GI SPECIAL 3B98:

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CORNER IN HELL:

AMERICANS WANT YOU HOME:

BUSH WANTS YOU THERE:

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

US Marines at Tharthar Lake, Iraq. (AFP/USMC/File/Cpl. Robert R. Attebury)

Then There Are The Bad Days

Dust Storms, Sun Take Toll On Soldiers

July 22, 2005 By Capt. H.R. Grimm, Columnist, Chillicothe Gazette

The intensity of dust storms have grounded flights and convoys for days with visibility of less than a quarter mile.

No mail arrives, no evacuations take place and no convoys move as the heat grinds the dust into every nook and cranny.

Soldiers who are housed in tents fight with poles and straps that are loosened by the constant wind. Soldiers who are housed or work in buildings re-caulk and re-tape every window and door against dust, sand, camel spider, scorpion or other unwanted visitors.

The ground seems to move under one's feet as the shifting sands fill the slightest corner or depression into snow like drifts.

It is an eerie sci-fi scene with Soldiers meandering around with scarved and goggled faces bracing against the wind, heat and dust.

Life is ground to a slowness so that even the locals know better than to venture out into the day.

Then there are the bad days. Days when it is only the sunshine with its unrelenting heat bearing down promising to suck the very life out of anyone who has failed to hydrate themselves.

These are the days when convoys are driving down the highways and patrols are out looking for bomb making locations and attempting to gain against the insurgents' planting of IEDs.

The local population is going to market and, amid this sea of humanity, insurgents are able to blend into the fray firing off mortars, attacking with VBIED and milling into crowds of civilians as suicide bombers.

All of this makes the reality of casualties a more likely possibility.

My civilian friends, don't complain about the rain or humidity or the temperature or the traffic or even the long line at your local store.

Trust me, what is considered a bad day in the states is better than a Soldier's good day here.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

SAILOR DIES FROM BOMB BLAST WOUNDS

July 22, 2005 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE Number: 05-07-14C

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq A Sailor assigned to Regimental Combat Team-2, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), died July 21 of wounds received July 15 from an improvised explosive device.

The incident occurred during combat operations in Hit, Iraq.

MARINE KILLED BY IED NEAR ZAIDON

July 22, 2005 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE Number: 05-07-15C

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq A Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team-8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), was killed in action July 21 by an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations near Zaidon, Iraq.

Fighting In Samarra

July 22, 2005 The Canadian Press

U.S. and Iraqi troops also clashed with militants in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, leaving four dead, police said.

One Iraqi soldier, along with three civilians, were killed, said police Capt. Laith Mohammed. Another 11 people were wounded, he said.

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Karzai Sets Goal:

To Control Afghanistan

[Thanks to PB who sent this in. He writes: Great goal for a country's ruler: control the country.]

Jul 22 AP: Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Friday that his government was determined to gain control over the whole country but would still require years of international support as Afghanistan emerges from decades of civil war.

TROOP NEWS

Rape A House For George!

U.S. Command Wants Even More Dead And Maimed U.S. Troops:

Stupid Terror Tactics Encouraging Thousands Of New Recruits To Take Up Arms And Fight U.S. Soldiers

U.S. soldiers from the 256th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, break down the front door during a cordon and search mission in Baghdad, in this military handout file photo taken July 14, 2005. REUTERS/USAF/Staff Sgt. Jorge A. Photo by Reuters (Handout)

Assholes In Metrics-land

Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Peter Rodman, left, accompanied by Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp, director of strategic policy and plans for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meets reporters at the Pentagon July 21 to discuss a Pentagon report on Iraq. (AP Photo/Heesoon Yim)

Report to Congress Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq

July 21, 2005 U.S. Department of Defense News Transcript

Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs:

We call this the Iraq Metrics Report.

Metrics is something we do ourselves. As you know, Secretary Rumsfeld is passionate about metrics. It's a management tool. Long before Congress asked us for this report, we have been doing our best to apply rigorous standards of performance, particularly in the training, the field of training Iraqi forces.

And I think this is a key dimension to watch, and the metrics are, of course, the timeline, the schedule of political developments that we're looking for the rest of this year. [Huh?]

