Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: L'eroica uccisione del nipotino quattordicenne di Saddam

Killing Mustafa Hussein
Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
By LISA WALSH THOMAS
http://www.counterpunch.org/thomas07302003.html
The death of a child: the birth of a national hero.
This story is still in first draft, rough with a lot of blanks to be 
filled in. On July 22, 200 American soldiers with enough sophisticated 
weaponry to start a small war attacked an upscale villa in the al-Falah 
neighborhood of Mosul for the purpose of killing Saddam Hussein's two 
sons, Uday and Qusay. The four people in the villa, who defended 
themselves with only small arms for approximately four hours, included 
an aide to one of the brothers and Qusay's 14-year old son, Mustafa.
But, according to information available as of July 27, after the three 
adults were killed and killed again and again (ten to twenty anti-tank 
missiles, depending upon the source, but undeniably by a 50-to-1 
ratio), 14-year old Mustafa, grandson to Saddam Hussein, held off 
eighty or more soldiers until he too was finally overcome and shot to 
death.
Were it not for the pathos of Mustafa's still being a child, the events 
would evoke the last scene in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." 
It's not, however, very comfortable to laugh at the image of a brave 14-
year old boy, his dead father and uncle at his feet, mustering the 
courage of legendary heroes to fight off two hundred men from the 
world's mightiest military, all armed to the teeth against whatever 
small arms one boy could grab.
It's a cruel story that civilized people will never be comfortable with 
as we wonder what kind of thoughts ran through the boy's head in his 
last moments. Surely he made a conscious decision to fight to the 
death. He had apparently been placed protectively in a back bedroom, so 
it might well be that he emerged only upon the murder of his father. 
Was his own nationalism as firmly entrenched in his mind as that of the 
soldiers who had invaded and destroyed his country? Perhaps a Steven 
Spielberg can someday put it together right. There is surely a 
devastated mother somewhere, a best friend, a girl who had caught her 
breath once upon speaking with the teenager. Maybe it will come out 
that there are keepsakes, first shoes, a lucky soccer ball, a piece of 
artwork from a child artist. That we have to leave to the movies. OR to 
those who preserve all they can of their heroes.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi people who did not support Saddam or his sons now 
have a hero able to break hearts, not the first time one was compiled 
by the bones of a valiant death. Whereas Saddam, Uday, and Qusay -- 
unless they have been demonized out of any semblance to truth -- were 
cruel to their own people, young Mustafa is probably squeaky clean. We 
don't yet know, but it could be difficult for those forces against 
Iraqi insurgence to convincingly paint any fourteen year old as "evil."
Mention of young Mustafa, even after his death, is rare. A long search 
provided no detailed report, no biography. It might well be assumed 
that this is one death the killers would prefer to bury. We have photos 
of Uday and Qusay. For those who enjoy gore, there are the indelicate 
naked pictures that almost seem to boast -- twenty plus bullet holes, 
blood, disfigurement. Then, when global outrage against the brash bad 
taste of displaying such photos shook the Mideast, new photos emerged, 
these patched up, like an American body in an American morgue.
But there are no photos of Mustafa. Not in life OR death.
The invaders have shrugged and said they had no choice but to kill 
them. Some of us wish we had been contacted so that we could have 
reminded them of sieges, of tear gas. For reasons we don't yet 
understand, Uday and Qusay appear to have been wanted dead, not alive. 
It speaks poorly for the mentality of the designers of this killing. 
Captured, the brothers could have been tried by their own victims and a 
picture of some kind of justice could have replaced the barbaric 
embarrassment of two hundred soldiers, many inept enough that the 
entire neighborhood around the villa was bullet-riddled by the end of 
the attack, fumbling as they killed.
The official line (stated by U.S. General Sanchez) is that the 
Americans were careful, conducting an orderly and gradual siege, taking 
every effort to avoid harming bystanders. The neighbors in Mosul, 
however, describe the entire event as a "chaotic free-for-all" where 
ushering local residents to safety was never a factor. (Source: 
Guardian Unlimited - Special Report; Julian Borger in Washington and 
Jonathan Steele in Mosul, Thursday July 24, 2003)
Hundreds watched from the street as the U.S. troops fired missiles 
launched from Humvees into the villa, helicopter-borne US troops 
climbed by rope down to the rooftops of the villa, and a steady barrage 
