Err–that was for Phil, by the way.
And yea, I should take a deep breath and calm down (good advice).
One thing is for sure. Seeing all the outrage the market explosion created certainly has given Saddam some ideas.
Has the U.S. definitively said that this was the result of Iraq bombing the marketplace? The stories I’ve seen have U.S. officials saying it was “possible” that happened. I haven’t seen a quote from a U.S. official saying “Yep, Saddam bombed the place. What a jerk.” What I have seen is a lot of “we don’t know” type answers to the question of what happened to the marketplace.
It’s entirely possible that U.S. munitions caused the destruction – in fact, it may be the most likely scenario. But it’s also possible that Iraqi munitions accidentally strayed into the marketplace. Or perhaps munitions were being transported through there and detonated prematurely. Any number of scenarios can be devised, and at this point anyone who “knows” what happened likely doesn’t.
The second quote from the OP, from Victoria Clarke of the Pentagon, makes perfect sense to me. We’ve already seen one instance of schoolchildren guiding coalition soldiers to a hidden cache of weapons and ammunition in their school. I think that’s a definite sign of a regime that cares little about its civilians.
Interesting, it doesn’t say who the weapons belong to, which is the whole fucking point of the OP!
Did you miss the memo?
I’m trying to filter through the tons of information being provided by all parties in an effort to remain impartial and to base my opinions on facts, not news speculation. To help me with this, Easy Phil, I would ask for a Cite on the assertions you are making here. I know of one example which you mentioned, but I’ve seen no indication of “outright lying” being done by the administration or the allies. Please provide me with cites to these allegations.
This is not a matter of believing Saddam over Bush, or vice versa. Just because Saddam is a bigger scum doesn’t mean lesser scum Bush is automatically telling the truth.
Both have proven to be big enough liars that both their statements can be ignored for the oral flatulance that they are. I trust neither one to make statements based on reality, only on what can help them politically.
The truth is we simply haven’t heard from a trustworthy source on this issue yet.
Agreed Revtim, I doubt we’ll know the truth of this until after an on-scene (and hopefully impartial) assessment can be done. Jumping to conclusions either way doesn’t do anyone any good.
Yes, I don’t know how in my search for unbiased sources I overlooked a message board posting from a guy who’s already put this incident in his “war crimes” report.:rolleyes:
Mojo, it would help me to understand the point of that if you’d be good enough to link to what you’re talking about.
Thanks in advance.
Click on EasyPhil’s last link.
We are bombing a city with 5 million inhabitants. If there is a 1% error rate that leaves us with a lot of civilian casulties. It will happen and the government will try to soften what we see. That said I see no stratigical benifit for us to target civilians. If we are responsible for this bombing it was an accident and there will be more.
That all said there is an enormous propaganda gain for Saddaam Husein if we are blamed for this bombing. The more we are seen by the population of Iraq as evil child killers theharder they fight us and the longer he stays in power. I suspect that it will be hard to prove one way or another either way because any chance that it was “friendly fire” will be cleaned up and made to go away. It is just to convenient for it to be our fault at this time. I don’t know if he is desperate enough yet to be bombing his own population, although that may come.
Whatever happened, and we may never have conclusive evidance, had to have been an accident. It may not matter who did it. We will be blamed, and that probably will be part of the baggage that will be there when the war is over.
I don’t know about that either, though I certainly wouldn’t put it past him. I do know that he is desperate enough to blame an Iraqi military mistake on Americans though.
Well, this is an American who is on the ground in Baghdad documenting what he is seeing.
You know, I read that in WWII, during the V1 blitz, more damage was caused by brit flak on their own people than by the V1’s themselves. (or was it the V-2’s?)
Anyway, AA has always caused “freindly fire” civilian casualties. How much more so when fired at planes that are pretty much not going to be hit anyway.
The shallow crater caused by the explosion is evidence (but not proof) it was not ours. We were dropping "bunker busters’, thus it would have been a very deep crater. Thus it is probable, that it was freindly fire by the Iraqis. No need to postulate it was done by SH on purpose- “what goes up, must come down”.
Looks like we are dropping other things as well according tothis account
Well looks like we’ll be having this discussion again.
Another market bombed, this time 50 dead.
Phil- on THAT run, we were dropping “bunker busters”.
Haven’t heard of “clsuter bombs” from B-52’s, either, but…
Take a look at this from Sky News
Makes sense if it’s true, of course it isn’t going to convince anyone who is willing to believe the worst about the coalition.