Dahr Jamail on what happened in Fallujah: US Military and Western Mainstream Media trying to conceal War Crimes in Fallujah (Vengeance, Blackwater Style)

1. Introduction

2. Dahr Jamail on what happened in Fallujah

3. Two Documentaries

I. Introduction

Every time I read a story published in Western mainstream media about what transpired in Fallujah in 2004 during two US assaults on the city I feel sick.

The evidence proving that the United States committed war crimes, slaughtering innocent men, women and children is irrefutable. The US military’s use of chemical weapons is irrefutable. The destruction of a city amounting to collective punishment is irrefutable. All of this occurred because four Blackwater mercenaries were killed by Iraqis who were trying to protect their city from what we now know as “America's Private Army”.

I have tried to understand why Western mainstream media has remained complicit in its coverage and reporting of this event, and I believe I have found the answer.

On January 2, 2008, The Washington Times reported that:

“…a secret intelligence assessment of the first battle of Fallujah shows that the U.S. military thinks that it lost control over information about what was happening in the town, leading to ‘political pressure’ that ended its April 2004 offensive with control being handed to Sunni insurgents.”

This propaganda piece continues to state that:

“…the decision to order an immediate assault on Fallujah, in response to the televised killing of four contractors from the private military firm Blackwater, effectively prevented the Marine Expeditionary Force charged with retaking the town from carrying out ‘shaping operations,’ such as clearing civilians from the area, which would have improved their chances of success.”

According to the article:

“Crucial to the failure…was the role of the Arabic satellite news channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya… ‘They filmed scenes of dead babies from the hospital… Comparisons were made to the Palestinian intifada. Children were shown bespattered with blood; mothers were shown screaming and mourning day after day.’”

The damning part of this article, which explains why Western mainstream media has continued to turn a blind eye to what happened in Fallujah is presented in the last two paragraphs (emphasis added):

“…later in 2004, when U.S.-led forces successfully retook Fallujah, they brought with them 91 embedded reporters representing 60 press outlets, including Arabic ones. ‘False (sic) allegations of non-combatant casualties were made by Arab media in both campaigns, but in the second case embedded Western reporters offered a rebuttal,’ the authors said.”

Did everyone catch that? While all other embedded and non-embedded journalists were reporting that innocent men, women and children were being massacred, “embedded Western reporters” were denying these reports. Do you feel sick yet? You should be by this time, especially if you remember that during World War II, Nazi ‘news’ sources never reported on German War Crimes, and if they did, they used words such as “false allegations”, “military action”, “informational battle”, “successfully retook”, and “presumably killed”. How appalling would those that died during World War II in the fight to stop fascism find his type of propaganda in the United States?

If you would like to know what really happened in Fallujah, then watch the following short excerpt from a lecture by Dahr Jamail, an award winning unembedded American journalist who was in Fallujah at the time of the US assault.

II. Dahr Jamail on what happened in Fallujah

On 8 December 2007 Dahr Jamail, an award winning American author and journalist who is best known as one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from the Iraq War, spoke to roughly 200 people at the Vancouver planetarium in British Columbia Canada about his book, “Beyond the Green Zone”, and the catastrophic occupation of Iraq.

I attended this lecture and was fortunate enough to film the event. The following is an excerpt of the talk on what happened in Fallujah in 2004 when the United States and Britain assaulted the city.

Dahr Jamail on what happened in Fallujah: US War Crimes

III. Two Documentaries

Further information on American War Crimes in Fallujah through the following two documentaries:

Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre

Fallujah: Operation Phantom Fury

Related Links and Information:

How to Populate Concentration Camps, from Fallujah to Lodz Ghetto

Dahr Jamail’s website

Remember Fallujah

How Did We Get Here? You have the "mainstream" media to thank for the Iraqi quagmire

The Censorship of Al Jazeera