US Troops kill seven women and children - Iraqi setup?

Great Debates
181

Sorry, but I don’t see anything that suggests he has any experience beyond standard military checkpoints. He specifically states that few soldiers have experience with similar situations.

My point is that there are soldiers who DO have experience with operating in areas with a hostile population supporting terrorists. There are even soldiers on location with such experience. And they quite consistenly have expressed disgust and contempt at the way the US Forces have been interacting with others.

ExTank’s comment, in the end, amounts to the soldier having a right to panic, the civilian not, which is a flat-out violation of the Geneva convention. It’s the obligation of the soldier to go out of his way to protect the civilian. NOT vice versa. Unless ExTank suggests that any waffling about liberation is sheer hypocrisy, and the ‘liberated’ part of Iraq is now a US colony, it is still the Iraqi who is at home, and the GI who is outside US territory.

182

For those still reading this thread, another car bomb has just killed 5 people.

183

Mandelstam, you’ve been one of the few reasonable people in this thread, what’s your take on the article? We can dismiss the clerics as unreliable, but at a minimum I say the article makes it clear that the “Iraqi Ploy Theory” (IPT) is not unreasonable.

184

There has been one Brit soldier cited. Since you obviously have other sources not available to the American public, could you provide some cites?

185

Plenty of Brit soldiers took off their helmets and sunglasses to look more approachable to civilians and distance themselves from the GIs.

Take a look at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23555-2003Apr3.html

and let me quote:

British military experts contend both incidents would be less likely at a British checkpoint. Under their military procedure, checkpoints are manned by only one soldier, with others covering him at a distance, to limit the potential human toll from a car bomb. The British also say they signpost their checkpoints in Arabic and place physical barriers well ahead of the stopping point to slow vehicles before they are deemed a threat.

and

*“I love Americans – they’re wonderful to work with,” said Goldsworthy, who served alongside U.S. forces in Turkey and Bosnia. “But I’m afraid the American attitude of today is like the British attitude of 120 years ago during the Empire. We thought everyone wanted to be an Englishman and live an English life, celebrate the queen and have cream tea. Americans seem to believe that everyone is envious and wants to be part of America. It’s as though they haven’t learned the lessons we’ve learned in a very hard way.”

Goldsworthy cites photographs showing American soldiers ordering Iraqi civilians to lie face down in the dirt while they are checked for weapons. “For Arabs, to be spread-eagled with your face in the dust is a hugely shameful thing,” she said.

What the Iraqis want more than anything is respect, and to feel valued and feel treated as human beings," she said. “What our troops show is a willingness to be humble, to lose a football match 9 to 3. If the Americans had played, I’m afraid they would have wanted to win.”*

There’s been plenty of Brits complaining about trigger-happy Americans, and foreign journalists who got to experience American paranoia first hand.

186

Ok, OliverH, I read that article yesterday. I also read an article about how the coordination of US and UK troops, based on the UK’s training in peacekeeping, is to allow the US to do the shooting, and allow the UK to do the peacekeeping. Sort of like bad cop/good cop. So, where are the rest of the cites? If there are foreign journalists experiencing “American paranoia” who are they writing for? The Mirror? Guardian? The Berliner Kurier? Inquiring minds want to know…

187

Another report on Aro’s story.

Kinda defeats the whole, “suicide bombers don’t kill their families” argument? Eh?
cnn link.

188

OliverH: uhm, check the link in my sig. I’ve “been there, done that,” you know what I mean?

As far as what I may or may not have implicitly stated (from your point-of-view, at least), I said no such thing (from my point-of-view).

Civilians caught in a war not of their making have every right to be nervous; I explicitly said that nervous civilians in a war zone, who have any shred of notions of self preservation, will NOT charge (fail to stop, continue to advance, otherwise disobey) even an hastily prepared position with armored vehicle backup.

