not --despite my tiger-like eyes--actually seen one plane.
I hear them, especially at night, but they are flying at supersonic
speed; during the day, they are usually above the clouds of black
smoke that wash over the city. I have, just once, spotted a cruise
missile--the cruise or Tomahawk rockets fly at only around 400mph--and
I saw it passing down a boulevard towards the Tigris river. But
the grey smoke that shoots out of the city like the fingers of
a dead hand is unmistakeable, along with the concussion of sound.
And--when they can be found--the computer codings on the bomb
fragments reveal their own story. As the codes on the Shu'ale
missile surely must.
All morning yesterday, the Americans
were at it again, blasting away at targets on the perimeter of
Baghdad--where the outer defences of the city are being dug by
Iraqi troops--and in the centre. An air-fired rocket exploded
on the roof of the Iraqi Ministry of Information, destroying
a clutch of satellite dishes. One office building from which
I was watching the bombardment literally swayed for several seconds
during one long raid. Even in the Al-Noor hospital, the walls
were shaking yesterday as the survivors of the market slaughter
struggled for survival.
Hussein Mnati is 52 and just stared at
me--his face pitted with metal fragments--as bombs blasted the
city. A 20-year-old man was sitting up in the next bed, the blood-soaked
stump of his left arm plastered over with bandages. Only 12 hours
ago, he had a left arm, a left hand, fingers. Now he blankly
recorded his memories. "I was in the market and I didn't
feel anything," he told me. "The rocket came and I
was to the right of it and then an ambulance took me to hospital."
Whether or not his amputation was dulled
by painkillers, he wanted to talk. When I asked him his name,
he sat upright in bed and shouted at me: "My name is Saddam
Hussein Jassem."
Yesterday's
Features
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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