Story here.
Hey, waitaminnit! Maybe the person who picks up the stuff is not an insurgent at all, but an average, unemployed, broke Iraqi who just found something valuable lying in the street and hopes to sell it off. Sell it to insurgents, most likely, because that’s where the market is. But does the mere act of picking it up warrant death?!
That was my first thought. “A black market? For ammunition and explosives? In IRAQ? Naaaaahhhhhh…” :rolleyes:
Well, that explains why the “Adopt-A-Highway” program in Baghdad hasn’t gotten anywhere. 
I read about this in the paper this morning and just shook my head. Doesn’t anyone left in that place have any brains?
By “that place,” do you mean Iraq? This gem apparently was dreamed up not by soldiers in-country but by officers at the Pentagon.
The Pentagon and Iraq both. From reading Fiasco, I’d have guessed that anyone in Iraq with any brains knows the Pentagon is clueless by now. But those on the ground are the ones blowing away people wearing “Keep Iraq Clean” buttons.
Well, as usual the appropriate response is “interesting, if true.”
For some reason there is a parallel to the Peter Principle (sooner or later all positions are occupied by a person who is incompetent) operating here: sooner or later authority falls into the hands of the person most unfit to exercise it. It is not for nothing that the Military Intelligence and special tactics guys are called “spooks.” Who in their right mind could think that this sort of entrapment sharp shooting would not turn into a counterproductive planted evidence situation in very short order? The obvious answer is that anyone could see it and should have. None the less the hard chargers and hotdogs seem to get approval for this sort of crack brained scheme. All too often reckless proposals are seen as advance thinking. I suppose that frustration plays a roll. After a while just randomly shooting people has the advantage of doing something as opposed to doing nothing. For the guy with a big hammer everything looks like a nail. For a guy with a sniper platoon everything looks like a target.
From the article in the WaPo:
Bolding mine.
WTF is an “Asymmetric Warfare Group?” They, and their handlers, should be the target of an investigation and punishment.
This is the Asymmetric Warfare Group:
They’re a unit created to study and counter asymmetric warfare, a.k.a. attacks by guerrillas/insurgents, etc.
And, to answer my own question, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_Warfare_Group**Here’s the wikipedia article on the Asymmetric Warfare Group. Does anyone except me read that article and think that it was written by a Pentagon employee?
Thank goodness I had my speakers down.
Sorry, I don’t have sound on this computer. I wasn’t aware.
Of course. They collect them by the shovelful.
That’s exactly how it reads. I don’t even see any “external links” to sources that might be more critical/skeptical.
The author’s resume is just plain weird.
The next question is me wondering how many others were written by “interested parties”. Granted Wikipedia shouldn’t be your end-all for knowledge, but still…
No, the relevant question is how many Wikipedia articles were rewritten by interested parties. (And that cool new post-source search engine isn’t much help if some corporate or military jackanapes has the foresight to post from a cybercafe.)
The act of carrying around explosives in Iraq is justification for deadly force.
To put it in perspective:
Let’s say you were walking around your neighborhood with your “Clean up our Streets” button, and you came across a couple pounds of cocaine. If you picked up that cocaine–regardless of your intentions–you could be arrested for felony possession of a controlled substance. If you were stopped by a cop, your “I was on my way to the police department to turn this in” excuse is not going to save you! You would be subject to the penalties of cocaine possession, regardless of your intentions. Similarly, a person out in some Iraqi street carrying explosives is subject to the penalties of that act, regardless of his intentions.
The proper, legal thing to do is call the authorities and report the location of the cocaine so that they can come and get it.
The proper thing for an Iraqi to do if he comes across some munitions is contact coalition forces without touching or disturbing the items! They all know this. They have been flyered and leafletted ad nauseum.
Now, I am not trying to defend the operation as it stands. Nor am I condeming it. My major concern would be killing someone who wanted to pick up the item to turn in to US Forces. However, the fact that so many announcements, flyers and leaflets have explained to the citizens that they should NEVER pick up or be caught with such items, rids me of much of that doubt.
If I were involved in such a bait and shoot operation, my conscience would only waiver at the idea that the person may have had good intentions like turning it in or just getting it out of the street so a kid would not find it. I wouldn’t give a shit less if I later found out the guy was just poor and wanting to sell the thing to insurgents. Your defense of “he was only going to sell it because he is so poor” is not even close to excusable. Scavenging munitions to sell to violent, anti-coalition parties is and should be prevented using any level of force necessary. People don’t get an alibi because they’re poor. That doesn’t work in America either.
As for the whole shooting random people and then planting evidence thing… that’s so obviously wrong, I wont even get in to it.
:dubious: And whose fault is it that he’s so poor? (Hint: Not his own, not Hussein’s, and not the insurgents’.)
I knew that was coming.
And while I may (or may not) agree with the notion that America wrongly and wantanly caused this hypothetical man’s misfortune and poverty, I dont think it’s a valid excuse for scavenging munitions to later sell to violent anti-US factions.
If we all agreed that it’s the fault of the American government’s neglect or gross incompetence that so many citizens are poor and homeless after Katrina, we still wouldn’t excuse any of them if they turned to selling drugs or stealing as a sublimental or primary source of income. Being poor simply isn’t an excuse.
There’s definitley a cause/effect thing going on. But it’s still not excusable.
:dubious: Why? Why does the fault like solely with the US? I think that assumption is handwaving away those other groups in your attempt to pin it all on the US.
As for the OP I’ll just say that anyone who is crazy enough to pick up what they know to be explosives AND try and carry them off in Iraq today is either A) Knowledgable enough to realize what they are holding AND how to (somewhat) safely move it or B) Has a death wish or C) Is truely desparate.
Why? Well, obviously because most explosives left laying around in Iraq were put there for the purpose of blowing people up. If they haven’t gone off yet then its either a matter of time before they do or they were defective…which means they could go off some other time instead. Which brings us back to the people likely to pick something like that up. Pick any of the likely ones and you have something in common…people who are aware of the risk they are taking just in handling those explosives because its a good bet they COULD go off any time., and yet are willing to take the risk.
Myself I’m unsure about how effective this tactic is…and I’m also a bit uncomfortable with the use of deadly force in this circumstance. I would much rather set things up so that the person was apprehended using non-lethal force if they attempted to grab the goods. I think we’d get more out of live insurgents captured, and we’d quickly be able to separate the insurgents from the folks that were simply greedy or desparate.
-XT