Brian Haw — Stop killing our kids — Iraq War photos — Brian Haw protesting Parliament Square, London The WE News Archives

Unspeakable grief and horror

Know them by their fruit:

I'm Brian.
I'm saying stop killing our kids

Brian Haw

Rocket science isn't it!
Difficult to grasp that concept!
Stop killing OUR kids!

Oh! D'you come from Iraq then.

Sarcastically, accusingly, 'They're your kids are they?'

They're all our kids.

What did they do wrong!

What did them poor little beggars do wrong! Who said they could be killed!

What for!

I can't cope with it.

I can't live with that madness, that sickness. As if these people are vermin. These people are something in a test tube. These people aren't the same.

They're people aren't they?

They're human beings.

I came here because my neighbour's kid is as precious as mine. I'm not here for a career. I'm not here for a hobby. I'm not here because I want some excitement in my life. I've had my nose broken three times on this pavement.

No, I wouldn't have come here if I'd have had the choice — what they're doing to my neighbours kids.

They sent people along to destroy this, this display for the children.

The murdered children.

'As you do to the least, you do to me' — Jesus.

You see those pictures.

They've been there since October 2002, when we won the court case in the royal courts of justice. In the Strand, a High Court.

There were some lovely Buddhist monks and nuns who had those pictures up outside on the railings outside the royal courts of justice.

When we won the case, I got a copy of those, a set of those pictures. They've been there ever since.

Look at those poor people. What did they ever do to us. What did they ever do to us.

Do you know we have been murdering the people of Iraq for ninety-one years.

GB — Great Britain!

Oh! No! GB — Genocidal Britain!

Check it out!

Go around the world!

Ask the world, ask them what we've done!

Ask Kenya!

Ask Burma!

Go around the world, please.

We pretend to be so civilized.

When the high court of our land said it was legal this display, not to be interfered with and the police had the orders under the human rights act not to interfere with this freedom of expression, and they've destroyed it all. It has been destroyed by our police.

What a crime!

What a scandal!

So that's why I am sat on this chair two o'clock in the morning, freezing. A corpse waiting to be taken to the morgue. Frozen. (laughs)

I asked the soldiers!

'Well, we got to go there. Y'er know we got orders. We're give…. blah! blah! blah!'

Why your going there, son?

Why your going there?

Why are you going to Iraq?

Why?

Two o'clock in the morning, I'm lying on my chair there. Got my big Siberian coat on. Is it a big coat. It just about keeps me alive.

And there's this young man, apologizing for disturbing me. He's been by many times he tells me. But I'm always busy talking to somebody.

Two o'clock in the morning, he's got me to himself. And he's not thirty seconds before he is in tears.

Can't control himself.

'Call me a hero, Brian, Buckingham Palace, the Queen, gave me a meddle. Call me a hero, for killing the kids.'

This soldier, he was here before the war apparently.

He's apologising.

He's calling himself all the filthy, horrible names that he called me before he went there.

He's calling that himself, and so the soldiers are.

'Give me a medal, Brian. Call me a hero for killing kids.'

He can't live with himself.

He comes to me for counselling. He kicked down the door, the hand grenade. In the house thirty rounds, thirty bullets into every body. Everything that's moving. Everything that's not moving. Bang! bang!

And then afterwards look to see what, who, you've killed.

A man sat at this table having a meal, quietly minding his own business in his own house, in his own country, liberated, murdered.

'And a child, Brian! And a child!'

You know that was a nation of fifty percent children that we attacked. All heroic stuff. Big hero stuff.

The threat to us, the threat to us was no… lying stories.

The threat to us?

Gassing them, bombing them, burning them.

Saddam Hussein is a Johnny-come-lately as we say in Britain.

We've been doing it for ninety-one years.

Winston Churchill — he was gassing, and bombing and burning the Iraqi, Kurdish, Arab villages. 'I don't understand this squeamishness about the use of gas,' said Winston Churchill.

'I'm whole-heartedly in favour of using poison gas,' said Winston Churchill, not Brian.

I don't agree with it.

On uncivilized native tribes, that's what he called them and that's what he did.

They've used those poor people in Halabja and the five thousand who were gassed there, they've used that to inflame and to say, 'Look! Look! How evil,' Rumsfeld says, 'Kills his own people.'

As if exterminating other people is somehow less reprehensible.

Where's Hoon, the foreign secretary!

Where's Ingram, the armed forces minister!

And where's bloody Blair!

Where are they at two o'clock in the morning when this soldier comes here.

He can't sleep at night.

Can they sleep at night.

I can't sleep at night.

Many people can't sleep at night because our bombs and missiles are crashing down on them.

Noisy!

Mr. Blair. Mr. Bush. George! Tony! Christian! Christian!

Would Jesus Christ bomb a single baby.

Even by accident.

Would he?

They have no water.

They have no food in Iraq.

They are dying.

They are perishing.

That's the story.

Wipe out time, folks.

You've heard of the Wild West.

This is the Wild East.

How many millions of native Americans were wiped out.

Must be the most successful genocide in history, don't you think?

