A horrible scene. Question to everybody: when do we say when on this? I'm not saying it should be now...but this just cannot continue indefinitely. --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/20040331/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_8 Iraqis Drag Four Corpses Through Streets 18 minutes ago Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer FALLUJAH, Iraq - Jubilant residents dragged the charred corpses of four foreign contractors — one a woman, at least one an American — through the streets Wednesday and hanged them from the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. Five American soldiers died in a roadside bombing nearby. The four contract workers for the U.S.-led coalition were killed in a rebel ambush of their SUVs in Fallujah, a Sunni Triangle city about 35 miles west of Baghdad and scene of some of the worst violence on both sides of the conflict since the beginning of the American occupation a year ago. It was reminiscent of the 1993 scene in Somalia, when a mob dragged the corpse of a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu, eventually leading to the American withdrawal from the African nation. In one of the bloodiest days for the U.S. military this year, five 1st Infantry Division soldiers died when their M-113 armored personnel carrier ran over a bomb in a separate incident 12 miles to the northwest, among the reed-lined roads running through some of Iraq (news - web sites)'s richest farmland. Residents said the bomb attack occurred in Malahma, 12 miles northwest of Fallujah, where anti-U.S. insurgents are active. U.S. Marines operate in the area, but it was unclear whether the slain troops were Marines. In the deadliest previous incident this year, nine soldiers were killed when their Black Hawk medevac helicopter crashed near Fallujah, apparently after being shot down. In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the four killed in Fallujah were contractors working with the coalition. He did not say what they were doing in the city. Chanting "Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans," residents cheered after the grisly assault on two four-wheel-drive civilian vehicles, which left both in flames. Others chanted, "We sacrifice our blood and souls for Islam." Associated Press Television News pictures showed one man beating a charred corpse with a metal pole. Others tied a yellow rope to a body, hooked it to a car and dragged it down the main street of town. Two blackened and mangled corpses were hung from a green iron bridge across the Euphrates. "The people of Fallujah hanged some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed said. Some of the corpses were dismembered, he said. Beneath the bodies, a man held a printed sign with a skull and crossbones and the phrase "Fallujah is the cemetery for Americans." APTN showed the charred remains of three slain men. Some were wearing flak jackets, said resident Safa Mohammedi. One resident displayed what appeared to be dog tags taken from one body. Residents also said there were weapons in the targeted cars. APTN showed one American passport near a body and a U.S. Department of Defense (news - web sites) identification card belonging to another man. U.S. military officials in Washington said the situation was still confused but they did not think the victims were American soldiers and believed the SUVs were not American military vehicles. Witnesses said the two vehicles were attacked with small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades. Hours after the attack, the city was quiet. No U.S. troops or Iraqi police were seen in the area. Fallujah is in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where support for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was strong and rebels often carry out attacks against American forces. In nearby Ramadi, insurgents threw a grenade at a government building and Iraqi security forces returned fire Wednesday, witnesses said. It was not clear if there were casualties. Also in Ramadi, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy, witnesses said. U.S. officials in Baghdad could not confirm the attack. On Tuesday in Ramadi, one U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bombing, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. Northeast of Baghdad, in the city of Baqouba on Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew up explosives in his car when he was near a convoy of government vehicles, wounding 14 Iraqis and killing himself, officials said. The attacked convoy is normally used to transport the Diala provincial governor, Abdullah al-Joubori, but he was elsewhere at the time, said police Col. Ali Hossein. On Tuesday, a suicide bombing outside the house of a police chief in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, killed the attacker and wounded seven others. A bomb exploded late Tuesday in a movie theater that had closed for the night. Two bystanders were wounded by flying glass, said its owner, Ghani Mohammed. The latest violence came two days after Carina Perelli, the head of a U.N. electoral team, said better security is vital if Iraq wants to hold elections by a Jan. 31 deadline. The polls are scheduled to follow a June 30 transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government. Top U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said Tuesday he had appointed 21 anti-corruption inspectors general to government departments to try to prevent fraud. More will be named in coming days, he said. The inspectors will work with two other newly formed, independent agencies. Together, they will "form an integrated approach intended to combat corruption at every level of government across the country," Bremer said.
