Joe Cool wrote:http://www.fair.org/extra/0403/iraq-study.html
Come up with your own conclusions on what the US should be doing differently. You should be able to pick up a few
ok...
Two of the victims, woman and small child, were brought in simultaneously. Both had been shot in the neck by what witnesses said was a US sniper. Medical personnel expected neither to survive the injuries.
those witnesses don't say what they were doing, and don't give any reason why they could have been shot. this little piece of the article is a plead for attention and sorrow. if they would have said, she was getting bread at a local store and she got shot there, then i would question it, but there's no detail as to what she was doing. for all i know she was carrying a gun.
On Saturday, US Marine battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne put the number of Iraqi deaths during the week's fighting at around just 60 combatants, according to the Associated Press. A day later, however, Byrne said 95 percent of the more than 600 Iraqis his and two other battalions had killed were male fighters of military age and remarked that Marines are trained to be "precise" in combat. Byrne added, "The fact that there are 600 [Iraqi dead] goes back to the fact that the Marines are very good at what they do."
Rafie Al-Issawi, head of the Fallujah hospital, said most of the dead and wounded seen at area medical facilities were women and children. The Associated Press reported Al-Issawi refused to give specific numbers, saying he didn't want to imply that all of the men of military age who have been killed or wounded have been fighters.
i see, so we have a military guy giving numbers, but not a doctor. he's just claiming that most of them are women and children. toward the end of the Iraq Iran war, 12 year olds were fighting for Iran, so technically yes, children died, but they were combatants. which makes me wonder, how many of those women and children are actually combatants? or human shields for that matter?
According to an AP tally of official US military reports, resistance forces have so far killed 62 US soldiers and Marines throughout Iraq in the past week, the majority of them in the Fallujah area. Witnesses here say American casualty figures are being underestimated by US officials, that far more Americans have died than their commanders are admitting.
hmmm, i see. so if were dropping like flies, then that alone is cause for use of heavy machinery. (bombs, drones, exploding humvees, ect.)
Locals widely expect the fight for Fallujah will continue indefinitely. Resistance fighters seem determined not to relent. Ehab (last name withheld), an embattled, Kalashnikov-toting guerilla who spoke readily with reporters, summed up the mood of the local resistance when he said, "They will never take Fallujah until they have killed every Iraqi here."
For its part, the Coalition Provisional Authority maintains that "Operation Iron Resolve" is a "methodical" campaign to route out select bad seeds in the Fallujah community. However, citing massive civilian casualties, many Iraqis believe the annihilation Ehab claimed a willingness to face is more likely what the US military has in store for Fallujah.
if this guy's preference is what all fighters in this area prefer also, then ok, the US should be allowed to do so. what's sad here is that Ehab wants everyone in the city to die. guys like Ehab don't have the balls to actually evacuate the civilians into safe parts of Iraq. they'd rather that everyone, including people who don't give a damn about his cause die in this event. if Ehab were to walk up to a soilder unarmed, and request that the civilians who have nothing to do with this fight be escorted out of the city, it would be allowed. not a singe godamn one of them wants the civilians gone. that's their defense, that's their battle cry to recruit others to fight with them. it's not what the US should be doing differently, its what Ehab and the other assholes should be doing differently.
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