We got the gold in them 'nah hills, didn't we. Didn't we just.

And there's the black gold under the sands.

How many have to die for that.

No blood for oil.

When are going to get human.

They're trying to shut me up.

I'm noisy, apparently.

I disturb them.

Yes, I need to disturb them, don't I?

Dare to call themselves Christian.

Easter Week, Butcher Bush bombs the babies at the mosques in Fallujah, the holy city of the mosques they called that place.

Over fifteen hundred slaughtered.

I've pictures of the bombed babies.

And then he trucks off to church on Easter Sunday.

A message of Easter — slaughter of the innocents.

Isn't it nice!

Doesn't it make you feel proud to be British!

Isn't it a sick, filthy, evil business.

'Are you anti-war, Brian,' people ask me.

I say, 'I am pro-peace.'

People in Iraq, they have no doctors.

Do you know their doctors have all flown away to here.

(Begins to sing)

And the doctors leave the country with shattered heart, near insane.
Deprived of tools and all resources, they're great skill is all in vain.
To be with kindred as the patients, tortured, suffered, needless, die.
Knowing there is naught to save them,
callous, cold-hard world has left them high and dry.
Pity there, it's a hopeless task.
Diarrhoea, dehydration, cholera, typhoid, malnutrition,
Many ills they once controlled.
Bless Kansas!
Kansas!
Kansas!
Kansas!
Thanks to USA, for fold!

The real horror of Iraq cannot be shown

“It is in the hearts and minds of loved ones

Of the loss of those they will never see again.”

February 16, 2008

U.S. helicopter gun ships opened fire on a house in the small town of Zab in northern Iraq, killing eight people, five of them children from the same family, a police source said.

"It is a massacre. The eight martyrs include two men, one woman and five children," said a police source, refusing to be named.

The incident took place late last week and U.S. and Iraqi sources have kept it under wraps.

Many incidents like these go unreported in the violence-plagued country as reporters are afraid to leave their highly-protected hotels and offices in the capital Baghdad.

The officer said the copter came under fire "from unidentified gunmen" and the response has resulted in eight civilians killed.

The officer said it was difficult to tell where the gunmen targeting the U.S. copters were stationed.

The real horror of Iraq cannot be shown

“It is in the hearts and minds of loved ones

Of the loss of those they will never see again.”

Friday, February 15, 2008

BAGHDAD: Six members of an Awakening Council, groups composed mostly of Sunni Muslims who have turned against the insurgency, [Iraq resistance members] were killed early Thursday after they mistakenly fired on American soldiers in the north, the Iraqi police said.

The American forces fired back, killing them and two women in nearby houses, the police said.

A police commander said the group had thought that the Americans were insurgents [Iraq resistance members].

Local American commanders said they could not confirm the episode.

But it appeared to underscore the growing danger to Awakening Council members, wedged between United States forces and the insurgent groups many of them once supported, amid a recently begun operation to go after insurgents [Iraq resistance members] more aggressively in certain areas....

The real horror of Iraq cannot be shown

“It is in the hearts and minds of loved ones

Of the loss of those they will never see again.”

February 15, 2008

Baghdad (doa) - At least eight people of an Iraq family were killed Friday, when US air strikes hit their house in Kirkuk, some 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, media reports said.

Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency said two US helicopters had opened fire on a house in al-Howeija area, western Kirkuk, claiming eight lives.

The dead included a woman and five children, VOI said....

The real horror of Iraq cannot be shown

“It is in the hearts and minds of loved ones

Of the loss of those they will never see again.”


	Many killed in US bombing

The USA most Savage Crime

The USA most Savage Crime — Bombing of Al-Amiriya Shelter In February 1991, during the First Gulf War, a U.S. bomb punched a hole through the roof of the Al-Amiriya bomb shelter; seconds later a missile plowed through the opening.

The blasts killed 408 civilians, mostly women and children( as can be seen from the following list).

Many were killed by the concussion, the rest by a fire so intense it left flash-burned outlines of women and infants on the walls that are still visible today.

The United States has said it believed it was targeting a military command center.

The shelter was built by a European company at the middle of a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood, thus excluding the possibility of being used as military command center.

Moreover, during the war ( between 17 Jan and till its bombing on 13 Feb. 1991) it was used by hundreds of civilians as a civil shelter.

For the following years, the site of bombing was turned into a sort of shrine or museum.

There also are hundreds of photos and drawings of the women and children who died, along with favorite toys, books and other personal belongings left by survivors.

One of the survivors, Fatima, a middle-aged woman who lost her husband and children in the bombing.

The night of the attack, she had gone to a friend’s house.

She said, "I should get back to the shelter".

But her friend said, "You go there every night, so, why don’t you just stay here tonight".

She did, and now she is alone.

After the bodies were removed from the shelter, Fatima moved onto the grounds and has never left.

She lives there, giving tours to anyone who comes along, and asks for donations to maintain the site as a shrine.

This is part of what Mr BUSH the father has done with the Iraqis.

Mr Bush the son has only caused the death of 1 Million Iraqis.

