No one has adressed this, so i’ll repost it:
In the real word, these people had relatives. Implying that their deaths were voluntary, and meant to “frame” the US army does not show much respect for them.
So are you guys even remotely concerned about what reactions your speculations would provoke in the people your army are currently “trying to liberate”?
Actually, what the article said is that a full investigation is pending. Although warning shots seem to have been fired, it’s not clear that they were fired in time to serve the purpose. Signs in Arabic may also help.
Here are some things that the article reports which are not in dispute:
“Fifteen Iraqi civilians were packed inside the Toyota…along with as many of their possessions as the jammed vehicle could hold. Ten of them, including five children who appeared to be under 5 years old, were killed on the spot when the high-explosive rounds slammed into their target…”
“It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen, and I hope I never see it again,” Sgt. Mario Manzano, 26, an Army medic… He said one of the wounded women sat in the vehicle holding the mangled bodies of two of her children. “She didn’t want to get out of the car,” he said."
"Lt. Col. Stephen Twitty, the 3rd Battalion commander, gave permission for three of the survivors to return to the vehicle and recover the bodies of their loved ones. Medics gave the group 10 body bags. U.S. officials offered an unspecified amount of money to compensate them.
“They wanted to bury them before the dogs got to them,” said Cpl. Brian Truenow, 28, of Townsend, Mass."
Later "10 people carrying white flags walked down the same road. They were seven children, an old man, a woman and a boy in his teens.
“Tell them to go away,” Johnson ordered. But he reconsidered when told that the family said their house had been blown up and that they were trying to reach the home of relatives in a safer area."
and
“Dealing with the gruesome scene was a new experience for many of the U.S. soldiers deployed here, and they debated how the tragedy could have been avoided.”
I think our debate here, under these incredibly sad circumstances, has been a lot less dignified.
Umm, recently it’s been less and less secular. Have you read the transcripts of any of Saddam’s speeches from the last ten years or so? And even if there are no official laws prohibiting women from riding with unrelated males, it’s worth asking how the Islamic laws apply to the plausibility of a scenario. I personally think it doesn’t matter, if they really were refugees even a devout Muslim may violate the letter of the law to preserve their life.
I’m sorry, but I class the intentional shooting of what turns out to be unarmed civilians as a screw up. It may not have been the fault of the soldiers on the scene, it may not have been the fault of the military commanders who ordered the policy, it may not have been, even, the fault of the US President who ordered them all there to begin with, but all combined it’s a screw up. The needless death of innocents.
But rather than accept this, and swallow the realisation that the War on Iraqi is a whole lot uglier than impressive, safely distant and sanitised explosions on TV followed by a bout of flag waving, we get dumb, foundless theories about suicide families out to create bad propaganda. “Well huh? This wasn’t in the script! Those nasty Iraqi’s must be the ones up to their tricks again, certainly nothing to do with us!”
Futile Gesture -
No one is saying the families are out to create anti-American propaganda (except at gunpoint, perhaps).
It is abundantly clear that the Iraqi government is. And if they are willing to use their own civilians as human shields and force people to fight for them at gunpoint, it is hardly beyond the realm of possibility that they would use a carful of women and children to try to create an incident.
Theories about people being forced into being human shields or suicide bombers are neither “dumb” nor “foundless”. It happens. And it seems screamingly obvious that this is what the Iraqi government wants to happen when they employ soldiers not in uniform, make fraudulent offers of surrender and then begin firing, and commit all the other violations of the laws of war which they have been willing to commit since the war began.
On the one hand, you have a government made up of known and proven liars. On the other are the Americans and Brits, who are obviously doing everything reasonable to minimize civilian casualties. Is it any wonder that the rest of us cast a jaundiced eye on the latest screams from the Butcher of Baghdad and his cohorts that the Americans are baby-murderers?
Skepticism is one thing. We should not be accepting what anyone tells us at face value. But do you honestly think that forcing a family to try to crash a checkpoint is beyond the people who have been murdering, torturing, and raping civilians for the last forty years?
I don’t. It sounds right up Saddam’s alley.
This is not proof that the family involved were conspirators against the American invasion. But I would not class it as beyond the realm of possiblity.
Although we will probably never know.
Regards,
Shodan
I believe, Shodan, should you read thouroughly Mandelstams quotes above, you’d see that it is quite unlikely that things happened that way. For example the following:
“Fifteen Iraqi civilians were packed inside the Toyota…along with as many of their possessions as the jammed vehicle could hold. Ten of them, including five children who appeared to be under 5 years old, were killed on the spot when the high-explosive rounds slammed into their target…” (My Bolding)
Right. I was just responding to Randy who was taking one quote out of context as an indication that there were no warning shots, or that the shots were not fired in time. The rest of the article states that the platoon did fire the warning shots.
Perhaps if you could remove your blinders, you would be able to follow the conversation.
Querry - Is it possible that the van’s driver, for some reason, deliberately chose to ignore repeated warning shots and force the troops to open fire, resulting in civilian casualties?
Answer: Given the number of things that the Iraqis have been willing to do, (See Shodan’s post), it is not outside the realm of the possible that this was deliberate.
