US murder 40 worshippers as they gather to prey at mosque
 

This story is being reported everywhere, I don't feel there is any need for me to add anything other than that the occupying forces shame is now complete.

Find the full article at:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e_mi_ea/iraq_2

They should have retreated and left them there safely.
This is another instance that will whip them into a frenzy. This probrably more than anything because now it's 'attacking the religion'.

Oh boy.
The shit is really starting to hit the fan.

All I can hope for now is that 'our boys' (the Dutch military presence in Iraq) will not be retaliated against. They're situated in a relatively peaceful region of Iraq in which they have had true cooperation with the iraqis in rebuilding roads, schools and other much need facilities. One dutch office shot dead one Iraqi civilian a few months ago, and that was the only violence that has occured there. I hope it stays that way.

It's hard to know, but I hope the Iraq civilian population recognizes that there are only 2 aggressive foreign forces in Iraq, and that the Spanish, Dutch, and other forces are there merely for support of restoring order in their country. Then again, I also hope that our government will change the ratio of humanitarian/military presence so that it is more clear what our true purpose is there.

As for that, I also hope that bloodshed will cease, and such dehumanising acts as we saw last week will not occur again against ANY person.

I can only guess that anti-American sentiments throughout the world will rise much like anti-Israeli sentiments have been cemented, now since the American and Israeli military tactic's are indistinguishable.

Wolf Blitzer raised this point yesterday. What is fighting terrorism or terroristic factions and what is revenge.

Don't worry Silvy, have a feeling if this keeps up your leaders will come to their senses and pull out.

ANY NATION condoning killing innocent people in a place of worship is barbaric and the leaders need to be tried for murder.

I'm sure the administration will find some way to accept this as a defensive move and that we had no choice. But we add fuel to the fire and now neither the Sunnis and the Shiites want us there. This is turning more and more into Vietnam.

CNN's story
Here is the link to cnn's story of the same action.

The marines were being fired upon from a wall several hundred yards away from the mosque.

It does not matter where you are firing from, fire will be returned.
Seems to me these combatants should have been killed.

Now the cnn story also states that women are now carrying weapons, so when the Marines kill them this will be a major story for the anti-war crowd.( women killed by US Marines!!!) oh the travesty!!!!

I don't think using the same tactics as Israel use's against Palestine is going to work. I can't see how blowing up a mosque is going to help democracy and peace. Mind you I've always thought that Bush's idea of democracy is to kill / imprison everyone who disagrees with him.

Way to spin it people, honestly bravo...

If the assholes are firing at our boys from places such as behind the wall or from the mosque itself, you have to think that the Americans will return fire and rightfully so. Not to mention that these clowns are employing the cowardly tactics of Saddam's regime taking refugee in hospitals and other public buildings and firing on our troops. To hell with them.

Also who is condoning the killing of innocents here? What planet are you from? No where in the article has the administration said ANYTHING in the SLIGHTEST that comes close to condoning the murder of innocents. The American's fired on combatants, read the article, no part of the mosque was even damaged.

If they are carrying a gun shoot them, they are no longer "innocent" nor "civilian".

Yeah, that attitude has worked really well for Israel. :rolleyes:

Justified or not, firing back at people with guns, with missiles that have huge collateral damage is ultimately bad strategy. You knock out the guys who are firing on you...along with 40 innocent people whose grief-stricken families now hate Americans. When you're an occupying force you have to operate by different rules that sometimes tie your hands in individual battles. Sometimes you have to pick your fights to achieve the larger goal. "Well, they were in the way" is hardly going to fly as an excuse for why we're killing innocent civilians. In a frickin mosque, for cyring out loud. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

First off the article never said if the 40 killed were innocents or combatants. Secondly seeing as to THE MOSQUE ITSELF WAS NOT HIT, just the wall where the combatants were firing from you would assume those people were not just on their way to prayer. Oh and 40 was a speculated number.

No matter how you try and justify it, killing a bunch of people in a mosque isn't going to help the situation.
Let's just hope this madness ends soon.

I'm sad to say it doesn't matter what the facts are, mojo. Word of mouth spreads that we fired at a mosque and worshipers will killed, that's enough to fan the fires. We need to avoid any appearance of impropriety if we want to "win the hearts and minds" of the Iraqis. And this ain't it.

Sorry lurkette but you are wrong,

First of all hand tying gets troops killed plain and simple, and fight picking is not always possible, as per ambush.

Maybe if the people who were in that mosque told these combatants we dont want you in here there might have not been ANY collateral damage. (if there was any at all).

And it is up to civilians "not to be in the way" by either keeping away from hot zones or not allowing Iraqis with guns near them.