MORE:

Pentagon Throws A Silly Air Ball

[Thanks to Don Bacon, who sent this in. He writes THE PENTAGON DOESN'T HAVE A CLUE ABOUT WHEN WE CAN LEAVE IRAQ]

July 22, 2005 WASHINGTON (AP)

A Pentagon report [Report to Congress Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq] offered no estimate of when U.S. troops could be withdrawn. There are about 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

But the Defense Department report did not say when Iraqi security forces will be sufficiently trained to defend the country without direct assistance from U.S. troops.

The 23-page report - the most comprehensive public assessment yet by the military of progress in Iraq - was more than a week overdue. In it, the Pentagon cites progress on political, economic and security fronts.

U.S. officers have developed a method of calculating the combat readiness of the 76,700 Iraqi Army troops, but the Pentagon said it "should not and must not" publicly disclose specific data.

"The enemy's knowledge of such details would put both Iraqi and coalition forces at increased risk," the report said. [The resistance has perfect knowledge of such details, having infiltrated the Occupation local intelligence, security, and armed forces from top to bottom. Its only the whining, ass-kissing Imperial Senators who remain in ignorance: they let the assholes from the Pentagon get away with this silly security bullshit without demanding real answers right now.]

MORE ON METRICS:

Inflating Body Counts, And Transforming All The Dead Into Enemy

By Stan Goff, http://stangoff.com [Excerpt]

Those of us who spent time humpin the boonies in Vietnam remember this practice very well. Inflating body counts, and transforming all the dead into enemy or suspected enemy.

Anyone with an ounce of critical capacity and a gram of skepticism has figured this out about Iraq for a while now.

For those unschooled and inexperienced in war, and who have been exposed to a lifetime of television and film where bad guys always have poor marksmanship and good guys are Buffalo-fucking-Bill sharpshooters, where no one is ever stumbling under 50 pounds of LCE, tripping over rubble, falling into ditches, wheezing to catch their breath, firing suppressive fire around corners or over the lip of erosion ditches with no regard for bystanders, or returning fire in a general direction when they havent identified where shots came from (usually people fire wherever the first person who guesses out loud where the shots came from), and shooting each other in the confusion people who have no experience of this plain, dumb, human confusion and fallibility in combat, they can be fooled by their own internalized images from those films where soldiers and cops are all highly-skilled, competent, athletic, impervious to pain, and even well-read.

Aint so.

But the other reality of war, and the one I am highlighting here .is that bystanders always get beat up in urban combat actions worse than anyone, and are often attacked without provocation because of the trigger-happy paranoia and rage of the troops who are dropped into their cities troops who are not unlike hornets screwed inside a Mason jar.

What I am saying is that it is simply not possible that when 50 people are killed in one of these actions, that all 50 are insurgents.

Thats an outrageous claim on par with telling people that a piss-ant just ate a bale of hay and the outrage is magnified by the fact that the press repeats these figures WITH THE UNQUESTIONED CLAIM that the dead (no wounded, mind you) were all insurgents.

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Assorted Resistance Action

July 22, IRNA & By Frank Griffiths, Associated Press

According to a Baghdad police spokesman, a number of armed men opened fire at a police patrol unit on duty in Baghdad's western Baladiyyat District on Friday morning.

Two police officers got killed in the attack, one of whom was high ranking, and another officer was critically wounded.

Half an hour later the insurgents launched another attack in the same district, in which another police officer lost their lives.

In another ambush against a highway patrol in central Baghdad two plain-clothes police commandos were killed on Friday.

A morning police patrol came under fire in the eastern Ghadeer neighbourhood, leaving two officers dead and another injured, police officials said. The injured officer was taken to Kindi Hospital, said police 1st Lt. Ali Abbas.

Assailants shot dead three policemen in the eastern Mashtal district in Baghdad as they were directing traffic, said police Lt. Osama Adnan.

In the same area, clashes erupted at dawn between insurgents and a joint Iraqi police-army patrol, leaving two suspected insurgents dead, police said.

Three other suspected insurgents were arrested, police said. A soldier and a police officer were wounded in the fighting, said Capt. Jassim Al-Wahash.

Masked guerrillas wounded Yahya al-Haidari, a local chief of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, as he drove in Mosul, hospital officials said.

