Rosemarie, Human shield in a water purification plant

Rosemarie had, successfully, sent me an email - but that was yesterday, some hours before the bombs. The promised second em hadn't arrived. Had . something. happened. ?

I phone. On the fifth try I get thru. "Is Rosemarie there ?" "Speaking." How are you ? (Glad to hear you are not only alive, but there, but this don't say).

Fine. We had a big raid last nite. Very intense. Some hit close to us. I think they are aiming at the bridges. (Rosemarie Gillespie is part of a group of now 14 internationals, including two Australians, Human Shields, at the 7th of April Water Treatment Plant, on the Tigris River, in the suburbs of Baghdad. See also RRs DU, and previous. The Water Treatment Plant is a few hundred meters from the river.)

R: I can't tell if they've hit bridges, but they lit a very large fire, there was lots of smoke and could see the red glow of the flames, but after some hours it was extinguished. There's no more fire, no smoke, but before the smoke filled the sky. (Pause.. looking ?) The fire is out.

Q: Casualties ?
R: Some. Some houses, Civilians, Children, dead. But (at 7 am) have no figures, no confirmed figures.

Q The Internationals ? The Human Shields ?
R: As far as I know, all OK. At the Palestine Hotel (HQ of the Human Shields) -- there's broken glass..

Q: Your plans ?
R: We'll stay.

M: The media here, and American, report the war is almost "won", Hussein is dead, wounded, or not, the Americans are advancing almost at will.

R: (Laughs) That's a big lie. There's stiff resistance.(see earlier email, below).

R: I'm hearing Anti-Aircraft fire now. have to listen. yes. (An hour later, around 8 am Baghdad time, as ABC reporter TM spoke with Rosemarie, there were "explosions" near by).
21-03-03 Rosemarie Gillespie: I slept through some of the bombing last night
postend on http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/
Dear Max:

The email connection is open again - hooray! Today's email will be in two parts, what I will send now which you should receive before 10pm your time, the rest will come later and should be there when you wake up tomorrow morning.

It seems that I slept through some of the bombing last night. (Thursday) After a while you get used to it. It only wakes you up if it is close or right on top of you. I did an interview with Derryn Hinch this morning and got an idea of the type of bullshit that is being pushed out through the commercial media. Please, when you have time, could you send an email outlining the claims Bush and Howard are making to try to justify their actions, eg that they are coming to liberate the Iraqis, that the human shields are traitors, etc, etc. This will make it easier at our end to prepare our rebuttals. Please send all emails to me at the Human Shields email address: andalus206@warkaa.net and include my name in the title of the document you send to that address.

Bush believes his own bullshit. So does Howard. Eventually their bullshit will be washed away with the rivers of time. In the meantime:

Part of our peace effort here is to counter the lies, not only to save Iraqi lives, but also to save American and Australian lives. It would be tragic not only for the Iraqis, but also for the Australian, American and British soldiers, sailors and pilots who are being sent into Iraq under false pretences and will become casualties of this war.

Remember Gallipoli, when Aussie diggers died in their thousands because a huge miscalculation made by their British masters (Britain controlled Australian foreign policy at the time) My great uncle, a talented pianist, was one of them.

Remember Vietnam, where American GIs and Australian diggers died in a war also based on a big miscalculation, which caused terrible suffering to the Vietnamese. It also radicalized a generation of Australians and Americans, who have not forgotten the lessons of that war, even if the American and Australian governments prefer to forget and embark on yet another disastrous war.

In each case, the miscalculation was based partly on racism. In the case of Gallipoli, Churchill and other British war planners overlooked the fact that the Turks would vigorously defend their homeland against any invasion by an outside power - and the attempted landing at Gallipoli was just that, an invasion. In Iraq, the situation is exactly the same. Iraq is a neighbour of Turkey. Both have a long history and are not to be trifled with.

The idea that Iraqis will welcome American troops as liberators is fanciful. How can anyone imagine they can win friends and influence people by bombing them! Surely the chiefs of the American Establishment would have learned their lessons in Vietnam. If not, they are doomed to learn their lessons once again, this time at a terrible cost in human lives and human suffering. If they were history students, they would get a Fail. If they were patients in a psychiatric hospital, Bush and Cheney would have been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid delusions and delusions of grandeur.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)