The UN, US and Iraq IV

*Momentarily highjacking thread*

Just curious, did you work along side any contracted 'civilian' military, and if so what was the experience like? I hear their dedication drops off on second go arounds (read renewed contracts) etc., thanks.

Ital, I'm not going to get into a pissing match with you. You aren't worth it. But, what happens in line units often doesn't make it any futher up than company level, if that far. The amount of press that similar incidents has gotten leads me to wonder just how much investigation is going into any incidents of the shooting of Iraqis.

I must ask, Dear Professor Hobibit, why do you insist on giving us columns written by foreigners who understand nothing of the complex dynamics in the United States.

Eric Margois, from the TORONTO Sun???????

Please spare us.

Was it you who complained about Bill Buckley the other day?

Buckley shows more wisdom in one paragraph and demonstrates that he is more acutely aware of political nuances in one page than Margolis does in an entire book.

Why not try "The Nation" as a source?
They are, as I am sure you know, a US source and resolutely left-wing.

No, I was in Saudi with a CSB, and in Somalia with an Engineer BN. (Combat Heavy, i.e. construction), so we didn't have much contact with the civvies. I can find out from friends who were in Armour units, if you like. The M1 program is "civilian heavy."

Thanks, but don't go to the trouble. I'm interested in reading more on what our military really consist of after reading that Business Week article.

Please Dear Professor Hobibit:

Why do you insist on ruthlessly tearing down by alreadly fragile "self-esteem" by your heartless denigrations?

I thought liberals( You are a liberal, are you not?) believed in multi-culturalism, diversity, peace, sensitivity and understanding.

You are not helping the cause!!!

I will repeat in case you did not understand.

A case such as the one which occured the other day which made the HEADLINES in a majority of the world's newspapers cannot possibly be equated with < as you put it, "happens in a line unit".

Such an incident demands investigation and you know it.

I will see if I can find any reports of an ongoing investigation.

Now, dear professor, if you wish to allege that an investgation is overlooking evidence, you may indeed do so, but don't attempt to be taken seriously without evidence.


I read that President Clinton was alleged to have been aware of a Cocaine shipment that came into Arkansas's Mena airport.

The witness was Trooper L. D. Brown. However, since the evidence wasn't air tight the evidence was discounted.

I am sure you know, Dear Professor, that allegations are cheap but convictions are dear.

Or do you?

I think the Combat Heavy Engineer units are among those that have been replaced with the civilian contractors. Their job was to build bases and refugee camps,and such. The first unit I was with in Germany (79th ECB(H)) was deactivated in 1992, and folks moved to the 94th, which was divided up into three different posts in Germany each of only company strength. When I left active duty in 1995 there were three of those sort of units in the US. One at Ft. Lewis, one at Ft. Polk, and I think the third one was at Ft. Bliss. I think there was also one in Korea, but that might have disappeared as well. I wasn't an engineer, so I didn't pay very close attention to their fates. Sorry.

Just a few but ther are a ton more.
I wonder how much influence having a commander in chief that says things like ' bring em on ' or 'wanted dead or alive' would have on a troop that is pissed about being there in the first place ... how light would his trigger finger get.


Angry Iraqis tell of U.S. troops fatal errors
by KEN DILANIAN and DREW BROWN, Knight Ridder Newspapers
September 10th, 2003
Dr. Talib Abdul Jabar Al Sayeed was asleep at home with 11 relatives, he said, when U.S. troops surrounded his house, stormed his gate and began firing.

At least three dozen American soldiers blazed away for more than 60 minutes in the early morning hours of July 31, the British-trained physician recounted recently, pointing to the hundreds of bullet holes that still mark his stately home.

"I shouted at them with all my strength to stop shooting," said Al Sayeed, 62. "I will open the door. Please give me a chance."

