US strike 'kills Iraqi civilians'

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

Eight civilians have been killed in a strike by US military helicopters north of Baghdad, Iraqi police say.

Two children were among those who died in the air attack on Wednesday evening near the town of Baiji, they said.

Baiji's police chief told Reuters news agency the incident risked heightening tensions between US forces and Iraqis, and undermining security improvements.

The US military said an incident resulting in civilian deaths was under investigation.


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7414155.stm

[Journeyman]

1. People fleeing with their children, killed "because they were running" . . .

Classic definition of the "enemy" in fourth generation warfare.


"How can you kill women and children?" the helicopter gunner was asked.

"Easy," came the curt reply. "Just don't lead 'em as much."*



*Michael Herr: Dispatches

(paraphrased, 'cause it's too late to look it up)

[Viracocha711]

2. WOW?

The same thing was said not long after US air strikes that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...Before portraying our forces as cold blooded killers I would hope you could at least wait longer than an hour to get the full story? I have friends over there who are helicopter pilots on their 4 tour and you have no F-ing idea what kind of hell they are in! If your friends, your brothers, are on the ground fighting you do not have the luxury of being a Monday morning QB...If a car does not stop then who knows what could have been going down? Soilders as well as helicopter pilots are doing a job, following orders that have certain protocols, let us see if they were followed...We all know things are never right so soon after the first report has been published!

I am ready for this war to be ended as soon as Obama takes office but to see simple minded post like this makes me angry!

[Viracocha711]

3. One more thing...

Why would US forces simply start target practice on civilians? Especially after having made some efforts to restore peace? I hate this war more than you ever will be able to understand so please have some respect, PLEASE?

[leftchick]

8. you will never "restore peace"

in an occupied country. Ever. The Troops need to come home.

[bread_and_roses]

10. Some respect for what? Killing children?

You have read the recent Congressional testimony? Fallujah? Haditha? Exactly what is it for which you are demanding "respect?"

[leftchick]

12. here is some proof for you. They were Shepherds!

Residents pray near the bodies of civilians killed in an air strike, during a funeral in Baiji, 180km
(112 miles) north of Baghdad May 21, 2008. REUTERS/Sabah al-Bazee



The bodies of shepherds killed in an air strike lie on the ground outside a Sunni mosque before their burial in Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad May 21, 2008. A U.S. military helicopter air strike on a car on Wednesday night killed the eight civilians, all shepherds, in Baiji north of Baghdad, said two police officials. Picture taken May 21, 2008.
REUTERS/Sabah al-Bazee (IRAQ)



The bodies of the shepherds killed in an air strike lie outside a Sunni mosque before their burial in Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad May 21, 2008. A U.S. military helicopter air strike on a car on Wednesday night killed the eight civilians, all shepherds, in Baiji north of Baghdad, said two police officials. Picture taken May 21, 2008.
REUTERS/Sabah al-Bazee (IRAQ)

[Name removed]

18. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dipsydoodle]

24. I was pleased to see

that other response was deleted. No call for rubbish like that.

[OwnedByFerrets]

37. Have to vehemently

disagree. There are NO excuses for killing innocent humans, war or no war, occupation or no occupation. Putting children into the mix, makes it all the more horrible. THIS IS INEXCUSABLE, BY ANY MEASURE. You are entitled to your opinion, me to mine.

Btw, following orders was proven to be inexcusable by the Nuremberg Trials.

[dipsydoodle]

15. Original here at end of clip

Full Metal Jacket - Get Some : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06nIz4scvI&feature=related

[Journeyman]

42. Thanks for the clip, however Herr wrote "Dispatches" 10 years before "Jacket" was released. . .

as the others in the chopper in the clip are both journalists, same as Herr, I suspect Dispatches was the inspiration for this scene.

[dipsydoodle]

43. and thanks for the note

:toast:

[ShortnFiery]

4. It's tragic (no 4th Estate?) that we have to glean this information from foreign sources (BBC-UK).

:grr: :nuke:

[Viracocha711]

5. I would like to think...

Our media might be trying to get the full story? I hate this war!

[corporatemedia]

25. First he thinks that war protesters "spit" on soldiers....

and now he thinks "our media" will tell the "full story".

Pathetic.

