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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
 Sun Apr 06, 2003 11:53 am
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One boy's war... bathed in blood of his family
His father. His mother. Two sisters. A brother. And an uncle. All dead. That was the price of war for 15-year-old Omar when the vehicle he was riding in failed to stop at a US checkpoint five miles from Baghdad. Even the Marines were weeping in sympathy
James Meek in Iraq
Sunday April 6, 2003
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,930797,00.html
Was it worth it? For Omar, a 15-year-old orphaned by US Marines on Friday night, his shirt and trousers saturated with his parents' blood, the answer was no. For Corpsman Thomas Smith, a few days short of his 22nd birthday, exhausted and unbelieving after a day and night of mayhem which had seen three Marines killed, himself almost among them, the answer was yes.
For the senior Iraqi commander, dead in the dirt at the side of the road next to the white Toyota in which he had tried to escape, who knows? The second hand on his watch was still ticking, but the hour and minute hands had stopped at 2 am.
US intelligence sources quickly identified the man as the operations officer of the Special Republican Guards.
If George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein have anything in common, it is that the lives of Omar, Smith and the Iraqi officer are petty cash in their grand accounting of the balance of war. They cannot smell the dead rotting in the heat along the route of the Marines' final charge to the gates of Baghdad; there is no way to make them look Omar in the eye as he stares through his tears at the embarrassed, awkward foreigners who shot his mother and father. The boy did not know whether to be enraged or engulfed in sobbing, so he was both, and neither would help him.
Here, at a crossroads five miles east of the Iraqi capital, Marines shot dead eight civilians and injured seven more, including a child who was shot in the face. All the civilians were travelling out of Baghdad on Friday night in vehicles which, the Marines say, refused to stop when challenged - in English - and, when warning shots were fired, accelerated.
Fearful that they were being attacked by suicide bombers, the Marines shot to immobilise the vehicles. Result? Besides Omar's father and mother, two of his sisters, one brother and an uncle were killed when the bus and truck in which they were travelling were punctured by gunfire. The children were aged three, six and 10.
Aleya, Omar's aunt, walked barefoot through shattered windscreen glass yesterday and climbed into the cab of the truck, which was being repaired to make it roadworthy. She was close to hysterics and past caring about minor physical pain. 'People cry for one dead person. Who am I going to cry for?', she screamed through her weeping.
Omar held up his clothes, dyed a hideous purple-brown colour with the blood in the night. His features kept twisting into the face of the about- to-cry. At one point he scampered to the edge of the road to lift the blanket over the face of his father before the Marines led him away.
In the end the corpses, including one the Marines had begun to bury, were carried by the Iraqis and the Marines to the back of the truck for the family to take away and inter. When Aleya went with a medic to change the dressing on the badly shot-up face of Omar's baby brother, Ali, she confided that she had seen one of the Marines weep in sympathy at the family's grief.
The driver of one of the civilian vehicles claimed that they did stop. But Corporal Adam Clark, one of the Marines manning the checkpoint, his face strained and pale and his hands sealed in stained rubber gloves, said: 'We gave them warning shots. A lot of them. And they didn't stop. That first truck right there just about ran over our forward troops.
'It's not a good day when you carry dead people out of vehicles. What can you do?'
Another of the Marines, Lance Corporal Eric Jewell, said: 'We didn't know what was in that bus. It may sound bad, but I'd rather see more of them dead than any of my friends... Everyone understands the word 'stop', right?'
The checkpoint lay beside a row of dusty down-at-heel shops. Some had their padlocks shot off - it was not clear by whom - and their shelves were half empty. The Marines had not seen shops for weeks, and a little shopping, as much souvenir-hunting and curiosity as looting, was going on. A Marine walked past with a cardboard box that clinked with glass inside, but a string of plastic garden chairs, prized commodities in a war of movement and encampments in desolate places, had not been touched.
In the heat and dust of morning yesterday the crossroads seethed with tanks, armoured troop carriers, Humvees, trucks, and sunburned, weary troops who had fought their way there. Near by a military compound had been reduced to smoking black ash. Thousands of brass cartridge cases glinted on the road where armoured vehicles had dumped the waste of the night's fighting.
