Surge of Baghdad Violence Leaves 25 Dead

[on-ramp]

is this the type of "collateral" damage that's justifiable?

Surge of Baghdad Violence Leaves 25 Dead
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20040912%2F1339077010.htm&sc=1107&photoid=20040912BAG108&floc=NW_1-T

Many of the dead were killed when a U.S. helicopter fired on a disabled U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle as Iraqis swarmed around it, cheering, throwing stones and waving the black and yellow sunburst banner of Iraq's most-feared terror organization.

The dead from the helicopter strike included Arab television reporter Mazen al-Tumeizi - who screamed ``I'm dying, I'm dying'' as a cameraman recorded the chaotic scene. An Iraqi cameraman working for the Reuters news agency and an Iraqi freelance photographer for Getty Images were also wounded.

Originally posted by on-ramp
is this the type of "collateral" damage that's justifiable?

Yes it's definately one of the types that's justifiable. There are many, many others as well.

If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes?

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

[on-ramp]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=1&u=/nm/20040912/wl_nm/iraq_dc

Violence Sweeps Iraq, U.S. Gunship Fires on Crowd

[ronin]

hey Mark, did you hear the one about the Pole, the Hole, and the Mole?

Hillary?

[ronin]

LMAO. even I didn't see that one coming

[fintstone]

Originally posted by on-ramp
is this the type of "collateral" damage that's justifiable?

Most definitely! But I would hardly call it collateral based on your story:

Many of the dead were killed when a U.S. helicopter fired on a disabled U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle as Iraqis swarmed around it, cheering, throwing stones and waving the black and yellow sunburst banner of Iraq's most-feared terror organization.

[cegerer]

Newsflash: there's a war going on in Iraq. Innocent people being inadvertantly killed is part of war. Happens in all of them ...... but thanks for the update anyway.

[SteveStromberg]

Lets see I will stand here next to Islmofasist while the hold a Death chant fest I should be fine. What a Stupid reporter That will teach them to hang with the bad guys and broadcast their porpganda.

That one was for you Rod.

Two Thumbs Up for the Choppers Gunner. Thank Sir for sending them to meet Alaha. To bad the number wasnt higher oh well better luck next time.

[fintstone]

Usually when folks are attacking your vehicle and are carrying the enemy flag....shooting them is not considered collateral....it is considered justified.

[fintstone]

Any reporter stupid enough to be amongst a group attacking a US military vehicle...should hardly expect the bombs, bullets, etc to somehow exclude him.

[SteveStromberg]

I sure hope some of these Arseholes were there.

[ronin]

couldn't agree more

[fintstone]

New York Post
September 15, 2004
Terror's Pals In The Press
By Ralph Peters
Journalists across the world are horrified. A U.S. helicopter gunship killed an al-Arabiya producer in Baghdad. And the international solidarity between scribblers immediately kicked into gear, outraged at American brutality.

Not a single journalist asked the fundamental question: How is it that "reporters" from al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya are on the scene immediately when U.S. troops are ambushed or when a massive car bomb explodes?

It doesn't take a new CIA director to figure it out. Arab journalists are not only in contact with terrorists, they're in collusion with them.

Time and again, we see dramatic video and photographs from the terrorists' angle, killers with rocket-propelled grenades on their shoulders and blackened U.S. military vehicles.

Iraq's a big country, the size of California. Baghdad's a big city, a blue-ribbon victim of urban sprawl. It's simply impossible to believe that the handful of Arab TV journalists on the scene are so brilliant that they instinctively know where the action's going down.

Our journalists need to drop the feigned naiveté. Reporters who cut deals with terrorists for gory footage, who know a terror bombing's on the way and say nothing or who accompany thugs as they ambush U.S. soldiers, are not neutral observers.

As this column has consistently maintained, al-Jazeera, especially, is not a news organization. It's an anti-American propaganda bureau. Does anyone imagine that al Qaeda and other terror groups - the head-choppers for Allah - send their tapes to al-Jazeera because the postage is cheaper?

We are at war. Not only with terrorists, but with their supporters. That al-Arabiya producer joined forces with killers who ambushed a Bradley infantry fighting vehicle. He wasn't a journalist. He was a terrorist. Whether he carried a camera or a gun.

Our gunship didn't target him. It fired at the disabled Bradley so looters couldn't make off with weapons, ammunition or communications gear. Self-defense. The looters and terrorists clambering over the vehicle were fair game. So was their sidekick from al-Arabiya.

OF COURSE, we can't even get our media house in order here at home. It's been a loathsome week for American journalism.
CBS won't name its source for those "incriminating" documents about President Bush's National Guard service. That would violate its high journalistic principles (although lying about our president does not).

Instead, we get poor old Dan Rather, the crazy uncle of network news, insisting that those documents could have been typed on an early-1970s super typewriter, that there might have been just the right outrageously expensive machine in that fly-specked National Guard office - and that an officer who had never used it before would use it for note-taking.

Let me share some reality with Uncle Dan. I served in our active-duty military five years after those documents purportedly were written. I was in Army intelligence. And only the big boss's secretary had an electric typewriter - one too primitive to create those documents.

I worked on a manual machine made in East Germany (swear to God). In 1977. In a front-line division. The National Guard got the junk we didn't want.

CBS lied. The sad thing is that they just might be able to stonewall America.
That's network news, folks. Defend forgeries. Defend "journalists" who support terror. Let our soldiers die. Let the American people rot. And trash our president in wartime.

No wonder al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya get away, literally, with murder.

[CamB]

It's not quite that straight forward. Someone's stretching the truth a little...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3652174.stm

In a phone call from Baghdad on Monday, the US military was unable to clarify why none of the TV footage or press pictures showed armed people at the scene or recorded any gunfire.

[fintstone]

In your article, the picture shows a Bradley..clearly on fire..surrounded by what are apparently terrorists..identifying themselves with terrorist flags (do you think the Americans set it on fire by accident?)....anyone stupid enough to hang around under those circumstances cannot expect to somehow have the bombs distinguish between them and others. Of course since they are trying to make it look like a "massacre"....they would not provide any pictures indicating otherwise.

[fintstone]

In other words, if you come along and find someone has set my Porsche on fire in my driveway...it would not be wise of you to stop and toast a few marshmallows. Especially if you are sharing those smores with some guys holding a flag saying "Porsches Suck!"