Tal Afar / Giuliana Sgrena

L'ATELIER ROBERT COANE

he nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities
committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity
for not even hearing about them."

~ George Orwell

U.S. Checkpoints Raise Ire in Iraq
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: March 7, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 - When an Italian journalist was driven up Baghdad's airport road toward an American military checkpoint on Friday night, she was driving into a situation fraught with hazards thousands of Iraqis face every day.

The journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, 56, ran into fierce American gunfire that left her with a shrapnel wound to her shoulder and killed the Italian intelligence agent sitting beside her in the rear seat.

Giuliana Sgrena

Italian military carry Calipani's cascket in Rome

Agent Nicola Calipani

TAL AFAR, IRAQ
18 January 2005

One of the starkest incidents in recent weeks occurred on the evening of Jan. 18 in the town of Tal Afar, a trouble spot west of the city of Mosul, where a platoon from the 25th Infantry Division was on a foot patrol. Chris Hondros, a photographer for Getty Images, an American photo agency, said that soldiers of the Apache company were walking in near darkness toward an intersection along a deserted commercial street when they saw the headlights of a sedan turning into the street about 100 yards ahead.

An officer ordered the troops over their headsets to halt the vehicle, and all raised weapons. One soldier fired a three-shot burst into the air, but the car kept coming, Mr. Hondros said, and then half a dozen troops fired at least 50 rounds, until the car was peppered with bullets and rolled gently to a stop against a curb. "I could hear sobbing and crying coming from t he car, children's voices," Mr. Hondros said.
Next he said, one of the rear doors opened, and six children, four girls and two boys, one only 8 years old, tumbled into the street. They were splattered with blood.

Mr. Hondros, whose photographs of the incident were published around the world, said that the parents of four of the children lay dead in the front seat. Their bodies were riddled with bullets, and the man's skull had smashed.

Tal Afar Photos: CHRIS HONDROS / Getty Images

here is no flag large enough to cover the shame
of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable."
~Howard Zinn

EDITORIAL
Rules of Engagement
Published: March 8, 2005

The news of the Italian journalist whose car was sprayed by American gunfire on the way to the Baghdad airport stunned the world. But perhaps the worst thing about the wounding of the reporter, Giuliana Sgrena, and the killing of the Italian intelligence agent who was shielding her is that the attack wasn't unique.

On Jan. 18, American soldiers on patrol near Mosul were ordered to stop an oncoming car. After giving some warning shots, six soldiers sprayed the vehicle, firing at least 50 rounds. Chris Hondros, a photographer for Getty Images, said that when the car had come to a stop, he "could hear sobbing and crying coming from the car, children's voices." A car door opened, and six children, one only 8 years old, tumbled into the street, splattered with blood. The parents of four of the children lay dead in the front seat, their bodies riddled with bullets. Back at the base, the company commander told the soldiers that there would be an investigation, but that they had followed the rules of engagement.

Both cases - and presumably hundreds more like them - are a dreadful reminder of the human cost of America's war with Iraq and the ensuing occupation. Iraqi civilians don't have to live only in fear of suicide bombers and masked insurgents. They also must fear being mistaken for an insurgent by jumpy American forces, which are told to shoot first and ask questions later.

American soldiers operate under rules of engagement that give them the authority to open fire whenever they have reason to believe that they or others in their unit may be at risk of suicide bombings or other insurgent attacks. No one can fault an American G.I. at a checkpoint who fires on a car that refuses to stop, because the insurgency has targeted such checkpoints with impunity. But with every additional civilian who is killed by American fire, the human cost rises - both in terms of the lives lost and the psychological damage suffered by the Americans in uniform.

More broadly, these accidents further harm the United States' already shaky image abroad. And they play into the hands of extremists, who use them to vilify America and the American soldier.

It is the responsibility of those at the top of the chain of command - the ones who write these rules of engagement - to make sure that such rules are as close to mistake-proof as possible. That means studying hard the approach to each and every checkpoint put up by the United States military to make sure civilians understand that they should slow down. It means studying tactics used by others, like the British in Northern Ireland and the Israelis in the occupied territories, to gather every shred of useful information out there about how to construct checkpoints in a way that makes their presence obvious to anyone.

None of us want our soldiers killed by suicide bombers who get too close. But neither do we want these soldiers to have to live forever with the knowledge that they killed a heroic intelligence officer, or that they mowed down the parents of four Iraqi children in front of their very eyes, by mistake.

"an is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man' - with his mouth"

~ Mark Twain

"As democracy is perfected,
the office of President
represents, more and more closely,
the inner soul of the people.
On some great and glorious day
the plain folks of the land
will reach their heart's desire at last
and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron."

~ H. L. Mencken
(1880 - 1956)

I REFUSE TO BE LIED TO - I REFUSE TO BE DECEIVED!

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