This Should Win Hearts and Minds

[mburbank]

40 Reported Killed in Fallujah Mosque


By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. forces battling Sunni insurgents in this violent city apparently hit a mosque filled with people Wednesday, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed.

[davinxtk]

Why the fuck are we firing rockets at churches?
I don't care who's standing next to it. It's still a fucking church.



(and I absolutely despise organized religion)

[mburbank]

A.) maybe we missed.
B.) maybe our maps are all old, like the time we blew up the Chinese embassy.
C.) maybe bad guys were hiding out there.
D.) maybe we thought it was an Afghani wedding. We hate those things.

[davinxtk]

E.) Someone wanted to get discharged and go the fuck home, so he chose a target that was sure to get his ass booted but instead simply became a media "whoops."

[KevinTheOmnivore]

It sounds like things are getting really bad there.....

Again-- we need to get out of there, and if necessary, plead with the UN to increase its presence there.

[ranxer]

we need to get out of there, and if necessary, plead with the UN to increase its presence there.
no doubt!

i don't see how the bush administration has any will to actually relinquish hold on iraq contracts without defeat, either politically or militarily.

impeaching bush before the election would help the process and repair some of the damage we've done to our credibility with the world though.

[Brandon]

That's not the entire story.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/07/iraq.main/index.html

Coalition forces battle Sunni, Shiite forces
Mosque compound struck in Fallujah

Wednesday, April 7, 2004 Posted: 2:09 PM EDT (1809 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Army bulked up its forces in a teeming Baghdad Shiite neighborhood to take on the Mehdi Army, the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and Marines fought pitched battles with insurgents in Fallujah, the center of anti-U.S. unrest in the Sunni Triangle.

"The coalition is conducting ongoing combat operations to take the fight to the enemy in order to restore order in Fallujah and to destroy the Mehdi Army," the militia loyal to firebrand cleric al-Sadr, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.

Insurgents inside a mosque complex in Fallujah were firing heavily at U.S troops on Wednesday, U.S. military officials said. Marines, pinned down, dropped two precision-guided 500-pound bombs on the walls of the mosque and fired a Hellfire missile.

Kimmitt said about 40 armed insurgents were firing on the Marines from the "sanctity of the walls of the mosque."

"It didn't appear to us," Kimmitt said, "to have any effect on the main dome building itself."

He added, "I understand there was a large casualty toll" for insurgents but didn't give any figures.

A Marine source told CNN that "we specifically did not target the mosque."

A Marine lieutenant told pool reporters that a second mosque was also an insurgent hideout and Marines returned fire using ground assets. But Kimmitt couldn't confirm that.

The Sunni Triangle is an area north and west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

The upsurge in fighting had been predicted by the U.S. military as the June 30 handover date nears.

It comes a week after the grisly slayings of four U.S. security contractors in Fallujah and a few days before a major Shiite festival is to be held in Iraq.

During the Shiite festival of Ashura in March, more than 180 people were killed in Baghdad and Karbala.

The resistance posed by the Mehdi Army came after al-Sadr's hostile anti-U.S. sermon during Friday's prayers and the shutdown of a Baghdad paper, run by his supporters, that the coalition said incited violence.

[Perndog]

I bet the truth is somewhere between what Brandon posted and what Max posted. It's hard to really see what's going on when you're on the other side of the world, even when there are reporters over there to give us the fair, balanced, and objective story.

[mburbank]

When I posted it that's all the story there was. The Marines comments came several hours later, and it's still very confused.

Body counts have gone up and down with the marines saying at one point there were no civillian casualties at all. It will probably take some time before anything resembling a factual accounting comes out.

Here are the points that I think stand right now.

It was not an accident.

The Marines say they were returning fire and at least at this point I think they get the benefit of the doubt.

There is a ridiculous amount of clintonian parsing going on about what the word 'Mosque' constitutes. The Marines say only the central domed building is a Mosque. The Iraqis say the entire area within the walls of the religious compund is the Mosque. The Iraqis also say when the domed building is full, worshippers fill the available spaces in the area of the compound outside the domed building and I think that's certainly true.

Offical comments that since we only blew down the wall from which 'insurgents' were firing we could not have killed any noncombatants is absurd. How could we possibly know?


None of it matters in terms of the point of my post. There is no way to conduct an operation like this that endears you to people. The people who hate you already hate you, and anyone on the fence isn't going to decide to like us when we start blowing down the walls of Mosque related program activity areas. The best we could hope for is that we teach them fear which is pretty much how Sadaam ruled them.

There is no right answer here. There is absolutely nothing the US can do as the occupying power that would both keep our people (and there's) safe and steer them toward an american style democracy.

Plus, the more I read about the 'handover' to Iraqi sovreighnity the more queasy I feel. We will retain control of their army, we will have 14 semi-permanent bases of our own, their constitution will have to be approved by us...

Now wonder we're firm on the date. We aren't actually giving them control of anything.

[kellychaos]

I really thought they'd handle the situation surgically and low-key so as not to look like some kind of "eye for an eye" gang of thugs. This action really suprised me.

As for the question of taking out a mosque or not, I'm kind of on the fence. Realizing that an attack on something sacred is sure to cause an uoproar, one also has to take into account that that's the way they've compartmentalized themselves in their resistance against us... by their own choice. It's sort of like saying that the feebs shouldn't have attacked the Dave Koresh compound in Waco, because, even though they were whackos, it's still an attack on a religion at a place which THEY might have considered hallowed ground. Don't get me wrong, I still have some civil rights issues with THAT debacle but, at the same time, I'm still empathetic with the FBI perspective.

[Brandon]

I'm pretty sure that Geneva Convention rules say that once a religious building is being used militarily, it loses sanctuary status.

[Rez]

thats funny... on a non-american network, it's saying that there was no firing whatsoever, which is absolutley vital to see if the military could justify it or not.

at any rate.. bombing a mosque sounds like a top-notch way to amazingly unite both the sunni and shiite muslims there... now they have a common enemy!

c'mon. bombing a friggin mosque.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I'm pretty sure that Geneva Convention rules say that once a religious building is being used militarily, it loses sanctuary status.

We should type that up in a memo and send it to the folks who dragged burning bodies through Fallujah.....

[mburbank]

My point is not so much that they shouldn't have fired on a Mosque, or Mosque compound, or wall around a Mosque compound. If it wa being used as a defensive site, I guess it's fair game.

I'm saying this is a loose loose situation, and has been from the moment we invaded the damn country. You want to read something truly illuminating about our situation in Iraq right now? Check George Bush Sr's autobiography out of the library and read why he chose NOT to invade Iraq at a time when a huge international coalition was at his back and Iraq had was actively engaged in a war of agression.