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Chapter 7 Collateral Damage As the insurgency in Iraq escalates, so does has the U.S. military’s response, perpetuating a cycle of violence that envelopes not only combatants but also civilians caught in the middle. In one of the many battles over Fallujah, there remain questions concerning the U.S. bombing of the Central Health Center on November 9, 2004.Whereas the U.S. military has dismissed accounts of the health center bombing as unsubstantiated, Dr. Samil al-Jumaili who was working at the center at the time of the incident said that American warplanes dropped three bombs on the clinic where approximately sixty patients were being treated, many of whom had serious injuries from previous U.S. aerial bombings and attacks. Dr. al-Jumaili reported that 35 patients were killed in the airstrike, including two girls and three boys under the age of 10. He said, fifteen medics, four nurses and five support staff also died after the entire health center—a protected institution under international law—collapsed on the patients. According to James Ross, Human Rights Watch,“the onus would be on the U.S. government to demonstrate that the hospital was being used for military purposes and that its response was proportionate . Even if there were snipers there it would never justify destroying the hospital” (Schuman 2004, 5–6).The Association of Humanitarian Lawyers has petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States to investigate the incident. Similarly, international law experts said that U.S.soldiers might have committed a war crime on November 11, 2004 when they sent fleeing Iraqi civilians back into Fallujah. Citing several articles of the Geneva Conventions, they said that established laws of war require military forces to protect civilians as refugees and must not return them to a combat zone. Jordan Paust, a law professor at the University of Houston and former army prosecutor said, “This is highly problematical conduct in terms of exposing people to grave danger by returning them to an area where fighting is going on.” Similarly, Ross added “If that’s what happened , it would be a war crime” (Janofsky 2004,A8). 113 Introduction The previous chapter offered a critical view aimed at the economic infrastructure as it undergoes colonial reconstruction. Not to be neglected in a farreaching analysis is the devastation wreaked on the Iraqi people.In the attempt to order the country, there is tremendous disorder that produces collateral damage: a military euphemism referring to the unintended wounding or killing of noncombatants. The following pages exhibit serious incidents of bombs veering off course, errant machine gun firings, false arrests and detentions , etc. As tragic as collateral damage is, regrettably there is little recourse. Although some families have received financial compensation for errors in the use of lethal force, the vast majority of victimizations often go without formal acknowledgement by the U.S. military (Keen 2006; Shiner 2007). In the absence of such recognition rests impunity, the failure to hold specific wrongdoers accountable for mistakes or deliberate acts of war crimes. Impunity in the war in Iraq derives from denial that may transpire at the individual, organizational, or state levels (see S. Cohen 2001).The invasion and its collateral damage are consequences of several interlocking denials from the Bush administration.Against the backdrop of the myth over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon claims that the U.S. military is not an occupying power, evidently so as to skirt its responsibilities. In response, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, fully aware that the United States and the United Kingdom had invaded Iraq without the authorization of the Security Council, demanded that the coalition adhere to the requirements of international law. Annan’s statement infuriated the U.S. envoy to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, arguing that the war was legal and that the coalition is not an occupying power but rather a liberating force (Fowler 2003).The U.S. position squarely contradicts the Hague Convention (1907) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) which specify that the laws of belligerent occupation come into effect the moment a territory is occupied by adversaries. Unequivocally, international law takes effect when the attacker imposes control over an invaded area; furthermore, the entire country need not by conquered before the laws governing occupation actually apply (Fallows 2004). “Occupation is a matter of fact—not of intention or declaration—and the United States army’s own manual acknowledges ‘the primacy of fact...

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