List of Names of Al-Amiriya Shelter’s Victims — names and information from "Amiriya Shelter: US most Savage Crime of the Century" published by the Iraqi Ministry Of Culture and Information, 1996.)

Iman Naif Ahmed, female student, 1973./ Ibrahim Naif Ahmed, male student, 1980./Abd al-karim abd, wage earner, 1934./ Bushra Abd, female student, 1977./Saddia Abd, 1979./ Suad Habib Khasim, housewife, 1954./Asma’ Sa’id Ahmed, student, 1975./ Isra’ Said Ahmed, 1977./Imad Sa’id Ahmed, male, 1979./ Ala’ Said Ahmed, female, 1983./Fou’d Said Ahmec, male, 1981./ Bayda Said Ahmed, female child, 1986./Intessar Said Ahmed, 1988./ Sabiha Mahammed Abbas, housewife, 1959./Amel Mohammed Abbas, student, 1963./ Iman Mohammed Abbas, 1976./Fakria Abbas ALi, civil servant, 1953./ Othman Firas Hussein, female student, 1981./Asma’ Firas Hussein, female student, 1981./ ALi Firas Hussein, male student, 1980./Shayma Firas Hussein, housewife, 1982./Adnan Firas Hussein, male child, 1986./Kahtan Firas Hussein, 1987./ ALia’ Firas Hussein, female,1990./Karima Rasheed Daher, midwife nurse, 1941./ Kulud Akram Saleh, civil servant, 1964./Nadwan Akram Saleh, housewife, 1969./ Nabia Mansour, 1937./Sundus Shakir Mohammed, civil servant, 1957./ Yehaia Mohammed, male student, 1962./Shakir Mohammed Salman, retired, 1932./ Yasir Mohammed Bashid, child, 1990./Nadima Abbas Thamer, housewife, 1953./ Mustafa Salah Abed Mohammed, male child, 1989./Sammer Abed al-Rasul Abbas, student, 1948./Ahmed Abed al-Rassul, 1985./Mohammed Abed al-Rassul Abbas, 1988./ Hayder Abed al-Rassul Abbas, child, 1989./Majeda jouhi, female civil servant, 1969./ kaydan Kassem Thwiny, male student, 1977./Ala’ Ja’far Khuddyer, male student, 1966./Razkiya Sharief Abed, housewife, 1945./Ala’ Ibrahim Yassien, student, 1971./Rawa Ibrahim Yassien, 1975./Nadia Ibrahim Yassien, 1985./Saif Ibrahim Yassien, male student, 1981./Fa’za Aziz Hassen, female civil servant, 1967./Rasha Aziz Hassen, child, 1985./Samira Ibrahim khadam, student, 1979./Amsha Abbas Samir, housewife, 1934./Hameed Majeed al-Bayaty, male retired, 1940./Fawzia Abed al-Mahdy, female, 1946./Wafika Khalil Ibrahim, housewife, 1930./ Maythem Hameed Majeed, male student, 1976./Shayma’ Haed Majeed, female, 1979./Nada Najem Abeed, housewife, 1966./Hayder Mohammed Hameed, male child, 1990./Karima Ma’uif Ali, housewife, 1949./Sabiha Mohammed Khalef, 1950./Waled Abed al-Alah Ibrahim, student, 1977./Noor Abed al-Alah Ibrahim, 1980./Ibrahim Abed al-Alah Ibrahim, male, 1982./Marwa Abed al-Alah Ibrahim, female child, 1988./Makbula Hassen, housewife, 1940./Khadija Hassen, 1935./ Shakha Ahmed Hamoud, 1916./Lam’ia Ali Ahmed, 1954./Zina Youssef Wais, student, 1981./Nesrin Youssef Wais, 1983./Fatima Youssef, child, 1986./Ahmed Youssef Waiss, male, 1989./Adiba Aswad Shamel, housewife, 1930./Alia Nasser Hussein, student, 1975./Najat Nasser Hussein, female student, 1976./Fatima Nasser Hussein, 1978./Ali Nasser Hussein, male, 1980./Iman Nasser Hussein, female, 1982./Sajeda Atia Sharji, housewife, 1956./Odai Saleh Khafoori, male student, 1979./Ahmed Saleh Khafoori, 1980./Dalal Saleh Khafoori, female, 1981./Kossai Saleh Khafoori, male, 1983./Saif Saleh Khafoori, child, 1988./ Salima Hammadi Saleh, female teacher, 1945./Manal Ahmed Idan, student, 1970./Shayma Ahmed Idan, female student, 1974./Mo’ttaz Ahmed Idan, male, 1989./Ghassan Hussein Ibrahim, retired, 1937./Summia Ibrahim Humoud, female teacher, 1947./Moayed Hameed Hamed, male wage earner, 1943./Hana Hameed Hamed, housewife, 1959./Sada Hameed Hamed, student, 1981./Zina