U.S.-Led Forces in Iraq Kill 9 in Raid

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Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5880556,00.html

go usa! :puke:



A brother grieves beside the coffin of a boy, who appeared to be eight or nine-years-old and was said to have died during a U.S.-led raid near Baqouba, at a hospital in Baqouba in Iraq Monday, June 12, 2006. According to the U.S. military the raid was staged in the area where terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed and the targeted terrorists had ties to senior al-Qaida leaders across Iraq. The U.S. military said coalition forces had killed seven terrorists and two children, whilst local residents accused the Americans of targeting civilians and a man at the scene held up the charred body of a toddler whose head had been blown in half. (AP Photo/Mohammed Adnan)

The 1 terrorist that they were after was caught, so another successful raid. Clearly none of us are looking at this objectively. :sarcasm:

We're not winnning anything.

Don't shoot at our troops and then run back into the house where your wife and children are.

the Iraqi Resistance is morally justified in any tactic that leads to the end of the occupation and the dissolution of the puppet government.

Whats that have to do with what i said?

Shoot at our troops or anybody else's troops and then run back in the house where your children are, is insane. Or worse yet, fire at troops from a house where you wife and children are.

darned well, as imperial troops are often reluctant to fire into civilian structures. When they do fire into civilian structures, imperial forces often wind up committing My Lai's or Haditha's.

If they gave a rats ass about their loved ones, they'd stay as far away as possible.

The Iraqi and Afghan resistances are waging classic guerilla warfare, including tactics and strategies borrowed from resistance movements of the past. See Spanish against Napoleon Bonaparte, Soviets and French against Hitler, Algerians against French and National Liberation Front against U.S.

Saying they "hide behind women and children" is a way of insulting them even though history shows that guerilla strategy and tactics work against imperial forces.

Or anybody who chooses the same tactics.

Will you condemn that tactic with the same degree of sprightliness with which you condemn guerilla tactics? Or are you, as another poster (Saigon68) alluded, a "troop jock sniffer"?

Can't even come up with your own insults?

A DU member who supports our troops is now called a Troop Jock Sniffer? Is that what you believe?

All i've said is shooting at our troops or anybody else's troops and then retreating to your house or compound where women and children are is insane. Exactly how are the troops suppose to know you just ran into a house full of women or children? You personally put them at risk with this tactic.

what the Marines did at Haditha? Or maybe you "supported" Lt. William Calley and his merry band of rogues at My Lai? Or, perish the notion, you "support" Graner, Frederick, England and the Abu Ghraib et. al.

See, in my book, when you say you "support" the troops, that's just RW code for saying you support the BFEE's policies that endanger the troops. But maybe that's me.

As far as Haditha goes, not one marine has been charged. I'll wait until the investigations over.
As far as the others you mentioned, i believe all were charged found guilty and sentenced. As it should be.

don't commit war crimes? If the former, then you're really saying you support BFEE's policies. You're right that not one marine has been charged yet re: Haditha. Of course, Marine brass initially tried to spin allegations that civilians (including a 6-month-old baby) were murdered in cold blood as "al Quaida propaganda." That cover-up went on for at least 6 months. And anyone who's paid even the slightest bit of attention knows that Haditha is just the tip of a massive iceberg, despite the best efforts of the corporate whore media to spin Haditha as another case of just a "few bad apples."

How about those Air Force bombardiers who blithely drop their bombs from altitudes > 5,000 feet? I'll bet you support them, but their tactics are just as chickenshit in their own way as the "hide behind women and children" tactics you claim to deplore.

Whatever. You support whichever war crimes and troops you're comfortable with.

And stop making up facts, much like the military, to defend the indefensible.

"Don't shoot at our troops and then run back into the house where your wife and children are."

This isn't what happened, and you know it.

"The military said coalition forces received enemy machine-gun fire from a rooftop and two people with AK-47s had been seen fleeing the area just prior to the assault."



If they didn't run to it, they may have fired from it.

it talks about a "rooftop" and people fleeing the area. It does not state that the people fleeing the rooftop were identified later as entering a house, a house where a wife is, or a house where there are children.

