Gunbattle in Fallujah, Iraq: US, Jordanian forces open fire on Iraqi Police

[Chemical Ollie]

If the mission is "Iraqi Freedom", there is still a long way to go.

If the mission is "secure the oil for Haliburton" the troops are doing quite well.

[Ted Striker]

He'll be here all night folks!!!

[Chemical Ollie]

You mean me? Don't be too sure about that.

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by Lonestar

Unfortunately for PR, Force Protection comes first.

If you want this to succeed politically, with that chance already slim, unfortunately "PR" has to come first.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler


If you want this to succeed politically, with that chance already slim, unfortunately "PR" has to come first.

To the American public, 1 US soldier is worth much more than 1000's of innocent Iraqis. From that perspective, the "Spray and Pray" doctrine is easy to understand. But in the long term, it's probably counter-productive. It will be like the Russians in Afghanistan. They easily won the war against the regular army, but lost the hearts of the local people and the 10-year guerilla war.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Three times. :BS:

How did you get my description of "spray and pray" responding to your post about IRAQIS and NV GEAR and the risks troops face from sticking their heads up for extended periods of time to figure out who was who, and magically turn it into "American doctrine"

Since the discussion was

(a) risk to US forces from sticking your head up and looking around when there's incoming auto weapons fire

(b) vision degradation at night making it difficult to ascertain whether fire was directed at you

(c) whether the "bad guys" now had NV gear

It seems fairly clear to me that in talking about "spray and pray" I was talking about the IRAQIS firing in the direction of the checkpoint and US positions therein.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler


If you want this to succeed politically, with that chance already slim, unfortunately "PR" has to come first.

People have short memories, and in ten years, I'm sure everyone on every side of the political spectrum will have a new issue to whine / thump their chests about.

As long as the oil is cheap and flowing, the government isn't run by clones of Khamanei or the House of Saud and they're not too obviously our boys, most of the world won't give a **** by then, certainly not policy makers.

[Chemical Ollie]

Yeah, a problem in forums like this is that we often expect the other part to read a great part between the lines, which easily leads to misinterpretations. There is hard balance between making a short and compressed post where as much information as possible is pressed into as few words as possible, and posting long detailed posts that nobody bothers to read.

But you still have not answered my most important question: Explain how USA will win the hearts of the Iraqi public by shooting at everything that moves.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

Sure does, including places such as Seoul, Okinawa, and Italy, in addition to Afghanistan and Iraq.

He's got a point Michael.

I've spoken to veterans of WWII, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and Gulf War I; all of them say that US forces were particularly prone to friendly fire. Look at those Canadian soldiers that got smoked in Afghanistan, after their commanders had refused the offending pilots permission to fire. And people up here were really pissed off about that.

Surely you have to admit that the US military has a problem with their weapon release protocols. It's unprofessional and bad for morale.

Something needs to be done about.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


People have short memories

Don't be too shure about that. Ask the Serbs, Jews and Northern Ireland protestants. The Serbs still have some "holy ground" in Kosovo from some medieval battle, the Jews go back to the old testament to claim ownership to a piece of dirt and the Orange Order or whatever it's called celebrates a 17th century battle to provoke the Catolics.

[GePap]

Ollie, he meant Americans have short memories: everyone else has relatively long ones.

And on the incident:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/international/middleeast/14IRAQ.html

The Iraqi deathtoll is up to 10. Several of the wounded say that the cars holding most of the casualties had stopped and the occupants were attempting to identify themselves but the soldiers gnored this and fired. Take what they say wth a grain of salt, but still, the US should send people to investgate and if soldiers acted incorectly, people need to be punished and damages paid.

[Tingkai]

A lot of mixed information about what happened.

The Washington Post reports that the Iraqi officials say the police broke off the chase after getting to the city limits and before they reached the checkpoint:

"After breaking off the chase outside the city, the three [police] vehicles started to turn around on a divided highway in front of a hospital run by the Jordanian government"

Kassim [an aide to the mayor] and other city officials said they believe that guards at the hospital opened fire first, shooting into the air because they suspected the vehicles carried looters. Then, the city officials said, the U.S. troops began shooting at the Iraqi policemen, believing they had opened fire.

"The Jordanians were shooting, and then the Americans were shooting, and the Iraqis were caught in the middle," Kassim said. "The Americans just shot everybody."



The Americans say they were shot at and fired back in self-defence. News reports do not say whether the Iraqi police vehicles were marked or had identification lights.

The New York Times report mentioned by GePap says:
"American forces recounting the incident said shots had been fired at them, but the only spent ammunition at the scene today was from American weapons, not from the Kalashnikov rifles used by the Iraqi officers."

One thing is certain right now: the people in the city are pissed.

From the Washington Post:
"More significant, however, was the reaction of city officials, who had, until recently, advocated cooperation with U.S. forces and sought to persuade residents to accept the occupation. "How can we have security if the people who are supposed to keep security are killed?" Kassim said. "How can we cooperate with the Americans if they do things like this?"

"Bedawi, the mayor , said he would urge religious and tribal leaders to call for calm, but he expressed little optimism that it will come. "When the Americans do something wrong like this, they have to accept that bad things will happen," he said.

"As he walked out of the mosque, he stopped to watch the funeral procession. "You know, things were going well here," he said. "Now we have to start all over again."

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by BeBro
Seriously, why does the US have these problems with peacekeeping? They must have experience from previous missions, they participated on the Balkan too. And what is with Military Police - wouldn´t they be right for a lot of tasks? Or are generally not enough MP forces available? Just wondering....

Nobody is good at peacekeeping. It's not just us.

[HershOstropoler]

MtG:

"People have short memories"

Arabs have very long memories.

"As long as the oil is cheap and flowing, the government isn't run by clones of Khamanei or the House of Saud and they're not too obviously our boys"

A big if that gets bigger with every incident like this one.

[LDiCesare]

I tend to agree with MtG that the American soldiers responded in the way you could expect considering the hour and what they thought was happening. Still, overall, their behaviour may cost more US lives long-term than it would have saved had they been under attack. There may have been an individual error, and if so it's up to the U.S. MP to check it, but the important thing is for the U.S. army to recognize it was a mistake, even though the conditions were hard, and to offer some token to the Iraqis (money for the widows, whatever else) in order to atone a bit.

The real problem is thesoldiers should never have had such a poor information about the situation in the zone they guarded. I mean, they are supposed to work with the police, they should at least have a protocol to let them know that armed police vehicles are coming into the zone they guard. Give the Iraqi cops a talkie walkie or something! It would have been much much easier for the Iraqis to explain themselves on a trusted radio channel than by trying to speak amidst a hurricane of bullets, when a stressed soldier believes he's being shot at. It would have been easy to know beforehand the cops were heading that way if they had talked about it together. The lack of communication between American and Iraqi authority or police is something that will make the situation in the country worsen.