Doug Lorimer
The US military has "dramatically increased air strikes in Iraq during the past five months", Tom Lasseter, the US Knight Ridder Newspapers' Baghdad correspondent reported on March 14. "A review of military data shows that daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased by more than 50% in the past five months, compared with the same period last year."
KRN compiled the statistics from about 300 daily press releases provided by the US Central Command's air forces unit, which describes itself as the "predominant owner of air assets in the region". The releases detailed bombing activities, but they didn't include actions by US Marine Corps units. US Air Force officials who reviewed the statistics confirmed that they were correct.
According to Lasseter, the statistics show that US and coalition planes dropped bombs or missiles on Iraqi cities on at least 76 days from October 1, 2005, through February 28, 2006 — or one out of every two days. During the same period a year earlier, bombs or missiles struck on only 49 days.
Lasseter also reported that air strikes by the US military struck at least nine Iraqi cities a year ago, "but were mostly concentrated in and around the western city of Fallujah. This year, US warplanes have struck at least 18 cities."
Osama Jadaan al Dulaimi, a tribal leader in the western town of Karabilah, a town near the Syrian border that was hit with bombs or missiles on at least 17 days between October 2005 and February 2006, told Lasseter that as a result of these bombings, "the people of Karabilah want to join the resistance against the Americans".
"Residents worry that their homes will be bombed at any time", Hussein Ali Jaafar, who owns a stationery shop in the town of Balad, north of Baghdad, told Lasseter. Balad was targeted by US warplanes dropping bombs or firing missiles at least 27 times between October 2005 and February 2006. "Most of the bombing is unjustified and random", said Jaafar. "It does not differentiate between militants and innocent people."
In a sign that the US military plans to intensify its indiscriminate use of firepower from the air against Iraqis, on March 3 Associated Press reported that the "US Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes — the lethal 'flying gunships' of the Vietnam War — to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance".
The AC-130 is a version of the C-130 Hercules transport plane that can "slowly circle over a target for long periods" with a 40 millimetre cannon that can fire 120 rounds per minute, and a big 105mm cannon, normally a field artillery weapon.
AP noted that AC-130s "were designed primarily for battlefield use to place saturated fire on massed troops". Used in Iraq, where resistance fighters are mixed in with the general population, they will result in indiscriminate killings of Iraqi non-combatants.
That such indiscriminate slaughter is also being carried out by US ground forces was once again highlighted by a March 19 Reuters report that stated "US troops killed nine people, including a family, after their patrol was ambushed in the Sunni town of Duluiya, about 90 kilometres north of Baghdad, early yesterday. Three of the victims were a 13-year-old boy and his parents, who were shot dead, Iraqi police said."
Three days earlier, the Beirut Daily Star reported that, in Ishaqi, a town 100km north of Baghdad, "Eleven members of an Iraqi family, including five children, were killed in a US raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The US military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an Al-Qaeda militant from a house. A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies showed each had been shot in the head ...
"Major Ali Ahmad of the Iraqi police said US forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children. 'After they left the house they blew it up', he said.
"Another policeman, Colonel Farouk Hussein, said autopsies had been carried out at Tikrit hospital and found that 'all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head'.
"The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed, Hussein said."
From Green Left Weekly, March 29, 2006.
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