Remember Fallujha

If you do, it appears that you are in the minority.

It doesn’t look so bad from the air.
(Don’t know when this shot was taken… I’m guessing before the November assaults)

From MilitaryUnits.com
It has a nice river running through it… a picturesque city of 300,000.

As a reminder, this is what happened in Fallujah. (I’m trying to find the actual movie file… Found it WARNING, you know what happens anyway.)

A BBC article from Nov 7,2004 quotes one soldier:

“If we can give the innocent civilians back their city, that would be a wonderful thing to do for them,” said 2nd Lieutenant Douglas Bahrns, whose squad will fight their way through one of the toughest sectors of Falluja.

I’m sure that, 3 months on, this innocent civilian would thank Lt Bahrns for returning him his city.

From Crisispictures.org

According to the AFSC and the UNHCHR, as of January 9, 85,000 people had passed through the checkpoints leading into Fallujah. Yet only 8-9000 people, or barely 3% of the original population, actually stayed overnight.

That adds up to over 250,000 displaced people from Fallujah alone.

For comparison, there are 1 million internally displaced people in Darfur.

We call the people of Darfur the victims of crimes against humanity.

What do we call the Fallujhans?

Juan Cole and Body and Soul have more.