It's still a flame! Your "mistaken" transposition of prey for pray is a deliberate attempt to color the argument!

HAHA! Just kidding, Lebell. Keep the peace.

Just an fyi, I didn't alter the "prey" part. ;)

The city was told to produce the insurgents responsible for attacking Americans or the city would be taken by force. They chose not to. American Marines were being fired upon, it's their right to return fire and defend themselves. It's a shame IF innocents were killed but that is a hazard of war. Period.

Very true. And I have to wonder about all the possible solutions to this event that were discussed if any before this action was ordered. It's been a few days since the military was loading up around Fallujah.

Finding those responsible for killing the 4 last week is one thing, rockets from apache helicopters into crowds of people is another. Surprised no one has called the innocent civilians killed" human shields" yet.

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Personally I think that dropping a huge bomb on a mosque was a very bad idea. No matter if it was an act of 'self defence' or not, it's going to raise a firestorm in the area.

Things are going to rapidly get a _lot worse_ there after news of this spreads.

why is it the US's fault for firing on a mosque (if indeed that what transpired)? why aren't all of you berating the militants who used the community's place of worship to stage a guerilla war? they know innocent lives will be put into danger. this appears to be a tactic of unmatched cowardice.

baffling...

Because they are to blinded by their hate for evil heartless America.

People seem to be very concerned about news of this spreading, but from what I have been reading lately, rumors are being spread throughout Iraq that U.S. forces are responsible for most of the car bombs going off around the country. So you can't really controll things like that anyway it seems.

If Marines were fired upon and suffered casualties, then wher ever the rounds came from should be a target period. Thats the whole reason they hide in mosques, hospitals, and around civilians. If we never returned fire under those circumstances, we would really have our hands tied.

I don't think any of us are really berrating the military for protecting themselves. What we are worried about is what the average Iraqi will do with the information that the mosque was fired on.

Though our soldiers were taking fire, it would have been more prudent to fall back and engage them at another time. This would be done to remove the APPEARANCE that we are attacking Islam itself.
That is our concern, that more americans are going to die now specifically because of this. Because it will be used as a method of inciting Iraqi's.

I know it is unfair to the engaged american military to have to retreat from certain structures when the Iraqi's take cover there but it should be done. In the long run it's best for our troops health. This is the kind of thing that may eventually unite all major Islamic factions against us there.

exactly, especially in the current situation the whole iraq and the whole muslim world is looking at the americans and how they deal with the situation.
if the americans kepp on acting like the "cowboy" cliche the fighting and the hate will continue.

I agree to some point. But think even further.
The US knew what it was getting into. If the US government did not like it, they shouldn't have started a war.
Urban warfare is a difficult and dirty type of warfare and civilians are certainly victimised by it.
Critisizing the agressor for this is a valid point in my opinion.

good post silvy...

in addition, i would argue that the US military DID know what they were getting into when they started this war. i have a lot of contact with military circles, don't think that this is unexpected to them. but, i agree that some of the politicians and certainly the news media did not consider the real implications of invading a country and occupying it for a year or so.

What I don't get is these people gathering for prayer blithely not noticing the 6-hour firefight between the Marines and the folks holed up in the mosque. Use some situational awareness, Iraqis!!

There are plenty of reasons why they may not have been able to or did not want to do that. If it were to cost more men to retake the ground you give up, if the paths of retreat are blocked, if you would be a bigger target in retreat, if you're concerned the attackers will pop up somewhere else etc, etc, etc you don't retreat you attack.

Actually NPR gave a fairly complete report from an embedded reporter in Iraq in Fallujah. I'm recalling this from memory, so I could be a bit off.

- The marines were encountering heavy resistance
- An RPG hit a humvee and injured five marines
- The marines saw about 20-30 rebels enter the mosque complex
- The marines called in a couple of Apache helicopters
- The marines then called in two laser guided precision bombs

The death count ranges from 20 to 40. The bombs were dropped during the afternoon call to prayer, so it seems likely that innocents were killed, but neither side had said anything one way or the other on that yet, as far as I know. Also, it's unconfirmed whether the actual mosque was bombed or not.

Al Jazeera (biased source) says the mosque was bombed and that the rebels weren't there when the bombs hit:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...478D565B02.htm

My take on it:
- Our forces have the right to defend themselves
- Attacking a mosque when trying to take out a religious fanatic and cut his support is idiotic. I can't think of a worse strategy that we could have used. Sadr had 10,000 supporters yesterday, I bet he has 50,000 today.

We'll see how this all shakes out, but bombing a mosque in this situation, no matter what was happening on the ground, seems like a really bad strategy.

My thoughts exactly. Very well said.

