PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

1,700 U.S. soldiers have deserted in Iraq
by Redddd Friday, Dec. 05, 2003 at 11:53 AM

One thousand and seven hundred U.S. soldiers have deserted their posts in Iraq

1,700 U.S. soldiers quit Iraq: French magazine
PARIS, Dec 04, 2003 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- One thousand and seven hundred U.S. soldiers have deserted their posts in Iraq, with many of them failing to return to military duty after getting permission to go back to the United States, according to the French weekly magazine Le Canard Enchaine.

The magazine, known for its satires and exposes, said the French intelligence agency obtained the information from what it described an "American colleague."

Citing a senior French official posted in Washington, the magazine also said that 7,000 U.S. soldiers have left Iraq allegedly due to psychological troubles and other illnesses.

Some 2,200 others sustained serious injuries including the loss of limbs, it said.

2003 Kyodo News (c) Established 1945

http://highmarkfunds.stockpoint.com/highmarkfunds/newspaper.asp?Mode=kyo&Story=20031204/338x6796.xml

add your comments

Following the Leader...
by AWOL is a Bush family tradition Saturday, Dec. 06, 2003 at 10:14 AM

In a news conference on 11 October 2001, President George W. Bush said "we learned some very important lessons in Vietnam." All members of the U.S. armed forces should take a moment and familiarize themselves with the important lessons that George Bush learned during the Vietnam War. Do everything you can to encourage the men and women of the U.S. armed services to follow the example of their Commander-in-Chief when called upon to go into battle.

In May 1968, American soldiers were dying in combat in Southeast Asia at a rate of about 350 per week. George W. Bush was twelve days away from losing his student draft deferment (meaning that he'd be eligible for draft into the Vietnam War) when he abruptly decided that he should join the 147th Fighter Group of the Texas Air National Guard. In spite of the very long waiting list and having only scored the lowest acceptable grade on the pilot aptitude qualification test, this son of a Houston-based congressman managed to enlist on the same day that he applied, and a special ceremony was staged so he could be photographed swearing in for duty (a second special photo opportunity was arranged when Bush was commissioned a second lieutenant as Bush's father the congressman [a supporter of the Vietnam War] stood proudly in the background). According to Shrub's former commanding officer, Bush "said he wanted to fly just like his daddy." Other members of the Texas Air National Guard at the time included the aide to the speaker of the Texas House and at least seven members of the Dallas Cowboys professional football team; Bush's 147th Fighter Group was known as the "Champagne Unit" because it also included the sons of future Senator Lloyd Bentsen and Texas Governor John Connally.

Immediately following his promotion to second lieutenant, Bush was put on inactive duty status and spent more than two months in Florida working for Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Edward J. Gurney. When he wasn't handing out Gurney press releases and making sure that the reporters didn't oversleep, Bush returned to Houston for weekend Guard duty. In early 1970, Bush rented a one-bedroom apartment at the exclusive Chateaux Dijon complex in Houston, a building with six swimming pools where Bush played all-day water volleyball games and dated many of the single women who lived there.

In 1973, as Bush's daddy was being considered for a new job as chairman of Nixon's Republican National Committee, Dubya secured an early release from the National Guard to start at Harvard Business School, eight months short of his full six-year hitch, and transferred to a reserve unit in Boston for the rest of his time. "One of my first recollections of him," says classmate Marty Kahn, "was sitting in class and hearing the unmistakable sound of someone spitting tobacco. I turned around and there was George sitting in the back of the room in his [National Guard] bomber jacket spitting in a cup." Bush's acceptance into Harvard Business School surprised some, since he had graduated from Yale a full five years before.

Urge enlisted men and women to do like Bush did: avoid combat at all costs, hang out, sleep late, and lead an active social life; when called upon to fight a war for your great nation, see if you can to pull political strings in order to avoid the infantry and chose instead to spend two years in flight training in San Antonio and another four years in part-time service in your home state. If you lack the ruling-class connections, than you should be obliged to do whatever you can to follow the lead of your Commander-in-Chief: cheat, lie, malinger, and go AWOL. Desert while you can; killing and dying for ruling-class petrocrats is for chumps.

add your comments

in our name
by Sam Sunday, Dec. 07, 2003 at 6:23 AM

Catalog of inhumanity in Iraqi sand

12-7-03

Niko Price

MAHAWEEL, Iraq - The killers kept bankers' hours.

They showed up for work at the barley field at 9 a.m., trailed by backhoes and three buses filled with blindfolded men, women and children as young as 1.

Every day, witnesses say, the routine was the same: The backhoes dug a trench. Fifty people were led to the edge of the hole and shot, one by one, in the head. The backhoes covered them with dirt, then dug another hole for the next group.

At 5 p.m., the killers - officials of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party - went home to rest up for another day of slaughter.

In this wind-swept field in the central town of Mahaweel, witnesses say, this went on without a break for 35 days in March and April of 1991, during a crackdown on a Shiite Muslim uprising that followed the first Gulf War.

"I watched this with my own eyes," said Sayed Abbas Muhsen, 35, whose family farm was appropriated by Saddam's government for use as a killing field. "But we couldn't tell anyone. We didn't dare."