Muayed Hameed, 1980./Khalid Muayed Hameed, male child, 1986./Mohammed Muayed Hameed, 1990./Sate’a Hameed Hamed, housewife, 1946./Durayed Ra ad Sa’adi, male student, 1974./Lina Ra’ad Sa’adi, female, 1976./Nidhal Sa’adi Kamal, female retired, 1945./Bassam Mouthana Rashid, male student, 1976./ Mayes Samir Rashid, female, 1982./Liza Samir, 1985./ Samir Heshmet Ghaith, male child, 1989./Qammera Hussein Khidher, housewife, 1920./Fadhila Abbas Obid, 1939./Iman Mohammed Ali, civil servant, 1967./Shatha Mohammed Ali, 1968./Nadwa Mohammed Ali, student, 1972./Maha Mohammed Ali, 1976./ Ja’afer Mohammed Ali, male, 1975./Baer Mohammed Ali, 1976./Nuha Mohammed Ali, female student,1976./Iman Abed Obid, housewife, 1968./ Gufran Hussein Mehmood, child, 1989./Salman Dhia Fadhel, male student, 1975./ Shayma Dhia Fadhel, female, 1974./Hassen Salman Abed al-Qader, male retired, 1931/Fatima Abed al-Mona’m, housewife,1935/Sana Hassen Salman/Wafa Hassen Salman/Mohammed Kadhim Abbas, male child, 1990./Layla Hassen Salman, female/Manal Hassen Salman/Euona Hassen, female/Rabab Abed al-Ameer Mustafa, housewife, 1935./Zaid Ala’ Abed al-Ameer, male student, 1982./Adnan Hassen Sa’id, retired, 1935./ Amal Adnan Hussein, female civil servant, born 1964./Inas Adnan Sa’id, student, 1976./ Hind Ra’ad Mohammed Sa’id, child, 1987./Ahlam Kamal Mohammed, housewife, 1945./Awes Adnan Hussein, male student, 1978./Hala Ra’ad Mohammed Sa’id, female child, 1991./Nedhal Mehmood Mussa, housewife, 1948./ Manar Abed al-Karim Fathi, student, 1979./Dalia Abed al- Mohmmed, 1980./Mustafa Abed al-Karim Mohammed, male student, 1984/Hala Abed al-Karim Mohammed, female child, 1985./Sabiha Abed Alah Reks, housewife, 1944./Elham Abed Alah, civil servant, 1961./Sabiha Radhi Rahim, housewife, 1939./ Ibtessam Rashid Sahab, student, 1969./Wijdan Rashid Sahab, 1971/ Belal Rashid Sahab, male, 1977./Mayes Sa’ad Mehmood, female child, 1985./ Mohammed Sa’ad Mehmood, male, 1987./Awatef Mehmood Mossa, female civil servant, 1960./Shatha Kadhim Isma’il, teacher, 1957./Hiba Abed al-Majid, child, 1985./Raja’ Mohammed Sayaj,housewife, 1958./Rana Hameed, female student, 1980./Shayma Hameed Abood, 1981./Rasha Hammed Abood, 1984./ ALi Hameed Abood, male child, 1988./Daina Hammeed Abood, female, 1990./ Ammar Ahmed, male student, 1978./Walid ALi Salman, male, 1974./Amer Qassem ALi, male, 1975./Adila Abed, housewife, 1925./Sally Ahmed Salman, student, 1984./Seham Saleh Mahdi, civil servant, 1946./Hussein ALi Ibrahim, male student, 1982./Samah Ali Ibrahim, female, 1983./ Mahia Ahmed Yassin, 1982./Samira Hameed Saleh, housewife, 1961/ Rula Sabah Abed al-Hameed, student, 1982./Mohammed Sabah Abed, male, 1984./Abir Sabah Abed al-Hameed, female child, 1987./ Wassen Ref’at ALi, student, 1980./Wissam Ref’at ALi, male, 1975./ALi Kadim, male, 1975./joodi Waiss al Doori, retired, 1924./ Belkis Hassani, housewife, 1934./Nawal joodi, teacher, 1958./jamiLa joodi, civil servant, 1961./Thawra joodi, housewife, 1976./Iman Kamel Hamoodi, student, 1975./Samira Baha, teacher, 1932./ALia’ kamal Mustafa, student, 1971./Omar Kamal Mustafa, male, 1978./Seham Kalifa Kattab, female, 1943./Raja’ Hussein Noori, 1963./Rasmia Abed, 1940./Amal Khudier Dhari, 1964./Hind Dafer Fayssel, child, 1989./Shahed Dafer Fayssel, 1988./Bassima Khudier Dhari, 1970./Bushra Ahmed, 1977./Shayma Ali Hussein, student, 1976./ Mohammed ALi Hussein, male, 1979./Mustafa ALi Hussein, 1981./ Hussein ALi Hussein, 1974./ Hadil Talib, female child, 1989./ Karar TaLib, male, 1990./Samira Daham jassem, female student, 