Iraq's interior minister announced here Friday morning that the dead corpses of three Iraqi brothers who were shot in their heads and chests on Thursday, were found by police forces in north of Baghdad on Friday.

Two of the assassinated brothers were police officers, while the third was a congregational prayer imam at a Baghdad district's mosque.

NO OIL FOR BLOOD

Damaged oil pipeline engulfed in flames July 21, 2005, in northern Beiji in the Makhool district 143 miles north of Baghdad. Wednesday night insurgents attacked an oil pipeline with explosives causing a massive explosion and fire. (AP Photo/Bassim Daham)

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

Where The Arab And Muslim Community Will Stand On September 24

7.22.05 Statement

On September 24 in Washington, DC the Arab American and the Muslim community will stand united with all targeted communities against the onslaught of the National Security State at home and abroad, as we declare a clear opposition to the war on Iraq.

We will assemble from far and wide in a unified mobilization at the White House under the banner of the September 24 National Coalition for the March on Washington with thousands of people from every community, region, sector and background to send a message to the Bush administration that its illegal war and occupation must come to an end. In addition to Washington, DC, we will also simultaneously mobilize in Los Angeles and San Francisco to send a powerful national message on a massive scale.

Emphasizing the consensus of the movement worldwide that war is neither singular in nature nor narrow in goals, we will inextricably support the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom and return.

As people in Palestine march the streets in support of their Iraqi brothers and sisters and as the Palestinian flag is waved in Iraq, we fully understand that those struggles cannot be disconnected from each other.

We are honored to insist on standing with our brothers and sisters in Haiti as they face off ongoing assaults, for their struggle is also ours. It should not be any other way. As such, we will stand in solidarity with all those targeted by Empire as we collectively share the wrath of its violence. We will defend civil rights and liberties, and reject any attempt to falsely position Muslims and Arab Americans as outsiders in this society.

Indeed, forty-two years ago, the 1963 March on Washington carried the bitter struggle of generations as it announced that the violence and hatred of racism and segregation have no place in our midst. That march continues to this very day, as we in turn announce that war and occupation also have no place in our midst.

We are angered that UFPJ leadership would attempt to divert activists headed for Washington, DC on that day away from where our community will be standing.

Those days of separation, we believed, are over. We are saddened that the leadership of the very organization to which we extended a sincere invitation of partnership, UFPJ, would instead respond 11 days later by calling for a rival and segregated protest on the same day and in the same place, simply to spite our community, oust Haiti and Palestine from the slogans of the anti-war movement, and remove Arabs and Muslims from positions of leadership.

In its behavior, the leadership of UFPJ is fanning the flames of separation and is unnecessarily pitting trusting movement activists against our community and people. Last year, hundreds of organizations and thousands upon thousands of activists took a clear stand against the marginalization of the Arab and Muslim community, and in favor of a principled political position. Yet, here we are again, facing the same attempts of separation by the same leadership of UFPJ.

It has become too common for some sectors in the US anti-war movement to be selective about opposition to Empire for their own political gains and demand that various targeted communities must wait.

But todays war on and occupation of Iraq, against which we all stand from the first day of sanctions until now, is a manifestation of an ongoing larger quest for dominance targeting all.

Consider the Palestinian peoples perspective - what more can they wait for?

Because we are at the primary receiving end of war, and in spite of its systematic violence and persecution here and abroad, we will neither wait, be sidelined, tokenized or be spoken for. We will not re-live the past. As we in the US join a galvanized world against the occupation of Iraq, our inextricable demands for justice must be put forward.

And as we march on to realize a dream long deferred, we are reminded of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: For years now I have heard the word Wait!This Wait has almost always meant Never. We must come to seethat justice too long delayed is justice deniedPerhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, Wait.

The streets of Washington, DC for decades have witnessed the struggles for ending hegemony over our communities and against separation and isolation. To us, purposely assembling apart and marching away from our young and old can only have one meaning!!

What does the leadership of UFPJ gain by continuing to pit activists and communities against each other? Unity with those facing Empire should not just be an option; it should be a must!

We call on every community center and place of worship, on every student group and grassroots organization to join the thousands who will assemble at the White House on September 24.

