Denis Halliday, who led the UN’s Iraq Program until he resigned in 1998, stating that the US-led sanctions were “genocidal”, discusses the realities of the so-called Oil for Food Program “scandal”. This December 3, 2004 phone interview with Tom Jackson (producer of Greetings From Missile Street) from Joe Public Films aired December 4, 2004 on “Making Waves”, a news program produced for WSCA-LP, Portsmouth, NH community radio.

Stream the Interview (29:16- 8.4 MB)

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Kathy Kelly discusses the US occupation of Iraq, and suggests things we can do to help bring it to an end. This December 3, 2004 phone interview with Tom Jackson (producer of Greetings From Missile Street) from Joe Public Films aired December 4, 2004 on “Making Waves”, a news program produced for WSCA-LP, Portsmouth, NH community radio.

Stream the Interview (29:38- 8.4 MB)

or Download (29:38- 8.4 MB) - mp3

By Donna Mulhearn

On arrival at the school where the Fallujah refugee families were staying, I was ushered into a front room not really knowing what to expect. But the answer came quickly in the response of one of the dozen or so men in the room, who, sitting at the big desk near the window, appeared to be the leader of the group.

As soon as he saw me he stood up and smiled widely as he stretched out his arms. Then he announced to the other men; “I know this lady; she stayed at my house in Fallujah!” I was just as surprised as they were to hear this. But sure enough, I soon recognised the big-moustached, distinguished looking man as the Fallujah community leader who offered our group hospitality when we went there to deliver aid during the previous US attack on the city back in April. Of all the 150,000-odd Fallujah men currently displaced and scattered around Iraq, to meet this one, this day, was a handy stroke of serendipity.

By Maxine Nash,
Christian Peacemaker Teams

The medical world uses a term called “flatlining.” The basic meaning has to do with a machine connected to an individual to monitor their heart. When the heart is beating normally the screen of the monitor shows a mountain range of peaks and valleys, indicating the comforting thump-thump of a regularly beating heart. When the heart is not working normally, the peaks and valleys may be less mountainous, less regular. If the heart dies, the screen shows a flat line.

In my work with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) I have to be careful about the flatlining of my own soul. I work in conditions where there is so much trauma, so much death and destruction, that part of my coping mechanism includes hardening my heart to what I see and hear, just so it won’t overwhelm me.

Raid and the bundle of aid given to Fallujah refugees.

By Donna Mulhearn

The statistics on the whiteboard looked frightening. There were columns of Arabic words in black pen and rows of various numbers in bright red. Asterisks, arrows, ticks and crosses. The whiteboard squiggles presented a scenario that appeared chaotic and overwhelming. But still it did not convey the human horror of the Fallujah refugee situation.

We were in the offices of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, the group now grappling with the disaster of an entire city becoming homeless in a war zone - a disaster within a disaster.