(THREAD) Today marks the 31st anniversary of the Amirriyah massacre in which the United States murdered at least 408 Iraq civilians by intentionally targeting a Baghdad bomb shelter with two GBU-27 smart bombs. The "US has good intentions" brigade ought to listen up:
After the attack - in which scores of innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered - the US DoD stated they knew the shelter was used for civil defence throughout the Iran-Iraq War which had ended just a few years earlier. They *knew* civilians would be there.
To try & cover it up, the US military (that likes to claim honourable battlefield conduct) said they thought it had been converted into a military command post. No one sane bought the lies. Human Rights Watch made findings at the time that it was a "violation of the laws of war".
Dick Cheney, at the time SecDef, lauded the Gulf War as having been one of history's most humane wars, preserving civilian life. This was a total smokescreen, as the US banned the press from freely reporting & controlled the flow of information so they could kill with impunity.
This also occurred when the US bombed public infrastructure where they knew civilians would be *during the day* e.g. a bridge in Nasiriyah was bombed as civilians were crossing it, killing 100 according to medical sources. The UK also bombed a bridge in Fallujah, killing 130.
This shows that Amirriyah was not isolated, but part of a pattern of war crimes where little regard was shown for civilian life, violating the First Additional Protocol, 1977 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. These are the same laws they consistently accuse others of violating.
In Rick Atkinson's book "Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War", the so-called "intelligence" is described in unflattering terms, citing US officers responsible for targeting. Despite knowing it was a civil defence structure, they decided to slaughter hundreds anyway.
It was a calculated massacre. The first bomb opened the bunker's roof. Residents could hear screaming as women & children desperately tried to escape, leaving handprints on the walls to this day. All went silent after the second bomb was landed through the open roof minutes later
Among the victims was 7 year old Sally Ahmed Selman. She was one of hundreds of children killed that day before US sanctions killed 100,000s more in the coming years. Had the US not committed war crimes, she'd be close to 40 today. What kind of hopeful futures did they blot out?
And so, the next time you hear a Rasha al-Aqeedi type claim that US involvement in Iraq is a benevolence, think of the ghosts of Sally & 100,000s of other Iraqi kids & what they would say if they were allowed to live long enough to say it.
May Allah bless Iraq's martyrs 🤲🏼
May Allah bless Iraq's martyrs 🤲🏼
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