Posted on 06/21/2006 10:03:01 AM PDT by TexKat
YUSUFIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Two slain U.S. soldiers who went missing south of Baghdad were ambushed by as many as 30 insurgents who closed in on them in vehicles and opened fire, according to people who said on Wednesday they were witnesses.
It was not possible to independently verify their accounts. The U.S. military has yet to explain how the soldiers may have been isolated in what Iraqis call "The Triangle of Death" for its frequent insurgent attacks.
But two Iraqis who said they were witnesses gave similar accounts of the moments when Privates First Class Thomas Lowell Tucker, 25, and Kristian Menchaca, 23, went missing in the al Qaeda stronghold of Yusufiya, south of Baghdad, on Friday.
They said the two soldiers and a driver fell back a few hundred metres behind two other military vehicles when they came under attack at dusk.
"There was one vehicle in the back of the convoy. It was very dusty. Suddenly these gunmen in Land Cruisers and Toyotas and other cars started firing at the soldiers," recalled farmer Omar Abdullah, 49, who said he was some 200 metres (yards) away.
"A lot of dust was kicked up by the cars so the soldiers in the other cars probably could not see. The gunmen killed the driver. Eventually the other two soldiers were totally outnumbered and they were taken away."
He said about 30 gunmen, some wearing ski masks and baggy black pants and others in white and red checkered headdresses, mounted the ambush.
Chief U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said there was reason to believe two bodies found in the Yusufiya area on Monday night were those of Tucker and Menchaca.
Muhammad Abu Hillal, a soft drinks vendor who also said he was in the area, said a woman was killed in an exchange of fire between the insurgents and the soldiers.
"There were many gunmen. One vehicle was isolated and there was lots of shooting. There was dust everywhere," he said.
The Mujahideen Shura Council has said it abducted the two soldiers but it has offered no proof and Caldwell dismissed the claim.
Residents say the group was highly active in the rural area, terrorising families and forcing them to flee.
"4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model. "
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm
The point is that to be covered by Geneva Conventions you must behave in certain ways. The insurgents (which some want to classify as militias) do not meet the criteria, and thus, are NOT covered under the Geneva Convention, although, as with the case of Gitmo, they are being treated as if they do.
Correct. That was not the original claim made in post #3.
I don't see how a "security contractor" who has been hired to perform military functions in Iraq or Afghanistan meets those any of those conditions.
Sorry -- I must have misread then -- I will admit to skimming as I'm at work.
I disagree. I DO believe they meet the criteria.
That has been my complaint for a long time now, we need more troops in Iraq.
A security contractor whose personnel are used to guard fuel convoys and supply trucks for construction projects, etc., does not meet any of these criteria. In fact, having this kind of non-military construction activity going on in a freaking war zone is one of the most idiotic aspects of this whole thing. It would be the equivalent of implementing the Marshall Plan in Europe in July of 1943.
Keep in mind most of the pictures of the live Zarqawi, one would find that @$$wipe dressed in black.
Blow up that area!
Washington escalates slaughter in Iraq (Barf Alert)
Bill Van Auken, WSWS
21 June 2006
The killing of two American soldiers captured by insurgents at a roadblock south of Baghdad will be seized upon by Washington as justification for an intensified bloodbath against the Iraqi people.
Well before the discovery of the bodies of the young soldiers, reportedly bearing the marks of torture and mutilation, there were already mounting indications that the Bush White House and the Pentagon were implementing a shift in military tactics that spells a dramatic escalation of US violence in the occupied country.
The mass media, which has shown little inclination to highlight the daily death toll of American troops, now totaling over 2,500—much less the far greater toll of Iraqi dead, estimated in the hundreds of thousands—has exhibited keen interest in the fate of the two executed enlisted men, including gruesome details of their deaths. Their aim is to whip up an atmosphere of hatred and revenge against the Iraqi population.
Brutal killings of occupation troops are the inevitable product of every colonial war fought in the history of mankind. Yet virtually every US television announcer and every newspaper headline writer has felt a duty to proclaim the "barbaric" and "savage" character of these particular deaths, words that are never applied to the torture deaths of Iraqis in the confines of Abu Ghraib and other US detention centers, the slaughter of men, women and children in their own homes by 500-pound bombs, or the indiscriminate killing of civilians on Iraqi roads in the name of "force protection."
The media has granted instant credibility to an Internet posting which claims that the purported new leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq—Abu Hamza al-Muhajir—personally beheaded the American soldiers. This dubious claim is promoted to provide a personification of evil for mass consumption, with the aim of conditioning the American people for the mass killing that is about to be carried out in their name.
Government and media propaganda aside, these killings are a telling indication that more than three years after invading and occupying Iraq, US forces have failed to secure the very ground upon which they stand. The ability of masked gunmen to seize the soldiers, hold them for three days, kill them and dump their bodies, and then mine both the location of the corpses and the road leading to it, without being captured or detected by the thousands of troops searching for them, is evidence that those fighting the US occupation enjoy widespread support and sympathy from within the Iraqi population.
It should be recalled that the bloodbath unleashed upon Fallujah in November 2004 followed the killing and mutilation of four military contractors—hired mercenaries—who were ambushed while driving through the Iraqi city. The city was turned into a free-fire zone and much of it was reduced to rubble by means of high explosive bombs, complimented by napalm and chemical weapons.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m24120&l=i&size=1&hd=0
It was not possible to independently verify their accounts
But the AP, AFP, and Reuters can verify the one account of the sunni iraqi terrorist in regard to Haditha?
Yuk yuk yuk ... have you ever read the accounts of Aztec human sacrifice and cannibalism? They ran an empire of blood
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