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International-UN-NGOs
Arab League chief slams killing of civilians in Iraq
2004-04-13
The Arab League chief on Sunday slammed battles between US marines and insurgents in which hundreds of Iraqi civilians had died as “unacceptable and extremely serious”.
"Nope. Nope. Can't have any of that."
“The meeting condemned the recent attacks that have killed more than 500 Iraqi civilians,” Amr Moussa was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency, after chairing an Arab League delegates’ meeting on Iraq. He branded the fighting in the war-torn country, as “unacceptable and extremely serious,” stressing it would entail “negative repercussions”.
Like piles of dead turbans?
While Arab governments have shied away from publicly criticising recent US military operations in Iraq, Moussa has stood alone in the world of officialdom by strongly criticising the violence. Although a tentative ceasefire held in Fallujah on Sunday, a week of battles in the town have left more than 400 Iraqis dead and 1,000 wounded, officials with the Iraqi interim Governing Council said.
Things kinda tough for the boomers and snuffies, are they, Amr?
Posted by:Fred

#8  Does he speak for the whole Arab League Membership? Did Somalia and the Sudan sign off on his condemnation of killing civilians? Has Somalia paid their dues recently?
Posted by: Super Hose   2004-04-13 10:28:12 PM  

#7  
Arab League chief slams killing of civilians in Iraq
Then tell your Arab terrorist buddies in Iraq to stop killing civilians, asshole.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2004-04-13 7:05:57 PM  

#6  Well it's a little bit late, but I welcome the Arab Leagues denunciation of the four civilians killed by the people of Fallujah. I hope that the Fallujahans, however many may be left, will take the AL's words to heart and refrain from the willful targeting of civilian personnel.

Fallujah, I ask again: How funny is it now?
Posted by: BH   2004-04-13 5:07:16 PM  

#5  I think I understand some of where the civilian casualties are coming from. This was my response to a post at Healing Iraq, which, as I expected, is doing the usual Arab solidarity thing, now that the gloves are off (Zeyad asked for the gloves to come off early, but now that gloves are actually partially off, he's appalled. Typical):

Sa'ad: You people are beyond any help. You think the insurgents are shooting their own women and children just to blame the Americans??? Are you that brainwashed?

My response: The few thousand rebels definitely aren't shooting their own family members - there are a few hundred thousand non-rebel families to target. For example, say a non-rebel family balks at handing their food or ammunition over to the rebels. The rebels kill the entire family to serve as an example to the whole community.

It happened under Saddam, and Fallujans who served under Saddam are the people who carried out Saddam's orders. (Note that Fallujah was a key recruitment center for Saddam's henchmen). A few hundred dead Coalition "collaborators" (i.e. people who refused to help the rebels) would not be exceptional. The rebels assume that they are the sole and legitimate authority of Iraq - what is to prevent them from executing "collaborators", given that they have carried out similar massacres against Saddam's opponents in the past? When the rebels say that Iraqis should not kill their own, they mean that Iraqis allied with the coalition should not kill them - but the rebels arrogate to themselves the sole right to kill Iraqis allied with the coalition as "collaborators".
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2004-04-13 4:16:45 PM  

#4  Arabs don't care if Arabs kill other Arabs; they only care if non-Arabs kill Arabs.

Or put a different way, Arabs have a problem only if they're not the ones doing the killing.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2004-04-13 4:03:52 PM  

#3  If the Americans were indiscriminate about who got killed, the Iraqi citizen death toll would be in the thousands.

ITYM "hundreds of thousands", if not "millions".

And, guys, this is not surprising at all. Arabs don't care if Arabs kill other Arabs; they only care if non-Arabs kill Arabs. That's why Saddam was OK, and that's why the terrorists are OK.
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2004-04-13 3:11:16 PM  

#2  The Arab League chief on Sunday slammed battles between US marines and insurgents in which hundreds of Iraqi civilians had died as “unacceptable and extremely serious”.

There simply is no way this guy can be serious.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2004-04-13 2:48:23 PM  

#1  CAIRO: The Arab League chief on Sunday slammed battles between US marines and insurgents in which hundreds of Iraqi civilians had died as “unacceptable and extremely serious”.

“The meeting condemned the recent attacks that have killed more than 500 Iraqi civilians,” Amr Mussa was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency, after chairing an Arab League delegates’ meeting on Iraq.

Since it's Iraqi bombers that are killing so many Iraqis on a regular basis, this whiner's blather about US caused Iraqi deaths is so much hot air. If the Americans were indiscriminate about who got killed, the Iraqi citizen death toll would be in the thousands. Instead, the Fallujah citizen death toll merely approaches the sort of numbers that Iraqi bombers have killed already.
Posted by: Zenster   2004-04-13 2:39:45 PM  

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