[raystorm7]

6. OOOPS! Took another bad step....Oh well =/

[dipsydoodle]

13. Is that picture pre-WW2 ?

.

edit : found it 1944

[leftchick]

17. 5 4 3 2

1

:nuke:

[DrewL]

47. NAZI Propaganda

Might want to avoid using Nazi propaganda...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_propaganda scroll down a little.

[democrank]

7. Just George Bush bringin` `em freedom

and keepin` us safer.

[leftchick]

9. "This is a criminal act"

the whole fucking occupation is a criminal act! :argh:


BAIJI, Iraq (Reuters) - A U.S. helicopter airstrike on Wednesday night killed eight civilians, including two children, north of Baghdad, police officials said on Thursday.

Colonel Mudhher al-Qaisi, police chief in the town of Baiji, said the attack was on a group of shepherds in a vehicle in a farming area. Relatives said some of those killed were fleeing on foot after the U.S. military arrived in the area.

"This is a criminal act. It will make the relations between Iraqi citizens and the U.S. forces tense. This will negatively affect security improvements," Qaisi told Reuters.

A U.S. military spokeswoman, Lieutenant-Colonel Maura Gillen, said the helicopter fired on the vehicle after observing "suspicious activity." She said the driver had ignored warnings to stop.
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The incident is the latest in a string of U.S. airstrikes in which civilians have been killed. It comes at a bad time for the U.S. military, which has been working hard to soothe tensions with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government over the shooting of a copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, by a U.S. soldier earlier this month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/22/AR2008052200368.html

[JohnyCanuck]

20. Same shit, different era

.........After mentioning the My Lai massacre in My American Journey, Powell penned a partial justification of the Americal's brutality. In a chilling passage, Powell explained the routine practice of murdering unarmed male Vietnamese.

"I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male," Powell wrote. "If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen (West Germany), Lt. Col. Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong."

While it's certainly true that combat is brutal, mowing down unarmed civilians is not combat. It is, in fact, a war crime. Neither can the combat death of a fellow soldier be cited as an excuse to murder civilians. Disturbingly, that was precisely the rationalization that the My Lai killers cited in their own defense.

But returning home from Vietnam a second time in 1969, Powell had proved himself the consummate team player.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html

[OwnedByFerrets]

38. Dont you just love the part about

"the helicopter fired on the vehicle after observing "suspicious activity."

We kill humans just because they are deemed suspicious. :mad:

[leftchick]

11. a little more here

good for WaPo on reporting this....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/22/AR2008052200368_2.html

Ghafil Rashed said his brother and son were killed in the Baiji helicopter strike.

"The Americans raided our houses ... People start fleeing with their children, then the aircraft started bombing people in a street along the farm," he said, standing near the bodies of his brother and son in Baiji mosque.
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Iraqi police have also raised questions about another U.S. military operation in which 11 people were killed on Wednesday.

U.S. officials said troops shot dead 11 militants in eastern Baghdad on Wednesday, but police and several residents said at least some of the dead were civilians killed by U.S. snipers.

[dipsydoodle]

14. Well at least it reached your side

which is good. Such delays are frequently a matter of timing differences across the Atlantic - 5 hours whatever.

[ckramer]

16. The benefit of being a superpower is we can kill anyone at will

We are GOD! We decide who live, who die!

Listen up the rest of the world!

The choice is "are you with us? or against us?"

Don't act like a terrorist! or we will kill you all!

God bless America!

[wmbrew0206]

19. OK, if all the amateurs are done playing Monday morning QB

First off, I've spent more time in Bayji than I'd care to. I've worked with the rotary wing aircraft, like the ones involved in this incident, in this exact area and as a JTAC I have very detailed knowledge of what it takes to be allowed to engage a threat with air to surface fires.

There is not enough info in these articles for me to be able to say one way or another if the pilots involved violated the ROE. Normally, when a vehicle is acting suspiciously you go through a standard set up procedures to try and get the vehicle to stop. The two final ones are a disabling shot to the engine block at a certain distance and finally a kill shot to the driver at a closer distance if. That is if the vehicle is moving towards coalition forces and it is seen as a clear threat. If the vehicle is moving away you normally just follow it and see where it goes.

IF, and this is a big IF, this story is accurate about vehicle moving away from coalition forces, the pilots would have been outside the ROE in engaging the vehicle because it had not shown a "Hostile Intent" or a "Hostile Act" which are required before a A/C can engage a target.