These were the units - thousands of infantry, tank crews and supporting arms making up what the Marines call 5th Regimental Combat Team (5RCT) - which had run the gauntlet of Iraqi ambushes along Highway 7 north to Baghdad.
Corpsman Thomas Smith, a Marine medic from New York with a passing resemblance to David Beckham, sat in the driver's seat of his ambulance, still stunned by the experience of the previous 24 hours. He had just finished scrubbing the blood out of the back.
'I was having a rough day. We must have taken about 20 casualties last night,' he said. This included Iraqi civilians injured at the crossroads. 'The whole floor was covered in blood. There was guys vomiting blood. There was blood on the seats. All the stretchers were full of blood. There's one stretcher we had to put down here where the Marines won't see it, because we can't get the blood off. At one point we had about six guys in here.'
Corpsman Smith, the ambulance driver and the unit's doctor were driving north towards Baghdad on Friday in a convoy when they ran into what officers variously described as one long ambush and six separate Iraqi 'killing zones'. There was a torrent of fire from rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank launchers and small arms.
Normally Iraqi ambushes wait until heavily armoured vehicles like tanks have gone past before targeting the thin-skinned vehicles like trucks and Humvees. This time, however, they hit the exter nal fuel tank of an M1 tank, and the crew bailed out. The tank could still be seen on the road yesterday, a charred wreck distinguishable only by its shape from the numerous burned-out Iraqi tanks, a reminder that even the most fearsome US armour is not invulnerable.
Smith found himself in the midst of a bloody firefight. The ambulance driver was shot through the window and hurt his hand. Smith was hit in the chest but his flak jacket saved him from injury. The torn fabric over the damaged protective plate where the bullet bounced off can be clearly seen.
Smith took over the driving, the driver sitting in the passenger seat. Then the driver got shot through the other hand. Rockets and bullets were flying across the road in both directions. 'I didn't think we were going to make it,' said Smith. 'Thank God for the Cobras [Marine helicopter gunships]. They came in and took everything out with their missiles. It was a nice little fireworks show.'
Lt-Col Mike Oehl, a tank battalion commander, said he had lost three men, with nine injured. "I think we quelled most of it, but it was a pretty substantial ambush.
'Every time you lose somebody it's disappointing but... when you consider there are maybe 900 in a battalion, we've lost three.'
Close by, a Humvee with a bullet hole through its windscreen and shot-out tyres was being towed away. The running board was thick with dried blood, just the same nasty colour as the blood of Omar's parents. A Marine lieutenant died on Friday in the vehicle. He was standing up through the hatch in the vehicle's roof when he was shot in the head.
Sergeant Dwight Gray, a 30-year-old reservist in the same unit as the lieutenant, said it had been the dead officer's first mission after he was brought in to replace a lieutenant injured earlier by rocket-propelled grenade fire.
Like other Marines, he is not stopping to mourn yet. 'It's part of the game - you've got to keep your head and stay focused,' he said. 'What I tell my troops is we'll deal with that when it's over. Right now I'd rather not know who's lost, who's died."
After the battalions reached the crossroads on Friday night and things seemed quiet they came under fire again - from inside Baghdad. The Iraqis fired three 120mm rockets. The Iraqis seldom get to fire more because within minutes the position they fire from is located by US radar and Marine artillery can then rain their computer-targeted shells down on it.
The observer was driving towards the crossroads on Friday night when the Marine artillery was firing: the guns ripped open the night with a crack that shook windows and the path of the shells could be seen in white stars sailing upwards in a soft parabola, the remnants of 'wrap-arounds', small rockets which make shells travel further.
But the Iraqi rockets which hit 5 RCT on Friday night, though they did no damage, unnerved the Marines. 'It sounds like someone holding up a piece of one-inch metal next to your ear and tearing it like a sheet of paper,' said one officer.
The Marines are regrouping and reorganising now for what may be a difficult and dangerous assault on Baghdad, or a cruise into the city - or a long siege. Nobody, not even Tommy Franks, can know what will happen inside the capital, but if it comes to a fight it will be warfare such as the US has not seen for decades. There will be much blood in the ambulances of those whose injuries do not greatly trouble the sleep of the great.
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Mech on 04-06-2003] |
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David
Joined: 20 Oct 2000
Posts: 1381
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Sun Apr 06, 2003 4:46 pm
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Seeker you fool. How could the woman in the above story been a suicide bomber, she was in the bedroom of her parents house. Read the damn text before show how incredibley stupid you are.
