U.S. Troops Fire on Iraq Protesters Again

[cinch]

Does anyone know what kind of access the American soldiers have to non-lethal crowd control methods? If all they have is bullets, maybe it's time they were supplied with tear gas, or rubber bullets, or what have you.

Is this a supply problem?

[Berzerker]

I'm tired of Iraqis complaining about our presence there, they wouldn't or couldn't rise up to overthrow Saddam so they should be thanking our troops. Most Iraqis seem to understand gratitude, but there are still far too many who are behaving like ingrates. Of course, the true blue Ba'athists who had it easy under Saddam because they were part of his ability to control the country are probably upset over losing their status...**** em. I could care less if they get killed provoking US troops...

"Hey Ali, let's go throw stones at those heavily armed troops".

[Joseph]

We will have to deal with the trouble maker. If we can do it without shooting, that would be fine by me.
However, I don't want to hear that another young American serviceman/woman is killed because they waited to see who was shooting before they were able to return fire.
The Iraqi people are just have to get used to us being there for a while.

[uh Clem]

Originally posted by Berzerker
I'm tired of Iraqis complaining about our presence there, they wouldn't or couldn't rise up to overthrow Saddam so they should be thanking our troops. Most Iraqis seem to understand gratitude, but there are still far too many who are behaving like ingrates. Of course, the true blue Ba'athists who had it easy under Saddam because they were part of his ability to control the country are probably upset over losing their status...**** em. I could care less if they get killed provoking US troops...

Our troops? You mean US gummint troops, right?

Or have you become a weekend libertarian?

[Dr Strangelove]

What concerns me is that this may be just the sort of thing that Hussein planned on. If he knew that his troops couldn't stand up to American troops in a conventional fight he may have instructed them to go to ground in the hopes of staging his own sort of "Intifada". If he can do that, maintain a low level continuous guerilla war augmented by popular uprisings of civilians encouraged by a few armed fighters he may believe that in the end he'll come out as a Arafat-like hero. After all, we do not know that he is dead.

[Sava]

So ineptitude is an excuse? I don't buy that for a ****ing second.

[Berzerker]

Our troops? You mean US gummint troops, right?

"Our" is shorter than US gummint and conveys the same reality as far as terrorists are concerned.

Or have you become a weekend libertarian?

Yes, the weekend has yet to arrive so I can go into my libertarian mode and refer to "our" troops as "gummint troops". Thx so much for reminding me what day of the week this is...

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Joseph
We will have to deal with the trouble maker. If we can do it without shooting, that would be fine by me.
However, I don't want to hear that another young American serviceman/woman is killed because they waited to see who was shooting before they were able to return fire.

So you would prefer to hear that another couple of unarmed Protestors have been killed and some 20-100 other unarmed Protestors have been wounded, because the American soldiers didn´t try to locate the person who shot at them, but instead fired wild into the crowd?

[The Mad Monk]

Yes.

[LoneWolf]

Look, people, it is a matter of no concern. Unfortunate, yes, but nothing out of the ordinary.
The Iraq war was necessary, but not sufficient. Within 30-50 years, they will be back in roughly the same situation as they were before, and someone (maybe the French again, they have been there before, you know) will need to go in again. They just can't run a country over the long haul.
Sorry, sometimes the truth hurts.

[Jack_www]

Well all it takes is one person to shoot a weapon or at least make the sound of weapon firing.
The US troops will respond, and that is just a sad thing.
But to say the US millitary is targeting civilians is silly.
If we wanted to the entire country of Bagdad could have been turned into a pile pile of burning rocks.

On one wants to shoot an unarmed Civilian. What reason other then that they feared for their lives and that of their friends. Considering all the crap that was done to fellow US troops( Iraq Troops pretending to be civilians and blowing them up, or pretending to surrender then attacking) they are a little on edge, and so would everyone else here would be too.

[Tolls]

"...this is symptomatic of not having enough forces in theater at the start of the war, not having enough there now, and not being politically prepared for occupation. "

"...maybe it's time they were supplied with tear gas, or rubber bullets, or what have you."

These two sum up the point for me. The failure (and this includes the British Army) to provide for the deployment of some force with crowd control capabilities I find quite staggering...I assumed (fatal mistake I know) that the British forces would have gone in with some form of non-lethal weaponry for the immediate post-Saddam period, but someone clearly forgot to pack the rubber bullets.

As for the lack of ground troops, well, that's Rumsfeld's big idea isn't it? Didn't really think through the consequences...

[Ned]

Now imagine your the Germans spread from France to Stalingrad, from the North Pole to Lybia. They really must have had a large number of troops simply pulling garrison duty.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


So you would prefer to hear that another couple of unarmed Protestors have been killed and some 20-100 other unarmed Protestors have been wounded, because the American soldiers didn´t try to locate the person who shot at them, but instead fired wild into the crowd?

No body is making them protest (at lease we don't know if anybody is in back of them making them protest). The troops are now at the edge of town. So if the Arabs stay in town, the two would not see each other. One thing is for sure, we are not leaving until we have a government in place that will protect all of the Iraqi and not just a very small percentage.

[Proteus_MST]

Of course, if they don´t protest there is less chance they are getting shot at.

But protesting is one of the rights People in a Democracy are supposed to have (and I think it wasn´t forbidden by the US-Troops).

What would you say if you have a large demonstration in the USA for example in Front of the White House and there are a couple of Soldiers guarding the White House. Now someone within the crowd fires a shot and, as a result, the Soldiers open fire at the Crowd. The Result are 10-20 dead unarmed civilians and maybe 100 wounded.

Would you, in this case, still say that the Soldiers had done the right thing, because, if they had first tried to discover the gunner within the crowd, they had put their own lives at risk?