Sheikh Ghazi Al-Yawar, Iraq's interim president, reportedly disagreed bitterly with the decision of the U.S.-led coalition to bring Fallujah down by force. He was quoted as likening the use of armed force to ``shooting a horse to scare a fly on it.''

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was reported to have sent a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush and others, urging them not to make the assault.

Undeterred, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers stormed into Fallujah on Monday and seized control of the city's main hospital and key bridges over the Euphrates. This is the same hospital that reported last month that U.S. airstrikes had killed only innocent civilians.

CNN reported, ``U.S. military officials said the hospital needed to be secured so hospital workers could attend to casualties without facing intimidation by insurgents, and to end its use as a source of anti-U.S. propaganda.''

The tactic, I assume, was to silence dissent and then mount a full-scale assault.

I understand that 500-pound bombs have been dropped on Fallujah. The news reminded me of the 500 pounders dropped from B-29s in the Pacific War. One major difference between Americans and Japanese is the latter know what it is like to be on the receiving end of an air attack.

Granted, there are not many Japanese left now who have actually experienced air raids. But there are plenty of sites where tremendous bomb blasts ripped lives apart. Even if the visual signs of devastation are no longer there, people can still imagine what happened.

The United States and others reportedly brushed aside Annan's letter as an example of meddling in someone else's affairs. But then, what do you call the American and British invasion of Iraq? It was definitely not an act of meddling by word or letter. It was an act that has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 10,000 or more Iraqi people, not to mention numerous instances of horrendous abuse.

``The slated general elections in Iraq are drawing near, but the nation's unwanted elements have yet to go away. If they can be crushed by force, let's go ahead and do that.''

If the above is a correct paraphrase of what the U.S. and British governments are thinking and doing, how could anyone not want to meddle in their affairs?

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 9(IHT/Asahi: November 10,2004)