You are offensive and should be removed. Pot and kettle seeker, pot and kettle. Don't like the photos, don't post video. tit for tat a-hole. |
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David
Joined: 20 Oct 2000
Posts: 1381
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Sun Apr 06, 2003 5:10 pm
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Bushs mighty killing spree continues unabated...
=============================================
U.S. Warplane Bombs Coalition Convoy, Killing Several People
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:10 a.m. ET
IRBIL, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. aircraft mistakenly bombed a convoy of allied Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 12 and wounding 45, including a brother of the man who runs half the Kurdish enclave, a spokesman for the leader's party said.
The bombing came when Kurdish ``peshmerga'' fighters and U.S. Special Forces called in airstrikes during heavy fighting with Iraqi forces at a strategic crossroads south of Irbil, the party official said. It was not clear there were any American casualties.
Among the wounded was Wajy Barzani, younger brother of Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani, who controls the western sector of Kurdish autonomous enclave.
The younger Barzani was in intensive care, Hoshyar Zebari, a senior KDP member, said at a hospital in Irbil where the wounded were taken. But he gave no details on his injuries.
The bombing ``will not undermine our resolve to work together,'' Zebari said. Three senior KDP military commanders, Saeed Abdullah, Abdul Rahman and Mamasta Hehman, also were among the injured.
Massoud Barzani and the entire top ranks of the KDP were at the hospital, along with U.S. officers. The Americans' military vehicles were parked outside the hospital where a huge throng had gathered at the entrance. Relatives of the wounded were escorted through the crowds.
One U.S. officer said no American casualties were at the hospital and that he did not know if Americans were injured.
U.S. Special Forces have been working alongside Kurdish fighters, helping plan the assault against Iraqi forces in the north and calling in airstrikes to support the Kurds' advance into Baghdad-controlled territory.
Zebari said the friendly fire bombing took place during ``serious fighting'' near Dibagah, 25 miles south of Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region and center for KDP rule.
They called in close air support, he said, and ``two U.S. planes mistakenly bombed'' the convoy of four-wheel drive vehicles, which was stationary at the time, Zebari said.
British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent John Simpson reported from the scene of the incident, saying the convoy contained between eight and 10 cars, two of which carried U.S. Special Forces troops.
``This is just a scene from hell here,'' Simpson said. ``All the vehicles on fire, there are bodies burning around me, bodies lying around, bits of bodies on the ground. ... The Americans saw this convoy and they bombed it. They hit their own people.''
The BBC said Simpson was wounded in the leg by shrapnel.
Zebari said the BBC crew was not ``embedded'' but was traveling along with the convoy.
The Kurdish and American force apparently had pushed the Iraqis out of Dibagah, which is on a key road between the major Baghdad-controlled cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, and control of it could be a pivotal victory.
But after the bombing accident, the convoy pulled back. The outcome of the battle was not immediately clear.
============================================
This link will only work for a short while, then the story will be replaced. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Friendly-Fire-Bombing.html?ex=1050897600&en=eeec6b9b3103abf3&ei=5004&partner=UNTD
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FLKook
Joined: 28 Apr 2001
Posts: 710
Location: East Central Florida |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 1:19 am
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David, Please remove those pictures, they are offensive, we don't need to lower the bar any further around here. Thanks.
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 1:27 am
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Dave...I agree with Florida. We all get your point. Think of the kids who might be reading this thread. |
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Proud Veteran
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Posts: 212
Location: United States |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 3:57 am
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Oh Davey boy:
Sure you hate to see pictures of dead men, women and children, but ya know what, it's called collateral damage and that s!@# happens during war. It doesn't bother me because I see the inside of a human body every day during surgery.
When women claim responsibility for the suicide bombings I have absolutly no sympathy for them and the children they are raising to hate the Americans. Given the same curcumstances, I would shoot them before they got to me also and not think twice about it. The news talks about saddam training children from birth to hate Americans, guess what, if they turn their weapons toward coalition soldiers, they are going to be toast also.
You posting propaganda pictures of dead women and children isn't going to change this Americans mind one bit about the need to remove this regime from Iraq.
