The UN, US and Iraq IV

Well, Italgato, I really don't think that German Economy has anything to due with this thread.

Quite right. And therefor we may call soldiers of the Wehrmacht murderers. (There has been a great exhibition showing this some time ago.)

You are quite correct, MR. Hinteler. I hope you do not mind if I reminded you of your comment on another thread.

So. let us return to your comment about the Iraqi police.

Are you saying that the US forces fired on the Iraqi police with malice aforethought?

Are you saying that casualties from "friendly fire do not occur in battles?

If so, I think you should rethink your statement.

Friendly fire has killed many. I have been under fire. I hope you have never been so unfortunate.
It is the most frightening, confusing situation you can imagine.

Good training and communication is supposed to prevent such incidents. However, there have been many instances of "friendly fire" killing allies. These instances are well documented and go back to at least World War II.

I have some documented instances. Do you need them to convince you of the existence of such a phenomenon or do you agree that there can indeed be occurances of friendly fire WITHOUT malice aforethought?

Tartar, But, did you not see brandX's post above? It says that Iraqi's are not resentful of the US, and most Iraqi's are generally confident that their lives will be much improved in five years. The important point is that two-thirds want our troops to remain there for at least another year. I think it's up to the Iraqi's to judge whether it was good or bad for them. It's up to us to determine whether we did the right thing; and on that score, most Americans think we did the right thing. A minonrity of us still think we did it for the wrong reasons, and are doing everything wrong during the post war period.

You perhaps should change something with the installed software of your pc, Italgato.

I didn't say anything about the "friendly fire". I quoted from a newspaper article and gave a link to it.

No- Mr. Hinteler- You misunderstand--Murder is Malice Aforethought. Murder means you kill with intent.

The killing of the Iraqi police was not Murder. It was, AT THE VERY WORST, Manslaughter which is defined as:

The unjustifiable killing of a human being without any deliberation, which may be involuntary, in the commission of a lawfal act without due caution and circumspection.

Well, I am saying something about "friendly fire".

I will categorically state that the US forces did not maliciously fire on the Iraqi soldiers and that the killing of the Iraqi soldiers can be classifed as deaths from "friendly fire" and that the "friendly fire" can be classed as Manslaughter at worst but not as murder.

Thank you, Mr. Hinteler.

Italgato, regardless of what you call it, they are still dead. That is the tragedy.

Dear Professor Hobitbob:

You are quite correct. It was a tragedy. A great tragedy. But the world is filled with tragedy.

It overwhelms us.

Camus, as you may be aware, commented:

"There is no suffering, no torture anywhere which does not affect our everyday lives...Today, tragedy is collective"

The overwhelming opinion here is that it was typical of trigger happy, shoot first think later Americans.

American fire lasted 45 minutes. The Iraqi police were screaming they were police and not bandits.

I'm sorry Italgato, but instead of trying to defend the indefensible by confusing murder and manslaughter, you should just acknowledge it was WRONG and APOLOGISE.

As for "friendly fire", how would you view the situation had it been a bunch of Iraqi police who had surrounded an American patrol and despite repeated pleas from the Americans, continued shooting until they were all dead or incapable of defence?

Would you just dismiss it? "Tough, unfortunate but blue on blue happens all the time". If you can honestly say you would view it the same, I'd think more of your argument.

I'm really tired of hearing this one.

The overwhelming opinion here is that it was typical of trigger happy, shoot first think later Americans.

Brandx

"Both sides deserve compassion, even if you think we shouldn't be there, we are and I'm sure these soldiers are doing the very best they can."

Is that to say we should abandon them?
Would that be doing for them the best we can?

You're going to have to explain your point(?) a little better than that, abandon?

Confused, CI. Were you joking in your post, above, about the WSJ article, or serious? If serious, then I should respond that I'm skeptical.

Brand x ....

You missed the question marks .... no point ... questions.

"even if you think we shouldn't be there, we are " sounds so fatalistic.

Okay, thanks for clearing that up.

Further, Walter, from the report in the New York Times, 13 September 2003.




U.S. Soldiers Kill 8 Iraqi Policemen, Townspeople Say
By ALEX BERENSON


ALLUJA, Iraq, Sept. 12 — American soldiers killed at least eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian security guard early this morning in a gun battle outside the Jordanian Hospital here, residents and town officials said. Falluja lies at the heart of Iraqi resistance to the occupation, and the killings will further incite the city, residents said.

At another Falluja hospital where two wounded police officers lay in spartan beds, witnesses to the fight described a mounting chaos that ended with American tanks and soldiers firing on the hospital and the police officers, as an Iraqi doctor tried to persuade the soldiers to allow him to evacuate the wounded. In addition, one of the wounded officers said American soldiers had continued shooting at them from very close range even after the Iraqis shouted that they were policemen.

"I asked the Americans to let me in, and they said, `No, you have to stop,' " said the doctor, Dhia Mahmoud. He said that when he was allowed to approach, he found a horrifying scene, with bodies torn apart from large-caliber weapons fired at close range. The dead were taken to a morgue in the nearby city of Ramadi, local officials said.

