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New 'Iraq massacre' tape emerges
BBC ^ | BBC

Posted on 06/01/2006 3:19:46 PM PDT by Axlrose

The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians.

The video appears to challenge the US military's account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March.

The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people.

A spokesman for US forces in Iraq told the BBC an inquiry was under way.

The new evidence comes in the wake of the alleged massacre in Haditha, where US marines are suspected of massacring up to 24 Iraqi civilians in November 2005.

'Massacre'

The video pictures obtained by the BBC appear to contradict the US account of the events in Ishaqi, about 100km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on 15 March 2006.

Map

The US authorities said they were involved in a firefight after a tip-off that an al-Qaeda supporter was visiting the house.

According to the Americans, the building collapsed under heavy fire killing four people - a suspect, two women and a child.

But a report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.

It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine, the BBC's Ian Pannell in Baghdad says.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: arabs5000us11; haditha; iraq; ishaqi; msm; murthawatch
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To: Coop
Coop...I've been reading your comments regarding Haditha and I think you're the bass player on the Titanic.

The best defense is a strong offense.

The Geneva rules shouldn't have any weight against a non-uniformed enemy.

Let it be known we treat any insurgent sympathizer a target.

That includes all people who obviously knew it was planted and set to explode against us.

It's a good strategy. Israel has survived on it.

81 posted on 06/01/2006 6:29:27 PM PDT by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon)
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To: Coop

Read this. It was by the same author, Tim McGirk, who miraculously broke the Hadifa story.


Thanksgiving With the Taliban
TIME correspondent Tim McGirk shares bread, raisins, and thoughts about the afterlife with some Taliban fighters, and finds some common ground
By TIM MCGIRK

With a few colleagues, I spent my Thanksgiving meal squatting on the floor of an Afghan passport office, talking to Taliban fighters about miracles and Judgement Day.

On the Afghan side of the border near the Pakistani town of Chaman, we had pulled into a Taliban base, a dusty courtyard with two broken-down cars. Earlier in the day, a convoy of journalists were stoned and robbed while leaving Spin Boldak, just up the road. Some 200 other journalists had already left for Pakistan. We were waiting for four reporters who had been led off into the Rigestan desert by the Taliban to look at some fuel tankers blown up by U.S. commandos. It didn't seem like a very good idea to leave our friends behind in Afghanistan.

So there we were, with darkness setting in, surrounded by curious and heavily armed Taliban. One fighter points up into the mauve twilight sky. I think he's showing me the crescent moon and I nod appreciatively: "Yes, very beautiful." Impatiently, he gestures over to a range of darkening hills, and then I see it: a B-52 bomber, its vapor trails catching the last rays of light. "American?" he asks me menacingly. "No, French," I lie.

I try to distract him by offering some raisins, and he backs away, laughing. Our guide Ahmed explains that the Taliban are fasting. It's Ramadan. On the other side of the world, Americans are waking up to Thanksgiving Day, football and turkey. A Washington Post reporter stranded here with me starts describing with considerable artistry the drool-inducing taste of his mother's turkey stuffing. We tell him to stop.

The sun's gone down, and now the starving Taliban can eat.

(snip)

Our missing colleagues finally arrive, and I leave thinking that maybe this evening wasn't very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we're not so different after all.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,185644,00.html


82 posted on 06/01/2006 6:38:46 PM PDT by hipaatwo
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To: Steve_Seattle

You offered, "Ever since Watergate, journalists have all wanted to be "players," to topple an administration ..." Uh, no, 'cause if that was their objective, Gore would have been president prior to the 2000 elections. The media have become THE nest/pestilence of leftist socialist vipers, so they want to topple any administration not approved by their agenda of societal engineering.


83 posted on 06/01/2006 6:50:25 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: hipaatwo
"Our missing colleagues finally arrive, and I leave thinking that maybe this evening wasn't very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we're not so different after all."

These crack-pots pass themselves off as reporters!!

If we're no different after all - our troops better start bombing and beheading everyone who wants to kill us infidels!!

84 posted on 06/01/2006 7:02:54 PM PDT by LADY J
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To: Axlrose
"The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group"

Wasn't the BBC the major pusher of the Palestinian lies on the Jennin "massacre" (that never happened) on the West Bank a few years ago?

