Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

[T]here are no bullet holes visible at the front of the school building or tell-tale marks of a firefight. The place is unmarked. By contrast, the houses opposite… are punctured with machine-gun fire, which tore away lumps of concrete the size of a hand and punched holes as deep as the length of a ballpoint pen. Asked to explain the absence of bullet holes, Lt-Col Nantz said that the Iraqi fire had gone over the soldiers’ heads. We were taken to see two bullet holes in an upper window and some marks on a wall, but they were on another side of the school building.

There are other troubling questions. Lt-Col Nantz said that the troops had been fired on from a house across the road. Several light machine guns were produced, which the Americans said were found at the scene. If true, this was an Iraqi suicide mission—anyone attacking the post from a fixed position within 40 yards would have had no chance of survival.

The American claim that there were 25 guns in the crowd would also indicate that the demonstrators had had a death wish or were stupid. Iraqis have learnt in the past few weeks that if they fail to stop their cars quickly enough at an American-manned checkpoint, they may well be shot. 43

In its on-the-ground investigation, Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that “the physical evidence at the school does not support claims of an effective attack on the building as described by U.S. troops.” 44This, HRW’s researchers asserted, “contrasts sharply” with the homes across the street from the school, which bore “the marks of more than 100 rounds—smaller caliber shots as well as heavy caliber machine gun rounds—shot by U.S. soldiers. The facades and perimeter walls of seven of the nine homes across from the school had significant bullet damage, including six homes that had been hit with more than a dozen rounds each…. No bullet marks were found on the upper levels of the houses, despite U.S. soldiers’ claims that they had targeted gunmen on the roofs across the street.” 45

Any hopes the United States had about its “winning hearts and minds” rhetoric resonating in Fallujah were obliterated that blood-soaked night. The morning after the shooting, funerals were held for the dead in accordance with Islamic tradition. A bloodied Iraqi flag hung outside the emergency room at a local hospital, 46which was struggling to treat the wounded as word was spreading fast across Fallujah and the country about the massacre. “We won’t remain quiet over this,” said Ahmad Hussein, as he sat in a Fallujah hospital with his eighteen-year-old son, who doctors predicted would die from the gunshot wound to his stomach. “Either they leave Fallujah or we will make them leave.” 47Some in the international press were comparing it to the “Bloody Sunday” massacre of 1972, when British troops opened fire on Irish Catholic protesters, killing thirteen, an event that helped popularize and mobilize the Irish Republican Army. 48

On the Wednesday morning after the killings, as many as a thousand people poured into the streets of Fallujah to protest the massacre and to demand that the U.S. troops leave the city. They assembled in front of the old Baath Party headquarters, which—like the school—had been taken over by the Americans. UPI reported that “the street scene was chaotic, with U.S. troops aiming weapons into the crowd from buildings the United States has been using as a base camp, while a pair of Apache attack helicopters circled overhead training their guns on the gathered crowd throughout the morning.” 49Once again, the protest ended in bloodshed, as U.S. forces shot and killed four people and injured at least fifteen others. 50As with the incident at the school, U.S. commanders claimed their forces acted in self-defense. But journalists from mainstream news organizations on the scene contradicted this account. The UPI correspondent in Fallujah, P. Mitchell Prothero, reported that “none of the dead and wounded in Wednesday’s incident appeared to have been armed, and none of the gathered protesters displayed weapons of any kind. In over a dozen interviews with witnesses of the shooting, the Iraqis denied any shots were fired at U.S. troops. The only shell casings found within the vicinity were 5.56 mm rounds used by U.S. forces, not 7.62 mm rounds commonly used in AK-47s, the Iraqi weapon of choice.” 51

Witnesses said one man was shot in the face and chest. His friends said the man was the father of four children. 52People interviewed by the Washington Post described U.S. forces in Fallujah patrolling neighborhoods and “firing with little regard for civilian life.” 53“This is exactly like what’s happening in Palestine,” geography professor Ahmed Jaber Saab, whose two nephews were wounded by U.S. forces, told the paper. “I didn’t believe it until I saw it myself.” 54As he prepared a body for burial after the killings, Sunni cleric Sheik Talid Alesawi mocked U.S. rhetoric. “We understood freedom by making demonstrations,” he said. “But the shooting that greeted us was not freedom. Are there two types of freedom, one for you and one for us?” 55That sentiment was widespread in the city. “Is this Bush’s freedom and liberation?” asked Fallujah resident Faleh Ibrahim as he marched with hundreds of others to a cemetery with the coffins of two of the dead. “We don’t want Bush, and we don’t want to be liberated. The Iraqis will bring their own liberation.” 56

A few hours after the second round of killings happened in Fallujah, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld landed at the Basra airport, at the time making him the most senior U.S. official to visit Iraq. 57“What is significant is that large numbers of human beings, intelligent, energetic, have been liberated,” Rumsfeld declared. “They are out from under the heel of a truly brutal vicious regime and that’s a good thing.” 58In Fallujah, U.S. soldiers abandoned Al Qaed School, consolidating their headquarters in the former Baath Party offices in Fallujah. Nearby, someone hung a banner that read: “Sooner or later, U.S. killers, we’ll kick you out.” 59

That day as well, a letter from Saddam—at the time still underground—was published, calling on Iraqis to “forget everything and resist the occupation,” declaring, “There are no priorities other than driving out the infidel, criminal, cowardly occupier. No honorable hand is held out to shake his, but, rather, the hand of traitors and collaborators.” 60The White House, meanwhile, announced that President Bush would, the following day, declare an end to major combat operations in Iraq aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln —his infamous “Mission Accomplished” moment. In reality, though, the real war was just beginning, and the events of the previous forty-eight hours would play a decisive role. That night, a grenade was thrown into the new U.S. headquarters in Fallujah, wounding seven American soldiers. 61After meeting with U.S. representatives in an effort to avert further bloodshed, Imam Jamal Shaqir Mahmood, of the Grand Fallujah Mosque, said the Americans argued that the troops were needed to provide security, “but the people of Fallujah told them we already have security.” 62To Fallujans, their city was now officially occupied. “After the massacre, we don’t believe the Americans came to free us, but to occupy and take our wealth and kill us,” said local leader Mohammed Farhan. 63

It didn’t take long for the story of the U.S. massacres in Fallujah to spread across Iraq and the Arab world. Within a few weeks, folk songs appeared on the radio, praising the people of Fallujah for bravely confronting the occupation forces. 64DVDs went on the market with footage of the aftermath of the massacres interwoven with images of resistance attacks against U.S. patrols and scenes of epic Arab movies. In one DVD, footage from the movie Black Hawk Down depicting the slaughter of U.S. forces in Somalia is accompanied by the voice of Fallujan singer Sabeh al-Hashem, who sings: “Fallujah, attack their troops and no one will be able to save their injured soldiers. Who brought you to Fallujah, Bush? We will serve you the drink of death.” 65In another song, Hashem declares, “The people of Fallujah are like wolves when they attack the enemy.” 66