The pilots are grounded at this point and will not fly again until this investigation is over. The investigation will be conducted by an officer outside of this unit, probably another pilot. The investigating officer will interview everyone involved and then deliver a report to the division general (2 star). The general will then decide if the pilots violated the ROE. If they are found to have violated the ROE, they will face a court marshal for manslaughter.

I'm not going to say one way or another if I think the pilots screwed up, because I don't second guess other officers' decisions until all the facts come out.

This is really going to hurt the relationship that the coalition and the local Iraqs. Bayji is a very important area and the situation there has been tense for the last couple years. The cooperation of the locals is the reason Al Anbar and other parts of Iraq are no longer a base for AQI or other insurgent groups. This needs to happen in Bayji if the town is going to become secure.

[leftchick]

21. no where in Iraq will become 'secure'

as long as the occupiers remain. That is a fact.

[wmbrew0206]

23. Go tell that to the people of Ramadi

Seeing as how the people there repeatedly told us that they felt safer now (August & September of '07) then they had during the Saddam era.

[ronnie624]

26. I can't help but notice

you have included no supporting documentation for your claims.

Recent polls reveal that Iraqi opinion coalesces on four demands: (1) an end to foreign occupation, (2) compensation to Iraqis for damages caused by the U.S. invasion, (3) release of Iraqi prisoners, and (4) establishment of political and military institutions independent of outside influences. A survey in Iraq commissioned by the British military in September 2005 found that 82 percent of Iraqis “strongly oppose” the continuing presence of coalition troops, and 45 percent feel attacks against coalition troops are justified. The battle for hearts and minds has been lost.
<http://www.afsc.org/iraq/activism/10-reasons.htm>

<http://www.counterpunch.org/arnove12162006.html>\

<http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1833>

<http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/275.php?nid=&id=&pnt=275&lb=hmpg1>

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/18/AR2007121802262.html>

[wmbrew0206]

28. Sorry, I didn't think to tape record the conversations

I was having with the Iraqis when they said that.

Do the Iraqi want us to leave? Yes.

Do the want us to leave before the country is secure enough that the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police can handle the security? No.

I also noticed the study you referenced is from 2005. Things have changed a lot since '05.
On the issues it raises:
1. I think we are all on board with that one.
2. This is happening. CERT funds are used to repay local Iraqis. These CERT funds are going to be cut off if the War Funding Bill does not get passed before Congress goes on vacation.
3. An agreement was recently reached by the government on prisoner releases and this is now happening.

[Tempest]

29. Iraqis will tell Americans just what they want to hear

It's called the survival instinct.

[wmbrew0206]

32. So I guess we can't trust the polls then either

since they were done by American firms.

[Tempest]

33. The polls were done by Iraqis

And paid for by the U.S. government.

You'd know that if you were really in Iraq.

[wmbrew0206]

36. From the article ronnie264 posted

"Outside of the military, some of the most widespread polling in Iraq has been done by D3 Systems, a Virginia-based company that maintains offices in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. Its most recent publicly released surveys, conducted in September for several news media organizations, showed the same widespread Iraqi belief voiced by the military's focus groups: that a U.S. departure will make things better. A State Department poll in September 2006 reported a similar finding."

No where in there does it say the polls where done by Iraqis.

[ronnie624]

35. Many of the polls

have been conducted by international organizations, and they are all consistent.

You are obfuscating and dissembling.

[ronnie624]

30. The references

are from a variety of dates, including May of 2008. Iraqi opinion has been consistent from the beginning.

And your claim to having conversations with Iraqis is evidence of nothing.

[wmbrew0206]

39. ronnie, I can't provide documentation I don't have

I can tell you that during my time in Ramadi last summer, the citizen there stated several times they felt safer now then they did under Saddam. I realize that you have to take me at my word on that. If you don't want to, I completely understand seeing as how anyone could claim to be anything on the internet.

The reason I brought up your references, is that three out of the four are from 2005 and earlier. The last one is from this year, but as the article notes, the metrics are trending positive for the military.

I'm not disputing the Iraqis want us to leave. It is a question of when. Like I said above, even the Iraqis who said they felt secure wanted the US to leave. They also have said they don't want the US to leave before the security situation in Iraq was to the point the Iraqis themselves could handle it.

[alstephenson]

48. You are presenting anecdotal information.

That doesn't mean it's not true, it just means, well, it's anecdotal. Thanks for your service.

