BBC airs footage of 'US massacre'

[cal04]

THE BBC aired video footage yesterday of a number of dead adults and children whom Iraqi police allege were among 11 civilians rounded up and deliberately shot dead by US troops in March. The British Broadcasting Corporation quoted a spokesman for US forces in Iraq as saying that an inquiry was underway into the events in Ishaqi, about 100km north of Baghdad, on March 15 this year.

The BBC, which reported it had received the video from a Sunni Muslim group opposed to US forces, said the evidence appeared to contradict the US version of events. US officials said at the time that four people died when US troops became involved in a firefight after a tip-off that an al-Qaeda supporter was visiting a house in Ishaqi, the BBC said.

US officials, it added, reported that the home collapsed under heavy fire, killing one suspected militant, two women and a child. However, a report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building. The BBC aired video footage of several bodies, including those of three children, one of them covered in blood. The BBC's John Simpson said the images clearly show the dead adults and children suffered gunshot wounds.

The BBC's Ian Pannell in Baghdad said it has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine. The video footage follows news of the alleged massacre in Haditha, where US marines are suspected of killing up to 24 Iraqi civilians in November last year. US President George W. Bush promised that the world would see the results of the ongoing investigation into the alleged Haditha killings.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19337842-1702,00.html

[tocqueville]

1. Video here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

[mike_c]

2. "...civilians rounded up and deliberately shot dead by US troops..."

[MikeNearMcChord]

3. So now our sons are slowly turning into

the American version of the Einzatzgruppen(sp) hunting Arab "untermenschen" Thanks Shrub.:grr:

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MikeNearMcChord]

6. So being disgusted by the murder of people

who had no connection whatsoever to the killing of the Marine, that triggered the massacre makes me a sick puppy. Sorry but I do not want to be associated with those in uniform, who commit these acts, yes things happen in war, and innocents die, but this was cold-blooded murder. Wrong is wrong, and these Marines from the CO down deserve the full measure of justice. I'm sorry to break your romantic John Wayne version of the Corps to the reality of what is happening. Oh by the way from one newbie to another welcome to DU:hi:

[uppityperson]

4. Just saw it, very good. Am so glad this is getting coverage.

I hope coverage of these stories start multiplying since there are many of them. Outrage enough people and things may change. TV helped end VietNam in a big way, can again.

[ShaneGR]

7. The problem now is, because of Haditha....

Anytime civilians are found dead, US troops will automically be blamed regardless of who actually did it. I'm not saying one way or another on this.

[IndyOp]

8. I will say one way or another - US troops killed innocents at Abu Sifa

WARNING: Photos that the BBC thought were too gruesome to show on air ARE in this Flash presentation:

Children of Abraham - Death in the Desert <http://www.chris-floyd.com/isahaqi/>

Here is a description of several of the photos:

We know from photographic evidence that the corpses of two men, four shrouded figures (women, according to the villagers), and five children - all of them apparently under the age of five, one as young as seven months, were pulled from the rubble of the house and laid out for burial beneath the bright, blank desert sky.

We know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police said that an autopsy performed on the bodies found that "all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head." We know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police said they found "spent American-issue cartridges in the rubble."

We know that two Iraqi police officials, Major Ali Ahmed and Colonel Farouq Hussein - both employed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government - told Reuteres that the 11 occupants of the house, including the five children, had been bound and shot in the head before the house was blown up.

We know from the photographs that one child, the youngest, the baby, has a graping wound in his forehead. We can see that one other child, a girl with a pink ribbon in her hair, is lying on her side and has blood oozing from the back of her head. The faces of the other children are turned upwards toward the sun; if they were shot, they were shot in the back of the head and their wounds are not evident. But we can see that their bodies, though covered with dust from the rubble are otherwise whole; they were evidently not crushed in the collapse of the house. They died in some other fashion.

We know from the photographs that two of the children - two girls, still in their pajamas - are lying with their dead eyes open. We can see that the light and tenderness that animate the eyes of every young child have vanished; nothing remains but the brute start of nothingness into nothingness. We can see that the other three children have their eyes closed; two are limp, but the baby has one stiffened arm raised to his cheek, as if trying to ward off the blow that gashed and pulped his face so terribly.

Please Honor The Deaths of Innocents in Haditha & Abu Sifa

[kittenpants]

16. the "pro-life" Bush supporters should be forced to watch that

Clockwork Orange style. Or don't those babies matter?

[redqueen]

9. How can people not be affected by this?

How can people just say 'i don't want that in my beautiful mind'... :wtf:

Is there some switch you can throw so that you're no longer capable of empathizing with the families of these innocents?

Is there some way you can somehow erase from your mind any thought about how many billions of dollars we're spending on this UNNECESSARY war? how many soldiers will come back scarred forever, and for what?

How can people not realize how much is at stake with respect to politics? How can they just say 'oh that's depressing' and not think about it at all?

It's selfishness... pure and simple.

[Briar]

10. They can easily not be affected by this

since their patriotism will blind them to the truth and they will believe the first huckster who comes along claiming that the dead civilians were really all packing guns, bombs etc. I'm afraid islamophobia has been pumped up to such a level, and that the almost religious veneration of the soldier has been a constant in US society for so long, that only those whose eyes are already open will see this.

[MikeNearMcChord]

12. And yet these same flag wavers

have no problem shaking their fingers at Germans, for ignoring what was going on in the concentration camps.:eyes:

[987654321]

15. "Patriotism will blind them to the truth"

I really like that line and have used a similar line in flyers I have made up. I ask that people not close their eyes to the truth for the cause of patriotism, as true patriotism means opening one's eyes to the truth as the only way to follow the principles our great country was founded on.

Thanks for sharing your point of view. I agree completely.

[Briar]

17. "true patriotism means opening one's eyes to the truth

as the only way to follow the principles our great country was founded on."

Well said.

[scarface2004]

11. its over

bush to hague...trial beginning shortly...bush to plead ignorance!

[LilyLibber]

13. He's got the "ignorant" part right!

I just caught a snatch of something on the radio saying that Marines had been cleared for wrongdoing for something, I didn't hear what. It wasn't Haditha. Anybody else hear this?

[LilyLibber]

14. I found it...

Posted here on DU, of course, and it IS the military clearing itself of wrongdoing in Ishaqi.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2319087

[Briar]

18. Apparently

their actions were within the "rules of engagement". Which must be extraordinarily inclusive of any and all acts of murder and mayhem. One is left wondering how many other such incidents have been exonerated as "within the rules of engagement".

Though the incident seems to have been followed by a cover-up, this too seems to have been exonerated.

[katty]

19. hope so-but he just keeps rolling along, atrocity after atrocity

[Vidar]

20. Well done, BBC.