There are a number of dead women and children who are not worth killing for this "victory". You may believe this is an acceptable level of "colateral damage", but I, for one, do not :(. You will find that Iraqis (remember you are trying to win their hearts and minds) will be even less inclined to think "it was worth it"...

This is what i don't get.... If they (the Iraqis) would stop shooting at us, I'm sure we would stop shooting too... What is it that they are trying to defend?? The chance to avoid freedom ?? I just don't get it.

"The U.S. military said coalition troops had come under hostile fire and had returned fire. It said troops recovered weapons, Iraqi and Syrian currency, foreign passports, and satellite communications equipment following the incident. "

2mill dinar is around $1000. The band expected to take home about 4mill dinars, but unfortuanely they are all dead. Bugger. (5 dead band members are confirmed to have been delivered to a hospital morgue.) Wedding parties in that part of world go for days. Everyone has a weapon, and they usually get fired at weddings. The bride and groom are dead too. Syrian passorts were found, oddly, given the proximity to the Syrian border. PR mouthpiece Kimmit, surprise, surprise, disputes the fact that children were killed. The children were obviously killed later for propaganda purposes.

More obfuscation , more spin, more dead Iraqis. I cant believe you guys can suck this stuff up. Looks like a duck, sounds like a duck- its duck. This has all the hallmarks of a ware crime, no better than the atrocities of Bosnia.

stuart

Good article in the Independent (left wing UK magazine, but they list their sources so you can make up your own mind):

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=523356

It is allways bad when innocent people get killed. I am sure an investigation is in order and will happen. I think the telling evidence will be the radio coms calling in the CAS. If there is gunfire in the background than some one not telling the truth. If the witnesess say they did not fire weapons and did not hear any than either the CAS hit the wrong place or someone is not telling everthing there is to tell.

http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/lol2.gif http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/...amingdevil.gif

investigation? by who?

have you heard the saying,
I'm judge and i'm jury and I'm executioner too....

Your point is?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1221658,00.html

Read this and see if you still want to yuck it up.

This is -another- PR diasaster. Does the military understand that whatever victory it might have achieved in this incident, its simply made irrelevant by the enormity of the damage done to the overall mission? Not only does it inflame and enrage the Arab world, I imagine quite a few Americans are ashamed of their military today.

There are war colleges, people devote their lives to the study and practice of the profession of arms. We are supposed to be good at this, experts, professionals.


stuart

As long as the mainstream media copies its stories from Al Jazeera....nothing we do willl be reported correctly...so why even care what they print? Every prisoner was tortured, every deserter ..did so because of the prison scandals, every battle is an atrocity that intentionally targeted civilians. The economy is getting worse when every indicator demonstrates otherwise! It is funny that the prison abuse scandals stay on the front page for weeks while a beheading and finding nearly a gallon of nerve agent lasts only a day.

Dont be dissing al Jazeera. Try using it. Then compare what we see and hear with what tyhe Arab street sees. Most of al Jazeera is BBC trained, it operates to very high standards. It gets enormous flak from within the Arab world from regimes and royal houses that are not used to the glare of a media spotlight or any form of scrutiny. Just as a counterpoint, -becaise there certainly biased voices in Arab media-what do you think the Arab Street would make of "We report, you believe" FOX?

I think we need to iunderstand that tehres a difference between an atrocity committed by a terrorist group in case al Qaeda, and an atrocity committed by an organised uniformed army under the flag of liberation an democracy. Isnt there?

stuart

That sentence sure explains a lot.

No different from me using Drudge and Limbaugh.

It helps to know what the other side is saying and observe what they leave out.

There is a segment of the population thatonly gets information from sources like Al Jazzera and a segment that only gets information from Limbaugh and Drudge. If you don't understand where they get their info, you can't understand where they get their blindered view of the world.

Or are you in the 'don't understand them, nuke 'em camp?

What I hope it explains is that it is important to take information from as wide a variety of sources as is possible. The internet, as you are no doubt aware, is an amazing tool for this. al Jazerra isnt your enemy any more than CNN is. It in fact should be seen as real opening up of the Arab Street.

It would be incedibly naive to beieve this war is any other than a public relations-that is, propaganda- battle. I put it to you that it is our duty as a citizens of an open and robust democracies to read widely, evaluate critically and apply the blowtorch to the belly of our leaders-who have after all, taken us to war in a far off plaxce where we our armies are killing people who havent done anything to us in our names.

