http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030415/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_war_us_mosul_030415151253
10 killed many more injured in Mosul. US spokemsan claims only to have returned fire from rooftops but that wouldnt seem to account for the massive casualties in the crowd.
Hey, snazzy title. “Massacre” is so…sensational. Don’t miss an opportunity to say US troops did something wrong…shucks, you dont need to wait for evidence. A little breaking news should do fine.
If 2 snipers fired upon US troops with the crowd in between and if none of the US troops were hit, who do you supposed got hit? That could explain the dead and wounded. I would wait for an autopsy to see what kind of rifle round is dug out of those 10 dead bodies.
If the US troops were firing at a rooftop from distance, the angle of their rifle might be so slight as to appear horizontal. From the crowd where they may think it is aimed at them the difference might not be important if they started to hate the US presence there anyways.
I’d really wait for the autopsies. Unless the family refuses.
TheMemeWarrior:
I also started a thread on this subject!
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=177441
Man, the limit on what it takes to cause a massacre is so low now. Used to be you’d have to get into at least five or six digits to even consider calling it a massacre.
mmm the americans should have handed baghdad over to the british to police. we have more experience of situations like this (i.e. bloody sunday) and have learnt from our errors.
policing a foreign population as an invading force requires a deft handand subtelty (have i spelt that correctly??) that im afraid the americans don’t possess.
e.g. flag on statue, this massacre, an american officer firing his gun in the air rambo style (for which you would be thrown out of the british army and put up on charges), the women and children in the minibus, the numerous friendly fire incidents, many of which shouldnt have happened and cannot be attributable to the fog of war.
How exactly is Bloody Sunday analguous to this situation?
Remember, in Mosul, there were snipers firing at the troops. In Derry there weren’t.
Thats currently being investigated in the Saville Inquiry.
How come this story hasn’t even been mentioned on CNN and BBC?
I, too, am interested in how this compares to Bloody Sunday. Where was the opening fire in Derry? Here, the Americans were fired on, and they shot back.
I would never slam the Brits - I think it was a regrettable accident - but neither do I think this comparison is a good one to use if your thesis is, “Hey, the Brits would have handled this better than the clumsy Americans.”
- Rick
Dunno why CNN hasn’t got it yet, but the BBC does, and it’s hit GoogleNews, and Reuters has picked it up.
CNN’s version is here:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/16/sprj.irq.war.main/index.html
Another shooting in Mosul
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030416/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_northern_iraq_6
Also reports seem to be lowering the fatalities on the first killing to 7.
It was a regretable incident followed up by a goverment encouraged cover up at the Widgery Tribunal. Lord Widgery was told by Heath that there was a “propaganda war” at stake. As well as these instructions heading into the tribunal, hundreds of eyewitness testimonials were discounted or just plainly withheld from evidence.
And to top it all off, The Leader of 1st parachute regiment was awarded by the Queen. Although not for his actions on that day, but certainly was a kick in the teeth to the families of the victims murdered by the 1 Para.
http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk/
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/bs.htm
http://www.bloodysundaytrust.org/