Death is a part of war in case you didn't know that. Look it up in any history book. Millions of people have died in wars since the beginning of time. That's just the way life is and no amount of sniveling and whining from you, Mech, Swamp, or anyone else is going to change it.
America has been using surgical strikes to take out this regime, prove that American shells did all the damage to the civilians.
Given this regimes history it's not going to suprise me that the republican guard did all the genocidal killings in the pictures you have posted.
By the way, the obscene picture shows your mentality. Even I would not go aginst the rules of the forum and post something that vulgar.
I know your not supposed to use obscenities in here but sometimes I get mad and that's what comes out
[Edited 2 times, lastly by Proud Veteran on 04-06-2003] |
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FLKook
Joined: 28 Apr 2001
Posts: 710
Location: East Central Florida |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 4:11 am
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OK everyone...sigh.
I don't want to be the censor czar here so could we please curtail the vulgar pictures and language? This includes references to body parts and what may or may not be inserted, sexual innuendo, perversions and persuasions (especially bestiality )and anything else not appropriate for all ages.
Not singling anyone out here, I'm sick of it from all sides so in my best newly acquired southern drawl...Ya'll take it to the rumpus room, ya hear?
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 4:13 am
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That's what you believe PV.
12 years of sanctions and crushing poerty is enough to make someone hate America no matter what Saddam says.
It's "collateral damage" to you because..like so many people like you don't respect life (unless it's your own). Those innocent civilians in Iraq didn't ask to be "liberated" by high explosives. Most likely.. they were just trying to make it through life like the rest of us.
Those 19, 20 and 20 year old troops being maimed and killed unfortunately are dying for the "liberation" of global domination and capital for the elites and the globalists, NOT the constitution.
If YOU look at HISTORY PV...the U.S. Government has a LONG HISTORY of supporting brutal regimes that supress it's own people...AND CONTINUE TO DO SO. The only way this will be turned around is withdrawing our support for a CORRUPT government completely.
When we return to a GENUINE Contitutional Republic....all of this UN-neccesay MURDER will stop.
One more thing. I sincerely believe the time is almost up for those who feel war is justified for profit and imperialism. It's only a matter of time. If enough people on this planet get fed up with corruption...we will see this whole "VIRTUAL REALITY PROGRAM" smashed and take back what is rightfully ours. Not just for a few.
Bu$h and his minions are being privately investigated and studied right now as we speak. It's only a matter of time before enough evidence is gathered and once that happens PV...you will see their illusion shattered.
It WILL happen. This year. 2003. Watch it happen.
It will be the biggest media story in decades.
You heard it here first.
[Edited 3 times, lastly by Mech on 04-06-2003] |
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Proud Veteran
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Posts: 212
Location: United States |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 4:14 am
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Yes ma'am |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 4:23 am
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ANOTHER insult PV?
Is that all you've got?
That's okay because I am 90% sure I will be getting the last laugh.
The wheels of truth and justice turn when you least expect it.
Especially when we will see Bu$h in handcuffs. Along with many others involved with his corruption.
Watch it happen.
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Proud Veteran
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Posts: 212
Location: United States |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 5:17 am
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Don't flatter yourself Mech. The yes ma'am was for Kook.
As far as the rest of your beliefs, I'll believe that when I see it. As a matter of fact if it happens I'll let you kiss my butt in the middle of DC and give you two hours to draw a crowd |
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theseeker
Joined: 25 Jul 2000
Posts: 3403
Location: Damnit...I'm a doctor jim |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 5:48 am
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I'll buy a ticket for that one !
hey P/V what's your opinion on surgery for a compacted disc ? |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 6:04 am
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Nah...you'll be kissin George's on his way to prison. |
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Molliani
Joined: 16 Mar 2001
Posts: 428
Location: Illinois |
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Mon Apr 07, 2003 7:53 am
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The lives of so many are dependent on the voices of dissent. Let's get a little LOUDER.
A quote by James J David from the following article.
quote:
[If you analyze world history you can see what has always happened to leaders, countries, or political organizations that become so powerful they cannot be publicly criticized.]
