"So much progress to report"

Photo by Dahar Jamail

As real Knight-Ridder journalists respond in anger to an editorial writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press who said they were accentuating the negative in Iraq "when there's so much progress to report," Dahr Jamail talks to Amy Goodman about all that progress. Here, he discusses how the U.S. military treats hospitals as enemy encampments:

[O]ne of the major examples of that is the U.S. military operations, both sieges of Fallujah, that is, where -- particularly the November siege, the first thing that the U.S. military did was go into Fallujah General Hospital and occupy it, place snipers on the roof and detain doctors, prevent them from carrying out their medical care, as well as the deliberate targeting of ambulances. And since that siege, in ongoing operations like in Al Qaim and in Hadithah, we have seen a almost exact repeat of that, where hospitals are sealed off, medical workers are prevented from working or being targeted themselves, and this has become clear that not only in Al Qaim and Hadithah, but it’s ongoing right now in Buhrez, which is right near Baquba; as we speak, this is ongoing, and any time there is a major operation now by the U.S. military in Iraq, this is the type of tactic that they're using.

Jamail has prepared an extensive report "Iraqi hospitals ailing under occupation", which he presented at the World Tribunal on Iraq, Istanbul 23-27 June. It is available, in both PDF and HTML versions, at his website.