My usual Saturday starts with a strong coffee, a long bath and then the usual trawl of the Saturday papers. I'm usually amazed by the mundane nature of what is considered to be news and then there is the usual Islamophobic comment and reporting that we are all used to.

This Saturday (27/05/06) was a little different though. The front page of the Times, yes lead story no less, with a story entitled The Marines and a 'massacre' in Iraq. Amazing that 3 years into what will be remembered as one of the defining debacles of this decade we get a report about the massacre of an Iraqi extended family by American soldiers. There are a few things that amazed me about this story.

1. It is the eyewitness account of the 10 year old girl from the family;
2. The people have names thus humanising them;
3. There are earth shattering events occuring such as Big Brother evictions and broken meta tarsals and these are relegated for this story;
4. The report is by an Iraqi from Iraq;
5. It has taken 3 years for a so called "quality" newspaper to find a bereaved Iraqi relative to interview. It must have been really difficult with only 100,000+ killed in the invasion!

You can read the full report here

There have been stories of American, UK and Italian forces committing Abu Graib style abuse and war crimes like Fallujah throughout the Iraqi occupation but never have they had such exposure that a zionist newspaper like the Times would report them. We are always told that these are "stressed soldiers" operating "outside the chain of command". You have to wonder though whether this is in fact the norm and everytime you hear of 10 Iraqis (nameless, faceless, dehumanised) killed by a roadside bomb, it wasn't another G.I. Joe needing to let off steam! I can't see any difference between these occupiers and the previous ones (Saddams cronies).

The report itself interviews Iman Hassan, a 10 year old girl who has lost everyone but her younger brother to the euphemistic "collateral damage".
An extract from the report is reprinted below.

As Iman tells it, US marines burst into her house 15 minutes after the bomb destroyed the Humvee, apparently looking for insurgents. They shouted at her father. Then a grenade was thrown into her grandparents’ room. She saw her mother hit by shrapnel. Her aunt grabbed a baby and ran from the house.

Soldiers opened fire inside the living room, where most of the family were gathered. Her uncle Rashid came downstairs, saw what was happening, then fled outside, where he was pursued by Marines and shot.

“Everybody who was in the house was killed by the Americans except my brother Abdul-Rahman and me,” Iman said. “We were too scared to move and tried to hide under a pillow. I was hit by shrapnel in my leg. For two hours we didn’t dare to move. My family didn’t die immediately. We could hear them groaning.”

Iman’s grandfather Abdul al-Hamid Hassan, her grandmother Khamisa, her father Walid, uncle Mujahid, her mother, uncle Rashid and cousin Abdullah, 4, had all been fatally wounded.

The US military initially reported al-Haditha as just one more bloody incident. “Fifteen Iraqi civilians and a Marine were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in al-Haditha,” said Captain Jeffrey S. Pool, a Marine spokesman.

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