Man...have you seen the pictures on this? Dragging charred bodies around....cutting the bodies open...hanging them off of bridges. Insert typical MadMax sarcastic comment about humanity here.
max where did you see them? On Good Morning America this morning the reporter said something like "due to the extreme nature of the pictures, we will not show you all of them".
to be fair...drudge himself doesn't have the pictures up there...they're linked to a story from a news wire service...and the link contains a warning about the graphic nature of the pictures.
Man, this is just a mess. Let's not drag out the "q" word that relates to Vietnam. I'll just say "mess."
We're there. I wish to god we weren't, but we are. We can't leave for the forseeable future. The ramifications would be even more devastating to American power, policy and prestige than invading was in the first place. That's debatable, I'll admit, but doing both is unthinkable. The Bush Administration has done incredible harm to our standing and relations with the rest of the world. We had near universal support after 9/11. We were cheered on by the world when we went after AQ and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Bush has thrown all that worldwide goodwill and support away on an invasion of a sovereign country that was based on deceiving the world before the United Nations and, even worse, deceiving the American people.
Mr. M, that was uncalled for. Wrong thread. Besides, I don't want to discourage people like Max from posting in threads like this. He has a different conservative viewpoint, compared to some of the others, that I like to read.
You're right, MM has seemingly been slowly moving back to the center over the past few months....it's working!
You are so right man.. I'm a democrat but I've generally supported the war on Iraq because of my hatred for Saddam. However, the way we went about going there, giving the UN(I still don't like how anti-Israel the UN is) the middle finger has led to even more worldwide hate for the US. After seeing what happened today, I don't know if I can justify the war any more. Not because people died, but because many people that we liberated did not want us there. Was it worth all those billions of dollars to "save" these people who hate us? Many extreme liberals on here(I'm not) would argue that we lost many soldiers, but but war's standards a few hundred is nothing. Our administration really screwed up on this one. One, what the hell kind of plan did they have for rebuilding Iraq BEFORE the war? All the media showed us was "shock and awe." Our boys drove straight to Baghdad with little resistance, because that was the Iraqi battle plan. They were going to fight guerilla warfare because they knew they cant go head to head in conventional war. Did we not know and plan for this? Yes, our boys kicked ass and kicked ass hard when there was ass to kick and I'm proud of them. But why were we in such a hurry to send contractors over there when it wasn't safe? Especially to whackjob towns like Fallujah... this just pisses me off. I'm afraid that Iraq and this Sunni Triangle is turning into one big West Bank. Welcome to Jenin boys. They will send suicide bombers, they will tear up bodies when they get them, they will lure you in with children and ambush you, and then they will accuse you of massacring them.
Let's leave aside the fundamental question of whether these deaths were more horrible than those of Iraqi infants killed after we destroyed their water supplies or say in the recent bombing raids for Bush the Younger's wars. It is horrible what happened to these people. What to do is very simple actually. Just ask Bama, Sharon or Bush- Cheney We just keep arresting and interrogating and killing these people and all the terrorists and the couple of hundred million Arabs and Muslims who somewhat support these actions till they all become more moderate. Any sort of negotiation would just be weakness and appeasement and encourage them to get more extremist. BTW according to our men Chalabi, Bush and Rumsfeld they would all be greeting us with flowers. I guess they'll have to raise the pay for American contract employees higher, though I hear it is as much as a thousand a day for the thousands of private security guards that our tax payers are footing the bill for.
That's a pretty frightening analogy I haven't seen put quite that way. Regardless of how we feel about Bush doing this stupid thing, let's hope Iraq doesn't evolve into just that scenario. Right now, it doesn't look good for our people over there. We should have a brigade sitting on that town. Anyone know what assets we have in Fallujah?
Deckard, if all the Democrats are going to do is manage Bush's mess, is it maybe better to let him stew in it? What should be done with the Iraq quaqmire is difficult. As the CIA and others kept predicitng, along with Bush I, Colin, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell, prior to working for Bush II, there is a real danger of a complete bloodbath and civil war. Should the US keep bases over there for say 40 years and keep spending billions to prevent this? Maybe this was the plan all along. Keep the bases over there for 40 or however many years it takes to pump the oil and do so under the guise of America the benevoent preventer of genocide?
Breaking News from CNN U.S. State Department identifies 3 of 4 civilians killed in Fallujah, Iraq, grenade attack today as Americans. Details soon.