Eventually, Al Sayeed said, the commanding officer told him he was sorry: They had raided the wrong house. But not before a soldier burst in and struck Al Sayeed with a rifle butt, knocking him down. The soldier kicked him in the ribs - an X-ray later showed they were cracked - and others bound his hands with plastic cuffs as his wife and young nieces cowered in the next room. They also took his three grown sons in for questioning, and they remain in a military jail in the south of Iraq.

Three weeks after they were first asked about it, military spokesmen said they were unable to track down details of the incident, so it's unknown whether the military disputes Al Sayeed's account.

But his story is one of dozens of tales that angry Iraqis tell of sometimes tragic errors by U.S. troops. Iraqis and international observers say the American military's tactics - sometimes directing overwhelming force at houses filled with women and children - have resulted in the detentions of hundreds of innocent people and the deaths of others, although how many is unknown.

They say the military does little to document the raids or the mistakes, and that the mistaken raids and civilian deaths are creating new enemies as fast as the old ones are eliminated.

Military officials acknowledge that there have been mistakes, but say that raids, arrests and accidental deaths of civilians, while regrettable, are the harsh realities of guerrilla war.

They note that U.S. troops are facing the most difficult sort of military task imaginable: trying to stamp out a determined enemy who blends in with the local population.

Coalition soldiers have been hit with an average of 12 guerrilla attacks per day. Snipers fire at them from buildings, grenades are dropped on them from overpasses and their Humvees explode in sheets of fire after running over hidden mines.

Seventy coalition soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since May 1, when the conventional war ended. Dozens of Iraqi civilians died in car bomb attacks on the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations compound and a mosque in Najaf.

"My soldiers are operating in a low-intensity conflict environment," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq. "And they're getting attacked every day - at service stations . . . in hospitals, on the road - and of course, they're going to be prepared to defend themselves and fight."

Added Lt. Col. Guy Shields, the outgoing chief military spokesman in Iraq: "We know that some innocent civilians have been killed, and each one of those is a tragedy."

In one sense, Al Sayeed was lucky. He and his family survived.

U.S.-led coalition troops have shot and killed at least 49 and possibly as many as 72 civilian noncombatants since the conventional war ended, according to a Knight Ridder review of reports first compiled by Iraq Body Count, a London research group that calls U.S. troops "occupiers" and bases its estimates on published or broadcast reports by news agencies and human rights groups.

The U.S. military says it doesn't count civilian deaths.

Asked about the issue at a recent news conference, L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, said, "The loss of life is a tragedy for anyone involved, but the numbers are really very low."

When questioned about the basis for that assertion, Bremer acknowledged that he couldn't say how many civilians coalition troops had killed.

For many Iraqis, it's a painful irony: As American civilian officials try to teach them about democratic values and respect for human rights, heavily armed U.S. soldiers storm into their homes, arrest people and kill some of them by mistake, all without public accountability or judicial review.

"It is the same scenario every day," said Eman Ahmed Khammas, the director of Occupation Watch, a Baghdad-based advocacy group. "The number of civilian casualties is increasing. But there are no statistics."

Over the past few months, a number of incidents have become public:

* U.S. troops killed an 18-year-old woman when they tossed a grenade into a house during a raid Sept. 1 in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad.

* A Reuters journalist was shot and killed near a Baghdad prison Aug. 17 after U.S. troops mistook his television camera for a grenade launcher.

* Two uniformed Iraqi policemen were shot and killed Aug. 9 while pursuing criminals in Baghdad.

* Five people, including an 8-year-old girl and three of her family members, were gunned down Aug. 7 when they ran into an unmarked U.S. checkpoint during an evening raid in Baghdad's Slakh neighborhood.

* A mother of six was shot and killed Aug. 1 in Baghdad after the family car broke down near where U.S. troops were attacked.

* Five people were shot and killed July 28 when they ran into poorly marked roadblocks during a raid in Baghdad's Mansour district.


In all those cases, military officials said they'd concluded that soldiers were acting within the rules of engagement, which authorize a soldier to fire when he feels his life is threatened. Still, officials said concerns about the spate of deaths at traffic checkpoints had prompted them to compensate some of the victims' families.

