Another Iraq thread: With friends like that...

[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by jasev


What is pretty basic is that you don't know why we withdrew from Iraq.

Political reasons.. mainly. I do know because Spain is my country. Sadly enough, most spaniards just never understood the reality... helping Iraqis was a very noble mission. Thanks to my country for pissing on the Iraqis, and **** Zapatero.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sandman
How do you know that the car was going at 55mph?

That's what they said on Fox News.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by MarkG
from the US Army statement

"When the driver didn't stop, the soldiers shot into the engine block, which stopped the vehicle, killing one and wounding two others."

how can you honestly that you killed the passengers of a speeding (according to you) car while aiming at the car engine?

Easy, it is hard to keep a good shot picture on a car speeding at 55mph. If you mislead the car then you end up shooting the **** out of the passenger compartment.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by MarkG have you ever been a passenger in car while being in a war zone and minutes after being freed from captivity? if yes, where you looking at the road at the time

No, but I have been a driver and a team leader in a war zone and I can tell you I was ALWAYS looking at the road ahead of me. I was looking for IEDs, I was looking for pot holes which might have IED, I was looking for animal carcases which might have IEDs, and I sure as **** was paying attention to what check point commanders were telling me. You should pay attention to what men with machine guns are telling you because that’s common sense. But that's just my hang up.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by MarkG
warzone? i thought it was a sovereign country which just had elections

.

Everyone knows Iraq is a war zone. It will remain a war zone for some time to be.

if i was 20, in iraq, having seen friends die next/close to me while others get away (and stay alive) with firing before asking questions, i would NOT do any hand, arm, head, finger signals and just fire at the damn things that's moving in the dark.....

By all accounts it happened duriong the day time. All the more reason for the driver to have seen the hand or light signals, much less observed the warning shoots. The fact that he kept speeding and missed all three says he wasn't paying attnetion. Not paying attention in a war zone gets you killed.

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Actually, the journalist who was wounded is saying it was purposeful:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...y_iraq_hostage

Which suggets she's not thinking very rationally. The US has access to plenty of Iraqi Soviet made weapons. If the goal has been assassination, the US troops could have hit the car hit with 50 caliber machine gun bullets to get it to stop, then hit it with an RPG, and finally moved in with AK 47s to make sure everyone was dead. They then could have the same soldiers come back later after getting rid of their Russian made weaponry, and "find" that the car was ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. Clearly that would have been the way to do things if you actually wanted to assasinate the individual, and would have avoided the current political consequences. Its also inexplicable that they didn't fire more bullets to make sure the reporter was dead if this was an actual assassination attempt.

[Giancarlo]

"the US troops could have hit the car hit with 50 caliber machine gun bullets to get it to stop, then hit it with an RPG, and finally moved in with AK 47s to make sure everyone was dead."

US Troops have AK-47s?

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Giancarlo
"the US troops could have hit the car hit with 50 caliber machine gun bullets to get it to stop, then hit it with an RPG, and finally moved in with AK 47s to make sure everyone was dead."

US Troops have AK-47s?

Yes they do. The US has confiscated large quantities of Iraqi weaponry, most of it Soviet made. Many US tank crew that are ordinarily using just pistols were definately using Ak-47s for a time since they gave them far more firepower and there was plentiful confiscated ammunition around. So making it look like an insurgent attack would have been quite easy for the US if assassinating the reporter had been their goal.

This is why you have to dismiss the possibility of this being an assassination attempt no matter how badly you think of the US. The US had better ways to pull of an assassination if that had been their goal. Remotely triggering what appears to be a typical insurgent IED when the car was driving by would have been another option where the US would avoid any significant political consequences and could have blamed the insurgents.

[One_Mean_Rabbit]

US Troops have AK-47s?

He explained here...

The US has access to plenty of Iraqi Soviet made weapons.

[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by Mordoch

Yes they do. The US has confiscated large quantities of Iraqi weaponry, most of it Soviet made. Many US tank crew that are ordinarily using just pistols were definately using Ak-47s for a time since they gave them far more firepower and there was plentiful confiscated ammunition around. So making it look like an insurgent attack would have been quite easy for the US if assassinating the reporter had been their goal.

