The Massacre has begun!!

British troops are shelling into the city of Barsa. British military commanders say status of Basra has changed and the city is now a military objective.

Lets Roll

A cruise missile hits a market place AGAIN! 50 innocents lost their live!

Source: Al-Jazeera

Back home, we're all being told the war is against Saddam, not the Iraqi people. Now, I realize that most of our soldiers are young men, by definition operating as much on testosterone as brain power, but still...how can we possibly expect them to reconcile the fact that they're conducting "Operation Iraqi Freedom" by killing Iraqis??? Are people somehow liberated by dying?

Dead Iraqi Would Have Loved Democracy

Frolic
While you are at it how about a little comment about the Fedayin[SP] shooting civilians and solders who want to surrender or leave the city? Or don't you believe because your leader would never allow that.

All that any of us know (Americans or Iraqis) is what we are being told. My point was simply that our leaders titling this conflict "Iraqi Freedom" while sending our soldiers to kill Iraqis is proof of a very powerful propaganda machine. The Iraqis are no doubt hearing powerful propaganda from their leaders as well. Always happens in war.

However, I am concerned about the long term psychological implications of our side's propaganda on our own soldiers. (For now, I'll let the Iraqis worry about their own.) How do we expect our men to live with the fact that they killed people in the name of "liberating" them? And how do they justify it in their minds at the time? Do they stand over the dead bodies and tell them they're free now?

This is an honest question from the heart. Perhaps someone can tell me how the military is explaining this, so I will know what to say when I talk to a friend after he returns from the conflict.

Here is a story that will never appear in Al-Jazeera or one of your posts.. Why is that?
British Report Iraqis Fire on Civilians Leaving Basra

By REUTERS

BASRA, Iraq - Iraqi forces fired on about 2,000 civilians trying to flee fighting and a humanitarian crisis in the besieged southern city of Basra, forcing some to turn back, British military officials said on Friday.
``A couple of thousand Iraqi civilians trying to get out of Basra to the north and west are being fired on by paramilitaries with both mortars and machineguns,'' British military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ronnie McCourt told Reuters.
In what appeared to be a similar but separate incident on the main road south out of Basra, Iraqi forces fired mortar bombs near some 1,000 civilians waiting to cross a bridge, seriously hurting one woman, a British officer in Basra said.
Speaking at the war headquarters of the U.S.-led invasion forces in Qatar, McCourt said British forces were trying to help evacuate casualties from the incidents north and west of Basra.
Another British military spokesman said two groups of civilians had tried to flee. ``The first group made it. When the second group came out, paramilitaries came out and mortared them and machine gunned them and drove them back into town,'' he said.
Al Lockwood, the main spokesman for British forces in Qatar, said the British Black Watch 1st Batallion tried to intervene once the paramilitaries launched their attack.
``This was witnessed by elements of the Black Watch...who placed themselves between the fleeing civilians and the paramilitaries and commenced firing,'' Lockwood said.
``The paramilitaries are attempting to keep people in the bounds of Basra,'' he said. ``There is a great deal of coercion particularly among the young male population by the Baath party and these paramilitaries to make them fight for the regime.''
``Once we have isolated these forces, located them, we will strike, we will take them out and return Basra to the people.

I've yet not seen any proof of those allegations. They come from embedded journalists. The allegations of the Iraqi executing POWs was already challenged by the families of the victims.

Frolic
How much proof do you see of the Iraqi and the Arab mouthpiece Al- Jazeera's reports.? You constantly post their reports as the absolute truth. Yet whenever reports of Iraqi misdeeds are reported we get the same old tired rhetoric from you I don't believe anything the press reports show me the proof. Suggest you ask your contact be it the Iraqi ministry of Information, Al Jazeera or where ever for some proof. You see what you want to see and believe who you want to believe. Than you have the audacity to constantly complain about biased reporting.

How very badly our government and the UK estimated the reaction of the Arab/Muslim world:

http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/fergal_keane/story.jsp?story=391779

Why is it so many of us saw this about to happen? I feel like Cassandra.

To me all the reports we get from Iraq are false until proven. When i see the pictures of people screaming, in panic, covered with blood. Then i find these more convincing than the words from some politicians or army officials. You are either really naive or extremely stupid.

I hope for u the first option. The launching of missiles over Saudi territory was suspended because some of those hi-tec precision weapons fell in Saudi-Arabia. We found missiles in Turkey and Iran. We had missiles hitting busses. And last night a bomb blasted the offices of the press in Bagdad. Not only arab press but ALL press. This could mean 2 things. Or this was not intentional, so it shows the bombings are not 100%. Or it means they really targeted the press in Bagdad, hours after the same press covered the blast on the market place. Retaliation for anti-american reports?

By Paul Waugh Deputy Political Editor
29 March 2003


The Government apologised yesterday to the families of two dead British soldiers over claims by Tony Blair that the men had been "executed" by Iraqi militiamen.

Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, expressed "regret" for any distress caused by the Prime Minister's condemnation of a broadcast on al-Jazeera television which showed the men's bodies.

Au
There are a lot of stories that i dont post here because i'm not sure if they are true. There is a report of a bus, fired upon by US soldiers. They thought it were Iraqi soldiers but it wasn't: 20 innocents died =>But like i already stated. Those reports are unconfirmed so i dont post them.

Frolic
Perhaps you should read what you write. You constantly quote the reports from Al-Jazeera as if they are gospel straight out of the Bible or Koran and brand anything reported by the coalition as lies.

The rules of a2k request that we refrain from making remarks of this nature. Therefore I won't respond in kind. Except to say your hatred for America continues to shine brightly and ask if you came to Belgium by way of Iraq?

Contrary to what some of you so obviously believe, an urbane and witty pejorative is no less a pejorative.

Snood
Believe it our not I have been tempted to ask that question or something of that nature for some time now. Not as an insult based on all of his/her posts I had the feeling that some type of connection exists.

Pray for peace, both in the world and on A2K.

au

Your suggestion, even your assumption, if held for more than a brief instant, that frolic is somehow operating as a mouthpiece for Iraq is not very agreeable.

There is, even in the US, but certainly abroad, an enormous amount of discontent and dissatisfaction with coverage of this war by the main US media. I personally do not trust this administration to tell the truth simply because they have demonstrtated a very lousy record to date. Nor do I trust the networks to move outside of a narrow band of acceptable storyline, at least presently.

There should be little problem here with input from as many sources as possible. Where bias is perceived, others here can point it out, as I did earlier regarding a quote from a Rupert Murdoch rag. But let's not fall into the trap of censorship.

blatham
Yes, let's not, anyone who discounts anything reported by the American press or spokesman as a lie and blandly accepts all that is reported by Al- Jazeera as the truth makes me wonder. That is not censorship that is a question. I am sure my comments will in no way inhibit any one from voicing their opinion.