Where, in this analysis, does anything about a ‘sanitised’ war enter into the picture? What does that have to do with the subject at all? Given that we know Irag has used schools as barracks, and put tanks in hospitals, dressed their soldiers as civilians, etc. why would you call it “dumb and foundless” to speculate that this is just another example of the same kind of behavior?
I think it needs to be pointed out again:
I don’t think that anyone is really trying to state that the civilians in the van WERE terrorists and that therefore the soldiers were justified in firing on them. What IS being put forth is that the soldiers had no way of knowing IF the van was loaded with terrorists or not. All they knew is:
Actually, I had a long discussion with some Iranian Friends of mine who were there during the 8 year war. Oddly enough they laughed when I brought up the Iraqi soldiers dressed in civilian uniforms.
They said during the war many civilians who were armed would leave their villiages and join a battle if it was near them. They said it would be more likely that the “soldiers” may actually be civilians. They believe the US is keeping morale from flagging by declaring that every one of them is a soldier out of uniform (After all how would you feel if you are being shot at by civilians who you are out to liberate).
That aside, I think it is ridiculous to believe these civilians were out to provoke an incident. Considering the amount of freindly fire incidents in any war how is it improbable that the checkpoint made an error, or that the drivers made an error in judgement?
To suggest this is some futile propaganda bid is twisted. Suicide bombers and the like take themselves and their intended victims out they do not bring their families along. As crazy as you may think them to be they do tend to show love and care for their own families they just have a screwed up way of “solving” the problems for their families.
There is a surprising (well not so surprising) lack of objectivity out there lately when it comes to the War. Errors happen, but there are those who seem more ready to believe in the evil conspiracies of the Iraqi regieme than on the errors of the coillition even when they seem less likely.
I will not buy the “but they are not like us” arguments which seem to suggest this family would sacrifice their children like this. What would keep them from stopping once in the American fire zone unless it was blind panic or miscommunication, or worse they didn’t have an adequate chance.
Yup, I’m sure minimizing casualties is on their . minds
One of the (british) survivors of friendly american fire said on TV (about US pilots): “They have no respect for human lfe”
I tend to agree with the line of thinking that the van-shooting was a tragic accident caused by the panic of the soldiers, civilians, or, most likely, some degree of both.
There is, however, some support for the notion that it was a set-up:
I point this out not to get derided for citing a cite to Fox, but because the cite here identifies a specific cleric making the “set-up” claim.
On kingpengvin’s slight hijack about Iraqi soldiers in civilian uniforms, I would point out that many news reports have noted that the civilian clothes often were worn directly over the uniforms. Does that account for all “civilian” shooters? Almost certainly not.
Hey everyone, definitive proof: American’s have no respect for human life! Gosh, I’m glad we settled that.
Your link doesn’t work, BTW
oops… this is the working link
Well Rhum, first of all I was not quoting the article, as you can quickly verify. And my claim was that a captain shouted at the soldiers for “waiting to long to fire warning shots”. And your claim that “the platoon did fire warning shots” and “they fired the warning shots too late” are not mutually exlusive statements, right?
Well, Randy, if you had read the article you would know that the people at the scene believed that the shots were fired in time, in contrast to the officer’s original statement that they were not timely. The two statements are not mutually exclusive, they are just not supported by the article.
Toaster: “I don’t think that anyone is really trying to state that the civilians in the van WERE terrorists and that therefore the soldiers were justified in firing on them. What IS being put forth is that the soldiers had no way of knowing IF the van was loaded with terrorists or not.”
Actually, I think it’s just the opposite (although you probably missed Rhum Runner’s post, which is very much to the point). I don’t recall that anybody is suggesting that the soldiers should have known more than they knew–so that is not under debate.
The title of this thread is, after all, “Iraqi setup?”
RhumRunner has just invoked Shodan to argue that “it is not outside the realm of the possible that this was deliberate.”
His point does not seem to be to exonerate the soldiers for what they couldn’t possibly have known, but to keep open the possibility that this may have been an Iraqi set-up.
For myself, I don’t see how anyone can read the article and come away that impression.
In fact, I don’t see how anyone can read the article without holding back tears: for the Iraqis, for the soldiers, for everyone.
[in response to my hijack] I certainly did not mean to imply all of them were civilians but I wouldn’t be surprised how many there are and will be in the coming days [/back to your regular programing]
Until the passangers confirm this I remain doubtful to the claims of some cleric who heard things second hand from opposition members.
I just caught that statement by the cleric shown on FoxNews bbonden. Very interesting, and unfortunately not suprising.
I would say that the OP and the statements of many posters more rather implies that it is likely that the van’s driver (and / or the passengers) was a Saddam lojalist willfully sacrificing him / themselves in order to cause the US military material / publicity damage.
I would also say that it is in reality genuinely unlikely that so is the case given for example the facts inherent in f.e. Mandlestam’s quote.
Ok, I admit to being curious as to what you think this proves. Please, enlighten me as to what sweeping generalization we are to draw from this single grainy photograph of indeterminate origin and authenticity that is being hosted on geocities.com. Don’t hold back, I think you are on to something big here.
