[QUOTE]
“We think it’s entirely possible that this may have been in fact an Iraqi missile that either went up and came down, or given the behaviors of the regime lately, it may have been a deliberate attack inside of town,” said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks at the daily Central Command briefing.
…
“It’s just a sign of the brutality of this regime, and a sign of how little they care about civilians, that they put military assets close to civilians,” Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said. /QUOTE]
I know I am going to get piled on here… especially considering my last OP… but… for Fuck sakes…
Listen, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that Saddam would bomb his own people to get brownie points with the rest of the world. Or would you believe him over the US? We’re talking about a sadist here folks, not a saint!
I mean, come on. I realize our President and his minions are incompetent and arrogant and that they’ve pissed a good chunk of the planet off with their idiotic excuse for a foreign policy. But believing Iraqi progaghanda is even more moronic than blindly believing Bush’s, if only for the simple fact that it’s less-well written.
It could have been a surface-to-air missile that went up and was forced by gravity to come down. Saddam might blow up his own people. Or, he might store so much ammunition in a private home that a spark causes a block to go boom.
Or, the coalition missed a target and bombed a neighborhood. How can you know without doing an investigation on the ground?
You can’t, but the coalition has been honest about some mistakes. I believe they admitted to firing some errant missiles that went into Iran, and I know they admitted to accidentally dropping a bomb on a bus of civilians. So if the US did acidentally blow up the market, I don’t see any reason for them to attempt to cover it up.
The one thing you can be absolutely sure of - the U.S. did not intentionally bomb a market. They have no reason to do so.
Saddam, on the other hand, has lots of reasons for doing it. He needs to make the population of Baghdad be afraid of the U.S. forces, and hopefully to even hate them. Otherwise, he risks uprisings when the coalition forces finally enter Baghdad.
The accidental bombing of the bus, Reeder, was that a bridge was targeted and after the bomb was released, a bus drove onto the bridge.
At least, so the US propaganda has told me. I’m sure that Iraqi propaganda says that the US had a fighter-bomber chasing the bus as it weaved back and forth trying to dodge the Western imperialists.
Anybody remember “The luckiest man in Iraq” from GWI? The bomb was on the way down and this Iraq truck drives across the bridge while the bomb is on the way down. The truck just clears the bridge and the bomb hits and blows up the bridge.
Sounds like the bus was a couple of seconds too slow.
According to the military experts on NPR, who were talking about this incident, they said it was highly unlikely that it was a US weapon. Reason being that the US was firing ground penetrating munitions (i.e. bunkerbusters), so if it had been a US weapon gone astray, it would have buried itself in the ground before exploding.
Additionally, the reason there were so many injured at the market was because the Iraqis have stopped worrying about being blown up if they’re not near a military target since US weapons have been so accurate, thus far.
EasyPhil, that quote doesn’t rule out what the military experts on NPR said. An anti-aircraft missile is designed to create a wide blast to better the chances of bringing down the aircraft. Everyone he spoke to heard the plane, didn’t see it. So they couldn’t identify what kind of plane it was (say a surveillance plane), nor could they state that they had seen it drop anything. It proves nothing.
So these experts “know” what weapons were being used at that very moment by every aircraft or are they speculating? Are they involved in the conflict or just providing expert commentary on what they “think” is happening?
With all the disinformation coming from the “coalition” spin machine, I don’t see how anyone isn’t skeptical of this particular story. Oh, damn it, I forgot, it’s an invasion of liberation, yeah, that’s it.
Well, let’s see here the word from the folks in the military is
and
and
And since none of the French, Russian, nor Chinese experts have come out and said, “We’ve looked at those images and it’s clear that the US is lying.” I’d have to say that the military folks are being honest about the matter. Geeze, Phil, even Satan has to tell the truth every once in a while.
Oh sure, ** Easy Phil ** now it’s all clear to me. We bombed a market full of Shiite Muslims because we want them on our side.
And Mr Robert Fisk from the aptly named “the Independent” is obviously the epitome of objective journalism. :rolleyes:
What an ass.
Sure this could have been an American bomb gone astray. Anyone who thinks our technology is going to be 100% perfect all the time has obviously never had to reboot Windows. It also could be the result of something the Iraqis did, either on purpose or on accident.