Your post made these facts up:



In fact, it isn't even clear if the women and children murdered had any connection whatsoever with the shooters alleged to be on the rooftop. The beginning of the story simply states:



So the rooftop shooting may have been juxtaposed in the article to the house raid in an attempt to justify the children's murder, when in fact there is no connection whatsover. Even this pathetic attempt at justification fails utterly.

The children, it would appear, were murdered during the "suppression of enemy fire on a rooftop":



It is far more likely that the building beneath the rooftop was obliterated, killing the women and children within.

Then theres no point for further discussion.

I am so sick of hearing about children being killed in Iraq, and then turning right around and seeing crap like this.

I don't care if someone in the house shot at US troops. I don't care if the kids themselves did the shooting! They are *children.* Soldiers should not be killing children. Period.

Yes, I know it's difficult to tell who the "enemy" is in a situation like the one we've created in Iraq. That is only one of the myriad reasons to get our troops out of there.

There is no excuse for killing children. And don't try telling me these are *all* accidents, either. I don't buy it.

That's the point at issue.

It's real simple, there is no excuse for shooting kids. No fucking excuse whatsoever.

NO EXCUSE.

and I don't support them anymore than I would have supported the Wehrmacht had I been a German in 1939.

Notice the similarities between US troops in Iraq and the Wehrmacht, US troops have killed more innocent civilians in Iraq than Hitler's Wehrmacht did in Poland:

The war crimes of Wehrmacht include:

Atrocities during Invasion of Poland

Wehrmacht units killed over 16,000 Polish civilians during the 1939 September campaign through executions, terror bombing of open cities or murder. After the end of hostilities, during the Wehrmacht's administration of Poland, which went on until October 25 1939, 531 towns and villages were burned, the Wehrmacht carried out 714 mass executions and a number of other crimes. Altogether, it is estimated that 50,000 Polish civilians had perished including 7000 Jews.(1)

Atrocities during the Battle of France

Between May 25th and May 28th, the German Wehrmacht committed several war crimes in and near the small village of Vinkt. Hostages were taken and used as human shields. As the Belgian army continued to resist, farms were searched (and looted) for more hostages who were later executed. In all 86 civilians were executed, but the total death toll was probably 140. The reason for the carnage is unclear. See massacre at Vinkt.

Destruction of Warsaw

Further information: Battle of Warsaw (1939) and Warsaw Uprising

Up to 250,000 civilians were murdered by German led forces during the Warsaw Uprising. Human shields were used by German forces during the fighting and during the Wola Massacre 50,000 civilians were executed to intimidate the Poles into surrender.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

References

1. Davies, Norman. Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944, Richard C. Lukas, Hippocrene Books. ISBN 0781809010.

When asked how he could kill children ?

He replied with a well worn Marine hoo rah--

"You simply aim a little lower at their tiny heads"

all the 'pro-lifers' who cheer when kids are killed like this...

but those dead children only make us more free. Why do Some Democrats hate America?

thanks to Paul Krugman & :sarcasm:

This is horrible.

Here is Al-Jazeera's version of the OP story by AP:

Nine killed in US raid near Baquba

Muhammad Abbas, a relative of those killed, said the raid was started after an error on part of the local guard in the village of al-Hashmiya, west of Baquba, where the air strike was carried out.

"We were sleeping on the rooftop at midnight when one of the local guards fired in the air as he saw individuals who he thought were insurgents ... unfortunately they turned out to be US troops on foot patrol," he said.

"The US forces responded fiercely and struck several houses first and later concentrated on one house. We later discovered that nine members of the house, including seven children and youngsters were killed while four members are missing."

Another witness, Shahin Abdullah, at the local hospital where the bodies were brought, described the US attack as fierce.

"We heard sound of explosions and airplanes in the sky. The result was that nine were killed and four are missing," Abdullah said.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B7143197-A9F9-4692-B9E7-F74103B0AD31.htm

Killing terrorists in one story, a stray shot by a guard that led to a mass killing of innocents in another.

On edit - The BBC is now giving both accounts of the story. That often means the Pentagon version will fall apart.