WikiLeaks: Iraqi children handcuffed, executed by US Forces. Airstrike to cover evidence

[Mazmaz]

The Crusades are in no way analogous to the events I referred to with the exception of human lives lost.

So you're saying we should dial down the morality meter a bit, but not all the way. Or what the fuck are you saying?
If you're trying to say that this was ok if it was a tactical decision or some shit, then just think of this thread as a protest to those tactics.

[Salodin]

What the flying fuck, there is a clear possibility that this story is bullshit, yet here we have people defending a persons side of the story who has clear bias against the "bad guys" in this story?

Again, what the flying fuck. Take your hate goggles off; yes if this happened its horrible and heinous, but there is a big fucking possibility that its bullshit. If you can't, won't, or just don't care to recognize that, then fuck you buddy, you're part of what's wrong with this country.

[Senoska]

Can you point me to anything that would suggest this story is bullshit?

[Elvis]

From the International Business Times:
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/2077...i-massacre.htm

From there, the accounts diverge. U.S. military spokesmen said that an al-Qaida in Iraq operative was captured from the house, and that the ferocity of the fight had reduced the structure to rubble. A subsequent military investigation exonerated troops of any wrongdoing. The investigation acknowleged that the raid caused as many as nine civilian fatalities but attributed the deaths to the house collapsing.

But the Joint Coordination Center in Tikrit, a regional security center set up with American military assistance and staffed by U.S.-trained Iraqi police officers, maintained that the 11 civilians killed -- four of them women and five of them children younger than the age of five -- were purposefully executed.

"The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men. Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals," the Joint Coordination Center's report said.

Alston's cable supports those claims, that autopsies conducted on the civilians determined that they had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Alston also disputed the idea that the house was destroyed in the firefight, maintaining that it was still standing until the U.S. called in an airtstrike.

"Troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them," Alston wrote. "After the initial MNF [Multi-National Force] intervention, a U.S. air raid ensued that destroyed the house."

McClatchy noted that the cable also backed up what neighbors and the doctor who performed the autopsies told Knight-Ridder -- which is now owned by McClatchy -- immediately after the incident. The BBC also released a video that depicts dead bodies at the sight with what appear to be bullet wounds.

Col. John Gregory, a spokesman for the Pentagon, told The New York Times that the cable contained "nothing new we haven't already looked into here."

The Iraqi government is re-investigating the issue.

From the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...ssacre-inquiry

The Iraqi government is to launch a new investigation into one of the most controversial incidents of the Iraq war, after the release of a diplomatic cable alleging that US soldiers handcuffed and executed women and children during a 2006 raid.

The troops were also accused of calling in an air strike to destroy evidence.

An adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said on Friday that previous inquiries had stalled but the government would revive its investigation as a result of the new information.

Alston, who is now a professor at New York university, told a reporter for the McClatchy group of newspapers that the US had not responded to his letter – as was "the case with most of the letters in the 2006-2007 period", when sectarian and other violence was at its height. The Iraqi government had not responded either.

"The tragedy," he said, "is that this elaborate system of communications is in place but the (UN) human rights council does nothing to follow up when states ignore issues raised with them."

The Pentagon claims the civilians were killed in the air raid but the villagers say the air raid came after the killings. Three months after the attack, the Pentagon said it had conducted its own investigation and the allegations of the execution were absolutely false and there had been no cover-up.

Lieutenant-Colonel James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman, responding to the Alston letter and the Iraqi government announcement that it is to revive its inquiry, said on Friday: "The incident was properly investigated at the time and no new information has surfaced."

[Dimmauk]

Why didn't you bold the part about the Pentagon saying the story was false?

[Elvis]

Why didn't you bold the part about the Pentagon saying the story was false?

What the hell does it matter? It's superfluous. Can you not see the sentence above it? And the paragraph below?

[solanis]

Why didn't you bold the part about the Pentagon saying the story was false?

because america is evil, and anything the pentagon says cannot be trusted, duh

elvis bringing his special brand of tinfoil hat to this thread, color me shocked

[Elvis]

because america is evil, and anything the pentagon says cannot be trusted, duh

elvis bringing his special brand of tinfoil hat to this thread, color me shocked

The Pentagon saying it's false is no different from the Pentagon saying the civilians died in the air-raid and that the incident was properly investigated at the time.

Except, if I bold the Pentagon's explanation of why it's false and not simply the statement THAT it's false, then it doesn't make them seem reactionary.

I included it in the quote and gave the link to the original article.

Shut the fuck up.

[Byrthnoth]

If the accusation is "The Pentagon is covering something up", the pentagon saying "Nuh-uh" doesn't seem very relevant.

[Elvis]

If the accusation is 'the Pentagon is lying' then yes, quoting them saying 'the story is false' is meaningless. Unless you reflexively take them at their word.

That's why I quoted the official.

[Salodin]

So you base your belief that the military did this and covered it up based on the fact that some very biased people say so, then when the pentagon says otherwise, you say "nope sorry can't believe you obviously". Ok, I get it now.

Spoiler: show

It wouldn't be the first time our troops done fucked up over there, but until we have real evidence proving otherwise this is nothing but he said she said; I forgot though, that when it comes to Amerikuh, we are always wrong and guilty until proven otherwise.

[Elvis]

Who are you talking to?