Capt. Mike Friel, a coalition spokesman, said the coalition had paid a total of $68,000 to relatives in nine wrongful-death cases since the war began in March. A total of 74 wrongful-death claims have been filed, 23 have been denied and the rest are still under investigation, he said.

Friel didn't respond to further inquiries seeking details about the claims that were paid.

Commanders said they also had tried in recent weeks to be more precise and less aggressive when raiding homes and detaining residents.

The military says it has imprisoned about 5,500 people, most of whom are held without access to lawyers or relatives.

Among them are Al Sayeed's sons. They told their mother during a recent visit that they have never been interrogated and haven't been told what they are suspected of or when they might be released. Military officials didn't respond to questions about them.

There is no evidence that coalition soldiers intentionally target innocent civilians. What critics say, in essence, is that some U.S. soldiers are overwhelmed by the complexities of fighting a guerrilla war.

An officer of the 3rd Infantry Division, which occupied Baghdad just after fighting some of the major battles of the war, described the soldiers' burden in a "lessons learned" report for the army in late April.

"(They) have been asked to go from killing the enemy to protecting and interacting, and back to killing again," he wrote. "The constant shift in mental posture greatly complicates things for the average soldier. The soldiers are blurred and confused about the rules of engagement, which continues to raise questions about force protection while at checkpoints and conducting patrols. How does the soldier know exactly what the rule of engagement is?"

He added: "Soldiers who have just conducted combat against dark skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes have difficulty trusting dark skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes."

The most common complaints among Iraqis and international observers are that soldiers fire indiscriminately in crowded civilian areas; they frequently mount raids based on faulty information; and they set up poorly marked checkpoints and fire without warning on cars that approach them without stopping.

Many of the worst incidents have happened in Baghdad, which is patrolled by the 1st Armored Division, whose troops are trained for tank battles, not police work.

Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a research center for national-security studies, points out that most U.S. troops in Iraq aren't well trained in counterinsurgency warfare.

"Some of this is inevitable," he said. "When you have young men and women who don't have a lot of experience, they overreact."

Sanchez expressed concern last month about what he called the military's "iron-fisted tactics" in some of its raids. The general said he had begun encouraging commanders to surround their target areas first, then knock on the door and ask permission to search.

But military officials said coalition soldiers still would kick down doors and go in shooting when they thought it was necessary.

Officials declined to explain how they decide what level of force to use when raiding a private home, except to say that it's "based on intelligence." But a raid can be prompted by a tip from a single informant, and "unfortunately, there are some raids that go awry," spokeswoman Spc. Nicole Thompson said recently. "Sometimes you get a case of, you know, this guy doesn't like that guy, and he makes a phone call."

To those whose homes are raided by mistake, or whose relatives are killed or detained for months without word of their fate, the tactics are indistinguishable from the kind of thing that used to happen under Saddam Hussein.

"I loved the Americans before this happened," Al Sayeed said. "But now I hate them. Before, I wanted all of my sons to go to America to finish their studies. But now there is no way I will let them go. This is the freedom they promise us? This is democracy?"

Zahra Khalid Sabry - and hundreds of her relatives, friends and neighbors - are asking the same questions.

"They killed him in front of my eyes," Sabry said, sobbing, on the day her male relatives brought her husband's body back from the morgue. "I tried to kiss him but they wouldn't let me."

Her house spilled over with more than 200 mourners, who could barely contain their fury as they told visitors what happened when U.S. troops came crashing through their doors at 1 a.m. Aug. 11, four days after Sanchez promised changes in tactics.

Upstairs, the bullet holes were still visible in the bedroom door, as was the crimson blood stain on the mattress. Women in black head scarves wailed, and men stared with hard eyes.

