Innocent civilians, including people who are considered vital to building democracy, are increasingly being killed by U.S. troops.
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When I first glanced at the headline i thought it said Innocent civilians ...increasingly being killed by Iraqi Troops.
I had to take a second look and read the whole thing again. I am in no way blaming our troops for what must be a job that gets muddier and muddier day by day. How are they to discern between friend and foe, for the most part.
As was just played out in London last week, it is usually a split second decision that is made by a tense soldier who is faced with a vision or a reality of a gun or a bomb hitting them.
However, the crux of the whole situation is that the soldiers shouldn't be there in the first place. They were placed in this impossible situation and by all accounts a majority of them voted for the administration that put them there.
The losers in this whole scenario are the innocent civilians of Iraq and then by rule of revenge, the innocent civilians of the angry victim that was just created.
A snippet of the story:
BAGHDAD -- Three men in an unmarked sedan pulled up near the headquarters of the national police major crimes unit. The two passengers, wearing traditional Arab dishdashagowns, stepped from the car.
At the same moment, a U.S. military convoy emerged from an underpass. Apparently believing the men were staging an ambush, the Americans fired, killing one passenger and wounding the other. The sedan's driver was hit in the head by two bullet fragments.
The soldiers drove on without stopping.
This kind of shooting is far from rare in Baghdad, but the driver of the car was no ordinary casualty. He was Iraqi police Brig. Gen. Majeed Farraji, chief of the major crimes unit. His passengers were unarmed hitchhikers whom he was dropping off on his way to work.
"The reason they shot us is just because the Americans are reckless," the general said from his hospital bed hours after the July 6 shooting, his head wrapped in a white bandage. "Nobody punishes them or blames them."
Angered by the growing number of unarmed civilians killed by American troops in recent weeks, the Iraqi government criticized the shootings and called on U.S. troops to exercise greater care.
U.S. officials have repeatedly declined requests to disclose the number of civilians killed in such incidents. Police in Baghdad say they have received reports that U.S. forces killed 33 unarmed civilians and injured 45 in the capital between May 1 and July 12 -- an average of nearly one fatality every two days. This does not include incidents that occurred elsewhere in the country or were not reported to the police.