We call on all to leave behind the era of separation and to join in unity.

All Out on September 24!

Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation

National Council of Arab Americans

Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, Chairman, Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations

Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

Arab Muslim American Federation

The Palestine Right of Return Congress

Free Palestine Alliance

Palestinian American Women Association

Middle East Cultural and Information Center

This Is No Way To Build A Movement That Can Force The U.S. Military Out Of Iraq

July 22, 2005 WHAT WE THINK, Socialist Worker [Excerpts]

A national antiwar mobilization has been called for September 24 in Washington, D.C., the first in many months. This has the potential to tap the growing opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq--despite Bushs cynical attempt to use the July 7 London bombings to boost support for the war on terror.

The biggest mobilization of the fall will be the national antiwar protest called for September 24 by the antiwar groups United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER.

The antiwar movement has been at a standstill since 2004, in large part because UFPJ leaders decided to devote their resources to getting Bush out of office--which meant backing pro-war Democrat John Kerry. Unfortunately, these same political weaknesses are reflected in the way that UFPJ is organizing for this march.

A recent UFPJ action alert argued, If we organize in an inclusive way, with broad demands, accessible language, and an inviting style, we have the potential to organize the largest and most diverse demonstration against the war to date, with people from all walks of life coming together in a clear call to bring our troops home now.

But the point of the UFPJ alert is the opposite of being inclusive--to try to justify why the march will not include any reference to critical issues of the movement, such as Israels occupation of Palestine.

The messages authors, Leslie Cagan, George Friday, Judith LeBlanc and George Martin ask that we go outside our comfort zones and speak to people our movements dont typically reach.

Limiting the demands of the march, they argue, will attract people from all walks of life--but their focus is really on the Democrats in Congress.

Meanwhile, they are willing to shut out Arabs and Muslims--who must play a central part in the antiwar movement--and relegate important issues like justice for Palestine and the witch-hunt of Arabs and Muslims to the back of the bus. This is no way to build a movement that can force the U.S. military out of Iraq.

Its possible to transform the political climate in this country and give voice to the millions of people who are fed up with George W. Bush--but only if we confront the conservative agenda head-on.

This was the approach of the most vibrant antiwar activism so far this year--the struggle to kick military recruiters off college and high school campuses.

Now there are new opportunities to organize resistance on other issues as well. Its time to take the initiative.

IRAQI TROOPS SEARCH HOMES IN COLUMBUS, OHIO

(REUTERS/HO/USMC/Lance Cpl. Lucian Friel)

Above, Iraqi Occupation Army Sgt. Khurr'ub Hussein searches a house during Operation Guardian Sword in the Ohio town of Columbus, in this military handout photo released on July 20, 2029.

The Sgt. was conducting counter-insurgency operations with the newly organized U.S. Transitional Forces loyal to the free, wholesome, democratic U.S. provisional government headed by Benedict Arnold Capone.

Fifty-five terrorists belonging to the fundamentalist Minute Men gang were killed during the three day operation, 26 wounded, and 1364 suspected terrorists taken prisoner. They have been using women and children as human shields, a Capone press officer said, explaining why many have died during the operation.

General Raschid Al-Hadr told reporters that the back of the insurgency has been broken, and that the terrorists are in their last throes. Its only the foreign fighters coming over the border from Canada and Mexico that are keeping the insurgency going, he said.

Americans want the new freedoms we bring them, and they are learning how to govern themselves. Their children are so happy when we throw them candy and give them pencils.

Terrorists Captured Near Cincinnati

Men suspected of being American insurgents are handcuffed during Operation al-Shrouq (Sunrise), a joint Iraqi and U.S. and military sweep in southern Ohio province near the restive insurgent stronghold of Cincinnati, in this military handout photo released July 17, 2029.

The man seen kneeling at left, wearing an American flag t-shirt, was identified by Multilateral Forces intelligence officers as Wilber Isom, Commander of the Tom Paine underground terrorist cell, made up of foreign fighters and freedom-hating fanatical Methodist fundamentalist terrorists, who kill and eat small babies.