Violating the Geneva Convention
by James J. David*
27 March, 2003
It seems as if the Bush Administration is quite upset and very much concerned over the Iraqis treatment of the recently captured American prisoners. The concern is quite understandable and, like every other patriotic American, I pray that these soldiers are unharmed and released as soon as possible. But if the last Gulf War is any indication of Iraq's treatment of prisoners of war then our fears may somewhat be relieved. Of the 23 prisoners of war that the Iraqis captured all 23 were released and in relatively good health.
Nevertheless, President Bush was quick to blast the Iraqis for showing television footage of the captured American soldiers on Iraqi TV. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that " it's a violation of the Geneva Convention for the Iraqis to be showing prisoners of war in a humiliating manner and needless to say, television that carry such pictures are, I would say doing something that's unfortunate."
In the five or six hours of TV war coverage I watched, I probably heard the words "Geneva Convention" 100 times. I was a little surprised that not one person pointed out that the United States is not applying the Geneva Convention to fighters captured in Afghanistan. In fact, the Bush Administration has been very vocal in its opposition to treating these prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Perhaps now that American soldiers are also being held, the administration will treat all prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
And what about the way the Israelis treat their prisoners? If there was ever an award to be given for the biggest violator of the Geneva Convention the Jewish State would win hands down. Why hasn't George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld or, for that matter, any previous administration ever criticized or threatened Israel for its treatment of Palestinian prisoners. Over the years, Israel has habitually tortured innocent Palestinians to extract confessions. Detainees suffer long periods with urine-soaked hoods over their heads, are handcuffed and shackled to posts in painful and suffocating stooped positions, stretched backward over chairs with hands and feet tied to their legs, and they are never permitted the use of a bathroom. Red Cross lawyers and family are not allowed to even contact these prisoners. A number of Palestinian prisoners have died from torture at the hands of Israeli military. When the question came up in Israel just a few years ago of whether or not the practice of torture should be permitted in the light of international disapproval the courts approved it and the U.S. didn't say a word. When it comes to violations of the Geneva Convention, I guess it's only wrong "unless Israel does it."
But maybe the most shocking of all violations of the Geneva Convention came during the 1967 Israeli war with the Egyptians. The Israeli army carried out a number of mass executions of Egyptian prisoners of war in the Sinai, forcing them to dig ditches, then lining them up and shooting them. Dozens of eyewitnesses to these mass executions have reported what they saw, but the world's politicians and media bosses pretend not to know. According to eyewitness accounts by Israeli officers and journalists, the Israeli Army - the army that claims to hold itself to a higher moral standard than other armies - executed as many as 1,000 Egyptian prisoners. Historian Gabby Bron wrote in the Yediot Ahronot in Israel that he witnessed Israeli troops executing Egyptian prisoners on the morning of June 8, 1967, in the Sinai town of El Arish. Bron reported that he saw about 150 Egyptian POWs being held at the El Arish airport where they were sitting on the ground, densely crowded together with their hands held on the back of their necks. Every few minutes, Bron writes, Israeli soldiers would escort an Egyptian POW from the group to a hearing conducted by two men in Israeli army uniforms. Then the man would be taken away, given a spade, and forced to dig his own grave. "I watched as (one) man dug a hole for about 15 minutes," Bron wrote. "Afterwards, the (Israeli military) policeman told him to throw the shovel away, and then one of them leveled an Uzi at him and shot two short bursts, each of three or four bullets." Bron says he witnessed about ten such executions, until the grave was filled. Then an Israeli Colonel threatened him with a revolver, forcing him to leave the area.
If you analyze world history you can see what has always happened to leaders, countries, or political organizations that become so powerful they cannot be publicly criticized. The United States has put the Israelis on such a high pedestal in America that it is impossible for anyone to make criticism. We talk about the Geneva Convention but just look at what we actually practice. We have one standard for the treatment of Israel that is so high they cannot be criticized no matter what grisly crimes they commit. Then we have a second standard for the treatment of Israel's enemies that is so low we publicly finance their ethnic cleansing and torture. America has reasonably moral policies at home but our foreign policy is as corrupt, hypocritical, and violent as any of the third world dictatorships we love to look down upon and occasionally bomb.
*James J. David is a retired Brigadier General and a graduate of the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, and the National Security Course, National Defense University, Washington DC. He served as a Company Commander with the 101st Airborne Division in the Republic of Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 and also served nearly 3 years of Army active duty in and around the Middle East from 1967-1969.
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/Analysis/cover.htm
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