Sabry said she was in bed with her husband, Farid Abdul Khahir, 23, after celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary. She heard loud noises outside. Khahir, thinking the house was being attacked by looters, pulled his rifle from under the bed - most Iraqis have at least one firearm in their homes - and fired out the window.

Soldiers bolted up the stairs and fired at least seven shots through the closed bedroom door, bullet holes show, hitting Khahir in the leg and torso, Sabry said. The soldiers took him to a hospital, where he died. The next day, other soldiers came to the house and retrieved the bullets, relatives said.

A translator with the Americans told them an informant had fingered Khahir as an anti-coalition fighter. His relatives said he used to be in Saddam's Fedayeen militia before the war, but quit and had been working at odd construction jobs.

"We've never done anything against the Americans, never," said Ali Khalid,16, a cousin who was sleeping on the roof during the raid.

Military officials didn't respond to repeated requests for comment about the incident.

"Please, tell the world what happened," said Khalid's sister, Khalid Abdul Amir. "He would have gone with them. Why did they do this? Why?"

(Dilanian reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer.)

The incident recounted by Gelisgesti proves that we must immediately leave Iraq and that President Bush and the Military Leadership must apoligize to the world and the American people for their brutality and insenstivity to the Iraqi people.

Of course, when Bush is removed from office in 2004, the new president will see to it that the troops come home immediately from Iraq and Afghanistan.

I do believe that the American Soldiers are just as brutal if not more brutal than our US Storm Troopers( Our police forces) who daily terrorize and demean the innocent in our city's ghettoes.

In fact, many of our American soldiers are from our nation's police forces. Who believes that they will change their stripes?

italgatco

I said so earlier:

please change something with your software! I was just quoting the newspapers, here it was a litteral quote (from USToday, if I remember correctly).

Dear Mr. Hinteler:

If you were quoting something from the newspapers, either you or the newspapers left something out.

Your replication cannot be a complete story.

Why don't you just give us a source so we can check it out?

Thank you!

And I re-repeat...Where are the Civil affairs and MPs? You know..the ones who are trained to deal with these things?

Angry Iraqi mourners vow revenge for shooting

U.S. apologizes as anger surges

et. al, - a google.news search will give some dozen more articles.

Walter - I'm sure they have German sources where they translate the page.

That way one can go directly to the source.

Dear Mr. Hinteler:

I may be mistaken, but I think you are quoting headlines.

If you are, I must inform you that in my readings I have found that there is often a disconnect between headlines and the body of the article.

I am sure that you are aware of this, Mr. Hinteler, but the writer of the story does not write the headline- Editors do.

When you see a headline, you are getting the Editors idea of the gist of the story.

When you read the first two paragraphs, you get SOME of the story. You may, however, receive a different impression when you read the rest of the story.

Headlines alone are insufficient- I am very sorry.

I would be dismayed, and astounded, if there were not Iraqi outrage at the incident. I hope some US outrage brings about some much-needed reappraisal and adjustment of circumstances which foster such senseless tragedies. I suspect that will come about, though likely not as expeditiously as might be most propitious.

Thanks for that information, italgato.

Seems, it differs from country to country or newspaper to newspaper (You are/were writing for what media? I'v learnt journalism at my local paper "The Patriot" and the regional "West German News paper" [WAZ], studied it at Ruhr Univeristy Bochum ... just in case, because you are always asking such :wink: )

If you have some difficulties understanding the way of quoting in a paper (or on a website), there is quite some good stuff to be found online.

BTW: when do you start following you own advice?

Dear Mr. Hinteler:

I always follow my own advice. If I post something that is not self- evident, I usually give documentation or evidence to back that statement up.
If you would like to see more evidence in case of a statement which does not have evidence that is persuasive to you, I'll be happy to try to provide it.

Thank You.

Hey Italgato, good morning.

These "headlines" cited by Walter were actually links, did you realise that?
You click on them, they open out.

Yours helpfully,

McT

Thank You , McTag. I did not know that. They looked like headlines to me.

I appreciate your "heads-up"