In other news, gunmen kidnapped Australias envoy to Washington on July 21, the latest in a series of attacks that have driven diplomats from the U.S. capital and hurt the Iraqi-backed government's bid for recognition from its neighbors. Police sources said gunmen in two cars snatched the Australian mission chief off the street outside a Georgetown restaurant along with a diplomatic attach. (Reuters - Handout)

A History Of U.S. Armed Forces Rebellions:

Vietnam:

Individual Refusals Spread To Involve Entire Companies

[Continued]

By Martin Smith (Sgt. USMC; out of service)

Writing this was about healing a really dark chapter in my life, my experience in the marine corps. The words I wrote came out of an inner pain and experience that needed to heal.

But most of all, I hope that my words in some way bring an end to this god damn war and that no one else will have to come back in a body bag.

This isn't about me, it's all about bringing the troops home now,

Martin Smith

Analyzing soldiers poetry can further substantiate the contradictory expressions of the grunts world.

In addition to the combat gear that included ammo pouches, canteens, a first-aid kit, flak jacket, hand grenades, and mosquito repellent, many soldiers also carried a Zippo lighter. These lighters were coveted for their consistent flame in lighting cigarettes and also for use in burning down village huts of suspected revolutionary insurgents, called zippoing a hooch by soldiers. Inscribed on these lighters, often traded on the black market or exchanged for the services of a prostitute, are contradictory markings that reflect the anger, revenge, sadness, and the emerging anti-military and anti-war consciousness of the soldiers.

In Jim Fiorellas The Viet Nam Zippo, pictures of these highly prized collector items that date roughly from the 1960s to 1972 show a broad range of messages.

Some lighter engravings express a celebration and self-identity with the brutality of war, Death is my Business and Business Has Been Good; Yea Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I Fear No Evil For Im the Evilest Son of a Bitch in the Valley; Let Me Win Your Heart and Mind or Ill Burn Your Hut Down; for example.

Others include carvings of unit numbers and some contain pictures of naked women, revealing the particular gendered response of male troops.

Some lighters, however, reveal a more critical view of combat experience and provide an example of informal resistance, providing troops with a simple outlet to criticize their military service. These Zippos include: It Seems the Days in the Army are the Longest Days on the Earth; If I had a farm In vietnam and A home in hell Id sell my farm And go home; When I Die Ill Go to Heaven Because Ive Spent My Time In Hell; and The Army is a Rubber It Gives You the Feeling of Security While You are Getting Fucked, this last example, provides more evidence of the male-centered world of the combat soldier.

In addition, many lighters move beyond describing the braggadocio of killing and the hell of war, revealing an oppositional culture that developed amongst the troops.

Peace signs and FTA, for Fuck the Army, engravings were some of the numerous anti-military inscriptions that also included: Ours is Not To Do or Die Ours is to Smoke and Stay High; If I Die in Vietnam Bury Me on My Stomach so the Army Can Kiss My Ass; and We Are the Unwilling Led by the Unqualified Doing the Unnecessary for the Ungrateful, also known as UUUU.

Similar slogans were also chalked on helmets. These etchings express a hidden area of soldiers protest, hidden from the major media and pentagon press releases, which swelled amongst the troops during the final years of the war.

In 1968, revolutionary forces launched the Tet Offensive, a coordinated attack on more than a hundred cities in South Vietnam during the Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday.

The attack surprised the U.S. and South Vietnamese military and revealed widespread civilian support for the North Vietnamese. For the first time, revolutionary forces, taking great loss in human life, invaded the cities in South Vietnam. Tet was a watershed and a decisive turning point in the war. A potential major victory turned into a disastrous defeat through mistaken estimates, loss of nerve, and a tidal wave of defeatism, as military historian Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall put it. Previously, President Johnson promised that victory was around the corner. Tet exposed the lies of the military planners and government officials. The war would no longer be the same.

After Tet, the contradictions produced by the war turned a significant minority of troops towards open rebellion.

In 1968 alone, there were sixty-eight incidents of combat refusals in Vietnam, an official euphemism for disobedience to orders.

In a 1970 article in the New York Times, Fred Gardner described how troops took part in search and evade missions in which they disobeyed orders and went out to a safe perimeter location and called in wrong locations, pretending to carry out their assigned missions. We smoke, rap and sack out, according to one Vietnam veteran in the article.

