By TAREK AL-ISSAWI, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. military investigation found no misconduct by U.S. soldiers who killed eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian hospital guard near Fallujah on Sept. 12, the U.S. commander in Iraq (news - web sites) said Thursday.
“The initial findings are that the soldiers acted within the construct of the military’s rules of engagement,” Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said of the action by the 82nd Airborne Division.
Sanchez also said the unit acted within military rules when it called in a helicopter airstrike on a farm north of Fallujah on Tuesday, killing three men and wounding three other people, including two boys. He added that he would not order an investigation.
Sanchez said he was satisfied with the results of the investigation of the Sept. 12 shootout.
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“The initial reports were clear. There was initial fire and it was a 30-second engagement. At the end of it, the policemen were dead,” Sanchez told reporters.
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His remarks contradicted accounts by Iraqi policemen injured in the incident.
Several of them said the incident began as several Iraqi police vehicles approached a U.S. checkpoint near the Jordanian military hospital on the outskirts of Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad. The police were chasing a car known to have been involved in highway banditry.
The policemen said they begged the American soldiers to stop shooting, screaming in Arabic and English that they were police. The Americans kept firing for 30 minutes, the policemen said.
Fallujah is in the heart of the dangerous “Sunni Triangle,” the region north and west of Baghdad where support for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) runs deep and attacks on U.S. forces happen daily.
Villagers and survivors of Tuesday’s air-ground assault said they were asleep when the U.S. force attacked. The Americans said they were fired on from the vicinity and that the attackers had sought refuge in the farm compound.
“That was clearly a hostile force that was attempting to break contact with my forces, and the application of force at that point was appropriate and from my perspective, demanded,” Sanchez said.
Questioned by reporters about the rules of engagement in that instance, Sanchez said his troops would “use the force that is necessary to defeat an enemy force.”
how can you expect justice when justice is delivered by the same people who are killers. 