Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Loren Pechtel · 07-10-2003, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by RLV
There was no need to suppress them, because none were there!

It was an isolated area on a road from Iraq to Syria. There was no city, no military base, no soldiers, no defence at all. Just a bridge and a bus full of Syrian workers heading back home to avoid the war. They didn't arrive there because the pilot of an US plane decided to avoid the minimal, nearly null, risk that he would have incurred if he had checked the presence of civilian traffic before bombing the bridge.

IOW, the pilot didn't care about any civilian loss that he might cause, as far as he was as safe as possible.

All that talk about a clean war and about minimal civilian losses has been just another of the pre-attack lies propagated in order to make the invasion easier to sell to the US people. The was hasn't been clean at all, civilian losses have been big and they are still mounting, and the US military didn't do much to prevent them, if this meant incurring in the slightest risk to their safety or to the objective of the mission.

RLV

In hindsight we know there was no AA. At the time, though, how could the pilot know?

Furthermore, the fact that we stayed out of the range of light AA fire means they wouldn't bother to deploy it. Had we been making a haibt of coming lower, putting soldiers with SA-7's near important targets would have been a useful tactic for them.

RLV · 07-11-2003, 04:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Loren Pechtel
[B]In hindsight we know there was no AA. At the time, though, how could the pilot know?
Furthermore, the fact that we stayed out of the range of light AA fire means they wouldn't bother to deploy it. Had we been making a haibt of coming lower, putting soldiers with SA-7's near important targets would have been a useful tactic for them.

Er... I repeat: there were no soldiers. There was no defence. Nodoby there, save Syrian civilians trying to get back to their country. It wasn't an important target, it was just a bridge on a road far away from the main fields of battle.

But anyway, you are making clear that even the slightest chance of a risk to the pilot is more important than the lives of civilians. This reflects perfectly the attitude the US military showed, the attitude that led to the thousands of civilians killed.

And the hipocrisy of claiming that they tried to avoid civilian casualties.

RLV

garraty · 07-11-2003, 07:17 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by RLV

Do you want more examples? The many incidents in which unarmed civilians were killed by US soldiers in road checkpoints. As some US soldiers had suffered an attack from a car, they started shooting at the slightest suspicion of any danger. As a result, many Iraqi civilians were killed or injured, including women and children.

RLV

You definately don't want to read this:

Iraq: The Human Toll

Quote:

Departure was delayed by a sandstorm, and the family - the four children in the back - set off shortly after noon in Kassim's new car. A few minutes later they reached the American checkpoint at the northern gate to the city. (Significantly, the suicide bomb which killed four US soldiers at a road block and was credited with inflaming American behaviour at check points, occurred a full four days later on 29 March at Najaf. This was the incident described by the Washington Post as, 'The first such attack of the war.') 'I could see two tanks,' recalls Kassim. 'They were sand-coloured, with markings on them. I was afraid and stopped my car 60m away. Less than a minute passed. They did not open anything, I saw no one. It was silent.' [The American tanks kept their hatches down. The Marines inside would have been looking through their green-tinted rectangular window, at a civilian car carrying a couple and four children.] 'I was frozen with fear,' continues Kassim. 'I could see their guns moving down. Then there was a terrible noise, and my car was buried in shooting.'

Trust me, it gets a lot fucking worse from that point on.

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