Astonshing admisions by the US soldiers. One has to read the full interview ‘I just pulled the trigger’](This is London Magazine) to realise that this is fast becoming another Vietnam for the American forces in Iraq.
US troops ‘shoot civilians’
American soldiers in Iraq today make the astonishing admission that they regularly kill civilians. In a series of disturbing interviews which throws light on the chaos gripping the country, GIs also confess to leaving wounded Iraqi fighters to die, and even to shooting injured enemy soldiers. They say they are frequently confronted by fighters dressed as civilians, including women. Their response is often to shoot first and ask questions later, even when it means killing genuine civilians. Yesterday, US troops killed at least one man and injured three others during a demonstration in Baghdad by former Iraqi soldiers protesting at not being paid for two months. US troops first fired into the air and then into the crowd after the demonstrators began throwing stones and bricks.
In the worsening cycle of violence, American tactics like these are feeding the resentment of many Iraqis who object to the occupation of their country. US troops are facing a growing number of hitandrun guerrilla attacks and more than 40 soldiers have been killed since George Bush declared the war over seven weeks ago. The threat American soldiers feel was illustrated today when a coalition-run humanitarian aid office north of Baghdad was shelled, killing one Iraqi worker and wounded 12. The attack represents a tactical shift by the guerillas as they target fellow Iraqis deemed to be too close to the allies. One of the soldiers interviewed by the Evening Standard, Specialist Anthony Castillo, of the 3/15th US Infantry, said: “When there were civilians there, we did the mission that had to be done. When they were there, they were at the wrong spot, so they were considered enemy.” The soldiers are furious that their commanders have reneged on promises to send them home as soon as the war was won and are now forcing them into the role of peacekeepers. The interviews will make troubling reading for US and British politicians and senior military staff desperate to pacify the country and impose order before a transfer to a civilian government run by Iraqis.
"They say they are frequently confronted by fighters dressed as civilians, including women."
This is a War Crime.
It is War Crime because it causes needless civilian deaths.
Yet the Anti-America crowd automatically assumes that soldiers who are 18 and 19 years old, and getting killed at the rate of one per day are somehow blessed with telepathic powers to distinguish fighters from civilians.
Lovely of you not to highlight the lines where a humanitarian office was shelled, or mention the RPG attack on an ambulance the other day.
Those who dress as women to attack their enemies from behind shields of women and children, are not men.
These American killers are openly boasting of killing Iraqi civilians, and it is summed up by Specialist (Corporal) Michael Richardson:-
“There was no dilemma when it came to shooting people who were not in uniform, I just pulled the trigger. It was up close and personal the whole time, there wasn’t a big distance. If they were there, they were enemy, whether in uniform or not. Some were, some weren’t.”
Even the HRW are now calling on the US military to investigate it’s slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians, at Faluja.