This is why you have to dismiss the possibility of this being an assassination attempt no matter how badly you think of the US. The US had better ways to pull of an assassination if that had been their goal. Remotely triggering what appears to be a typical insurgent IED when the car was driving by would have been another option where the US would avoid any significant political consequences and could have blamed the insurgents.

No, the US would use weapons that are supplied to them. The M-4 carbine is the weapon of choice for tank crews since it is small and compact, the AK-47 is NOT. Additionally, the US military has a bigger supply of 5.56MM rounds, not 7.62MM rounds. I dismiss your speculation.

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Giancarlo
No, the US would use weapons that are supplied to them. The M-4 carbine is the weapon of choice for tank crews since it is small and compact, the AK-47 is NOT. Additionally, the US military has a bigger supply of 5.56MM rounds, not 7.62MM rounds. I dismiss your speculation.

You're seemingly utterly missing the point. On the tank crew discussion, here's an article from the AP that I read awhile ago on the subject, confirming my point about US tank crews equiping themselves with Ak-47s.

http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/weapons/military/ak47iraq.htm

The pertinent point is only 2 members of the 4 man tank crew get M-4s, the others are issued pistols. Here's a quote from the article about how plentiful of the 7.62 ammunition was in Iraq relatively recently.

Some soldiers also say it's easier to get ammo for the AK — they can pick it up on any raid or from any confiscated weapon.

"It's plentiful," said Sgt. Eric Harmon, a tanker who has a full 75-round drum, five 30-round magazines, plus 200-300 rounds in boxes for his AK. He has about 120 rounds for his M16.

Just to summerize my main point one more time, the US has access to alot of seized insurgent weaponry. If this had been an assassination attempt, the US could have easily equipped some US soldiers with these seized insurgent weapons and then ambushed the car, making sure everyone inside was killed. After the weaponry was disposed of, the same soldiers could stumble on the scene and "discover" the car had been attacked by insurgents. The only difficulty at all with this strategy would be finding soldiers able to use the Russian weapons effectively who they could trust to keep what they did secret. However if necessary there are definately CIA opperatives with the necessary experience who could have pulled of the job. The US simply had better options than what happened if this had been an assassination attempt.

[Giancarlo]

AP is not a credible source, nor am I missing any point, dl.

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Giancarlo
AP is not a credible source, nor am I missing any point, dl.

You do you realize that the AP stands for the Associated Press right? A large portion of news articles in the US come from this source. You might have a very occassional instance of outright innacuracy, but generally you're talking about cases where someone is rushing to write or update a breaking news article, which is not the case here. Its certainly generalyl viewed as a reliable source of news that tries to avoid outright bias in their articles.

The other complaint is that the AP often simpy repeats the news facts in their articles rather than providing analysis, but this article comes closer to the other variety of AP story that goes more in depth. I find the claim that the AP is not a credible source extremely strange.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Giancarlo
No, the US would use weapons that are supplied to them. The M-4 carbine is the weapon of choice for tank crews since it is small and compact, the AK-47 is NOT. Additionally, the US military has a bigger supply of 5.56MM rounds, not 7.62MM rounds. I dismiss your speculation.

There are tons of Soviet made weapons in Iraq and I myself had a Libyan made AK-47 when I was there though I tossed it into the tigress because it was such a POS. AK-47 and
Iraqi made berretas are every where. Of course that doesn't change the fact that there are a **** load of American snipers with .50 caliber rifles who can kill a person at 1 mile. That idiot Italian woman who claims the Americans were trying to kill her is a fool. If we wanted her dead then I saw many, many, many people who would have easily killed her without her stupidly running around making accusations now.

She got shot because her driver was an idiot. Even a fool knows to pay attention to the guy with a machine gun but her driver ignored him, ignored his hand signals, ignored his light signals, and ignored his warning shots. The driver and no one else is to blame.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Eh, he was speeding towards a checkpoint. You're supposed to shoot.

Uh, even if what the US said was true -- contested now by the Italian reporter -- there is such a thing called "warning shot."