1961./ Adnan Daham jassem, male student, 1976./Hamida Fayadh Ibrahim, female retired, 1927./Iftikhar Rahim Kalil, housewife, 1972./Ahmed Kalil Ibrahim, male student, 1970./Wa’al Mohammed Abed Ali, male student, 1980./Rabia’ Faris Abbas, housewife, 1954./Maher Sadoon, male student, 1971./Lamia Abed Alah Saleh, female retired, 1937./ Qhtan Ismail, male, 1940./Afrah Mohammed Fiadh, female child, 1985./ Mehmood Mohammed Fiadh, male, 1965./Fadhila Ghdban Mohammed, housewife, 1942./Ali Hussein Mohammed, male student, 1980./Shatha Hussein Mohammed, female, 1977./Zina Hussein Mohammed, 1983./Mohammed Hussein Mohammed, male child, 1986./diba Ahmed, female teacher, 1942./ Ghada Muhammed Khudiar, student, 1970./Abir Mohammed Khudiar, 1974./ Ghaida Mohammed Khudiar, 1977./Rana Mohammed Khudiar, 1975./Alia Alwan Manhel, housewife, 1938./Sausan Abbas, civil servant, 1968./Maha Abbas, student, 1973./Muntaha Abbas, 1976./Hassan Ali Hussein, male,1976./Eftekar Farid Al-Said, housewife, 1946./Mohammed Al-Said Farid, male student, 1978./Ahmed Al-Said Farid, 1980./Mehmood Al-Said Farid, 1982./A’ssma Al-Said, female, 1984./Hafsa Mohammed Mustafa, housewife, 1968./Mohammed Ahmed al-Knas, male child, 1988./Salma Ahmed al-Knas, female,1989./Fatema Hassan al-Mustafa, housewife, 1942./Amena Mohammel al-Mustafa, student, 1973./ Jumana Mohammed al-Mustafa, 1975./Rafi’ Mohammed al-Mustafa, male, 1974./Hassan Mohammed al-Mustafa, 1983./Khadija Mohammed al-Mustafa, female, 1984./Nidhal Rashid Mohammed, housewife, 1959./Noor Saad Hammadi, child, 1989./Mustafa Saad Hammadi, male, 1988./Farah Saad Hammadi, female, 1987./Rajeha Mehmood Fawzi, housewife, 1945./Rana Musleh Hammadi, student, born 1977./Hind Musleh Hammadi, born 1982./Rusul Musleh Hammadi, born 1971./Hammza Musleh Hammadi, male, born 1983./Samira Ibrahim Saleh, housewife, born 1947./Khulud Rahim Batawi, female student, 1971./Sajeda Rahim Batawi, 1972./Eyiad Rahim Batawi, male, 1980./Ala Rahim Batawi, 1983./Haifa Ja’far ali, housewife,1950./ Fua’ad Tariq Ahmed, male student, 1979./Karrar Tariq Ahmed, child, 1985/Zina Tariq Ahmed, female student, 1977./Lina Tariq Ahmed, 1974./Yassir Taha Shaghani, male, 1982./Raja Qassem Muhssen, female, 1976./Amira Murshed Rashid, housewife, 1957./Firas Fawzi Abed al-Razaq, male student, 1977./Fadia fawzi Abed al-Razaq, female, 1978./Murad Fawzi Abed al-Razaq, male,1980./ Belal Fawzi Abed al-Razaq, 1983./ Baha Fawzi Abed al-Razaq, 1985./Ala Fawzi Abed al-Razaq, 1975./ Samiha Ibrahim Hameed, housewife, 1941./Wi’am Abed al-Kalil, 1974./Ibtehal Abed al-Kalil, 1974./A’thir Abed al-Kalil, male, 1977./ Hussein Abed Ali, 1924./Sa’dia Kasseb, housewife, 1924./Nebha Naif,1945./ Sahera Naif, born 1957./Mohammed Hussein Abed Ali, male student,1972./ Ahmed Hussein Abed Ali, 1974./Mustafa Hussein Abed Ali, 1977./Omer Hussein Abed Ali, 1980./Hadi Hussein Abed Ali, 1970./Sa’ad Hussein Abed Ali,1982./ Sa’ad Abed al-Hameed Al-Rawi, retired, 1946./Hutham Kalil jawad, female teacher, 1948./A’fia Sa’ad Abed al-Hameed, student, 1978./Omer Sa’ad Abed al-Hameed, male, born 1979./Hiba Sa’ad Abed al-Hameed, female,1983./Ilham Kalil jawad, civil servant, 1950./A’thra Ibrahim jawad, 1941./Buthina Mohammed Khalaf, housewife, 1937./Sami’a Mustafa Zaidan, 1932./Bushra Meftah Mohammed, student, 1974./BelKhis Abed al-Karim Mushir, housewife, 1945./Izdehar Abed al-Wahab Mustafa, student, 1966./ Fatima Khudiar Mustaf, civil servant,1968./Zainab Khudiar Mustaf, student, 1971./Sukaina Khudiar Mustaf, female student, 1973./Belal Khudiar Mustaf, male, 1984./Wedad