Iraqi Family Crushed by US Tank

[silverchair]

this really pisses me off, WTF is going on over there? :mad:

see the video here: video in upper left corner of website

http://www.reuters.com/

if anyone can find a link to an article, please post it. thanks in advance.

[Melinda]

1. Text under the video:

Three Iraqi civilians, a mother, father and their youngest child, a five-year old daughter, were killed on Friday (October 24) when a U.S army tank fleeing an ambush by anti-Coalition guerrillas hit their car on a main Baghdad highway, west of the capital, Iraqi police said.

Two other members of the same family suffered injuries in the incident.

An Iraqi police officer at the site of the accident said a U.S tank ploughed into the car driving on the opposite side of the road after a rocket launcher was fired at another U.S army tank parked under a bridge, on the Abou Grheib highway.

Mohamed Jawrani and two other family members were crushed and died in the incident which occurred as they were driving back from a family occurred as they were driving back from a family gathering outside Baghdad on Friday - a Muslim public holiday.

---------------
I couldn't bear to watch the video... I saw what Israeli tanks did to Rachel Corrie and it haunts me yet. The tragedies and atrocities continue to escalate in this immoral and illegal war.

Rot in hell, Bush*

[Mikimouse]

2. Is this a dupe?

Earlier reported as an APC?

[PartyPooper]

3. Thanks for the text, Melinda. Yes, these folks didn't have a chance.

Maybe, Junior, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al., could take time out of their "busy" schedules to visit Iraq...and, all of the hospital beds and graves that they have filled!

[tabasco]

4. The Terrible Consequences of War

Something cowardly little rich boys like Bush will never understand. Bush is alone responsible for this carnage. He anxiously unleashed the dogs of war and the ghosts of the dead will find him.

[mike_c]

5. you don't think the tank driver shares some of the blame?

Bush is alone responsible for this carnage.

Bush* wasn't driving. Bush* doesn't hose civilians in response to every threat. Bush* doesn't shoot women and children for approaching unsigned road blocks.

Let's not delude ourselves. Bush* and his cronies are responsible for lying, mismanagement, malfeaseance, and a whole host of other crimes, IMO, but the soldiers on the ground aren't always innocent little darlings. War crimes are war crimes, and the responsibility for them rests as much upon the person who commits the crime as upon the politician who manipulated the situation and created the circumstances.

[w4rma]

7. Nope. I don't. The tank driver is just a pawn to folks like Bush*.

“Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy,” Kissinger told Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein (The Final Days, Simon & Schuster, 1976).

[No Passaran]

8. you're mistaken

I don't want this to turn into another debate, but I have to say this: I don't think this is a war crime. Have you ever been under attack? You have to make a split-second decision and this time the one he made was not very wise but still you can't blame the driver for this. This is a tragedy so we should stop politicizing it.

[salin]

17. Yes and No

Politicizing it on the back of those we placed into this situation - I agree is not the thing to do. It is a tragedy. And dollars to donuts the driver will have a hard time living with this down the road.

Politicizing that these are the realities of this administration's policies - and that inevitable tragic incidents are likely to have reprecussions (i.e., work as a message to be used for recruiting even more resistance within Iraq, and work as a message to be used to recruit additional terrorists to groups like al queada) - that is VERY appropriate.

Why? Because this war - being waged ostensibly (to the American people) as being for national security - is inevitably working to make Americans Less Secure.

Reading Hersch's "Stove Pipe" further emphasized the multiple ways that the administration worked against National Security, to pursue their blind ideological policies. They pulled intel and military support/resources away from Afghanistan- where the real and active front was - and where in months of pulling those resources (pulled by March 2002) there were many reports in the international press first of Al queada regrouping on the borders and within Afghanistan (by summer 2002); and then of regrouping of the Taliban (bolstered, no doubt by Al Queada; reports by winter of 2002); and now of the Taliban surging to attempt to take control of areas.

Then look at how awful the planning has been in Iraq - leading to this very dangerous situation where resistance is active and violent, spurring reactive (understandable) responses that can lead to such tragedies - that work in a very predictable (but no less tragic) cycle that appears to be picking up steam that make this exact scenario likely to recur (more acts of violent resistance/attacks on service people; more reactive responses due to fear of those attacks). Put into the larger context - each publicized incident like this increases the power of recruitment of terrorists beyond Iraq.

And this crazy administration is ramping up the rhetoric to take this same ill-conceived process to Iran and Syria.

This and other incidents do need to be politicized in the POLICY/ADMINISTRATION context - because much of the public does not yet realize that despite all of the talk of 'success in the war on terra' - the effects of what this administration is pursuing is making us less and less secure.

In this tragic drama - it is the people that we are putting on the front lines that are the pawns; acting in good-faith based on the orders of those above; being set-up (inadequate support (re: numbers) to honestly restore peace, and begin to build good-will by rebuilding and employing Iraqis in the process {many of the nobid contractors are importing cheaper labor from other regions of the world instead of employing Iraqis - adding to the hostility rather than building the support for efforts by Iraqis being employed in the efforts}; and distracted Washington as the top military/state planners already have their eyes on their next desired military targets.); and are placed in situations that make both them and the civilians they have been sent to liberate - more likely to fall victims to the escalating violence.

[lostnfound]

11. They may have been someone's innocent darling just 6 mths ago..

Can't judge them, can't walk a mile in their shoes because what they've seen and done by now may be enough to have shredded the moral code they once had. Heck, they could be crazed on sleeplessness, heat, and uppers.

[jenk]

6. and now for the Fox news spin!

"Iraqi family attacks US tank, heroic tank crew fights valiantly, more with Cavuto later......"

[0007]

9. Dead link?

Must have been taken off with new news.

[loudnclear]

10. We are looking more and more like the Israeli IDF

We are becoming worse terrorists than those we say we are after.

[imax2268]

12. I don't see the video link...

where is it...it's not in the left hand corner...

[Zhade]

13. It's been removed.

Further censorship.

[doubleplusgood]

15. not removed, just further down

...the list of video stories under "Tank Deaths". I think it was superceded by the Wolfowitz/rocket attack story.

[tlb]

14. Maybe just a TAD of blame for the attackers

knowing civilains are in the battle zone? Would you hesitate to put the full responsibility on Israelis firing at a car of PLO who evading attack ran over a civiilian.


Under fire an infantryman will take cover and a tank will move and evade. There is no reason at all to think this was intended by the tank commander and driver. I expect the tank crew are devestated by this accident.

[NNN0LHI]

16. None of this would have happened if Bush didn't invade Iraq for no reason

So tell me who is to blame again?

Don