Gardner claimed that thousands of U.S. soldiers used this tactic in Vietnam, and his assertion is substantiated by a similar episode in the CBS news documentary, The World of Charlie Company, recorded in 1970.

On film intended for U.S. audiences, 1st and 2nd squads blatantly radio in false positions to their superior officer, Captain Rice. Ordered to separate out by one kilometer, the two squads refuse the order with confidence. The soldiers reason that if they came in contact with the enemy, they would be safer in one team that includes both squads of all twenty members, rather than in two dispersed teams.

The soldiers disobedience reveals the changing consciousness that emerged during the war, but it also exposes how their actions were firmly rooted in the experience of the grunt as a collective laborer, looking out for each others survival.

Soldiers began to question the military doctrine of obedience to all orders, as they came to realize that their own lives and that of their buddies should come first.

According to Fred Gardners New York Times article in 1970, individual refusals to fight became so widespread at the army base camp at Cu Chi, located 25 miles of Saigon, the military set up a unique company for such men. A soldier stationed at Cu Chi explained:

They have set up separate companies for men who have refused to go out to the field. It is no big thing here anymore to refuse to go. If a man is ordered to go such and such place he no longer goes through the hassle of refusing; he just packs his shirt and goes visit some buddies at another base campMany guys dont even put on their uniforms anymore. I am almost always wearing a pair of keds, a blue tie-dye shirt and army pants I made into cut-offs. I put in an appearance at work sometimes to see if Ive gotten any mail.

The above revelation about Cu Chi paints a markedly different portrait of the life of a soldier in Vietnam. The lack of punitive action, that it is no big thingto refuse to go, suggests these individual refusals were widespread, involving numerous troops who gained a sense of independence and subverted the team of warriors into a group of non-compliers.

The Army convicted soldiers of 330 incidents of insubordination, mutiny, or other acts involving willful refusal to perform a lawful order between 1968-1970 and numerous other incidents occurred that were not prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). No longer killing machines, these troops instead wanted to save their own lives and return to the world.

By 1969, these individual refusals spread to involve entire companies.

Individual refusals mushroomed to involve more troops due again to the collective nature of the basic fighting unit, the squad.

When one team of a platoon refused an order, it would affect the whole company. Other teams would have to either cover and work in the place of the rebellious team or join in the mutiny as well.

It became a simple matter of--whose side are you on?

According to David Cortright, ten major mutinies occurred in the later years of the war.

On August 24, 1969, for example, 60 men of Alpha Company of the 3rd Battalion/196th Infantry refused to move down the dangerous terrain of the Nuilon Mountain. The incident received press coverage, and none of the men received disciplinary action. Similarly, CBS news filmed the mutiny of Charlie Company, 1st Air Calvary Division. On April 6, 1970 the entire company refused to walk down what they perceived as a dangerous trail, possibly booby trapped or filled with enemy personnel. Second squad initiated the mutiny, and it spread to the entire company. Yet the military did not punish any of the soldiers.

Richard Boyle, a freelance journalist, reported an eyewitness account of a mutiny in Flower of the Dragon.

On October 10, 1971, after the third platoon of the First Cavalry Division at Firebase Pace refused to go out on what they considered a suicide mission, the Brass threatened six GIs with a court martial.

In response, about 30 members of the other platoons held a meeting and voted to stand in solidarity with the accused.

They composed a petition signed by 63 members of the company to Senator Ted Kennedy requesting his help and protection from suicide missions.

They also declared their own ceasefire, refusing to fight unless fired upon.

These men saw the necessity of building peace from below and solidarity with each other. As one soldier explained, Theyre trying to separate us, trying to keep it from being unified. They know if were unified they cant do anything. They cant court-martial the whole company.

This example at Firebase Pace also shows how a horizontal leadership developed within these mutinies that challenged the military system of rank and obedience to orders.

These troops voted on their decisions and declared their own peace missions instead of their assigned search and destroy mission.

The scope and breadth of the soldiers rebellion reached what David Cortright described as a virtual general strike amongst a sizable minority of enlisted people.

Troops went to Vietnam to find, fix and finish the enemy, engaging in back-breaking labor through thick forests of tropical thorns and bush. They emerged from the fields, however, forever changed.

