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| 5/30 |
| 2004/5/19 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:30298 Activity:very high |
5/19 The US winning hearts and minds in Iraq:
http://tinyurl.com/yvnu8 (Newsday/AP)
\_ Couldn't it have been anti-coalition forces holding a wedding party
at a foreign fighters' safe house?
\_ Pick any random group of 40 Iraqis and at least one of them will
probably advocate the violent ouster of the US, but does that
make it OK to kill the whole wedding party?
\_ Yes. Guilt by association.
\_ Iraqis are terrorists.
\- a. I am outraged over the outrage.
b. Mistakes were made/You have to break some eggs.
c. They may have been manufacturing aspirin!
d. At least we didnt sodmomize and humiliate them.
\_ Stop deleting this.
\_ This is tragic. And it's also another reason to not shoot a gun in
the air to celbrate.
\_ Didn't the exact same thing happen in Afghanistan several months
ago?
\_ Yes. Shouldn't people have figured out that firing guns
into the air is a bad idea when your country is being occupied
by a foreign army? -geordan
\_ It would be nice if some people in this country would figure
this out as well.
\_ Yeah, but you've got dumb yokels firing guns into the air
to celebrate, and dumb yokels killing an entire wedding
party. There's plenty of blame to share.
\- what would be your reaction if the say LAPD or say
philadelphia PD "rained down gunfire" on a house
from where they saw some shooting into the air?
\_ Wow, that's some of the most twisted logic I've
seen out of you, psb. There's nothing similar
at all between those two situations, and the one
in Iraq. Cool.
\_ E_TOOSHORT
i'm wondering if the same people making the dumb yokel
comment also get bent out of shape over ruby ridge
and waco. --psb
\_ These kind of stuff will not happen in the US because we
have laws. It happened in Iraq because there are no laws
governing what the US military can do. So what if we bombed
your wedding? Tough luck. The worst that can happen is we
offer an apology after a year long investigation. The truth
is, there are no justice when your country is occupied by
someone else. The only justice you'll get is when you drive
out the invading forces one way or the other. But we don't
care, by then we would've gotten all the oil we wanted. The
moral of the story? Don't be the weak guy. The bully is
always right. Although I do wish sometimes the police would
take the same attitude toward those fuckers in Oakland and
East Palo Alto. Just nuke their fucking house and the city
will be a better place.
\_ oil? please show me some evidence that the U.S. is going to
get enought oil revenue to pay off the >100B we've spent on
iraq.
\_ the deal is, the war is paid for by taxpayers, and the oil
revenue goes to Bush's friends.
\_ hmm a wedding party with 2 million dinars, sat com equipment,
and foreign passports in a safehouse. Yea...
Was the same reporter in Jenin?
\_ Why does the US keep lying? Who are they trying to fool?
\_ The US.
\_ Isn't 2M dinars like $1000 USD? Foreign passports? Imagine
that, on a town bordering another nation during a wedding
celebration where out of town relatives are invited.
\_ About $1400. Yeah. Which was probably part of the wedding
gift.
\_ No, see, the administration spends all taxpayers money, and
they as individuals (more accurately their friends and
campaign contributors) reap the benefits. |
| 5/30 |
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| tinyurl.com/yvnu8 -> www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-wowedd0520,0,6828667.story?coll=ny-nation-big-pix The rest of the world is not nearly consumed with our election cycle as we are. Submitted by: Noticer 6:00 PM EDT, May 19, 2004 That would be the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center that happened EIGHT years after the first attempt to bring it down? Heavy Rain Causes Flash Flooding in Mo The Associated Press May 19, 2004, 5:23 PM EDT BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A US aircraft fired on a house in the desert near the Syrian border Wednesday, and Iraqi officials said more than 40 people were killed, including children. The US military said the target was a suspected safehouse for foreign fighters from Syria, but Iraqis said a helicopter had attacked a wedding party. Associated Press Television News footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one atop the other. Several were children, one of whom had been decapitated. The attack happened about 2:45 am in a desert region near the border with Syria and Jordan, according to Lt. Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, the provincial capital about 250 miles to the east. He said 42 to 45 people died, including 15 children and 10 women. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45. The area, a desolate region populated only by shepherds, is popular with smugglers, including weapons smugglers, and the US military suspects militants use it as a route to slip in from Syria to fight the Americans. In a statement, the US Central Command said coalition forces conducted a military operation at 3 am against a "suspected foreign fighter safe house" in the open desert, about 50 miles southwest of Husaybah and 15 miles from the Syrian border. The coalition troops came under hostile fire and "close air support was provided," the statement said. The US troops recovered weapons, Iraqi and Syrian currency, some passports and some satellite communications gear, it said. Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said revelers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack took place. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire. APTN video footage showed mourners with shovels digging graves over a wide dusty area in Ramadi, the provincial capital where bodies of the dead had been taken to obtain death certificates. Al-Ani, the doctor, said people at the wedding fired weapons in the air, and that American troops came to investigate and left. However, al-Ani said, helicopters later arrived and attacked the area. Is this the democracy and freedom that (President) Bush has brought us?" Another man shown on the tape, who refused to give his name, said the victims were at a wedding party "and the US military planes came ... Dan Williams, a US military spokesman, said earlier that the military was investigating. "I cannot comment on this because we have not received any reports from our units that this has happened nor that any were involved in such a tragedy," Williams wrote in an e-mail in response to a question from The Associated Press. "We take all these requests seriously and we have forwarded this inquiry to the Joint Operations Center for further review and any other information that may be available," Williams said. The strike, widely reported in Iraq and the Middle East as an attack on a wedding party, comes at a time when American prestige is under fire as the United States tries to stabilize this country before the June 30 transfer of sovereignty are foundering. Anti-American sentiment has risen following last month's bloody Marine siege of Fallujah, a Shiite Muslim uprising and the scandal over treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. "Many Iraqis have been killed so far" during the occupation, said Adnan Pachachi, one of the most pro-American figures on the Iraqi Governing Council. He said Iraqis "hope that these acts, from all parties, come to an end because the victims are Iraqis." In July 2002, Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a US airstrike in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by the US Central Command said the airstrike was justified because American planes had come under fire. |