Kalil al Da’ad, housewife, 1951./ Hind Majed Ibrahim, female student, 1972./Lu’ai Majed Ibrahim, male, 1978/Saif Majed Ibrahim, 1984./Safa Majed Ibrahim, female child, 1990./Fadhila Latif Mohammed, housewife, 1938./Intessar Jaber Kalil, 1960./Hajem Jaber Tala, male wage earner, 1918./Makia Hawas Khalaf, housewife, 1918./Sharifa Hussein Saghira, 1930./Suhad Qassim Hajim,student, 1976./Zainab Qassim Hajim, 1977./Wazban Qassim Hajim, male,1982./ Dhul-Fikar Qassim Hajim, male student, 1983./Shayma’ Kadoori Nasser, 1980./Muna Kadoori Nasser, 1980./Rassmia Abdullah Saleh, housewife 1939./Ibtessam Hameed Abdullah, teacher, 1953./Nahlla Hameed, student, 1967./Affin Sa’di Taha, student, 1982./Nivin Sa’di Taha, 1985./Lian Sa’di Taha, 1986./Kissma Jabar Ahmed, housewife, 1949./Ali Akram, male student, 1979./Othman Akram, 1983./Jinan Akram, female child, 1986./Majid Hameed, male retired, 1939./Sabiha Rashid Saleh, housewife, 1943./A’ssma Majid Hameed, student, 1970./Ahmed Saleh Shehab, female, 1968./Niran Saleh Shehab, female student, 1971./U’ruba Saleh Shehab, 1975./Ahlam Saleh Shehab,1967./ Khalidia Hamed Ameen, housewife, 1934./Rajeha Abedulla, teacher,1942./ Nasser Mohammed Fiadh, male student, 1974./ Mohammed Omer Abed al-Hussein, 1976./Sana’ Taha Mohammed, female civil servant, 1951./Safa’ Ali Hussein, male student, 1977./Wassen Ali Hussein, female, 1979./Mohammed Jassim Muqhbel, male, 1983./Hafsa Abed al-Khadder, housewife,1929./ Mohammed Abed al-Khadder, male student, 1973./Salma Abed Rahi, housewife, 1958./Mustafa Hameed Jabbar, male student, 1977./Mohammed Hameed Jabbar, 1982./Ahmed Hameed Jabbar, child, 1986./Najat Fadhel, housewife, 1953./Ussama Abed, male student, 1982./Issra’ Abed, female child, 1984./Yehia Abed, male, 1985./Hiba Abed, female, 1990./Malika Nawaf Dhaher, housewife, 1962./Karam Abed Aziz, male student, 1982./Yatherb Abed, female, 1984./Farah Abed, 1986./Arwa Abed, child, 1988./Khulud Hameed, housewife, 1963./Shayma’ Dawood Rokan, student, 1977./Inas Sami Dawood, 1985./Ali Sami Dawood, male, 1987./Sara Sami Dawood, female child, 1990./Farah Sami Dawood, 1989./Hana’ Mohammed, housewife,1951./ Shayma’ Kalil Ibrahim, student, 1973./Ghaid’ Kalil Ibrahim, 1975./Zina Kalil Ibrahim, 1978./Ali Kalil Ibrahim, male student, 1982./Issera’ Kalil Ibrahim, female teacher, born 1969./Randa Mohammed Kamel, child, born 1990./Nawal Ibrahim Ali, housewife, 1949./Shwooki Shamoon, female, 1948./Safa’ Mohammed Ali, male retired, 1937./Sarmad Safa’ Mohammed, student, 1978./Madiha Mohammed Amin, housewife, 1924./Efaf Saleh Mehmood, 1956./Batool Saleh Mehmood, 1955./Zahra’ Ghaish Saleh, student, 1982./Huda Ghaish Saleh, 1987./Sana’ Yossif Abu-, female./Wafia Mohammed Majid, teacher, 1943./ Zahra’ Mohammed Nader, student, 1979./Marwan Mohammed Nader, male, 1985./Samira Abed aL-Karim, housewife, 1938./Amira Abed al-karim, 1940./Talia’ Ahmed /Jarid Jassem Mohammed, housewife, 1944./Mahdi Mohammed Saleh, male student./Mohammed Ahmed Talet/ Mohammed Hussein Saleh/ Sa’dia Jawad, female civil servant, 1964./ Walid Shaker-Kalil, male./Abed al-Salam-Ghaith/Salam Mohammed Awad/ Dooriad Naji-Hameed, male civil servant./Mohammed Shaker /Radhi Yossif/ Jassem Hiak /Rabi (Father’s name unknown) /Ahmed Ibrahim Kalil /Abed al-Khaliq (father’s name unknown) /Adnan Ahmed Na’em /Haidi Rahim Kalil / Kalthum Jaber Khalif, housewife, born 1959./Jassmia Abed Khalaf, 1917./ Firas Kadhim Abbas, male student, 1982./Amjad Kadhim Abbas, 1983. /Nibras Kadhim Abbas, female, 1985./ Inas Kadhim Abbas, female child,1988.

