USS Fallujah Archived Message Posted by johnlilburne on March 1, 2023, 11:24 pm Chomsky: It’s also of no slight interest to see the self-image that NATO is proudly constructing. One instructive example is the U.S. Navy’s latest acquisition, the amphibious assault ship USS Fallujah, named to commemorate the two Marine attacks on Fallujah in 2004, among the more atrocious crimes of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It’s normal for imperial states to ignore or seek to explain away their crimes. It’s a shade more unusual to see them celebrated. Outsiders don’t always find this amusing, including Iraqis. Reflecting on the commissioning of the USS Fallujah, Iraqi journalist Nabil Salih describes a football field “known as the Martyrs’ Cemetery. It is where residents of the once besieged city [of Fallujah] buried the women and children massacred in repeated United States assaults to repress a raging rebellion in the early years of occupation. In Iraq, even playgrounds are now sites for mourning. The war entailed showering Fallujah in depleted uranium and white phosphorus.” “But US savagery didn’t end there,” Salih continues: Twenty years and incalculable birth defects later, the US navy is naming one of its warships the USS Fallujah.… This is how the US Empire continues its war against Iraqis. Fallujah’s name, bleached in white phosphorus implanted in mothers’ wombs for generations, is a spoil of war, too. “Under extraordinary odds,” reads a US Empire statement explaining the decision to name a warship after Fallujah, “the Marines prevailed against a determined enemy who enjoyed all the advantages of defending in an urban area.”… What is left is the haunting absence of family members, homes bombed into nonexistence and photographs incinerated along with the smiling faces. Instead, a lethally corrupt system of cross-sectarian camaraderie-in-theft was bequeathed to us by the unpunished war criminals of Downing Street and the Beltway. Full interview with Chomsky here: A Stronger NATO Is the Last Thing We Need as Russia-Ukraine War Turns 1: https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/chomsky-a-stronger-nato-is-the-last-thing-we-need-as-russia-ukraine-war-turns-1/ Message Thread: USS Fallujah - johnlilburne March 1, 2023, 11:24 pm David Letterman: "Where do you think you are---Fal-LU-jah?" (Gales of laughter) - Morrissey March 2, 2023, 4:07 am Re: USS Fallujah - .John Monro March 2, 2023, 4:25 am Re: USS Fallujah - johnlilburne March 2, 2023, 1:17 pm Re: USS Fallujah - Ken Waldron March 2, 2023, 3:10 pm Re: USS Fallujah - johnlilburne March 2, 2023, 5:27 pm   Searching