Last week on Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Cindy demonstrated how you can talk about Iraq. You can talk about what happened early in the war and you can also talk about what's going on right now. Cindy grasps that Iraq didn't go into suspended animiation when the US network TV cameras left. Here guests last week were Iraq War veteran Ross Caputi and Dr. Dahlia Wasfi.
Cindy Sheehan: So, Dahlia, I want to ask you this. Of course, we are supposed to praise Obama because he ended the war in Iraq. And part of the problem is that he got a Nobel Peace Prize and people think he's anti-war because he called the war in Iraq "stupid" -- even though he said he's not against war. So what -- you're Iraqi-American, you have family there. What is your sense of where Iraq stands today?
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi: Well I'm -- I'm watching from a distance and I would sort of I think is a reflection of the repression has continued and worsened today in Iraq is that I can't talk politics with my cousins out of fear of anybody listening to the conversations and that there would be repercussions for them because of it. But I think, uhm, yes, technically, there was an official troop withdrawal in 2011 but this does not include the thousands who remain -- US military personnel who remain behind to protect at least the US Embassy. And then there are thousands of mercenaries. And, by my estimations, its the CIA administrators operating out of the Embassy and I'm not sure how many they have -- involving themselves in government affairs and civil affairs in Iraq today. But what we can see now is our legacy from the invasion and occupation -- with the government that came to power during our occupation -- is that these unbelievable degrees of repression -- including arbitrary detentions, torture, rape -- this is ongoing for Iraqi society. And this is what the demonstrations in Iraq are about today. Now, of course, the mainstream media tells us a story that, 'Well this is a Shia government and these are Sunni who are upset with that and so they are rejecting the Shi'ite government.' But from all the news that I'm getting on the ground that this is -- and they put the signs in English for western media that say, 'We are against sectarianism. We reject the tyranny of this government. We reject Nouri al-Maliki. And there's no sectarianism, this is unity.' And also as a result of our invasion, religious groups and their militias that were based in Iran crossed over into Iraq, especially southern Iraq, in the earlier years -- 2003, 2004, 2005 -- and became dominant in the south. And what also happened was under our control of the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defense, we installed individuals who would orchestrate the death squads in Iraq. And these individuals like Bayan Jabr also was from Iran, originallly Iraq but was from Iran and was actually a high ranking member, high ranking official of the Bard Brigades. So the structure that is in place in Iraq today is absolutely -- They call it the second part of the occupation. Iraqis know exactly what is going on and they are fighting once again to have their -- basically to have their sovereignty. So this is the legacy that continue today. Most -- most of the west, as far as I can tell, is turning a blind eye to it. But this is a real liberation movement. You can call this a liberation movement. And meanwhile the US administration continues to deal arms with the Iraqi government. So it's same-old-same-old. This is very comparable to the relationship that the United States had with Saddam during the 1980s. And I believe that when Nouri al-Maliki no longer satisfies our agenda in the area then we will have to "liberate" Iraq again. So we'll see what happens. But the people, their slogan is "NO RETREAT." And they have endured enough and are willing to-to -- They have bled for their future in the past.
Wasfi and Caputi (above) are with The Justice for Fallujah Project. And the massacre that ook place in Falluja was not ignored.
Cindy Sheehan: And you were in the Marines and your unit was involved in that second siege.
Ross Caputi: Yeah, I was in the Marine Corps. I was in the 1st Battalion 8th Marines. It was a regular infantry unit and we were one of the five battalions who were part of the second siege of Falluja. And what our command told us was that, you know, all the civilians had left the city, the only people who remained in the city were 2,000 hardcore terrorists.
Cindy Sheehan: Mhh-hmm.
