Another in a series of letters sent by Marine Col. Mike Walker, retired. This letter was responding to a letter written concerning media coverage of the Israeli/Hamas war.
Always good to get a different perspective. The war in Gaza was very violent and innocents were killed but do not fall for some of lies and propaganda. There has been an untruthful manipulation of the war in Gaza by Hamas.
War is always savage. But Hamas and the radicals who follow al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood/Hezbullah go beyond refusing to follow accepted international rules of warfare.
The extremists intentionally violate the rules in order get the "Big Lie" out blaming the other side for all the bad things that the extremists largely cause.
Let me give you my first hand experience with this de-civilizing form of warfare from Iraq. Hamas/Hezbullal/al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood: They are barbaric terrorists.
In Iraq they hid weapons and ammunition in Red Crescent (Muslim partner of Red Cross) food supplies. Our forces were tipped off and searched and found the stuff. Using the Red Crescent to smuggle arms and munitions is a war crime by the way.
The extremists ensured that al Jazeera and al Arabia only showed it as evil Americans halting desperately needed international aid from the "victims." A "Big Lie."
In reality our only requirement was that we would search the aid going through our lines.
These enemy propaganda stories were more often than not repeated by the Western media with little or no attempt to get at the truth.
The terrorists never wore uniforms when they attacked to try to kill/wound Americans and their fellow Iraqis so that their dead/wounded could always be reported in the news as innocent "civilians" who were victims of American war crimes/atrocities. A "Big Lie."
We (like the Israelis), in trying to follow the rules of warfare, designate areas as no-fire/restricted fire areas. They are usually places that are heavily populated or structures such as hospital, schools, clinics, Mosques, etc.
Hamas/Al Qaeda/Hezballah all figured this out.
In Iraq the terrorists immediately began to store their weapons and ammunition only in schools and the like. They would use the minarets of the mosques as military observation posts and the mosque itself was used for all manner of military purposes.
Muqtada Sadr's followers had a torture chamber set up in the Shrine of Ali Mosque in Najaf during the fighting there in August 2004.
Even more shocking, our forces found dozens and dozens of empty and broken bottles of hard liquor on the shrines grounds where his Mahdi Army boys used to get up a little liquid courage before fighting the Marines.
Needless to say that sacrilege of the Shrine was never reported on al Jazeera or al Arabia or in the Western media. Instead the Madhi army was presented as a legitimate force opposing the occupation. One more "Big Lie."
The truth is that the Mahdi army was a bunch of (occasionally drunk/high) criminal thugs and a tool for Sadr's now ruined plan for becoming the new dictator of Iraq.
The terrorists used the hospitals to position snipers and set up command and control centers to try to kill Americans in Fallujah.
We would eventually move in to attack the enemy at these places. Al Jazeera and al Arabia would then air pictures of a damaged minaret or a hospital with American troops all around it and show it as another example of evil Americans doing bad things. Another "Big Lie."
In Iraq, a humanitarian group brought a convoy of ambulances to Fallujah during the first battle. We were then put in a lose-lose situation. If we refused to let the ambulances in we were heartless and evil. If we let them in we knew the terrorists would use them for their own purposes. We decided to let them in.
They were immediately used by enemy as military transport for troops, weapons, munitions. The worst of it was in one fight an ambulance drove up and left the wounded on the street as the driver only stopped to pick up the weapons of the dead enemy and put them in the back of the ambulance and drove off back to the enemy lines.
After repeated use of the ambulances for solely military purposes we started knocking them out. Of course the only pictures shown on al Arabia and al Jazeera were pictures of burning ambulances destroyed by the evil criminal Americans. A "Big Lie."
I could go on and on but hopefully you see my point.
I do not trust the reporting from Gaza. I have been met with the "Big Lie" too many times to accept any of it at face value.
The civilized world has a real problem.
Every time we let Hamas/Hezbullah/al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood violate the rules of warfare (storing weapons in schools/not wearing uniforms/using hospitals and mosques for military purposes) we take another step backwards towards a barbaric world ruled by ruthless savages.
Mike