And that soldiers, as human beings, have every right to that same sense of self preservation. There is nothing, in any Geneva Convention briefing/training I received, to indicate that I, or any other soldier is, was, or should be obligated to die for foreign civilians in time of war.

Enemy combatants are supposed to be identifiable by uniforms and rank insignias; soldiers dressing in civilian clothes to spring close range ambushes is, IIRC, a violation of the Geneva Convention. Civil and military authorities who hold civilians hostage as human shields are in violation of the Geneva Convention.

Soldiers manning a checkpoint (even if it is just a hastily erected roadblock) shooting a vehicle, with unknown number of occupants of unknown intention, that fail or refuse to stop when ordered, are not in violation of the Geneva Convention.

At least not when I was in. Since that wasn’t all that long ago, I cannot conceive of the Geneva Convention having been radically altered otherwise.

189

Not really.

  1. women who appears to be pregnant gets of car
  2. she starts screaming (not running away from car)
  3. soldiers are drawn towards car
  4. car blows up
190

Rhum, you’ve asked for a more detailed commentary than I can provide at the moment. Will get back you tonight or tomorrow.

ExTank: *" Regardless of race, religion, color, creed, sex, or sexual orientation, a 25 ton armored vehicle armed with a 25mm cannon, parked in the middle of a road, with armed soldiers waving you to a stop, is its own STOP sign.

I know I would stop.

I’m pretty sure you would stop."*

Ex, this “human truism” approach to this episode is of limited value since no one doubts that it’s a strange an unfortunate thing. The driver apparently believed that the stop he had made several miles before was the official stop and he seemed to think he was being waved on. We are talking about a very confused, possibly quite tired and hungry man from a remote farm, fleeing for his life with his family and as many of his worldly possessions as he can stuff in a crowded 1974 Land Rover. Can we honestly put ourselves in his place? I don’t think so. In any case, I’m trying to rationalize his behavior; I’m merely pointing out that there’s no evidence that his odd behavior was due to a hostage situation involving still other family members in some unspecified location. That’s not the story that he’s telling, there’s no evidence to back it up, and the story that he is telling is plausible enough. Have you read the two articles yet?

“So I have a very difficult time faulting those all-too-human soldiers…”

I have not been faulting the soldiers. On the contrary, I’ve been saying that this has been a tragedy for them too. (OTOH, it’s clear that the procedures need to be improved; and your own posts on how checkpoints should work provides further evidence of that.)

OliverH., I’d like to get back to you too on your thoughts about the tactical advantage of British troops for this type of duty. In brief for the moment: I don’t doubt it, given their experience with Northern Ireland. Still I think one should acknowledge that the American soldiers did not behave callously or defensively after the incident; as I’ve said again and again, they were clearly anguished by what had happened.

As to the new car bomb incident: if anything this confirms my impression that the incident we’ve been discussing in this thread was not a voluntary or coerced suicide mission. My guess is the pregnant woman in the car bomb case either knew or suspected what her husband was up to and either panicked or tried to escape in the end. OTOH, maybe she was willingly part of it too and merely hoped to attract soldiers to the car so that they would die. In either case, there’s not much ambiguity here.

By comparison, the Land Rover incident involved no bomb. It’s a different kind of situation: and at best what you’ve got is the theory that the driver was forced to drive past a checkpoint and thus risk death for himself and his family because somewhere else still other family members were being threatened. The motive in that case was just to make the US look bad.

Well, maybe. But in this instance I think the US has made itself look bad, as I’ve said, by not responding in more dignified fashion to what in all likelihood was just a tragedy.

191

In my response to Ex: that should be “I’m not trying to rationalize his behavior…”

192

How about a little sense of proportion here?

The only thing that makes this story interesting is the possibility that they were forced into provoking a tragic incident that can be blamed on the US. If that possiblilty is dismissed, the so is the significance of the story.

What pecentage of the Earth’s population was killed? What percentage of Iraq’s population was killed?