[Tempest]

27. You do know that impersonating a veteran is a crime, don't you?

And you're doing a piss poor job of impersonation.

[wmbrew0206]

31. Tempest, I'm pulling your punk card.

I've got a tour in Afghanistan with the 22d MEU SOC in '04.

I have two tours in Iraq. Both with with II MEF in '05 and '07.

I'm sure you must have served to be able to tell when someone is impersonating a veteran. I told you my service, so please tell us yours.

[Tempest]

34. I can throw out all kinds of numbers and acronyms

It wouldn't make them any more true than yours.

You're not coming across as someone who has actually been in Iraq. Your post on the polling is proof enough for me.

[wmbrew0206]

41. There is no point arguing my service with you

I laid out enough of my service to say where I have been and with who.

I realize that anyone can claim to be anything on the internet, so if you don't want to believe me than that is up to you.

The only other thing I would suggest is that you google the number in my user name and "Marine." You'll be able to see one of the jobs I held in the Marines. I've been a member here since late 2004, so I didn't just make up a number to go with my user name.

[Viracocha711]

40. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

Most here are in a reactionary mob state of mind! SCARY! The same thing was said not long after US air strikes that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...Before portraying our forces as cold blooded killers I would hope you could at least wait longer than an hour to get the full story? I have friends over there who are helicopter pilots on their 4 tour and you have no F-ing idea what kind of hell they are in! If your friends, your brothers, are on the ground fighting you do not have the luxury of being a Monday morning QB...If a car does not stop then who knows what could have been going down? Soilders as well as helicopter pilots are doing a job, following orders that have certain protocols, let us see if they were followed...We all know things are never right so soon after the first report has been published!

I am ready for this war to be ended as soon as Obama takes office but to see simple minded post like this makes me angry!

OBAMA...The only true voice for change!

[ronnie624]

44. Really?

Which messages, specifically, do you consider reactionary?

And why are you copying and pasting your previous remarks?

[wmbrew0206]

45. Ronnie624...

I can tell you that as someone would has served in Iraq, I've noticed that a lot of people on this board seem to assume the worse of the military when something like this happens.

Are mistakes made? Yes, absolutely, but they are mistakes; they are not intentional.

[LynnTheDem]

22. Good thing Iraqis' children aren't worth anything!

Imagine if a nation invaded & occupied us and dropped bombs daily for years, killing our kids. Boy would we be pissed.

[Sabriel]

46. What's the going rate for shepherds and kids nowadays?

I imagine with the dollar in the tank the way it is now, the military payoffs for killing children aren't worth as much as they used to be.

Good thing money cures all ills! Whew.

[Hissyspit]

49. Iraq Officials: 2 Children Die in U.S. Airstrike

Source: Associated Press

Iraq officials: 2 children die in US airstrike
By KIM GAMEL – 46 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — A U.S. helicopter strike north of Baghdad killed eight people in a vehicle, including at least two children, Iraqi officials said Thursday, insisting all the dead were civilians. The U.S. military said six were al-Qaida militants but acknowledged children were killed.

AP Television News footage showed the bodies of three children in blood-drenched clothes — the eldest appearing to be in his early teens — along with the bodies of five men, at the hospital in Beiji, where the dead were taken after Wednesday evening's strike.

Iraqi and U.S. officials each put the number of slain children at two. The reason for the discrepancies between the two accounts and the TV footage was not known. It was the latest incident threatening to alienate Sunni Arabs, who have played a key role in the steep decline in violence over the past year by joining forces with the Americans against al-Qaida in Iraq. Beiji, an oil hub 155 miles north of Baghdad, lies in a largely Sunni Arab area. The strike came as the U.S. was trying to ease Iraqi anger over the shooting of a copy of the Quran by an American sniper, who used Islam's holy book for target practice.

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD90R14SG0

[disenfranchisedgal]

50. Thanks George W.

You will rot in hell.

[Hulk]

51. More democracy and freedom for children.

I want bush and cheney brought before the court for war crimes against the 600,000 dead Iraqi's and held accountable for the 4000+ dead American service personnel. They need to swing from a tree....both of them, and the rest of their crime family.

[Name removed]

52. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DeSwiss]

53. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

We need to get the fuck outta there.

- K&R

[surfridum]

54. War is not sexy...