That they would print this. This is potentially a big deal. If Hack is still drawing any kind of military benefit, pension or otherwise and he is behind this, he can be Court Martialed.
That, according to the US "boots on the ground" in Iraq, more Iraqi civilians may being killed than the Bush administration and the Pentagon are letting on and that those who are left standing are becoming increasingly antagonistic toward their ostensible "liberators" who, along WITH the Iraqi civilians, are the ones caught in the middle, here.
Independent [London], 12/5/03
Col David Hackworth (USA, ret.) hasHackworth's two websites, www.hackworth.com and www.sftt.org maintains two Web site whose "entries may discuss subjects [about conditions the US troops are facing in Iraq] ranging from shoddy food and badly performing equipment to a lack of ammunition. He says he receives up to 2,000 such messages a week from troops whose anonymity he scrupulously protects. His website currently carries a letter from a veteran helicopter pilot, discussing the recent attack that brought down two Black Hawk helicopters.
In the aftermath of America's worst month in Iraq, when 79 of its soldiers died, Col Hackworth this week received an email from a "combat leader" involved in the firefight in the city of Samarra in which US forces claimed to have killed 54 attackers. Local people insisted that only eight people, mostly civilians, had been killed.
In his email to Colonel Hackworth, who he has known for eight years, the soldier with the 4th Infantry Division wrote of Sunday's incident: "Hack, most of the casualties were civilians, not insurgents or criminals as being reported...“We drive around in convoys, blast the hell out of the area, break down doors and search buildings; but the guerrillas continue to attack us. It does not take a George Patton to see we are using the wrong tactics ... Much of Samarra is fairly well shot up. The tanks and brads rolled over parked cars and fired up buildings where we believed the enemy was. This must be expected considering the field of vision is limited ... Not all the people in this town were hostile, but we did see many people firing from rooftops or alleys that looked like civilians, not the Feddayeen reported in the press. I even saw Iraqi people throwing stones at us, I told my soldiers to hold their fire unless they could indentfy [sic] a real weapon.
Since we did not stick around to find out, I am very concerned in the coming days we will find we killed many civilians as well as Iraqi irregular fighters. I would feel great if all the people we killed were all enemy guerrillas, but I can't say that. We are probably turning many Iraqi against us and I am afraid instead of climbing out of the hole, we are digging ourselves in deeper."
(Hackworth's two Web sites that contain troops' accounts of what's happening are at www.hackworth.com and www.sftt.org. )
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=470213