Posted: February Monday 11 2008

The author commissioned the "Lancet" study recently attacked in a National Journal report and by the Wall Street Journal. He calls the criticism a "hatchet job," fraudulent or based on innuendo.

By John Tirman

(February 14, 2008 Commentary) One puzzling aspect of the news media’s coverage of the Iraq war is their squeamish treatment of Iraqi casualties. The scale of fatalities and wounded is a difficult number to calculate, but its importance should be obvious. Yet, apart from some rare and sporadic attention to mortality figures, the topic is virtually absent from the airwaves and news pages of America. This absence leaves the field to gross misunderstandings, ideological agendas, and political vendettas.

The upshot is that the American public — and U.S. policy makers, for that matter — are badly informed on a vital dimension of the war effort.

As an academic interested in the war’s violence, I commissioned a household survey in October 2005 to gauge mortality, and I naturally turned to the best professionals available — the Johns Hopkins University epidemiologists who had conducted such surveys before in Iraq, Congo, and elsewhere. Their survey of 1,850 households resulted in a shocking number: 600,000 dead by violence in the first 40 months of the war. The survey was extensively peer reviewed and published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, in October 2006.

The findings caused a ripple of interest (in part because President Bush, during a press conference, called the results “not credible”) and stirred a very lively debate among the few people interested in the methods. By and large, however, the survey passed from public view fairly quickly, and the news media continued to cite the very low numbers produced by the Iraq Body Count, a U.K.-based NGO that counts civilian deaths through English-language newspaper reports.

Another survey, this one undertaken by a private U.K. firm, Opinion Business Research (ORB), found more than one million dead through August 2007. Yet another, a much larger house-to-house survey was conducted by the Iraq Ministry of Health (MoH). This also found a sizable mortality figure — 400,000 “excess deaths” (the number above the pre-war death rate), but estimated 151,000 killed by violence. The period covered was the same as the survey published in The Lancet, but was not released until January 2008.

The ORB results were almost totally ignored in the American press, and the MoH numbers, which did get one-day play, were covered incompletely. Virtually no newspaper report dug into the data tables of the Iraqi MoH report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, for that total excess mortality figure, or to ask why the MoH report showed a flat rate for killing throughout the war when every other account shows sharp increases through 2005 and 2006. The logical explanation for this discrepancy is that people responding to interviewers from the government, and a ministry controlled by Moktada al Sadr, would not want to admit that their loved one died by violence. There were, instead, very large numbers of dead by road accidents and “unintentional injuries.” The American press completely missed this.

What some in the news media did not miss, however, was a full-scale assault on the legitimacy of the Lancet article by the National Journal, the “insider” Capitol Hill weekly.

The attack, by reporters Carl Cannon and Neil Munro, which was largely built on persistent complaints of two critics and heaps of innuendo, was largely ignored—its circulation is only about 10,000 — until the Wall Street Journal picked up on one bit of their litany: that “George Soros” funded the survey. “The Lancet study was funded by anti-Bush partisans and conducted by antiwar activists posing as objective researchers,” said the January 9, 2008, editorial (titled “The Lancet’s Political Hit”) and concluded: “the Lancet study could hardly be more unreliable.” The editorial created sensation in the right-wing blogosphere and in several allied news outlets.

Let me convey what I thought was a simple and unremarkable fact I told Munro in an interview in November and one of the Lancet authors emailed Cannon the details of how the survey was funded. My center at MIT used internal funds to underwrite the survey. More than six months after the survey was commissioned, the Open Society Institute, the charitable foundation begun by Soros, provided a grant to support public education efforts of the issue. We used that to pay for some travel for lectures, a web site, and so on.

OSI, much less Soros himself (who likely was not even aware of this small grant), had nothing to do with the origination, conduct, or results of the survey. The researchers and authors did not know OSI, among other donors, had contributed. And we had hoped the survey’s findings would appear earlier in the year but were impeded by the violence in Iraq. All of this was told repeatedly to Munro and Cannon, but they choose to falsify the story. Charges of political timing were especially ludicrous, because we started more than a year before the 2006 election and tried to do the survey as quickly as possible. It was published when the data were ready.

The New York Post and the Sunday Times of London, both owned by Rupert Murdoch, followed the WSJ editorial and trumpeted the Soros connection and the supposed “fraud” which Munro and Cannon hinted. “SOROS IRAQ DEATH STORY WAS A SHAM” was a headline in the Post, which was followed by a story in which scarcely anything stated was true.

The charges of “fraud” that were also central to the National Journal piece were based on distortions or ignorance of statistical method, such as random sampling and sample size, or speculations about Iraqi field researchers fabricating data. Nothing close to proof of misdeeds was ever offered.

The two principal authors, Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts, parried the fraud charges effectively on their web site and in letters to the editors, but of course these are rarely noticed as much as the original charges. Those charges were wholly speculative and at times based on small irregularities in the collection of data, hardly a crime in the midst of the bloodiest period of the war. For example, some death certificates were not collected from respondents; about 80 percent of the time they were. (In the Iraqi MoH survey, death certificates were never collected, making their claims about violence v. nonviolent causes unconfirmable.)

In any case, the many peer reviews of The Lancet article, including one by a special committee of the World Health Organization, gave the survey methods and operations passing grades.

