Iraq Bombers Blow Up 2 Children Used as Decoys

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Iraq Bombers Blow Up 2 Children Used as Decoys


By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: March 21, 2007

BAGHDAD, March 20 — Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday.

Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Joint Staff, said American soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat.

“Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said, according to a transcript. “We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back.”

General Barbaro offered no further details.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a top American military spokesman in Baghdad, said late Tuesday that his office had no record of the bombing but that it was researching it. “I don’t know what event he’s talking about,” Colonel Garver said.

Agence France-Presse, quoting an unidentified American military official, said the incident occurred Sunday. The bombers parked the vehicle across the street from a school then ran away, leaving the children inside, the official told the news agency. The blast killed the children and three other civilians and wounded seven, the official said.

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[Taverner]

1. And we really want to be fighting these people on the ground????

Sorry - call me insensitive - but this is religious delusion on a massive, psychopathic scale. This is what Faith looks like, folks. Time to get the hell out and do like Friedman sez - "Make the mideast IRRELEVANT."

[BeyondGeography]

2. A nightmare

but how many children have we killed? The NYT doesn't write stories about "collateral damage."