If it's me, which it has to be, I just quoted two articles. The first one, because it mentions the Joint Coordination Center's report and the corroboration of the cable's version of events by the doctor who conducted the autopsy and the neighbors.

The second, because the Iraqi government is apparently going to open up the investigation again, as well as what I saw as the official response from our government.

you say "nope sorry can't believe you obviously"

Where the fuck did I imply we can't believe the Pentagon's statement? I didn't even provide commentary after I posted the two articles.

[Xno Kappa]

A lot of these "Iraqi investigations" are also notoriously full of shit where as in the villagers are paid off with promise of peace and/or threatened by Sunni/Shiite insurgents. Especially during 2006-07 when IP had a ridiculous desertion rate.

[Day]

Anyone that spends enough time on a video game forum to actually post in this thread can not possibly actually give 2 fucks about this family.

[Kuya]

To learn more, I spoke to journalist Matthew Schofield, who has been covering the incident since he first wrote about while on assignment in Iraq in 2006. He is currently an editorial writer at the Kansas City Star, a McClatchy paper, but he wrote a news article on the WikiLeaks cable this week.

I know there are competing accounts, so can you explain what do we know -- or think -- happened in this incident in 2006?

What we know happened -- what everyone agrees on -- is that U.S. troops went to a house in Ishaqi, Iraq, in March of 2006. In one official U.S. version, the troops were looking for an al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist, or, in another official account, someone who had shot at U.S troops. When they approached the house in the early morning hours, there was a gunfight. Neighbors talked about this. In the U.S. version, in the course of the gunfight, the people in the house were killed, the house was destroyed at the same time, and they were able to detain the person they were looking for. In the account the neighbors told, as well as the report of a U.N. investigation on this, the house was standing when the soldiers went inside and was destroyed sometime later.

The bodies of the dead were found against one wall in one room, all handcuffed in white plastic handcuffs according to neighbors. The coroner we talked to after the incident said that the people who died were killed by gunshots to the upper chest and head. It didn't necessarily look execution-style -- the shots were not all to the same place in the head, or anything like that -- but it looked like they were from fairly close range. His guess was that the bullets were from an M-16. The Iraqi police investigators, who had been trained by U.S. forces, said in their report that these had been execution-style killings by American forces.

What about the question of an alleged airstrike on the house?

The house was certainly rubble after the raid -- that's clear. When it collapsed is the question. The neighbors said that after the U.S. troops left, an airstrike was called in. At the time, they said it was helicopters. U.S. forces maintained that it collapsed during the firefight. I couldn't get to the site when I was in Iraq because at that time we couldn't get far out of Baghdad very safely. We relied on a stringer who we had worked with quite a bit in the past. He took a satellite phone and we did phone interviews with the coroner and the police and others.

What did we learn from the cable just released by WikiLeaks?

One, it shows different sources of information than what I was dealing with. It shows that officialdom was concerned about this. They were not admitting they were concerned when we were on the story back then. They gave much more credence to the story than they had suggested to the press at the time. Behind the scenes, there was a great deal of concern over what exactly had happened there.

The cable outlines pretty much exactly what the worst-case scenario was when we were reporting on it. I didn't really pursue the worse-cast scenario because I didn't believe it was possible. We looked into it and we reported on the allegations at the time, but we were always looking for other explanations, for other ways this could have happened. This cable seems focused on that worst-case scenario, which I found fascinating.

So what happened with the U.N. investigation? It was essentially stymied?

Yes, it died. They sent questions out to the United States, and there was no response. They have said there was frequently no response from the United States on these matters. They sent questions to the Iraqi government, and they said these things also just tended to vanish because Iraq was a mess at the time. The investigator, Philip Alston, who is the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told us this week that they just had nowhere left to go after these nonresponses.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/w...leged_massacre

[archibaldcrane]

They keep saying handcuffs and plastic handcuffs, but I wonder/think they're talking about those plastic zip-ties.

[Mazmaz]

So you base your belief that the military did this and covered it up based on the fact that some very biased people say so, then when the pentagon says otherwise, you say "nope sorry can't believe you obviously". Ok, I get it now.

Spoiler: show

It wouldn't be the first time our troops done fucked up over there, but until we have real evidence proving otherwise this is nothing but he said she said; I forgot though, that when it comes to Amerikuh, we are always wrong and guilty until proven otherwise.

Holy fucking shit you dumb fucking shit, what's so hard to grasp. One side has EYEWITNESS REPORTS that match exactly what an AUTOPSY reveals about the bodies, so unless the villagers and the fucking doctor got together to corroborate their stories, that's fucking evidence.

[Gadritan]

the villagers

They heard gunfire and decided, "HEY GUYS! LET'S GO CHECK IT OUT!!!!" and ran to it to get an up close and personal view?

That's what you're saying? They were chillin in the house, or got close enough during/after a 25min firefight to watch the family be handcuffed and executed?

These well educated, totally unbiased civilians showed amazing courage to place their very lives in danger to make sure they had an accurate first hand account of exactly what happened.

[Drex]

Guys, people have been abducted by aliens. They said so themselves! And their neighbors saw it happen too! And they have scars consistent with surgical equipment! How can you deny this?

[Abandon]

They keep saying handcuffs and plastic handcuffs, but I wonder/think they're talking about those plastic zip-ties.

flexicuffs are pretty fun.