The mass grave at Mahaweel, with more than 3,100 sets of remains, is the largest of 270 such sites across Iraq. They hold upward of 300,000 bodies; some Iraqi political parties estimate there are more than 1 million.

"It's as easy to find mass graves in Iraq as it once was to find oil," said Adnan Jabbar al-Saadi, a lawyer with Iraq's new Human Rights Ministry.

In the days after Saddam's fall on April 9, family members rushed to grave sites, digging for ID cards and clothing that confirmed their worst fears: The bones in the ground belonged to a son, a wife, a grandfather.

The U.S.-led occupation authority desperately tried to halt the digging, telling people that if they waited, forensic teams would unearth the remains and use the evidence to punish those responsible.

Now, an Associated Press investigation has discovered, forensic teams will begin digging in January to preserve the first physical evidence at four grave sites, their desert locations kept secret to prevent relatives from disturbing them first.

In a tiny back room of the deposed Iraqi president's sprawling brick-and-marble Republican Palace in Baghdad, American and British experts are using the latest technology to reach out to the dead.

They work from a growing database of 270 suspected grave sites, matching witness accounts with geological evidence, preparing for field trips by four-wheel-drive vehicle and helicopter to confirm their high-tech data with the most low-tech tool: a shovel.

"This is not a case of 'X marks the spot,"' said archaeologist Barrie Simpson. "It's not like driving down Route 66 with signposts that say, 'Stop here."'

Gypsum is one key tool. The Iraqi desert has a hard crust a foot below the surface, which is broken when a hole is dug. Minerals then mix to form gypsum, a kind of salt whose glistening white crystals are visible decades later from a satellite or from the ground.

Imagery in six spectral bands comes from a commercial satellite in orbit since 1983, which can take images of any spot on Earth every 16 days.

The classified computers - which the experts switch off before a reporter enters the room - hold two decades of imagery.

If witnesses report a mass grave was dug in a certain desert location, say, in March 1991, the team can analyze data from images taken in February 1991 and June 1991, and determine whether a pit was dug in that area during that time.

"We don't care what it looks like," said geoscientist Bruce Gerrick. "When our pixels come back and say it's gypsum, that's it."

After seven months of work, the team has confirmed 41 mass graves across the length and breadth of Iraq - a country the size of France - some near major cities, and others miles from the nearest road.

They have a long way to go.

Excavating a grave site under international standards is painstaking work. To pull 100 sets of remains from the ground, it usually takes six to eight weeks.

Nobody expects scientists to dig up and identify 300,000 sets of remains. So as the scientists analyze the desert, experts are trying to identify which graves could help prosecutors build a case against those responsible.

"We're trying to make sure that there is at least one grave, and hopefully two or three, for each major period of atrocity," said Sandra Hodgkinson, director of the occupation authority's human rights office. That would mean eight to 24 mass graves selected for full exhumation.

Of the 41 mass grave sites confirmed by the coalition team, only four meet the criteria for full exhumation so far, several members of the scientific team told AP. All are in the remote desert, none closer than 10 miles from the nearest road.

Iraq's U.S.-appointed rulers have drafted a plan to set up a special tribunal for crimes against humanity.

According to four people who have seen the draft - expected to be approved as soon as today - it calls for Iraqi judges to hear cases from Iraqi prosecutors. International experts will participate as advisers.

U.S. authorities are pushing for a small number of high-profile trials - maybe 100 or so, including Saddam and other key leaders. Many Iraqis want to try thousands with links to the former regime.

"I think those highly responsible should face the courts," said al-Husseini, the doctor. "For the people who followed their orders, we need forgiveness in Iraq."

Villagers dug furiously in Mahaweel in April, carting away more than 2,200 sets of remains. For those they couldn't identify, they dug individual, unmarked graves, and piled the belongings found with them atop the mounds.

In Mahaweel today, 900 mounds sit topped with shreds of clothing. On one is a pair of child-sized high-tops. On another, a blood-spattered green jacket. A wallet. A string of black prayer beads.

"It's over," said Atlas Hamid Ode, whose brother-in-law was buried there. "People don't go there anymore. They have lost all hope of finding their sons. These graves, without names, will remain as shrines."

add your comments

Where Did They Go?
by Prodigal Yunzer Tuesday, Dec. 09, 2003 at 12:20 PM

Where are the countless Iraq war refugees escaping from the hellish landscape of burning uranium shells? Where are the multitudes of civilian casuaties? Where did the 3rd Infantry Division break formation as it was swallowed up by the Mohammedan freedom fighters? Where are the thousands of battlefield casualties?
We lost more airmen during the Berlin Air Lift than we did soldiers in the entire Iraq war, and not one shot was fired. The nice thing about the preedictions above not coming true is that we won the war. Two million former refugees RETURNED to Afghanistan since we kicked the Taliban out. I heard there are gas lines all over Baghdad now since there are about 50% more cars owned by private owners now. Some war we're losing huh? I can't wait to see one of the 1700 deserters on TV. Just one, is that too much to ask?

add your comments