Overlooked and under-regarded

I'm sure we will hear much over the next few days about the discovery of "hostage slaughterhouses" in Fallujah. Such images will not only be used here to drown out the cries of the civilians killed and maimed, but may even have some resonance in the Arab world, where, as the Christian Science Monitor noted on November 2,

[w]ith images of civilian casualties from US airstrikes set against insurgent slayings of unarmed Iraqi police and civilians, Arabs and the Arab media are increasingly struggling with the question of how far to support an insurgency that sometimes uses tactics they feel are immoral.

Conversations with ordinary people, intellectuals, and politicians illustrate that clearer lines are being drawn in people's minds between what is seen as "legitimate" and "illegitimate" resistance.

"People are coming ... to grips with complicated realities," says Abdel Moneim Said, director of Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Among the events that have raised the doubts include the October 7 bombing attacks on Israeli tourists at Taba, the videotaped beheadings of foreign contractors, the executions of 49 unarmed Iraqi military trainees, and the kidnapping of aid-worker Margaret Hassan.

Nonetheless, I expect the primary use to which the new information will be put is as pro-invasion, pro-Fallujah-attack PR deployed against the American public. The White House will press it and the media will slaver over it and thereby will, par for the course, play down or overlook completely the more important stories.

One downplayed story is that the first major objective of the US-led attack on Fallujah was not an arms cache, not a command center, not a defensive perimeter, but a hospital.

In Washington, Pentagon officials told CNN the hospital was one of the initial objectives of the planned offensive.

U.S. military officials said the hospital needed to be secured so that hospital workers could attend to casualties without facing intimidation from insurgents, and to end its use as a source of anti-U.S. propaganda.

The "propaganda" in this case being reporting civilian casualties from the "precision air strikes" that have rained down on the city for months. And speaking of propaganda, had anyone complained that the hospital previously had been unable to attend to casualties due to "intimidation from insurgents?" No? Then what the hell is the official statement supposed to mean?

Apparently, though, some of that damned "anti-American propaganda" slipped through anyway, into the hands of the Guardian (UK):

Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at the hospital who escaped arrest when it was taken by US troops, said the city was running out of medical supplies and only a few clinics remained open.

"There is not a single surgeon in Falluja. We had one ambulance hit by US fire and a doctor wounded," he told Reuters. "There are scores of injured civilians in their homes whom we can't move. A 13-year-old child just died in my hands."

Meanwhile, under the heading of overlooked we can file the fact that this story said "[t]here was only minor resistance when the hospital was seized" but another CNN story the same day (Monday) quoted Allawi as claiming

[n]early 40 "terrorists" were killed in the hospital takeover and four foreign fighters - two of them Moroccan - were captured,

which sounds like an indication of pretty heavy fighting to me.

And did you notice - as the media pretty much failed to do - that as soon as the attack began officials started downplaying its importance and talking down what it would accomplish? CNN reported that

[m]ilitary officials say 3,000 to 5,000 insurgents may be inside the city - difficult terrain for urban warfare - but they acknowledge many may have slipped away amid widespread reports that an offensive was coming.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Monday that [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi's whereabouts are uncertain. "I have no idea if he is there," Rumsfeld said.

Those sentiments were echoed by Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, who said

the city was sealed off Sunday, but many insurgents could have slipped out before then.... As for al-Zarqawi, Metz said, "I think it would be fair to assume that he has left."

And the overall effect? Defense Secretary Rumplestiltskin was quoted by the Guardian as saying

victory in Falluja would not end the insurgency. "These folks are determined. These are killers. They chop people's heads," he said.

But the most significant overlooked story - by which I do not mean unreported, I mean underreported, not getting the attention it deserves - had to be that

[a] major Sunni political party has quit the interim Iraqi government and revoked its single minister from the Cabinet in protest over the U.S. assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the party's leader said Tuesday.

The Iraqi Islamic Party wields significant influence over the country's Sunni community and its withdrawal from the government will likely be a blow to Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

"We are protesting the attack on Fallujah and the injustice that is inflicted on the innocent people of the city," said Mohsen Abdel-Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party,

according to AP. Reuters notes that

it was unclear what impact the withdrawal would have. The party's one cabinet representative, Industry and Minerals Minister Hajem al-Hassani, said he would leave the party but not resign. ...

The party will keep its four representatives on the 100-member National Assembly, a body created in August as a check on the activities of the interim government.

Even so, the move so "alarmed" Allawi, the New York Times said on Wednesday, that

he met privately with Mr. Abdul Hameed hours later. But the party stuck to its position, and an aide said in the afternoon that it was not clear that the group would take part in the elections.

"We haven't decided to withdraw from the elections; we're still going forward with the process," the aide, Ayad al-Samarrai, said. "But it will all depend on the general situation in Iraq."

Some, however, have already decided. As the Times describes it,

the leading group of Sunni clerics called for Iraqis to boycott the nationwide elections scheduled for early next year. ...

"The clerics call on honorable Iraqis to boycott the upcoming election that is to be held over the bodies of the dead and the blood of the wounded in cities like Falluja," said Harith al-Dhari, director of the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques.

Hours earlier, the group issued a religious edict ordering Iraqi security forces not to take part in the siege.

If there is a significant Sunni boycott of the January elections, it would seriously hurt their legitimacy. If it was sufficiently widespread, it could undo them completely. That not only would be devastating to US plans for the country, it would be a serious push in the direction of the outright civil war so many fear and so many hope to avoid. That, frankly, would seem to me to be a much more serious issue, a much more important story, than further proof that Zarqawi is the butcher we already knew him to be.

But then again, I expect there really isn't any reason to worry about a boycott. Just let J. Kenneth Blackwell do the counting and you can have 90,000 votes appear out of nowhere.

Footnote one: One report referred to 15 to 20 insurgents who the military described as having been "neutralized" as they attempted to set up an ambush. Neutralized? What, did you drain off excess negative charges? Wash them in de-ionized water? You meant you riddled them with holes, splattered their brains against the walls behind them, ripped their bodies open and left their intestines falling into the street, let them lie in puddles of their own piss, spit, and blood, moaning away their last moments of life in deep pain. Why don't you say so? "Neutralized," indeed.

And no, this is not to deny the insurgents meant to do any less. It is to deny the convenient lies we tell ourselves, the comforting euphemisms we toss around, to conceal even from ourselves the reality of what we are doing.

Footnote two: A Pentagon official claimed that more than 500 insurgents have already been killed in the fighting out of a total of 2,000-3,000 in the city. US-led forces have had 13 killed. The numbers seem out of whack, like Vietnam-era body counts, but maybe not. Quil Lawrence, a BBC correspondent embedded with troops in Falluja said

"I imagine there must be many casualties considering the amount of gunfire I've seen. The Americans launch about 500 rounds to the insurgents' one, pelleting the insurgent area."

Somehow, "pelleting" seems an inadequate description. Those aren't BBs they're shooting.