Doug Lorimer
On June 22, for the second time in three days, US F16 warplanes fired missiles into Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim holy city of 250,000 residents located 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, that had been freed from the presence of US occupation troops since early February.
Witnesses said the US missile attack destroyed a car and truck garage in the Jubail neighbourhood of Fallujah, killing its owner and his two sons. Three days earlier, a US warplane fired two missiles into the same neighbourhood of Fallujah, demolishing several houses, killing 22 people and wounding 30.
The June 19 missile attack was the first significant US military action against Fallujah since May 1, when 4500 US marines abandoned a three-week attempt — using air strikes, artillery shelling and sniper attacks — to reoccupy the city. At least 700 Fallujah residents, mostly unarmed women, children and old men, were killed by the marines' assault.
Since early May there has been a uneasy truce between the US marines and the Fallujah Protection Army (FPA), a 2600-strong military force recruited from the city's resistance fighters that is commanded by some 100 veteran Iraqi army officers.
When the marines launched their assault on Fallujah in early April they claimed they were merely seeking to capture the killers of four US mercenaries (referred to by the Pentagon as "civilian defence contractors"). US officials asserted that the killers were "foreign fighters" directed by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, allegedly a Jordanian-born associate of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
While claiming there are "several thousand" foreign Arab fighters in Iraq and despite holding at least 8000 "security detainees" in Iraqi prisons, the US occupiers have failed to publicly present a single captured or dead Arab foreign fighter since they invaded Iraq more than a year ago.
At a June 20 Baghdad press conference, General Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of US military operations in Iraq, said the US missile strikes on Fallujah were aimed at "key personnel in the Zarqawi network operating inside Fallujah, with the capability to strike Iraqis and coalition forces throughout Iraq".
However, the following day, Colonel Mohammed Awad of the FPA told Agence France Presse his soldiers had investigated the site and "affirmed to us that the inhabitants of the houses were ordinary families including women, children and elders. There was no sign that foreigners have lived in the house." Awad's comments were backed up by Fallujah police chief Colonel Sadar al Janabi.
"They brought us 22 corpses — children, women and youth", cemetery worker Ahmed Hassan told Reuters. Kimmit did not dispute this figure or that there had been civilian deaths, saying: "The collateral damage estimate was within permissible limits and this operation was within standing rules of engagement."
Aljazeera reported that hundreds of Fallujah residents, both Sunnis and Shiites, rallied in the centre of the city on June 21 to denounce the US air strike. They chanted slogans hailing the rebel Shiite leader Moqtada al Sadr as a national hero and accused the US military of falsely claiming that Zarqawi was in Fallujah so as to create an excuse to resume attacks on the city.
'The lie about Zarqawi is like the one about weapons of mass destruction and Fallujah rejects these allegations", read a banner signed by Shiite leaders.
Last month Kimmit claimed that a US missile attack on a village near the Syrian border — an attack that killed 45 Iraqis, including at least 10 children — had targeted "a suspected foreign fighter safe house" run by Zarqawi. A video obtained by Associated Press on May 24, five days after the US attack, confirmed survivors' and Iraqi police claims that the victims were attending a wedding party.
Zarqawi's name first came to public attention when US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented Washington's case for invading Iraq to the UN Security Council in February 2003.
As well as showcasing fabricated intelligence that Iraq had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Powell claimed that "Iraq today harbours a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants".
On June 17, US President George Bush's commission into the 9/11 terrorist attacks found that there was "no credible evidence" of any "collaborative relationship" between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime. That same day, Bush told White House reporters that "Zarqawi's the best evidence of a connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda... remember the email exchange between al Qaeda leadership and he himself about how to disrupt the progress toward freedom".
This was a reference to a claim by US occupation officials that in January they had found a copy of an email letter allegedly written by Zarqawi to Bin Laden proposing a campaign of car bombings outside Iraqi Shiite shrines.
In late February, US national security adviser Condoleeza Rice claimed that Zarqawi was "probably organising a lot of the resistance" to the US occupation of Iraq. The May 22 Boston Globe reported that US officials are now claiming, "off the record", that Zarqawi is "al Qaeda's new operations chief".
Despite the Bush administration's presentation of Zarqawi as one of the world's top terrorists — and the hunt for him as a key reason for the US occupation of Iraq — he has not been put on the FBI's 22 Most Wanted Terrorists list, nor is he even mentioned in the FBI's April 2004 Intelligence Assessment on al Qaeda.
From Green Left Weekly, June 30, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.