That about as serious as it gets, isnt it?

stuart

You've lost focus on the primary mission. The goal is to keep the peace. Secondary to that, while admittedly critical, is not pissing on the entire universe. Granted, we're doing miserably at both right now, and failing at the secondary mission is liable to result in failing at the primary mission, but you can't lose sight of the point, which is making Iraq stable. To declare that any war is merely a PR battle is a gross failure to understand this thing that we call war.

As to the soldiers who fired these particular rounds -- what ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" The story so far looks like it was a big mistake, but so many are very quick to condemn them for a massive human rights violation before any investigation has been done. I like to believe that, for the most part, most soldiers are good people, that they do not intentionally do stupid things, that they do not intentionally murder innocent women and children, etc. Yes, there are always cases where I'm wrong, but it's generally contrary to the basic principles that make this country what it is to assume that these guys are guilty already.

(sigh) What a mess....


Dan

Dan

I’d love to give the US military the benefit of the doubt, I truly would. I am, believe it or not, usually the first to defend the profession of arms and the nature of what we ask the military to do on our behalf, and the toll it takes on the individuals who do it.

However, not anymore. Not after Guantanamo Bay. Not after the photographs of the Baghdad prison. Not after the foreign news service footage of this wedding incident I saw which I will bet my house will never air in the US. Whether the miliary finds some way to justify this action or not is frankly irrelevant- they engaged, they killed 40 people at a wedding. Its not about one soldier firing some bad shots. This is about the methods being used by the military in Iraq. Any moral high ground that we may have occupied, even after the fiasco of the missing WMD, the non existent terror links was pinned to the notion of liberation for the people of Iraq, the end of tyranny. Well that’s been p1ssed away in just a few weeks. I cant believe the militarily could f*ck up so badly, its gobsmacking in its stupidity, just breathtaking.

Not about PR? The US can and has crushed militarily. It could do what it wants but for the glare of public scrutiny and the weight public opinion. The military thinks PR cost them Vietnam, and its not about to let that happen again. Except its has.

I do not believe there is a way back from this. These last few weeks will be looked back on as the ones that cost this war. We do agree on one thing. What a mess.

Stuart

After watching al Jazeera claiming that our troops were being destroyed in south Iraq, that we were losing the war, and could never reach Baghdad and then flipping on the TV and watching the tanks roll through the center of Baghdad...I cannot believe that anyone other than a fool would take them seriously. As long as the terrorists continue to operate out of schools, mosques, and homes....there well always be accompanying civilian casualties in any battle. Those are the fault of the terrorists for hiding behind civilians.

Don't miss my meaning, Stu -- PR is critical. ****** up PR is pretty serious business. OTOH, screwing up the war effort because we're too focused on PR is just as serious. Given the choice of telling my soldiers not to shoot back because they shouldn't shoot innocents is, in my mind, a worse failure than allowing them to make battlefield decisions as necessary. Hmmm ... seems like this probably comes down to problems in training and recruiting that yield lower quality soldiers? Just a hypothesis, nothing really to back it.

The last couple weeks have been absolutely abyssmal for this country, and you're right -- we're liable to go down in history for these mistakes.

But somehow I still cling naively to the idea that the vast overwhelming majority of our troops are honorable men and women, serving their country as best as they know how. We're getting a colossally bad collection of random and pretty much unrelated mistakes right now. Is it because our military hasn't had the training and recruiting dollars that it should have had? Is this a problem in general American patriotism, in that our best and finest aren't going military? Is it a grand decision from Donnie and Vern to ruin the known universe? Tough to tell from here, really.

Dan

Was al Jazeera making such claims, or was al Jazeera reporting that such such claims had been made?

That was the line being run by the Iraqi govt. All media reported that.

stuart

Dan
Leadership and organisational culture "We"wear the white hats. We dont torture. We dont send soldiers to kill women and children. We believe in human dignity. And if you choose to do these things, then I will not support my soldiers standing with yours. You are on your own.

We expect our military to reflect those values. Otherwise we are simply substituting one form of oppression for another.

Having read that, I think Im the naive one actually. have to say, I'm pretty f'in angry at the moment.

best stuart