So even reporters embedded to the US military are exposing the lies and fallacies put about by the child and woman murdering American soldiers. Who does believe these war criminals anyway?
"A metal fragment found at the scene by British journalist Robert Fisk carried various markings, including “MFR 96214 09”. This, our reader pointed out in an email, is a manufacturer’s identification number known as a “cage code”.
Cage codes can be looked up on the internet (www.gidm.dlis.dla.mil), and keying in the number 96214 traces the fragment back to a plant in McKinney, Texas, owned by the Raytheon Company.
Raytheon, whose headquarters are in Lexington, Massachusetts, aspires “to be the most admired defence and aerospace systems supplier through world-class people and technology”, according to its website (www.raytheon.com). It makes a vast array of military equipment, including the AGM-129 cruise missile which is launched from B-52 bombers." (Source).
Well said :k:
**Coalition divided over battle for hearts and minds** - British military critical of US troops’ heavy-handed style with civilians
Richard Norton-Taylor and Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, 1 April 2003
"You can see why the Iraqis are not welcoming us with open arms," a senior defence source said yesterday. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, drove home the point at a press conference in London on Friday. “We have a very considerable hearts and minds challenge,” he said, adding: “We are not interested in gratuitous violence.”
US troops accused of excess force, Steven Morris
The Guardian, 1 April 2003
Nadia:
I can assure you that, with the current orange alert ongoing in the US, if I were to try to drive a van through a barricade or checkpoint set up in any major city in the US in or around a guarded facility (federal buildings, military bases, nuclear plants, etc.), I would likely meet the same fate as these poor women. If my reason for ignoring orders to halt was that the accelerator was stuck and/or the brakes didn’t work, it wouldn’t matter in the least. The guards manning the checkpoint/barricades don’t know the good or bad intentions of the person driving the vehicle. They need to make determinations as to intentions and threats based upon actions that they observe. If I were to have been killed in my above example, it would have been tragic. But the shooters would not in any way be culpable.
While civilian deaths are tragic, they don’t have to be war crimes.
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*Originally posted by myvoice: *
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Does the military know that firing at tires is more likely to stop ANY van be it "terrorist" laden or "civilian"? Assuming the "time" they spent in "trying" to stop the van, they had opportunity to fire at tires and stop it, NO? Or were they not confident enough to hit the target (tires)?
i don't see what she said as anti-american propoganda. who murdered these people, the germans?
let's not be so caught up in our rhetoric as to ignore the double-standard. both sides (the arabs and the americans) attempt to take advantage of even the slightest openings to use as PR for their cause.
this whole war is turning into a big, ugly mess. Mr Rumsfeld is guilty of HUBRIS. how many more innocent lives must be lost before we realize this was a huge mistake?
MyVoice, Although i disagree with it, thank you for an answer that at least attempts to be balanced & rational.
Regarding the checkpoint, if i am not mistaken, the Washington Post has already reported that a warning shot was not fired soon enough. In other words, the family and the driver of this car were not given a sufficient opportunity to slow the car down. If the US soldier had fired a warning shot earlier, who are we to judge - this family might still have been alive.
So do you see how this gruesome killing of ten civilians, including five small children, can be perceived of as a crime? A war crime. You will not like to read this, but there is now no difference between a dictatorship such as Iraq’s that commits atrocities against its civilians versus actions such as these. It infuriates some of us to hear phrases like ‘well this is to be expected in a war’, ‘it’s regrettable but this is the reality of war - you have to make split-second decisions and the soldier in this case did what he believed was the most rational course of action’.
That tends to send the feeling that Iraqi lives, Muslim lives, occupy a lower position on the social hierarchy.
“Reuters reporters taken by Iraqi officials to a hospital in Hilla, about 80 km (50 miles) south of this battered city, saw the bodies of at least 11 civilians, killed when U.S. bombs hit the residential area. Sahaf said nine of the dead were children. “What has he done wrong, what has he done wrong?” demanded the driver of the truck carrying the bodies, as he held the corpse of an infant.” 
