First Danish casualty in Iraq conflict

[Monk]

The Danish military might not be in the business of killing unarmed fishermen, but then again, who really knows when it's so obvious we can't trust anything they tell us? Saying the guy died heroically in an exchange of fire when he was really shot dead by his buddy - really, I agree with the opposition when they say our minister of defense has got to go.

[Chemical Ollie]

With trigger-happiness I did not necessarily mean "kill for fun and sport" but "shoot first and ask the questions later". That's a doctrine the Americans are infamous for, and a doctrine the Danish soldiers practiced in this case. As for American trigger-happiness, you just have to read MtG's posts in this thread to understand what I mean.

The difference in favour for Denmark is that the Danes went back to the village, apologized to the village elder and payed a 10 000$ damage fee to be shared among the victims' families, the persons who was wrongly arrested and the owner of the scrapped truck. We have yet to hear reports about Americans sending CSI experts to investigate deaths of innocent civilians, apologizing and paying damage, haven't we?

Another difference is that this is a big political scandal in Denmark, while no American would even come up with the idea to demand Rumsfeldt's resignation for obvious desinformation campaigns (like the "Saving Private Lynch" story, not to mention the BS that was used to motivate the whole war.)


By the way, here's another shooting accident involving Danish soldiers:

http://www.jp.dk/indland/artikel:aid=1983448:fid=9452/

EDIT: typos fixed

[Asmodean]

Okay, Ollie. I see what you're getting at. I don't agree with you however. As I stated, there are so many other factors involved. Darkness, fear, hunger etc. etc. This is not a case of policy. It's not a general "shoot first and ask questions later" matter. It's tired soldiers coming home from a patrol, and one of them makes a mistake, which get's worse. That's all.

As a former soldier, albeit without combat experience, I can easily relate to the situation.

Asmodean