A handful of people you never heard of died–along with the rest of the proverbial “forty thousand men and women” who also died that day.

Film at a fucking leven.

193

Thanks for stopping in sqweels. :rolleyes:

194

Firebomb question: We known a Muslim in the U.S. army attacked his fellows. Why isn’t the military under orders to fire upon fellow soldiers that do not seem to be following orders or seem dangerous?

Forebomb question 2: Why did news stories continue to report that no warning shots were fired, when long after the direct eyewitness account of the commander implies that there is no reason to believe that warning shots WERE fired in time?

195

Maybe they are? What’s your point? What does the fact that the soldier was Muslim have to do with other soldiers? This must be one of those bombs that doesn’t go off.

More like incoherent bomb. I have read the above five times, I still have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe I’m just stupid, but could you try to restate this?

196

It clearly didn’t change their attitude a lot, given the new incident, in which people were NOT just killed in the car which didn’t stop, but in cars BEHIND it, suggesting that the whole area was hosed down with bullets. That, together with the experiences non-embedded journalists made with US troops suggests a high degree of mental problems. Riddling everything with bullets that’s moving is not a very rational thing to do. If they can’t pull themselves together, they should be relieved.

197

Mandelstam: thanks for the rational response. I know that if I were one of the soldiers at that checkpoint (regardless of however elaborate it was or wasn’t), I’d be feeling pretty goddamned awful over the incident, whether it was a planned attack or just a very bad tragedy of errors (which I acknowledge developing evidence indicates).

I don’t feel that I am unique, although I will also acknowledge that suicide attacks on American troops can do very bad things to their morale, and their thought processes; things which, as OliverH seems to be implying, are inconsistent with the multiple objectives of

  1. defeating an armed force,
  2. pacifying a partially insurgent civilian population,
  3. and helping scared and confused civilian noncombatant refugees in a war zone.

Those three objectives, under the best of circumstances, are almost humanly incompatible; it does take an extremely disciplined armed force to absorb the casualties of #2 while NOT turning their frustration, anger and fear upon #3, thus engendering a self-sustaining negative feedback loop.

Something the U.S. post-Cold-War feel-good military may not be up to…but is their responsibility under the rules of war and the tenets of human decency to attempt.

I think that the vast majority of officers and long-service NCOs are up to the task; it’s the smaller, squad- and platoon-level units led by junior (thus younger, less experienced) officers and NCOs that face the greatest danger, on both accounts.

I am not retracting my earlier statements that, in light of the suicide attacks from civilians upon Coalition forces, it is NOT unreasonable for Coalition troops to eventually adopt a view of ANY non-Coalition person, in uniform or not, as a potential enemy and be very nervous about them.

Too much of that for too long is going to eventually be counterproductive.

198

Well, legal language is about as formal as things can get in the English language, particularly when said legal language pertains to matters of international law and diplomacy. I don’t have my Black’s Law Dictionary handy here (it’s at the office), but I can tell you that in the context of international treaties, “shall” explicitly means “will,” as in “is required to.” So if the U.S. occupies Iraq, they do have an affirmative obligation to protect the civilian population.

Eva Luna, paralegal and former court interpreter

(P.S. Any international law types who would like to expand on this, please go ahead, but the topic probably is worthy of a separate thread.)

199

Well, I do have my copy of Black’s at hand, and while it says that the usual and preferred reading of shall is to give rise to an imperitive, it also recognizes that shall can be used as a permissive. In any event, unless someone wants to find the actual language of the convention and post it, all we are dealing with is one person’s paraphrase, and that’s hardly a good place to start when dealing with legal issues.

Rhum Runner, current law student and former paralegal.

200

Well, if anyone knows exactly which Geneva Convention we’re talking about, I’ll take a crack at it later tonight. If not, it’ll have to wait until Monday, when I’m on my faster office Internet connection and where I have many such things bookmarked, not to mention a co-worker to bug who is a former human rights lawyer.