The more things change

Then

In the 1920s Britain bombed Kurds and Arabs in Iraq when they rebelled against Britain's attempts to control them. By October 1922 the RAF had principal responsibility for the war, with British ground forces being reduced. In a single aerial sortie, in mid-May 1922, Suleymaniya was bombarded, causing the town's 7,000 residents to evacuate the town for the rest of the conflict. In fact, armed confrontations between Kurdish and Arab nationalists and British imperialism continued until the early 1930s.

Winston Churchill, the colonial secretary at the time, believed that gas could be used effectively against the Kurds and Iraqis (as well as against other peoples in the Empire): 'I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.' Some shared Churchill's enthusiasm for gas as an instrument of colonial control but the British cabinet was reluctant to allow the use of a weapon that had caused such misery and revulsion in the First World War. In the event, gas was used against the Iraqi rebels though gas shells were not dropped from aircraft because of practical difficulties.

Wing-Commander Sir Arthur Harris, later Bomber Harris, head of wartime Bomber Command, was happy to emphasise that 'The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage. Within forty-five minutes a full-size village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.' It was an easy matter to bomb and machine-gun the tribespeople, because they had no means of defence or retaliation. Iraq and Kurdistan were also used as testing grounds for new weapons; devices specifically developed by the Air Ministry for use against tribal villages.

Now

BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 -- U.S. pilots targeting a house where they believed insurgents had taken shelter killed a family of 12, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping.

A Washington Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three women and three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 were removed Tuesday from the house outside the town of Baiji, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

A U.S. military spokesman said that American forces take every precaution to prevent civilian casualties and that they were working with Iraqi authorities to determine what happened at the farmhouse in Baiji. "We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman, said in an e-mail.

The Associated Press Television News showed footage of men carrying several bodies wrapped in carpets from the wreckage of the house. The men chanted ritual prayers: "There is no god but God."

The United States has steadily intensified its use of airstrikes against insurgents in Iraq in the past year, increasing the number of attacks from 25 in January 2005 to 120 in November.

Washington Post