of gunfire kept the neighbors in frightened prone positions, as they 
feared for their own lives.
Two days later 21-year old Anas Basil Hamed was laid to rest in Mosul 
by his father as fifty or so friends mourned his death. Neighbors 
claimed that Hamed was killed by U.S. soldiers who fired into a crowd 
of young, unarmed Iraqis who were throwing rocks at the troops, shortly 
after the fierce firefight in which Mustafa was killed.
A U.S. military spokesman reported no record of any civilians being 
shot at during the uprising, but eight eyewitnesses (two of whom were 
recovering from gunshot wounds themselves) report seeing four to eight 
U.S. soldiers firing briefly into the crowd. Those interviewed did not 
know each other, but they provided nearly identical accounts of the 
incident. (source: Washington Post, "Troops Accused of Killing in 
Mosul" by Kevin Sullivan, Saturday, July 26, 2003; Page A13)
Further evidence indicates that shots were fired away from the building 
where the Hussein brothers were trapped, and toward an area far from 
the fighting, where the crowd had gathered. One witness, Bashar Ghanim 
Hamoodi, was able to retrieve Hamed's body and take it to a physician 
who noted two fatal gunshots.
A shopkeeper, Ashad Akram Ahmad, showed reporters two bullet holes in 
the facade of his shop. Their location was directly behind the spot 
where witnesses say Hamad was shot down. (Source of these two 
paragraphs is the same Kevin Sullivan/Washington Post article cited 
above)
However much we want to defend our young U.S. soldiers as being 
uninformed victims of the administration now running our country, can 
we truly feel pride in the US Army's 101st Airborne Division and the 
200 men who shot a 14-year old to death?
And however much some want to demonize any Muslim or any Iraqi who is 
not willing to kneel at the invaders' feet, can they truly not be 
touched at the story, if it is accurate, of a child fighting to the 
death against all odds?
Some see the event differently. Top civilian administrator L. Paul 
Bremer said of the killings: "It certainly is good news for the Iraqi 
people." Ahman Chalabi, <U.S.-picked> delegate speaking at the United 
Nations, reported: "This will contribute significantly to reducing 
attacks on coalition soldiers." (Source: WBZ 4 News, July 22, 2003 9:20 
pm)
But the facts belie such expectations. Ten U.S. soldiers have died in 
the five days following the Mosul killings, causing some to claim that 
it is not only Iraqis who are the victims of the heavy-handed attack. 
And despite U.S. administration claims that this was done for the 
benefit of the Iraqi people, Andrea Stone of USA Today reported on July 
23rd that many people are now claiming to have "loved" the Hussein 
brothers. She examples Arfan Khalid, a 28-year old shopkeeper who made 
this threat. "Those who reported their hideout to the Americans, I will 
slaughter them with my bare hands."
The person who betrayed the Hussein brothers and Mustafa has not been 
clearly identified, but the U.S. has confirmed that he will receive the 
30 million dollar bounty that led them to the villa. The Iraqi people 
have never once turned in the snipers who are increasingly killing U.S. 
soldiers. It appears that a large payoff is required.
At last word, the army would not return the bodies of Oday and Qusay to 
their appropriate tribe for correct Islamic burial procedures but, 
instead, said that Saddam himself must claim the bodies. One wonders 
whether Mustafa's mother has been refused the body of her young son for 
burial according to his religion.
If this story is placed in the general "We v. Them" context, it must 
surely be accepted that "we" have no heroes here. "They" have one, one 
so potentially explosive that it could draw millions of neutral Iraqis 
into the resistance.
This one renders the biblical story of David vs. Goliath small.
May one more Iraqi child rest in peace, Insha Allah.

 The death of a child: the birth of a national hero.
Speriamo che ci facciano vedere le foto...
:-(((((((((((((
Saluti
Il GecKo
-- 
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Democrazia č: infili una scheda in una urna e
dall'altra parte ti salta fuori uno Schifani
M. Fini
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 Il GecKo
A volte ritornano. Gli errori, dico.
Ricordo che nel mio libro di storia alle scuole medie c'era una fotografia
austriaca di Cesare Battisti che si avviava alla forca.
Per la causa italiana fece più quella fotografia di cento battaglie. Un
clamoroso errore di propaganda del nemico.
Puo' darsi che nella loro ansia -che credo sincera- di veder distrutti i
nemici dell'America anche gli odierni vincitori dell'Iraq abbiano commesso
un errore simile a quello degli austriaci con la foto di Cesare Battisti.

 
http://www.counterpunch.org/thomas07302003.html
Bell'articolo pieno di ca***te senza citare una sola fonte a sostegno
delle stesse :)))
*LOL*
-Stefano