 want to read two things from the book. One I'd like to read is about a short bit of from when I went into Fallujah during the April 2004 siege and again to give you a bit of a taste of what it really felt like to be in Iraq, particularly in the middle of conflict zone. And I decided to go into Fallujah because there were no reporters in the city aside from two correspondents with Al Jazeera. And the military was doing everything they could to keep journalists outside of the country, outside of the city. They had coordinated off the best they could. They were doing things like turning away aid convoys, turning away media vehicles, and in fact they were trying so hard even to get the Al Jazeera correspondents out that they set up this ruse that they were going to be doing negotiations on April 9th. The siege started on April 4th. And they were so troubled by the fact that Al Jazeera was airing footage of American snipers shooting civilians, American snipers shooting ambulances, warplanes bombing civilian homes, etc. This was not helping their image across the Arab world. And so when the US were trying to set up truce negotiations for April 9th with resistance fighters in the city, one of their demands was that the Al Jazeera camera crew leave the city. So on April 9th, hearing about these atrocities, I had the chance to go into the city. There was an Iraqi NGO and Baghdad that had arranged for a bus carrying humanitarian supplies. And me and a British woman named Joe Wilding and David Martinez, an American independent filmmaker, and a few other folks decided to go into the city on this bus because we were just carrying in literally, we had a couple of stacks of blankets and then boxes of some basic antibiotics, things like gauze and rubber gloves. And we put, we basically flew a white flag out the window and drove the bus into the city. And we chose April 9th because according to the US military, and of course then repeated by a complicit corporate media, most of the corporate media. April 9th was a ceasefire because this truce negotiation was ongoing. But when we went into the city, we were watching, I saw with my own eyes, F-16s bombing parts of the city, helicopters strafing other parts. And when we got into the clinic in the middle of the city, that's essentially the context for this next bit that I'd like to read. We rolled toward the one small clinic where we were to deliver our medical supplies. The small clinic was managed by Makhiel Nazal, who was hired just four days ago. He was not a doctor. The other makeshift clinic in Fallujah was in a mechanics garage. He had barely slept in the past week, nor had any of the doctors at the small clinic. Originally the clinic had just three doctors, but since the US military bombed one of the hospitals and were currently sniping at people as they attempted to enter or exit the main hospital, effectively there were only these two small clinics treating the entire city of 350,000 people. The boxes of medical supplies we brought into the clinic were torn open immediately by the desperate doctors. A woman entered, slapping her chest and face, and wailing as her husband carried in the dying body of her little boy. Blood was trickling off one of his arms, which dangled out of his father's arms. Thus began my witnessing of an endless stream of women and children who had been shot by US soldiers and were now being raced into the dirty clinic. The car is speeding over the curb out front, and we think family members carrying him are wounded. One 18-year-old girl had been shot through the neck. She was making breathy, girdling noises as the doctors frantically worked on her amid her muffled moaning. Flies dodged the working hands of doctors to return to the patches of her vomit that stained her black abaya. Her younger brother, a small child of 10, with a gunshot wound in his head from a marine sniper, his eyes glazed and staring into space, continually vomited as the doctors raced to save his life while family members cried behind him. The Americans cut our electricity days ago, so we cannot vacuum the vomit from his throat, a furious doctor tells me. They were both loaded into an ambulance and rushed toward Baghdad, only to die in Another small child lay on a blood-spattered bed also shot by a sniper. The boy's grandmother lay nearby, shot as she was attempting to carry children from their home and flee the city. She lay on a bed dying, still clutching a bloody white surrender flag. Hundreds of families were trapped in their homes, terrorized by US snipers shooting from rooftops and the minarets of Maas whenever they saw someone move past the window. Blood bags were being kept in a food refrigerator, warmed under running water before it being given to patients. There were no anesthetics. The lights went out as the generator ran dry of fuel, so the doctors who had been working for days on end worked by light provided by men holding up cigarette lighters or flashlights as the sun set. Needless to say, there was no air conditioning inside the steaming clinic. One victim of the US military aggression after another was brought in to the clinic, nearly all of them women and children, carried by weeping family members. Those who had not been hit by bombs from war planes had been shot by US snipers. The one functioning ambulance left at this clinic sat outside with bullet holes in the sides and a small group of shots right on the driver's side of the windshield. The driver, his head bandaged from being grazed by the bullet of the sniper, refused to go collect any more of the dead and wounded. Standing near the ambulance in frustration, Mati told us they shot the ambulance and they shot the driver after they checked his car, inspected his car and knew that he was carrying nothing. Then they shot and then they shot the ambulance and now I have no ambulance to evacuate more than 20 wounded people. I don't know who is doing this and why he is doing this. This is terrible. This has never happened before and I don't know who to call because it seems that nobody is listening. The stream of patients slowed to a sporadic influx this night though. Mati sat with me as we shared cigarettes in a small office in the rear of the clinic. For all my life I believed in American democracy, he told me with an exhausted voice. For 47 years I had accepted the illusion of Europe and the United States being good for the world, the carriers of democracy and freedom. Now I see that it took me 47 years to wake up to the horrible truth. They are not here to bring anything like democracy or freedom. Now I see it has all been lies. The Americans don't give a damn about democracy or human rights. They are worse than even Saddam. I asked him if he minded if I quoted him with his name. What are they going to do to me that they haven't already done here? He said. And now I'd like to talk briefly about the aftermath and I touched earlier of what happened after that. The Americans failed to take the city as that siege continued. 736 people were killed. 60% of them civilians according to doctors at Fallujah General. And that set the stage for the November siege which destroyed 70% of the city. 5,000 people were killed. The vast majority of those civilians as well. And of course illegal weapons like white phosphorus incendiary weapons and cluster bombs were used heavily during the siege. To this day the U.S. military maintains a security cordon around the city. An Israeli style security cordon where they are using file metrics. Things like retina scans and fingerprinting people with all 10 fingerprints. Giving them a barcode to establish that they're residents in the city. And severely restricting movement in and out of the city. And that's the situation today. 80% of employment in Fallujah. Entire neighborhoods remain to this day. Since the November 04 siege without water and electricity. It's basically a ghost town. And there's been a vehicle ban either total or partial vehicle ban in Fallujah since this last May. And that continues to this day. I have an Iraqi colleague that I'm working with in depressed service for. He's sending the information and he's based in Fallujah today. So we're still getting updated information on that.