White flags.. unfurling
flutt'ring in flowing wind..
silent mercy pleas ..
ignored in the Highway
of Death
*************
The Highway Of Death.. These flags
ignored by the US regime
whose pawns bombed them again and again
(even the right wing Rutherford Foundation.. rutherford.org
speaks of the Highway Of Death)
and sent tanks into the middle of their phalanx
.. tanks equipped also as bulldozers..
to shovel dirt on top of Iraqi soldiers in the trenches
and to bury them alive
while elsewhere Barrie McCaffrey, his subordinate,
bombed the beginning and end of the Highway of Death
.. to trap tens of thousands.. of Kuwaitis, Palestinians
and Iraqis.. civilians.. some in oxcarts..
their helos ignoring the innocents' halos
as they bombed and machine gunned
and then bulldozed the dead into dirt graves
Author's Notes/Comments:
Most of the descriptions
of the Highway of Death
have come from the peace
movement. This one is
from the right wing Rutherford Institute
(not an endorsement
of their funding of
investigations into
the sex lives of politicians) rutherford.org On a 60-mile stretch of road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq, a convoy of more than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were fleeing. These were people who were putting up no resistance, many with no weapons, leaving in cars, trucks, carts, and on foot. The American armed forces bombed one end of the main highway from Kuwait City to Basra, sealing it off and then bombed the other end of the highway, sealing it off. They positioned mechanized artillery units on the hill overlooking the area and then, both from the air and the land, massacred every living thing on the road. Fighter bombers, helicopter gunships, and armored battalions poured merciless firepower on those trapped in the traffic jams, backed up as much as 20 miles. One U.S. pilot reportedly said, "It was like shooting fish in a barrel." That fateful stretch of road has since been dubbed the "Highway of Death." In a report submitted to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal, charges are made that those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. The report claims that no attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians. Pictures taken after the attack show charred and dismembered bodies. Some of these photographs can be viewed by clicking on the link for Peter Turnley�s photo essay, "The Unseen Gulf War." Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson, suggested the carnage could only have resulted from the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs�anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.
