U.S. helicopter fires at Baghdad crowd

[Voter]

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A U.S. helicopter gunship has fired at a crowd of Iraqis swarming round a burning U.S. vehicle in a Baghdad street and witnesses and officials say 13 people have been killed and 61 wounded in violence in the area.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040912/325/f2f8d.html

 

[ThePhoenix]

WHAT? The vehical was empty (at least I hope it was, as they destroyed it). There was no need to unleash a gunship on the crowd.

 

[SirKenin]

Come on guys. That's not exactly what happened. The helicopter was not firing at the crowds. At least read what really happened at foxnews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132143,00.html

Militants struck Baghdad's Green Zone (search), the administration district, with a heavy barrage of mortars, and a homicide bomber blew himself up outside the city's Abu Ghraib prison. Heavy clashes broke out on Haifa Street, during which a car bomb destroyed a U.S. Bradley armored vehicle. A U.S. helicopter fired on the burning Bradley to destroy it, killing and wounding several people who had gathered around it.

 

[ThePhoenix]

They fired missiles at a vehical surrounded by people. WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN?!? That is at the very least willful disregard for human life.

 

[SirKenin]

Their intent was not to kill a bunch of innocent people. They needed to destroy a vehicle so it and it's contents did not fall into the wrong hands. It's unfortunate, but it happens.

 

[Voter]

Their intent was not to kill a bunch of innocent people. They needed to destroy a vehicle so it and it's contents did not fall into the wrong hands. It's unfortunate, but it happens.

In New York? Chicago? Washington, D.C.?

 

[Word of Peace]

Their intent was clearly not to avoid killing them - if it was, they could have taken steps to do so.

 

[burrow_owl]

Whatever. I hear they do worse things at frat initiations. Either that or it was just a few bad apples. Then again, there's probably a new rationalization for the week.

 

[republican]

TAKE STEPS TO DO WHAT put the men and women that wear our proud uniforms and put them in danger or disbursting a crowd to destroy or recover a destroyed truck. No I do not think so unfouranatly their are gonna be days where we all will be divided on things we do to make sure we win the war of terror but their are gonna be innconet live lost and yes their might of been no need of shooting at a truck with people near by but we do not know what was going on as the peole where sworming the truck and the gunshiped arrived. So I leave that to the president and the men and women of our military.

 

[Voter]

TAKE STEPS TO DO WHAT put the men and women that wear our proud uniforms and put them in danger or disbursting a crowd to destroy or recover a destroyed truck. No I do not think so unfouranatly their are gonna be days where we all will be divided on things we do to make sure we win the war of terror but their are gonna be innconet live lost and yes their might of been no need of shooting at a truck with people near by but we do not know what was going on as the peole where sworming the truck and the gunshiped arrived. So I leave that to the president and the men and women of our military.

Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror.

Ok, well, it didn't.

Per Fox, we gave it a nice foothold, though (see other thread).

If we shoot more people for what is perceived as no good reason, we are going to give terrorists a hand up, as well as a foothold.

 

[republican]

Yes I see what you are saying but you would think that we would give them a warning and that those who did not choose to move are those who where killed or injured.

 

[mala]

Yes I see what you are saying but you would think that we would give them a warning and that those who did not choose to move are those who where killed or injured.

i wonder if that same logic would pass if say a crowd of protesters refused to move in new york city or someplace?

it's much easier to discount the deaths when you dont see them upclose and think that everyone in a crowd is the enemy

 

[republican]

Yes but we will never know becuase our men and women of the service follow orders and they are the only person that know what went on.

 

[rahma]

These people have families who are now without a father, a brother, a husband or a son. These are real people, and they deserve more then an oh well, too bad for them.

 

[republican]

I did not mean it like that i just meant it by saying the people who died yes I feel sorry and iam sad for them. But it is what happened and what was said will only be for those who carried it out.

 

[InnerPhyre]

i wonder if that same logic would pass if say a crowd of protesters refused to move in new york city or someplace?

it's much easier to discount the deaths when you dont see them upclose and think that everyone in a crowd is the enemy

This was not a crowd of protestors. I'm not saying such action was justified, but let's not get ridiculous here. That vehicle was full of weapons and explosives that could have been taken and used against US soldiers.

 

[burrow_owl]

Yes but we will never know becuase our men and women of the service follow orders and they are the only person that know what went on.

True, which is why the problem is with the orders. It doesn't seem clear to me that the American military knows what we're doing there, and it isn't clear that this is their fault. My guess is the DoD hasn't let them know that the reconstruction is as much about ideology as it is about military. In other words, we want there to be a government in Iraq allied with America. The last thing we want is there to be a government antipathetic to American interests; if they end up sympathetic to radical/political Islam, we'd have been better off leaving Saddam in power.

That was the problem with Abu Ghraib: it gave a whole lot of ammo to anti-American Islamists. The Bush administration doesn't seem to understand that getting rid of Saddam, without there being a better government in its stead, really isn't so important re: our interests in the region. They're still reproducing the faulty logic of Clinton's foreign policy, which sees the minimization of American casualties as a substantial goal. Unfortunately, this goal may endanger the long run success of the mission by putting American lives ahead of foreign lives, which in turn aggrieves those foreigners.

 

[Nathan Poe]

Their intent was not to kill a bunch of innocent people. They needed to destroy a vehicle so it and it's contents did not fall into the wrong hands. It's unfortunate, but it happens.

Very unfortunate.

Remember, Boys and Girls:

When THEY kill innocent bystanders, it's "terrorism."

When WE kill innocent bystanders, it's "Collateral Damage."

 

[Law of Loud]

A U.S. helicopter gunship has fired at a crowd of Iraqis swarming round a burning U.S. vehicle in a Baghdad street and witnesses and officials say 13 people have been killed and 61 wounded in violence in the area.

What this very specifically seems to imply is that 13 people have been killed, and 61 wounded in the fighting in the area. That doesn't mean that the helicopter gunship is the cause of even a single one of these deaths, or that we were specifically targetting civilians.

1. The count of Iraqi casualties does not discern between those who were armed or otherwise. Nor does it discern between those who were killed by coalition or insurgent forces. As we have seen, the Iraqi insurgency has shown it has no qualms as regards the targetting of civilians, and has committed numerous terrorist acts against the Iraqi civilian population.
2. As a general rule of the thumb, if you are a sane human being, you do not swarm over a disabled, burning, vehicle in the middle of a firefight. That is suicidal, and is beyond logic, unless you have some reason to do that. What good parents take their children with them when they go to swarm around a burning US military vehicle?
3. Due to the fact that this was a firefight (hence the reason that the vehicle had been disabled), it is entirely likely that the helicopter was taking fire from that crowd. This is a common occurence in Iraq, and I would be surprised if our helicopter wasn't taking hostile fire in a combat zone like this.

It is very tragic that these people were killed, but to claim that those 13, as well as 61 others who were injured, were done by the helicopter alone is a foolish claim. It is difficult to tell where these people were injured, but there was quite obviously a significant firefight before the arrival of the gunship, and I would be very surprised if most of the casualties did not come from the firefight.

Health Ministry officials said 13 Iraqis were killed and 61 wounded in the violence in Haifa Street, although it was not clear how many were killed in the helicopter strike.

 

[SirKenin]

Very good points there, Law of Loud. I will have to rep you for that