More Iraqi children killed in US air raids](http://www.msn.co.uk/news/breakingnews01/) MSN News 01 Apr 03 (Excerpt)
By Nadim Ladki BAGHDAD (Reuters) - More Iraqi children have died after U.S. bombs hit a residential area in central Iraq a day after checkpoint killings of civilians by nervous U.S. troops prompted Arab anger. The latest deaths in an overnight raid on the town of Hilla were bound further to damage U.S. efforts to win Iraqi hearts and minds – an undertaking ridiculed by Baghdad’s authorities and which U.S. officers admit is proving harder than expected. Reuters reporters with invading U.S. and British troops said a pause of several days in their advance towards Iraq’s capital – hit again on Tuesday by bombs and missiles – appeared to be over and the armour was on the move again. “It seems as though the operational pause in our sector is over…We’ve swung from passivity to activity quite quickly,” Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire said from central Iraq. …
**Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said U.S.-led air raids over the past day had killed a total of 56 civilians throughout the country. Iraq has put the total civilian deaths to date at 653.?B] Reuters reporters taken by Iraqi officials to a hospital in Hilla, about 80 km (50 miles) south of this battered city, saw the bodies of at least 11 civilians, killed when U.S. bombs hit the residential area. Sahaf said nine of the dead were children. “What has he done wrong, what has he done wrong?” demanded the driver of the truck carrying the bodies, as he held the corpse of an infant.
Nadia: The “in other words” conclusion does not logically follow from the first sentence. It presumes that a warning shot is the only thing that gives a person a sufficient opportunity to slow the car down. The fact that you might get to the point of firing a warning shot is indicative of the fact that other means of trying to stop the car were not successful. A warning shot is the last thing you do not the first.
Now, as to the Washington Post, it was not reported as a fact that a warning shot was not fired soon enough. A Reporter for the Washington Post quoted a US soldier as saying, “You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough!” From that report, you have concluded that a warning shot was not fired soon enough.
It may very well be true that an earlier warning shot might have resulted in this vehicle stopping. That’s something we will never know. I just thank the good lord that I am not in a position where I have to make the split second decision about when is the proper time to fire a weapon in the middle of a battlefield in a situation where every vehicle and person coming my way might possibly be loaded with TNT designed to kill me and many other fellow soldiers. You seem to think that is an easy spot to be in and that all decisions that will be made by mostly young men and women will be infallible. And, if god forbid, one of these fallible people makes a regretful decision that he should be immediately branded a war criminal.
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No I don’t. You must have an awful lot more confidence in your own infallibility than I have in mine.
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It doesn’t infuriate me to read such statements. I’ve become immune to them over time although they still sadden me. It also shows me how disconnected the peoples of this world are in their thought processes. That you can’t see the difference between a dictator putting his citizens into industrial shredders as torture killings and/or gassing his own people as a matter of policy versus an 18-25 year old soldier in the middle of a war making a split second decision that ends up tragically causing some civilian casualties absolutely astounds me. That is so clear to most people raised in (for lack of a better term) the western judeo-christian culture.
ICRC terms Baghdad bombings ‘horror’
ICRC terms Baghdad bombings ‘horror’
BAGHDAD: The spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad told AFP on Tuesday that the bombings in south of the capital were a “horror” that had left dozens of “smashed corpses”. “Our four-member team went to Hilla hospital south of Baghdad, and what it saw there was a horror. There were dozens of smashed corpses,” said Roland Huguenin-Benjamin.
He believed the air attacks had left “dozens of dead and 450 injured.” “We’re asking about the type of weapons used in these air strikes” on the outskirts of Hilla, a farming town 80 kilometres south of Baghdad. “There were women and children. All of them are civilians, farmers and their families who were on their fields or at home,” Huguenin-Benjamin said. Director of Hilla’s hospital Murtada Abbas had said 33 civilians, including children, were killed and 310 injured in the US-led bombing early on Tuesday, which, he said, targeted the Nader residential area at the city’s southern outskirts.
Separately, a civilian, Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaj, showed an AFP photographer 15 coffins, which he said held the bodies of relatives killed Monday when an Apache helicopter blew up their pickup near Hilla as they tried to flee fighting.
