Yeah!!!! Stick it to those mother$%^& and break it off!!!!

[Spiffor]

MrFun:
Yes.
If you read my posts, you'll notice that I see nothing shocking in that the troops defended themselves and killed their attackers. Also, despite being a supposedly raving anti-american leftist, I consider the US troops not to be responsible at all for the civilians dead or wonded caught in the crossfire.

I think the Iraqi guerilla is wrong. That it fights a lost cause, and that it will achieve nothing else than worsening the situation for everyone. I am glad to see the guerilla has suffered a defeat today.

Once again, I am opposing the fact that people gloat over the dead. To kill the enemy is normal. To gloat about it is not.

I remember Paiktis was banned for a week, in the past, for having gloated about casualties. I wonder what has changed these last 7 months.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Apparently, there's some subtle distinctions you miss. Not the conditional predicate clause "**** with the best" - the implication is that if you don't fulfill the condition, you won't "die like the rest."

Innocent civilians leaving work ended up dead like the rest. They weren't "**** with the best".

[Tingkai]

And while the Americans are gloating over their victory, but of course not the deaths, maybe they should question whether their government's version is accurate.

From the NY Times:
"While American commanders said the Iraqi body count [54 KIA] had come from precise reports filed immediately after a close-range battle, hospital officials said Monday that they could account for, at most, eight dead, with most of those probably civilians."

The commanders said they were not surprised by the dearth of bodies. They do not routinely collect the enemy's dead from the battlefield, they said, and the guerrillas were unlikely to take their dead to the morgues."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/international/middleeast/02IRAQ.html?hp

Regardless of what actually happened, this fight was a no-win situation for the American soldiers from the beginning. They had to defend themselves, but in the end alienated more Iraqis. It's the classic problem of fighting a guerrilla war: Every battle won is one step closer to losing the war.

"If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself," said Satar Nasiaf, 47, a shopkeeper who said he had watched two Iraqi civilians fall to American fire. "The Americans were shooting in every direction."

Sheik Khatan al-Salem, a Samarra town official with a decidedly anti-American bent, predicted that the battle on Sunday would ultimately prove to be something less than an American victory.

"Why is the resistance increasing now?" the sheik asked. "Simply because the Americans misbehave with the people."

[The Emperor Fabulous]

It's a war. The soldiers were fired upon. The attackers really don't make much of an effort to show that they're not civilians, lacking uniforms and otherwise. The soldiers were defending themselves. Of course, any indiscriminate shooting is horrendous, but in the heat of battle, first and foremost comes your own life.

[Whoha]

These guys aren't pows, they were Fedayeen Saddam. Those are the guys we have tapes of torturing people,throwing them off of buildings,etc. The Geneva convention clearly states that a group that acts the way these guys do(in addition to not being a recognized military force) is not protected.

All the same they will likely be treated the way we treat the other detainees,namely gain weight, be innoculated against disease that kill many of their friends,fight extradition to the country that it would be most appropriate to send them to because they would brutalize and then kill them,etc.

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by Spiffor
MrFun:
Yes.
If you read my posts, you'll notice that I see nothing shocking in that the troops defended themselves and killed their attackers. Also, despite being a supposedly raving anti-american leftist, I consider the US troops not to be responsible at all for the civilians dead or wonded caught in the crossfire.

I think the Iraqi guerilla is wrong. That it fights a lost cause, and that it will achieve nothing else than worsening the situation for everyone. I am glad to see the guerilla has suffered a defeat today.

Once again, I am opposing the fact that people gloat over the dead. To kill the enemy is normal. To gloat about it is not.

I remember Paiktis was banned for a week, in the past, for having gloated about casualties. I wonder what has changed these last 7 months.

This was precisely the point I was trying to make way back around reply #55 or so; however, this is a far more eloquent and elegant explanation of my feelings. Thank you, Spiffor.

[DinoDoc]

Thank you Tinky. I was wondering where Roland got his info from. Still waiting for the name of the reporter you mentioned earlier though.

[Spiffor]

Whoha:
I don't think it is that simple. These guys wore fedayeen clothes, but they can be ordinary Iraqis loyal to Saddam (not every Saddamite got to torture or oppress in the past, you know), they can indeed be people of Saddam's apparel who want to restore Saddam and their individual power (to torture, to oppress, to rape and to steal) with him, they could be simple citizens pissed by the US occupation, or they even could be foreign citizens fighting against the Great Satan. We don't know for sure

[Sava]

No bodies found after Iraq gunfight
From correspondents in Samarra
02Dec03

THE US military has said it believes 54 insurgents were killed in intense exchanges in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra on Sunday but commanders admitted they had no bodies.

