Another in a depressing string of dead civillians stories.
Don’t mean to pit the copter crew exactly, hell I can about imagine the scene. 2:30 AM, 50 or so people in a large group, firing into the air (as is common custom). Really just here to pit the criminally short-sighted planning team that planned The George W Desert Classic.
Pretty weak rant, I know. I’m just sick to the soul of this whole intractable mess.
[quote]
One of the children was headless.
Tha’t going to stick with me for a long time.
That’s going to stick with me for a long time.
What the fuck is up with helicopters and crowds today?
I occurs to me this would be a good time to reconsider the “appropriateness” of this “custom”.
Overheard in the public restroom: “That’ll leave a skidmark all the way to the treatment plant!”
The United States cannot buy a break lately. 
Here is a more detailed description of the account I just found, looking for some sort of indication there was gunfire from the wedding party. When are people going to learn that what goes up, must come down?
Didn’t something like this happen a year or two ago in Afghanistan as well?
Yes, pretty much identical.
If this turns out to be true, it indicates a horrible lack of communication between ground troops and air patrols. You would think that there would be some attempt to avoid this kind of mistake after we killed 48 people at an Afghan wedding party.
I am so glad that you didn’t triple post and “one of the childern was headless” became the next 1920’s style death rays.
Now if I lived in a country that was occupied by a foreign army and I was getting married, I would seriously be rethinking any sort of gun play at the reception.
Just heard on CNN that the military is saying that it was not a wedding party but rather insurgents who fired on coalition troops or aircraft (not sure which).
I hope this turns out to be the case, although it seems like a pretty quick investigation.
I feel terribly that kids were killed, to be sure, but there is a certain lack of intelligence about any kind of gun play in a country that is under military occupation, and responsibility for this incident cannot lay solely at the foot of the U.S. Thinking people should have an idea by now that when there are armed soldiers and helicopters and whatnot hanging around, shooting off guns is not a thing that should be done.
Where do you draw the line between cultural “insensitivity” and “idiots, don’t fire your damned guns in a war zone?” For me, the line is drawn pretty far away from the idea that we were monstrously in the wrong here.
Hmmm…
Guess you should ignore my previous post. I am sure that I heard what I posted, but there have been no further reports and I can’t find any web news which I would expect to see after 30 minutes.
Time will tell.
I’m so sick of any petty, bullshit justification we can grasp onto being used to justify attrocities like this. FUCK anyone who tries to say this shit was justified because some Iraqis fired some pistols in the air. Do they really deserve to be slaughtered like turkeys because of that? Are we really such callous, self-righteous, self-justifying scum as a people that the slaughter of children is so easily blamed on those parents who “should have known better?” Apparently we are.
Let’s not forget that WE HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE IN THAT FUCKING COUNTRY IN THE FIRST PLACE!
We have no moral right whatever to decide that any gunfire whatever makes it ok for us to kill children. Fuck that. I’m sick of that. We were wrong. We need to just fucking deal with that and quit making fucking excuses.
Some fucking heros we’ve got over there.
Some “liberation.”
This is Darwin in action. You fire on a helicopter gunship, you die.
And Diogenes we have every right to be in that country.
huh!?
Really?, what right to be there would that be?, please do explain.
Has anyone tried to say that? Or have people said “man, those people were idiots”? Well, weren’t they?
Doesn’t make it any less of a tragedy. Doesn’t make the children any less dead. Doesn’t make this whole fubar war any more of an international crime. Doesn’t make me despise Bush any less. But…
THOSE PEOPLE WERE IDIOTS!
Yes qds please do explain wich RIGHT that would be?
I would love to transmit that bright explanation of yours to someone who happens to have relatives in Iraq and is as such just a little bit worried when one of them shall become a victim of Crazy Arrogant Murdering Bush and his Killing and Torture Team.
As for these killings. There is not much reported on it, so there can no conclusions be made.
Yet I find the (expected) comments of those who say that people just need to forget all their traditions because a criminal foreign invader is occupying their nation and even dare to go as far as calling these people WHO ARE IN THEIR OWN NATION STUPID for following THEIR OWN TRADITIONS IN THEIR OWN NATION the best examples of unspeakable arrogant brainless idiots. From which qds is the most outstanding example so far in this thread.
Now waiting for more of them to join the “We are The Ones the Iraqis should Respect and Take as Their Rulers-Club”.
Salaam. A
Wow…not so much luck with the US military and Middle Eastern wedings (hasn’t this happened a few times in Iraq and Afghanistan?)
In all fairness, I’m pretty sure it’s not as if a couple of Apaches or AC-130s or whatever they were came across some beautiful weding procession with the cake and the flowers and the limos and the ugly bridesmaid dresses and opened up on it with 20mm cannon fire as the happy couple came running out of the church.
50 people firing AKs in the air in the middle of the desert looks a lot like 50 terrorists shooting at a helicopter.