For many, the thrill of killing and the psychological lift of war brought out the brutal side that humanity is capable of.

For others, a questioning and emerging contradictory experience led them to acts of refusal.

The very troops who committed war atrocities on one day, might on another, take part in the soldiers rebellion.

Individual combat refusals mushroomed to include the unity of entire companies based on a horizontal leadership.

Yet after remaining in the field for up to thirty or more days, all troops would return to base camp and life in the rear to resupply, take liberty, and have a chance to recoup. For many, life in the rear brought its own unique conditions that fomented a different kind of rebellion.

[To be continued.]

OCCUPATION REPORT

Remembering Fallujah 2003:

Fury As US Soldiers Shoot Two Protesters Dead

U.S. military policeman takes an Iraqi man detained into a Humvee at the city of Fallujah June 6, 2003. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

5.1.03 BY CATHERINE PHILP, London Times Online

FALLUJAH: More than 1,000 demonstrators were marching yesterday on the former Baath party headquarters in the town, where American troops had taken up their positions, when an armoured patrol tried to force its way past.

Demonstrators say that a brick was thrown at one of the vehicles; American military officials insist that bullets were fired from the crowd.

Whichever was true, jittery forces immediately opened fire on the protesters from their vehicles and from inside the compound, killing two and wounding 12.

The crowd scattered and the wounded were rushed to hospital, but within an hour the protesters had regrouped again outside the compound, baying [Dogs bay. OK, so the reporter is a racist piece of shit. You can still read between the lines.] for the Americans to withdraw as the troops sat behind coils of razor wire, nervously eyeing the crowd.

There is no God but Allah! the protesters chanted, sitting in the street, as a fresh convoy of American troops rumbled along the street towards them.

As the tanks approached, the protesters surged forward, screaming at the soldiers and hurling their shoes at the tanks, a grave insult in Islamic culture.

With our souls and our blood we sacrifice Islam, they chanted, carrying a local mullah on their shoulders towards the column of tanks.

The tanks screeched to a halt and quickly reversed, crushing a traffic reservation in their haste to reroute. Then the crowd turned their anger on the soldiers stationed inside the compound, shouting: You are killers. Go, go home!

American military officials blamed infiltrators for the incident, but acknowledged that they may have killed innocent civilians while responding to what they insisted was enemy fire.

The evil-doers are deliberately placing at risk the good civilians, Lieutenant-Colonel Tobin Green, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, said. These are deliberate actions by the enemy to use the population as cover. [Hard to believe that idiotic crap like this was once taken seriously.]

Residents insist that there were no security problems in Fallujah before the arrival of the Americans and that there is no cause for them to stay.

The fighting will go on day by day here until the Americans leave, one protester said, shaking his fist at the gate of the American compound.

Military officials confirmed that about 100 soldiers involved in the first shooting had vacated the primary school compound and had left the city, but they said that no more troops would be withdrawn.

The mayor of Fallujah, a former Iraqi exile appointed after the fall of the old regime, said that he had told the Americans not to provoke people by occupying sensitive areas such as mosques and schools for fear of further violence.

Many people believe these are occupying forces. And many of them are still cautious until they see their intentions, Taha Bedaiwi al-Alwani said.

U.S. Military Police arrest Iraqi men from the city of Fallujah, June 6, 2003. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

Remembering Fallujah 2003:

"They Came To Liberate Us?"

"What Is The Point Of Doing This?"

May 2, 2003 By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Scott Wilson, Washington Post

FALLUJAH: At the school where Monday's shooting occurred, teachers spent the day cleaning up in preparation for the start of classes on Saturday. The headmaster, Mohammed Ahmed, said that before they left, U.S. soldiers had damaged furniture and classroom supplies and left offensive graffiti on the walls.

In one classroom, "I (love) pork," with the word love represented by a heart, was written on the blackboard, along with a drawing of a camel and the words: "Iraqi Cab Company." In another room, "Eat (expletive) Iraq" was scrawled on a wall. And in Ahmed's office, sexual organs were drawn with white chalk on the back of the door.

"They came to liberate us?" Ahmed asked, pointing out the graffiti to a reporter.