While I was skeptical at first (what are the chances of errant bombs / missiles both hitting market places?), the Guardian article seems fairly damning. This is assuming that Fisk is a reliable source.
So, a metal fragment was found at the scene with the English acroynm “MFG” with an associated number that identifies the manufacturer as Raytheon. I wasn’t aware that Raytheon was a supplier to Iraq, so I have trouble imagining that it was other rayheon “stuff”.
N.B. I do consider it possible that the Iraqis planted the evidence.
This one’s easy. If everyone “heard the plane” we know it was not an Iraqi plane. What was it then. Probably not a U.S. plane. How about a cruise missile? It has a turbofan engine (you know, like in jets) and sounds like a jet plane!
Not sure about this either, but I believe this was the explosion in the second market place which, IIRC, was quite a bit larger than the one in the first market place.
I’ve seen speculation on other message boards that this serial number corresponds to a HARM missile. This missile seeks out and destroys antiaircraft radar. Now let’s assume that this fragment was not planted for a journalist to find (it’s not as though munition fragments are hard to find in Baghdad right now). Does this make the situation any less murky from a moral standpoint? Not really. At least three possibilities present themselves.
a. There was a mobile antiaircraft radar parked in or near that market place that moved on before being hit.
b. There’s an antiaircraft radar installation near the market and the missile missed.
c. The missile missed by a whole lot and just plowed into the market.
In cases a and b, this would be a case of having installed military assets near a civilian area. In case c, it would be a horrible and unfortunate accident, but still not a case of the US targeting civilian populations, unless one somehow thinks that the US prefers to use expensive HARM missiles to bomb civilian sites.
Sure. Any article can seem damning if you’re allowed to assume guilt by insinuation.
Raytheon doesn’t have to be a supplier to Iraq. Again, I’m guessing wildly here, but Raytheon could very well have contracts with, say, France or Russia for weapons that were approved to sell to allies. Weapons such as, oh, certain anti-aircraft missiles. And it’s also possible that France or Russia then sold or traded such missiles to Iraq. Is it likely? I don’t know.
In the first place, we don’t know if it was a “plane” that the folks in the marketplace heard. In the second place, I don’t know how much noise a cruise missile makes as it reaches its target. For some reason, I was thinking that a cruise missile (especially one deployed from an airplane) actually cruised, or glided, as it approached its target, to cut down on the noise level and reduce any warning the enemy would receive. That could be a Tom Clancy-inspired bit of stupid information, though, and I freely admit that I could be wrong about that.
I’m speaking solely of the first marketplace explosion. As for the second marketplace that was hit, Sky News is reporting that the explosions were the result of falling Iraqi ordnance, and that the Iraqi air defense minister has been replaced. Is that correct? I don’t know.
Nah; if the Iraqis wanted to plant evidence as “proof” of American bombing, they’d use a piece of shrapnel with a big ol’ American flag on it instead. Using manufacturing numbers is too subtle.
You can find more detail on Finagle’s theory here.
Interestingly enough, I see this today from The Agonist -
So I guess they haven’t yet dispensed with the hypothesis that the explosions came from Iraqi sources. Be nice if we had some journalists on the ground in Baghdad who weren’t knee-jerk morons like Fisk, we might have a chance knowing what is really going on there.