We are not attacking the government of the US, or even the war itself. We are just questionning this specific act which is getting MASSIVE worldwide attention which will most certainly come back to haunt us.

I realize this is approaching tit-for-tat and nitpicking... so this will be as far as i'll go on this line of debate. If you'll read my post, I wasn't acccusing anyone of berating the military, I was asking why anyone wasn't doing so to the militants. Admittedly, I did make a reference to posters being negative towards the soldier's actions. The differing interpretations are justified.

I have but 2 question, has major conflict ever really ended in this war, and secondly, how many soldiers, children, ordinary human beings, have to die in this mess before people realize that a country cannot be forced to peace, and democracy? This war will continue as long as Iraqis are willing to die for their country and for what they believe is right, honestly how many of you people would let a foriegn power invade your country and try to impose their rule and laws, I know I wouldn't. These are just my thoughts.

Seeing as to 80+% of the country loathed Saddam, I don't think that is the issue. You have a minority of people dicking around and fucking shit up.

Judging by the way things are going to hell a minority seems an understatement, and the coalition soldiers that are facing this minority probably doesn't consider this opposing force to be a minority.

uhh...

a majority in an issue w/2 sides (either oppose the US in arms or not) is 51% or more. an uprising led by a rogue cleric in a medium sized city is nothing like a majority.

although real bullets are being fired and injuring (and killing) real people... i seriously doubt the military is making it as big of a deal as the media and Bush's detractors want it to be.

First, I did read the article, and in my opinion blowing a wall away to a religious compound for any reason is barbaric. By blowing the wall away and knowing there were innocent lives in there is condoning their killing. In my opinion.

Do I condone the firing upon our troops? In no way shape or form and I resent anyone implying I do. I firmly believe when fired upon you fire back at those that fired (men, women, children, whomever it was), but you limit as much as possible the innocent casualties.

Blowing a wall away with 3 missiles is not limiting that.

1 missile I am sure would have sent a message.

2 missiles would have gotten the point across just fine and been overaggressive but after the first if the firing had continued acceptable.

3 missiles is overkill.

It is not showing the Iraqi or any Arab country that we mean peace and freedom. It shows we will go to extremes to make our point.

It adds fuel and more hunger to the enemy's cause and hatreds as now those who were innocent may now have been angered or the families vowing vengence against us.

We are not showing these people, (we say we are freeing from a horrendously evil dictator,) any difference between us and Saddam.

If they choose to use religious compounds to strike against us, then we do what they do. That is not fire back that is to let the press see for themselves firsthand what is happening. By doing this I guarantee you take away any sympathy and the attacks from these places stop. Because those that are innocent and those that (like myself) feel there were better ways to handle it will be able to see firsthand that we didn't fire first and we did all we could before firing back.

Also, just because I question policy or the president's motives, does not mean I hate America. IT IS MY RIGHT TO QUESTION AND NOT HAVE MY PATRIOTISM QUESTIONED. To imply or believe anything else, is not protecting freedom but stifling it and perhaps scaring, harrassing and berating others from speaking out. Noone has the right to do that to another, not in the USA.

Anytime soldiers die the military takes it seriously and makes a big deal out of it. Is 500,000 in Fallujah considered a medium sized city? I'm from a town of 15,000 so that seems like a large city. The uprising was in more than one city, Fallujah, Kut, Basra, Ramadi, Najaf, Baghdad, Karbala, al-Sadr's Mehdi Army was incontrol of Najaf with the coalition left on the outskirts so this was hardly a medium sized city uprising as you put it, I mean the US didn't take the Viet Cong seriously until Tet maybe this is a wake up call.

I'd just like to weigh in with a simple analogy.

If a mentally handicapped person is shooting at me and my friends, and my friends are dead and dying, and i'm just lucky to be upright and conscious, I'm gonna blast that fucker, no matter who or what the fuck he is.

What we have is the equivalent of the aftermath of my above hypothetical, and the title would read:

"analog shot a retard"

I'd say that there is a story here, and some of us are only getting bits and pieces of it.

1. They didn't bomb the fucking mosque. They bombed a wall that surrounds it. That's WAY different.

2. They bombed people who were- and had been for some time- actively engaging troops, and had already wounded or killed several.

3. These people chose to engage our troops FROM A CHURCH. As someone already pointed out, this was one of the disgusting tactics used by Saddam.

The only thing to debate, as far as I can tell, is whether or not we should have just pulled out completely rather than stay and engage.

You just lost several brothers- you tell me what you'd do in the moment.

I read on another message board that what cnn was reporting wasnt the truth... but i cant verify that, just what i heard..

that's only if they're not americans...:rolleyes:


do u REALLY think they are that stupid? i'm not sure i'm buying all of this..