In Brussels the European Commission appealed to combatants to “show their restraint when it comes to civilians.” “This is a horrible and tragic incident … It is not an isolated incident. Too many civilians have already lost their lives in this war. It shows that there is no war without loss of innocent lives,” said a spokesman.
The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iraq, Andreas Mavrommatis also sharply criticised coalition bombardments which have hit Iraqi civilians. “Respect to the right to life, to my mind, enjoins combatants to abort the process when the targeting of assets entails foreseeable risks to civilians,” he told a press conference in Geneva. “What we expect now is for the war to be over the soonest and that events such as the carnage in the market place in Baghdad would not occur again,” Mavrommatis said.
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/index.html
It is horrific.. so many innocent civilians are being killed in this illegal war. There is no justification for attacking these civilian areas, these are war crimes and I hope that those responsible are one day made accountable in the International Courts.
20 civilians killed when raid hit farm](http://news.sify.com/cgi-bin/sifynews/news/content/news_fullstory_v2.jsp?article_oid=12975791&page_no=1) Sify News 31 Mar 03
**Twenty people, including 11 children, were killed when a nighttime missile attack struck a farm near Baghdad, relatives said on Monday. Another 10 people were wounded, according to relatives who survived the Saturday night assault, which destroyed three homes in the Al-Janabiin suburb on the southeastern edge of Baghdad. They said the dead also included seven women and two men belonging to five families. **
The two relatives were the only residents to escape unharmed from the ruins of the homes, according to an AFP journalist on the scene. Civilian casualities in Baghdad and its outskirts have mounted since the war’s outbreak on March 20. The US-led coalition has relentlessly bombed the southern rim of the city, where elite Republican Guard units are believed to be guarding the approach to President Saddam Hussein’s seat of power.
**The witnesses in Al-Janabiin, who showed an AFP journalist the debris from the attack, said a missile struck the farm leaving a trail of destruction over a wide area. AFP journalists have witnessed five such incidents in which civilians were the primary victims of a coalition strike, reporting at least 70 dead and dozens of wounded. Iraqi officials have said hundreds of civilians have been killed and wounded since the start of the war. **
US and British war planners have declared their intent to minimize civilian casualities and accuse the Iraqi leadership of deliberately placing military targets such as weapons and ammunition in residential neighborhoods. They have also suggested that some of the blasts might have been the result of misguided Iraqi anti-missile missiles.
The spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad told AFP on Tuesday that the bombings in south of the capital were a "horror" that had left dozens of "smashed corpses". "Our four-member team went to Hilla hospital south of Baghdad, and what it saw there was a horror. There were dozens of smashed corpses," said Roland Huguenin-Benjamin.
Dear God. It is now clear that the United States military has less and less regard for civilian lives, and when they kill women and children as they have they will defend these actions.
Obviously
Obviously killing innocent women an children is the wrong thing to due. That was not the goal. How do know if the difference between a van full of sucide bombers and explosives, and a van full of women and childen when its driving at you full speed?
In this case it was abosolutly the right thing to do from a choice standpoint, NOT the killing of innocents. Can't you see the difference, man?
What should the soldiers at the checkpoint do when a car will not stop? Hmmm...wait and see if it explodes, then see who is inside. Don't think so.
This is a terrible tragedy that I hope doesn't happen again. If a sucide bomber in a car didn't blow himself up a day before this probably would have never happnend, period.
Re: Obviously
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by AvgGuy:
This is a terrible tragedy that I hope doesn't happen again. If a sucide bomber in a car didn't blow himself up a day before this probably would have never happnend, period.