85 posted on 06/01/2006 7:09:52 PM PDT by Ditto
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To: Axlrose
Why does a free media seem to always "hang to the left ?"

Vermin always gravitate to places where they can survive and multiply.

The left learned 100 years ago they can easily spread their propaganda via the media and then claim "free speech" when they are caught lying. Same with academia. They use our protections for liberty to destroy liberty.

86 posted on 06/01/2006 7:15:29 PM PDT by Ditto
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To: new yorker 77
The BBC is as useful as a used piece of toilet paper.

The British Bullsh&% Company

87 posted on 06/01/2006 7:17:25 PM PDT by Fruitbat
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To: Ditto

ballistics work, even in Iraq


88 posted on 06/01/2006 7:19:23 PM PDT by daku ("Behold this creature that walks like a man. It wants ketchup on its hot dog.")
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To: Axlrose
The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.


Cute their "proof" is after the fact footage given to them by "hardline Sunni group opposed to the coalition"... cute.

Also I love how the headline is "Tape Emerges" like its a friggin' etheral unknown process that helped the 'tape emerge'... meanwhile later they say how they were given it by 'hardline sunni groups' and decided to plaster it all over their gov't funded website and news channel.

Reminds me of that "MAD Magaizine" guy.... "who me?"
89 posted on 06/01/2006 7:36:11 PM PDT by FreedomNeocon (Success is not final; Failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts -- Churchill)
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To: Axlrose

Aha we should now believe a Sunni terrorist group.


90 posted on 06/01/2006 7:40:58 PM PDT by jveritas (Support The Commander in Chief in Times of War)
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To: BeHoldAPaleHorse

Still running around to all these threads convicting the troops huh.

Sick.

I usually don't notice FR nicks... not unless its someone I talk to regularly (on the sunday threads or whatever), but you I've seen over and over and over the past week.

And its always the same thing... I read an insipid comment, say "who in the hell said that" and surprise, surprise its you... every time.



91 posted on 06/01/2006 7:44:19 PM PDT by FreedomNeocon (Success is not final; Failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts -- Churchill)
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To: somniferum

And most of them have a low IQ and that is why they chose journalism in the first place. The IQ requirement to get a degree in journalism is very low.


92 posted on 06/01/2006 7:47:21 PM PDT by jveritas (Support The Commander in Chief in Times of War)
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To: freedomlover

There was no cover and regarding the liberals hope that this will President Bush Watergate, this will be the 17 millions times they say "This is it, this is the one that will be Bush Watergate". Of course like the 17 millions times before it, this time they will fail again... miserably.


93 posted on 06/01/2006 7:50:20 PM PDT by jveritas (Support The Commander in Chief in Times of War)
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To: Steve_Seattle

""The Haditha incident is REALLY troubling because the chain of command may have been trying to hide it."

No, it is really troubling because the news media will make 10,000 times a bigger issue of this one incident than they will make of the 5,000 attacks against civilians perpetrated by the insurgents. I take it as a "given" that in a war of this magnitude there will be a few incidents where our troops violate the rules of war. I also take it as a given that they will be punished if the incidents come to light. Just as was Abu Ghraib, this will be blown up entirely out of proportion. That's what's really troubling."

Well put. Would you credit the possibility of one or two well placed agents provacateurs (i.e., covert Leftists inserted into the Marines or their vicinity) encouraging this incident (if it happened)?


94 posted on 06/01/2006 7:56:21 PM PDT by strategofr (H-mentor:"pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it"Hillary's Secret War,Poe,p.198)
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To: strategofr

That was steve replying to BeHoldAPaleHorse.

BeHoldAPaleHorse is the resident judge, jury, and executioner of the troops here at FR, didn't cha' know?




95 posted on 06/01/2006 8:08:15 PM PDT by FreedomNeocon (Success is not final; Failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts -- Churchill)
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To: Ditto
Here you go, all the info you need to nail BBC's butt to the wall!

http://www.take-a-pen.org/english/Articles/Art20112005.htm
96 posted on 06/01/2006 9:04:37 PM PDT by Chgogal (The US Military fights for Freedom of the Press while the NYT lies about the Military and cowers...)
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To: boxerblues
Boxerblues this is not just a reply to you but to all... I just had enough reading the responses on this thread and I finally have to say something.