Ross Caputi: You know, and I accepted that. I didn't really know otherwise. I hadn't been paying attention to the media at all. I was completely uninformed about the context that set the stage for the second siege of Falluja. So I kind of just accepted that and rolled along with it. In being trucked into the city, you know, I remember seeing civilians wandering out in the desert -- women and children with sacks on their backs heading for safety. You know, I kind of at that moment said, "Okay, you know that's what they meant when they said all the civilians left. They fled for their life out into an inhospitable desert. And there were moments during the siege where we were kicking in doors and going into people's houses. And I'd see family photos up on the walls next to bullet marks and bomb blasts in the wall and stuff like that. And we destroyed an entire city -- a city of 300,000 people. We destroyed their homes. We bulldozed entire neighborhoods. We bombed the city into rubble. The entire city was destroyed after. So it really -- It really drove the message home for me. It was just incredible how many lives we ruined because of what we did. And this was all in the name of "liberation."
Cindy: Right.
Ross Caputi: Our command said that we were liberating the city of Falluja. It was absolutely absurd.
Cindy Sheehan: Dahlia, Ross and yourself met and you're married, you're partners, you're partners in the anti-war movement, you're partners in life When Ross was talking about his experience in Falluja, and he said that he hadn't really been paying attention to the media, well I was back in the states and I was paying attention to the media and I didn't really hear anything about civilians being left over in Falluja. Of course, we all were hearing what Ross was being told and his fellow Marines were being told. Do you have a comment on the media and the reports that were happening at the time of the second siege of Falluja?
Dahlia Wasfi: What I remember was it was very comparable to the images that were coming out of shock and awe -- where we just watched the bombardment and the fireballs and pillars of smoke in the city of Baghdad. I remember -- I remember there was an image on CNN of just basically -- I won't know the correct military term -- I don't know what was flying through the air -- I'll call it missiles but it was the lights of all these missiles that were -- that were aimed at the city of Falluja. It lit up the sky. That was the -- That was the mainstream, corporate media in America but I believe that by that time I was following the dispatches of Dahr Jamail. And I had actually -- I was wanting to go to Iraq at that. I had been to visit my family in February and March of 2004 and I was -- I was planning to go back as soon as I could because I had such limited time with my family in Basra so I was planning on going back to Iraq in November 2004 but I could only get as far as Jordan because the Marines had closed the main road between Amman, Jordan and Baghdad. So I was actually sitting in Jordan in November 2004 reading Dahr Jamail's reports of what might be going on in the city because he was not -- he was in the city in the April 2004 siege but not in November. And it was a very bizarre contrast between sitting in an internet cafe, people drinking coffee and tea and we had electricity and water and reading about just the decimation of a city that was really within miles of where I was so. And you're absolutely right. To this day, they'll recall Falluja as an epic battle when this is really -- to get the terminology means so much -- it was really a massacre that took place, that we were responsible for. It was led by the United States and Great Britain.
Cindy Sheehan: Ross, I was reading at your website and I was reading your report on what happened in Falluja. And you talk about seeing the White Phosphorus being used. I think that was the first time I had ever heard of white phosphorus. And we saw images of people who had unfortunately gotten in the way of that in Falluja. So can you tell my listeners about this and about what you saw?
Ross Caputi: Yes, this was on the day before they inserted us into the city and they were kind of finishing the air campaign against the city and we were supposed to be trucked into the city on the tail end of that. And it was an incredible amount of air power that they were dropping on the city. Everything from like 500 pound bombs to 2,000 pound bombs. I think I saw cluster bombs because I saw these bombs that kind of -- they looked like fireworks with lots of tiny little flashes and really rapid -- like one after the other. And I saw the White Phosphorus which is like a giant, white fireball shot out of the sky that kind of drifts down on winds. It's incredibly inaccurate. It must have covered a radius like 50 meters and there's no way to aim it. The wind can take it any which way.
Cindy Sheehan: Uh-huh.
Ross Caputi: And I didn't know this at the time but there were still up to 50,000 civilians living in the city and there were civilians taking refuge all around the outskirts. So where ever it landed, there was a high probability that it could have -- it could have hurt civilians. Any kind of indiscriminate means of warfare is a war crime and that's absolutely indiscriminate.
As Cindy demonstrated, it is possible to talk about Iraq as something other than a frozen moment in time, it is important to talk about Iraq with an actual eye on the Iraqi people.