[/QUOTE]
What a pathetic excuse. We know no warning shots were fired at the car to get it to stop, so hence these women and children were killied indiscriminately. But if you are going to use suicide bombers as an excuse, then explain why the US military is going around slaugthering civilians in market places in Baghdad? Then try to explain why the US forces have just massacred dozens of civilians at Hila - read the ICRC statement:-
The spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad told AFP on Tuesday that the bombings in south of the capital were a "horror" that had left dozens of "smashed corpses". "Our four-member team went to Hilla hospital south of Baghdad, and what it saw there was a horror. There were dozens of smashed corpses," said Roland Huguenin-Benjamin.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by myvoice: *
**That you can't see the difference between a dictator putting his citizens into industrial shredders as torture killings and/or gassing his own people as a matter of policy versus an 18-25 year old soldier in the middle of a war making a split second decision that ends up tragically causing some civilian casualties absolutely astounds me. That is so clear to most people raised in (for lack of a better term) the western judeo-christian culture.
[/QUOTE]
*
MyVoice, You state that, "it was not reported as a **fact* that a warning shot was not fired soon enough."* However, we do have a direct quote from an American official who was positioned at the intersection (my emphasis added)- "You just ...] killed a family **because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough". If he had been Iraqi, then i would be able to begin to understand why you would not accept his quote as legitimate; when he happens to be an American soldier, i am not certain i understand how you choose not to accept his quote.
Be that as it may. i knew that individuals would justify this event with the argument that the soldier only had a split second to decide what to do. i just will never understand why Iraqi civilian deaths are treated in such a cavalier fashion, regardless of how many innocent children and women are involved (as was the case this time). But i guess that's just me - Iraqi civilian deaths are always collateral damage. It's a pretty sad reflection, i think, of what type of world we all live in today where a civilian's life is valued this little, (this goes for the largely silent Muslim populace as well).
Coalition Bomb Hospital - Several Dead.
More precision bombing?
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2494161
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. missiles hit a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad and other civilian buildings on Wednesday, killing several people and wounding at least 25, hospital sources and witnesses said.
The attacks, which occurred at 9:30 a.m., surprised motorists who had ventured out during a lull in the bombing. This correspondent saw at least five burned-out and twisted cars parked in the middle of the road. Witnesses said the drivers burned to death inside.
Residents said U.S. planes raided the Mansour area, firing at least three missiles. They hit the hospital, the nearby Baghdad trade center complex and buildings housing the Pharmacist and Teachers’ Unions.
The blast caused extensive damage in the hospital.
“There were air raids. Some 25 people who work and live in the area were wounded. Three of our Red Crescent staff were also wounded. We brought all the wounded in our ambulances to two hospitals,” Red Crescent official Abdel-Hameed Salim told Reuters at Baghdad’s al-Iskan hospital.
He said among the Red Crescent casualties was doctor Mohammad Fadel, who was getting ready for a normally hectic day in war times. Also injured was a patient who had come to see a doctor. He was hit, requiring his leg to be amputated.
“We had a lot of medical supplies for rescue operations and we don’t know if they were destroyed or not,” Salim added.
U.S. military spokesman Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters in Qatar: “I am not aware of the Red Crescent report, so I cannot address it.”
**The proof: marketplace deaths were caused by a US missile **
An American missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis.
The codes on the foot-long shrapnel shard, seen by the Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu’ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by Ray- theon, the world’s biggest producer of “smart” armaments.
The Anglo-American claims were undermined by the series of 25 digits and letters on the piece of fuselage shown to Mr Fisk by an elderly resident of Shu’ale who lived 100 yards from the site of the 6ft crater made by the explosion.
The numbers on the fragment _ retrieved from the scene and not shown to the Iraqi authorities _ read: “30003-704ASB7492”. The letter “B” was partially obscured by scratches and may be an “H”. It was followed by a second code: “MFR 96214 09.”
An online database of suppliers maintained by the Defence Logistics Information Service, part of the Department of Defence, showed that the reference MFR 96214 was the identification or “cage” number of a Raytheon plant in the city of McKinney, Texas.
The 30003 reference refers to the Naval Air Systems Command, the procurement agency responsible for furnishing the US Navy’s air force with its weaponry.
US bombs Meternity Hospital
More Iraqi liberation by the coalition terrorists.
**Residents said U.S. planes raided the Mansour area, firing at least three missiles. They hit the hospital, the nearby Baghdad trade center complex and buildings housing the Pharmacist and Teachers’ Unions. **