Munro then went on the Glenn Beck program and suggested the Iraqi researchers were unreliable (“without U.S. supervision”) and that the Lancet authors “made it clear they wanted this study published before the election.” Both of those assertions are untrue. Beck then repeated these allegations on his radio program, and added that there was no peer review of the fatality figures, another falsehood, and “we’re getting it jammed down our throat by people who are undercover who are pulling purse strings, who are manipulating the news.”

The charge, repeated in all these media, that the Iraqi research leader, Riyadh Lafta, M.D., operated “without U.S. supervision” and was therefore suspect is particularly interesting. Munro, in a note to National Review Online, asserted that Lafta “said Allah guided the prior 2004 Lancet/Johns Hopkins death-survey,” which he also had noted in the National Journal piece. When he interviewed me he pestered me about two anonymous donors, demanding to know if either were Arab or Muslim. A pattern here is visible, one which reeks of religious prejudice.

Munro had also ignored the corroborating evidence I sent him, the 4.5 million displaced (suggesting hundreds of thousands of fatalities, drawing on the ratio of all other wars); estimates of new widows (500,000 from the war); and the other surveys done in Iraq suggesting enormous numbers of casualties (ABC/USA Today poll of March 2007, showing roughly 53% physically harmed by war). When I mentioned these things to him on the telephone, he literally screamed that such data didn’t matter, that the Lancet probe was “a hoax.” Lancet article authors also cite several cases where they were misquoted. The National Journal’s editors have been informed of their reporters’ misconduct and errors, and have not responded.

So the smear is complete — a “political hit” by the “anti-Bush billionaire,” complicity by anti-war academics, fraud by Muslims devoted to Allah — and repeated over and over in the right-wing media. Little has of this has appeared in the legitimate news media, apart from right-wing columnists like Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe.

One might expect that such nonsense is obvious to neutral observers, but it constitutes a kind of harassment that scholars must fend off, diverting from more important work. Gilbert Burnham, the lead author on the Lancet article, runs health clinics in Afghanistan and East Africa, and is spending inordinate amounts of time responding to the attacks. Les Roberts, a coauthor, and I have both had colleagues at our universities called by Munro to ask if they would punish us for fraud. The OSI people have also been writing letters to set the record straight. Most important, Riyadh Lafta, who has been threatened before, may be in more danger due to these attacks.

As to the issue of the human cost of the war, even the legitimate press that has avoided this kerfuffle might be intimidated from taking on the issue in depth. The fact that the National Journal hatchet job and the MoH survey appeared within days of each other sent a message to editors around the United States — one survey is “discredited” and one is legitimate. The treatment of the MoH survey that week often noted its death-by-violence number was one-fourth of the Lancet figure — forgetting, again, that total war-related mortality were much closer in both, and congruent with other surveys. The New York Times did run an editorial in early February about the dead in Iraq — the 124 journalists killed in the war.

The topic of the war’s exceptional human costs, now inflamed by these calumnies, appears to be too hot to handle. Even with all this fuss in January, no explorations of the Iraqi mortality from the war have appeared in the major dailies. No editorials, no examination of the methods (or the danger and difficulty of collecting data), no sense that the scale of killing might affect the American position, or might shed some light on U.S. war strategy, or might point to honorable exits and reconstruction obligations. Remarkably, no curiosity at all about the dead of Iraq, and what they can tell us.

That, in the end, may be the biggest injustice of all.

***

All the surveys can be found here. here.

The National Journal article, “Data Bomb,” is here.

My annotated copy of "Data Bomb" and much more is here.

John Tirman is Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology's Center for International Studies.

It so happened that, hours before, another Palestinian man had used that mafia term as we wove through scrolls of barbed wire, checkpoints, walls, and Galil/M-16 toting Occupation men as Jewish settlers/occupiers zipped through the West Bank on ethnically/religiously segregated superhighways.

ALLAN NAIRN — Mafia Rules in the Middle East

Humankind as we know it at the 'End Point'

Don't forget:

Behind it all is the desire for depopulation — by those rich enough to have their islands for temporary residence while depopulation takes place.

Doesn't matter if it is killing in the fight for food when the trucks no longer arrive at your local supermarket.

Doesn't matter if it is tribe against tribe.

Or thermobaric bombs — environmentally friendly compared to nuclear. Bombs that send ultra-sonic shock waves and searing fireballs to destroy everything in their dropping wake.

Or those special bombs that do not destroy the infrastructure — kill only you and those you love.

You are in the way, folks!

There are too many of you!

This is the plan.

Kewe

Unspeakable grief and horror

...and the circus of deception killing continues...

He says, "You are quite mad, Kewe"

And of course I am.

Why, I don't believe any of it — not the bloody body, not the bloody mind, not even the bloody Universe, or is it bloody multiverse.

"It's all illusion," I say. "Don't you know, my lad, my lassie. The game! The game, me girl, me boy! Takes on interest, don't you know. T'is me sport, till doest find a better!"

Pssssst — but all this stuff is happening down here

Let's change it!

To say hello: hello[the at marker]Kewe.info