I just wonder, do any of you even think or care about the humanity in all of this. I have seen this movie Time To Kill and I love the ending of the movie. Closing arguments for the defense explaining the BRUTAL rape and hanging, and urinating on this little girl..

"Do you see her, broken, bloody, laying there in the bottom of the creek... soaked in their sweat and their urine.... Do you see her? NOW Imagine she is white!!"

Can anyone sometimes imagine if these "animals" as you call them were Christian. Sometimes I just wish we could see our own reflection in the mirror, but then again MAYBE WE ARE!!

I was in the military, I know how difficult it can be. I cannot relate how difficult it is over there now. I feel bad for the Marines they are going through mental toughness that many of us have never and hopefully will never see. They may have snapped IT IS POSSIBLE and PROBABLE from the sound of it.

If they did, there should be consequences. If they didn't may they be found innocent.

As for the hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq I wish for once I could read someone in this forum have a little RESPECT for life. We are, in a sense, SUPPOSEDLY Christians RIGHT???
97 posted on 06/01/2006 9:24:32 PM PDT by JstnTime
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To: JstnTime
"I was in the military, I know how difficult it can be. I cannot relate how difficult it is over there now. I feel bad for the Marines they are going through mental toughness that many of us have never and hopefully will never see. They may have snapped IT IS POSSIBLE and PROBABLE from the sound of it."

What do you mean IT IS PROBABLE??? Talk about jumping to conclusions!! The media and some fools are hyping this story and we've only heard one side of it.

How about giving those Marines a break? Just because you read it - or heard it "from the sound of it" tells me that you have decided to be their judge and their jury. That's big hearted of you to feel bad for them!

I'll speak for myself and let the others do the same.

98 posted on 06/01/2006 9:51:25 PM PDT by LADY J
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To: JstnTime

Well a few days ago I posted a rant on this incident about the rush to judgement and impugning men (and women) of Honor. I stand by every word with the following modification. My original post was naive in that I believed this to be a pure political stunt by Murtha.

I must now admit that it is conceivable that some small element of the US forces violated the rules of engagement. That said, the incident has yet to be proven and is still being investigated. Nevertheless, there is a miniscule possibility that a rogue squad of our team broke the law. If so, they should be appropriately punished consistent with the circumstances they were in.

BUT, whether this incident was justified or not, it in no way changes the fact that this sad event when measured in human terms - with loss of potentially innocent non-combatants - is now and will remain a cheap political event for the Democrats and a battle cry for future terrorists and the entire muslim world. For all the hand wringing of Murtha and his ilk - how much do you think this really bothers the politicos on a human level? I doubt much sleep is lost for the dead. I doubt there is little concern for the effect on our boots on the ground and the US citizens travelling outside if the country.

So I am still P*ssed about this. Whether the incident was criminal or not, I still smell rats. And, our soldiers and each of us will to some degree pay for cheap & fleeting political gain.


99 posted on 06/01/2006 10:03:04 PM PDT by Lawdoc (Our military is the best trained and most humane in the world bar none! God bless them)
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To: Kakaze
Sensitivity training and hanging our boys out to dry wont make anyone love us or even like us.

I certainly agree with that. It's just one of the many ways in which political correctness is a heinous thing.

I'm not convinced, however, that this is what's in play in the Hafitha situation. Based on the limited info we have thus far, that one smells bad. Yes, our troops absolutely deserve our gratitude, but we also must remember that wearing a U.S. military uniform does not automatically mean the wearer is a person of honor.

I'm not saying you do this, but there are many on here who automatically assume anything remotely negative about a U.S. military man or woman must be a lie. That's not a reality-based view. Reality is that people of poor or no character do make it into the military, just like they make it into many other facets of our society. A Marine who murders is still a murderer, and deserves the full punishment of the law.

We cannot yet know how Hafitha will shake out, but at this point it really smells and I'll be surprised if it turns out well.

MM

100 posted on 06/01/2006 11:11:33 PM PDT by MississippiMan (Behold now behemoth...he moves his tail like a cedar. Job 40:17)
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