Untitled Document
Let's start with the headline
in today's story of tragedy and war crimes: "Iraqis
Say 11 People Killed in U.S. Raid." Oh, "Iraqis say," do they?
Not quite. After the second paragraph of the story tells us
"the military said only four people were killed -- a man, two women and
a child," we eventually make our way down to the ninth paragraph where
we learn that there's a little more than the word of the "Iraqis":
"Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children
and four other covered figures arriving at the hospital accompanied by grief-stricken
relatives."
So, even with AP photographers on the scene documenting the atrocity,
as "hard" and non-circumstantial as evidence gets, the AP still gives
a "he-said, she-said" credibility to the ludicrous claim of the U.S.
military that only four people were killed.
As to the actual story, well, what can be said that hasn't been said hundreds
of times before? Why were these 11 people killed? "The U.S. military said
it was targeting and captured an individual suspected of supporting foreign
fighters for the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist network." But much higher in
the article, we were told that "the U.S. military acknowledged the raid
and said it captured one insurgent." So it now appears it wasn't an "insurgent"
at all, but a suspected supporter of resistance fighters. And based
on that suspicion, the U.S. was willing to use warplanes and armor to flatten
a house (a curious way to attempt to "capture" someone, incidentally),
inside of which they had no idea who was present, and in the process to kill
11 people.
By the way, the first sentence of this post contains the phrase "war crimes."
You knew that phrase didn't come from the AP article, didn't you?
Postscript: CNN reports the story something like this: "U.S.
troops report that they were shot at from the house, and they returned fire."
Sorry, attacking a house with bombs and tank shells is not just "returning
fire." It's a complete and callous indifference to the possibility that
any non-combatants might be inside, even if you accept the right of the U.S.
troops to be there in the first place (which of course I don't).
