USA, Israel Committing Massacres

Ignore for a moment the media spin on these events and take a long, hard look: these are massacres. Innocent civilians are being killed on a daily basis in Iraq and Israel and that - as any intelligent observer will tell you - is the surest way to create new generations of so-called "terrorists".

ABC News Online reports from Jerusalem:

"Israeli troops have killed 56 Palestinians since Tuesday night when more than 100 Israeli tanks, backed by aircraft, moved into the northern Gaza Strip in the operation called 'Days of Penitence'.

Palestinians have now declared a state of emergency and decried the world's lack of concern for their plight.

Meanwhile, US forces made up three quarters of the 4,000-strong attack on the Iraqi city of Samara:

More than 100 people were killed and another 100 wounded as the city was pounded by air strikes and tank shells. The US military claimed the casualties were insurgents, but doctors in the city reported women, children and the elderly among the dead.

Falluja was also attacked by US warplanes overnight, continuing a weeks-long campaign of aerial bombardments that is inevitably leading to high civilian casualties. In the wake of such attacks, ordinary Iraqis are cursing the name of the US puppet PM Iyad Allawi - so much for "hearts and minds".

Of course, Baghdad hospitals are full of children right now because of the "terrorist" blasts committed by the USA's new most wanted fugitive, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, right? Well, maybe not. So-called "intelligence" obtained through bribery (think WMDs all over again) is giving Bush & Co an opportunity to seriously overstate the role of Zarqawi and other foreigners, as this report from US intelligence sources in Iraq indicates:

"We were basically paying up to $US10,000 ($A13,700) a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," one agent said.

"Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."

The bottom line is, ordinary Iraqis want the USA out of their country, but the US is going to keep killing them till they shut up and accept a US regime. It's past time to get out of Iraq. As the father of one child injured by the "terrorist" bombings complained:

"I don't blame the Americans for this but these terrorists are doing these things because the Americans are here."

Back in Washington, in a sign of just how very concerned Bush & Co are about civilian deaths, human rights and those Abu Ghraib investigations, the White House has endorsed a proposed bill - sickeningly called the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" - that would make it legal for U.S. intelligence officials to deport individuals to countries known to use torture to extract information.

So now Bush & Co will be able to say "We're trying to implement the "9/11 Recommendations" but those nasty Democrats keep blocking the bill." George Orwell would indeed be rolling in his grave.