In a statement, a military spokesman said the American soldiers had been fired upon first with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades in the vicinity of the Jordanian Hospital, The Associated Press reported. One soldier was wounded in the attack, the statement said.

In Washington, Pentagon officials confirmed that military authorities were investigating whether allied forces might have been killed accidentally by American troops in the incident today. "That's one of the possibilities they're looking at, but it's still very early," one defense official said.

The firefight in Falluja, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, began long after curfew, when policemen chasing a stolen BMW intersected the path of a military patrol that included at least two tanks, according to Abdul Jalil, a local police officer who was wounded in the shootout.

The tanks opened fire, Mr. Jalil said, and they forced the police vehicles off the road near the Jordanian Hospital, a 100-bed military field hospital built in April about one mile east of the center of the city. The BMW apparently was not caught.

Hearing the shots, guards inside the hospital opened fire on the road, prompting the tanks to attack the hospital, residents and hospital security guards said. Soldiers and tanks then fired for nearly an hour on both the hospital and the police vehicles, the residents and guards said.

Mr. Jalil contended that American soldiers had killed at least one Iraqi policeman from less than 20 feet away, even after he repeatedly identified himself as an officer. His account could not be independently corroborated. The position of weapons cartridges, tank treads and human remains at the scene of the battle showed that, at some point in the fight, American soldiers could have been no more than 50 feet from the wounded and dead police officers.

Police officers in Iraq wear patches reading "IP," for Iraqi police, and the English words "police" and "policeman" are used widely by Arabic speakers.

Two more United States soldiers were killed in a separate raid early this morning in Ramadi, another center of Iraqi resistance, a military spokesman said. No further details were available. Since the beginning of the Iraq war, 292 soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Kuwait, including 152 since President Bush declared on May 1 that major American combat operations had ended.

The attack severely damaged one of the hospital's buildings, which had large holes and soot in its concrete facade. By afternoon, most of the damage had been removed from the building, which sits about 200 feet back from a major road that connects Falluja and Baghdad.

Bloodied scraps of clothing and skin remained on the gravel beside the road where the Iraqi vehicles had stopped. About 50 feet away, hundreds of spent cartridges littered the ground, apparently where United States soldiers had positioned machine guns to rake the hospital. Many from larger-caliber munitions, including 1.5-inch-wide rounds fired by tanks and armored vehicles, could also be seen. Taha Abboud, a hospital security guard, said tanks had also destroyed the hospital's generator.

The deaths seem sure to further poison the relationship between American soldiers and the residents of Falluja, where troops already face grenade or small-arms attacks almost daily. The city is part of the Sunni Triangle, an area north and west of Baghdad that has been a stronghold of support for Saddam Hussein. Sunni Muslim Arabs make up one-fifth of the population of Iraq but have long dominated the country's political and economic life, and many Sunnis fear that the American occupation may end that primacy.

"This is supposed to be a cemetery for the Americans," said Yassir Abd, the brother of Mr. Jalil, the wounded policeman. "We will shoot any artillery or armored vehicles." As if to prove his point, a United States military convoy was fired on in the late afternoon on a major road just over a mile from Falluja Hospital and was trapped for more than an hour.


And Powell, in Geneva, told the French that any idea of turning over any control in Iraq was not in the cards. Now that's an excellent way to get nations to share in military and economic help. And the admin keeps saying it's in the "allies" best interests to do so. "Coalition" and "allies," two terms thrown about in an increasingly unrealistic maner. We've come a long way from the days of Jefferson and the founders. They understood what foreign policy was about. And whatever happened to "compassionate conservatism?" Probably thought of in terms relating only to the highly closed, highy secretive little cabal at the top. According to the latest Gallup poll, released after Bush's inspirational speech on September 11, he has now slipped to 52%, and is going down.

Do you know that, except for the brief photo-op visit made six days after the attacks, Bush has yet to show up in New York for September 11?

Mamaj -- There was a discussion on the radio -- not NPR, but danged if I can remember because I've been doing some car travel and it could have been anyone, anywhere! -- about Bush's chances for re-election. This was a sober, straight-faced kind of analysis, nothing in the voice to make one think he had an opinion one way or another. He went over Bush's poll numbers from inauguration on and then said (paraphrasing): "It then becomes clear that unless there is another terrorist attack or similar crisis, Bush does not stand a good chance of re-election..." This conclusion was startling and, of course, predictable.

But why startling, tart? If one keeps hiding one's head in the sand. sooner or later one becomes quite sandy.

I just thought that prediction uttered in a bland, uncommitted mainstream network voice was odd and creepy given the conviction of many of us that this "crisis" will happen, and will happen because Bush knows what makes his poll numbers go up. I doubt even the blandest-voiced network commentator or reporter or analyist could say "It then becomes clear..." and not have the connection cross his mind. It may be that many Americans, not just many people like you and me, believe the same possibility exists and don't find it shocking. See what I mean? "Oh yeah, well, politicians do that, kill people for votes..."