The only corpses at the city's hospital were those of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian pilgrims and a child.
US Brigadier General Mark Kimmit told a Baghdad press conference 54 militants were killed, 22 wounded and one arrested.

Challenged about what had happened to the bodies, Gen Kimmitt said: "I would suspect that the enemy would have carried them away and brought them back to where their initial base was."

Asked about reports from senior police and hospital officials in the town of eight civilians killed and dozens more wounded, the US general insisted: "We have no such reports whether from medical authorities or police.

A few hours earlier, Colonel Fredrick Rudesheim, who heads the 3rd Combat Brigades that was involved in Sunday's bloody clashes, told reporters his troops had killed 46 and captured another 11.

"Are you asking me to produce (them)?" he asked, when asked by reporters about the absence of any militants' bodies at Samarra's single hospital or on the city's streets.

"This is a good question and I think perhaps if you can interview the Fedayeen (a disbanded militia of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime) or whoever attacked us, you might get a better answer."

Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Gonsalves, who commands the 166th Armoured Battalion in Samarra, also said his troops were not in possession of the bodies.

The death toll, he said, was "based on the reports we got from the ground".

Lieutenant Joseph Marcee, who took part in Sunday's combat, said he saw several of the attackers lying dead on the ground.

"There was no time to pick up the bodies. We were receiving fire from other locations," he said.

Sergeant Nicholas Mullen, who fired rounds from an Abrams tank on Sunday, offered yet another explanation for the army's inability to locate the corpses. "We don't stick around," he said.

The mystery, which borders on solving a mathematics equation, further deepened with Col Gonsalves' report.

According to him, a total of 60 militants, divided into two groups, attacked two convoys escorting new Iraqi currency to banks in the city.

Another four assailants in a BMW attacked a separate engineering convoy.

If the US troops killed 46 and captured 11 of them, only three of the survivors would have been left to pick up the corpses.

On Kimmit's figures the calculus becomes even hazier - with 54 killed, 22 wounded and one captured, 13 militants remain unaccounted for, although both commanders did say the cash convoys also came under attack on their way in and out of the city.

As to how the troops came up with their casualty figures, Rudesheim said it was by counting their weapons.

"We don't indiscriminately engage people, only those who engage us with AK 47s and RPGs. That's how we determine the number of people we are engaging and, after talking with each soldier, we can tell just how many people are returning fire at us."

Residents in Samarra said they had not seen any of the militants' bodies, 46 or 54.

The head of the local hospital, Abed Tawfiq, reported eight dead civilians but no insurgents.

Ambulance driver Abdelmoneim Mohammed said he had not ferried any combatants wounded or killed and wearing the black Fedayeen outfit which US soldiers said their assailants wore.

"If I had seen bodies, I would have picked them up. It's not like the Americans would have done it.

"If the death toll had reached that announced by the Americans, the atmosphere in Samarra would be quite different."

Salaheddin Mawlud, a colonel in the former Iraqi army, who now heads Samarra city council's complaints office, said the American toll does not work.

"If there had been so many dead, we would have seen people rushing to the hospital, the police station or here, and it just didn't happen."

Abdelrizek Jadwa, who owns a grocery 50m from the scene of one of the attacks, said he did not have the shadow of a doubt.

"After the firing, I went out of my shop. There were no wounded, no killed on the streets. Where could they have disappeared?"

from http://www.news.com.au/common/story_...35%5E2,00.html

interesting development... but our government wouldn't lie to us, right?

[Spiffor]

It was apparently a big convoy. I know nothing about military tactics, but would it be possible that the troops had loaded the bodies in any truck/jeep where there was room, to search the bodies for info later?

[The Emperor Fabulous]

No

[Zylka]

Really embarrassing development. I'd like to hear from experienced soldiers to confirm how such a situation normally works... but NO bodies?

[chequita guevara]

Looks more and more like Vietnam every day, Sava.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Innocent civilians leaving work ended up dead like the rest. They weren't "**** with the best".

And confirmation of that and their status comes from?

And innocent civilians getting caught up in crossfires or downrange fire from either side is the single most horrendous aspect of guerilla warfare in the urban environment. It is also part of the guerilla's tactics and doctrine to involve civilians, both to have an effect on the conventional enemy and to incur civilian casualties and the psychological and propaganda "benefits" from those casualties. Another reason I have no sympathy for urban guerilla fighters.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Thank you Tinky. I was wondering where Roland got his info from. Still waiting for the name of the reporter you mentioned earlier though.

Sophie Claudet with AFP
See

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8028760%255E1702,00.html