"I hate the fact that American soldiers ride around killing
civilians," said Command Sgt. Major Samuel Coston, 44, from North
Carolina. "All you got to say is 'I feel threatened,' 'the car was
driving aggressively,' and you shoot. They have no remorse. They just
keep on driving."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/14/MNGJ2F8D8L1.DTL
COLONEL'S TOUGHEST DUTY
Battalion commander pays his respects, apologizes to Iraqis whose
civilian relatives have been killed by anonymous GIs in passing
patrols and convoys
Tikrit, Iraq -- Nebras Khalid Nasser understood this much: Insurgents
often killed people in Beiji, a northern Iraqi town where he lived
with his pregnant wife and their year-old son. He needed to move his
family to Tikrit, a safer city about 40 miles to the south. He helped
his wife, Zahoya, into his brother-in-law's beat-up Toyota sedan. They
started driving south. They saw a U.S. military convoy.
A shot rang out.
Blood poured from Zahoya's head. Then she died.
Standing on the blue concrete floor of his brother's compound
Thursday, Nasser wiped his tears with the collar of his gray dishdasha
shirt. A U.S. officer sat in front of him in a beige plastic chair,
telling him he was sorry about his loss. Nasser nodded, barely
comprehending what was happening. All he could repeat was, "She was
pregnant. She died right away."
Lt. Col. Todd Wood, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry
Regiment, 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, avoided looking at him.
Wood's battalion has lost eight soldiers since January, and he has had
a hard enough time explaining the randomness and the suddenness of the
death of his own soldiers. Now, he had to explain to this bereaved
Iraqi man how his wife had died at the hands of a U.S. military convoy
that was not even under Woods' command.
"This was a terrible accident -- it was not intentional," Wood, 42,
said with an army interpreter by his side. "The soldier who did this
did not intend to shoot and kill a woman. I wanted to apologize on
behalf of those soldiers.
"I know that explanation doesn't make anything any easier."
"She was pregnant. She died right away," Nasser said again and again.
U.S. military officials do not keep track of Iraqi civilians who have
died from U.S. fire. The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index said last
month that 8,347 to 14,576 Iraqis had been killed by acts of war since
2003, but the estimates were not broken down by type of incident.
Other groups attempting to track civilian deaths put the number even
higher. Wood estimated that since his battalion was deployed here in
January, U.S. soldiers had killed about 10 Iraqi civilians in this
sector of north central Iraq.
Often the deaths are the result of split-second decisions made by U.S.
soldiers who have to weigh the risk of being blown up by insurgents,
who use car bombs as their weapon of choice, against the possibility
of killing innocent civilians. Although U.S. troops in Iraq use their
weapons far more carefully than they did at the beginning of the war,
innocent civilians still get killed.
No matter the reason or the circumstance, every time U.S. soldiers
kill an Iraqi civilian in his sector, Wood meets with the family of
the deceased to pay his respects. On Thursday, he had to do it twice.
Both victims apparently were shot by U.S. soldiers from other units
passing through Beiji, where insurgents mount regular attacks on
Americans, Iraqi security forces and Iraq's oil pipeline. Neither
convoy stopped to help the civilians the soldiers had shot. It would
be pretty much impossible to ascertain which U.S. unit was passing
through the area at the time and track down those who did the
shooting, Wood said. "Seems like I pick up a lot of people's pieces
around here," he said. "These ... patrols that drive around and shoot
people have been a thorn in everybody's side all year."
Other members of the 2-7 battalion are equally concerned about the
incidents.
"I hate the fact that American soldiers ride around killing
civilians," said Command Sgt. Major Samuel Coston, 44, from North
Carolina. "All you got to say is 'I feel threatened,' 'the car was
driving aggressively,' and you shoot. They have no remorse. They just
keep on driving."
Last week, according to local Iraqi police, a U.S. soldier shot Jamal
Yassin Hussein, a fisherman and a father of five. Hussein, who lived
in Tikrit, was on his way to meet with a friend who had been fishing
upstream in the murky green waters of the Tigris River.
"He was observing the Ramadan fast, and he had packed some food so
that he could break fast with his friend," Hussein's father-in-law,
Maher Mara'e, told Wood. "He was always so careful, and that day, he
left home early so that he would get to his friend on time.
"The next thing we knew, Iraqi police officers are bringing his dead
body to the family and saying he was shot by coalition forces. I don't
know why, for what reason, he was killed."
Wood, who met with Mara'e at an Iraqi army headquarters in Tikrit,
told him:
"I know that there are no words to make pain and suffering any easier,
but sometimes it helps to look a person in the eye and to hear an
apology."
There was a moment of silence, as Mara'e and Wood looked at the floor.
"This was not my unit that did this," Wood finally said.
"I understand that," Mara'e nodded.
"But you live in the town where I live, and I'm responsible for you,"
Wood said. "I will be held accountable for this event."
Wood reached into his pocket and produced an envelope with $2,500 -- a
compensation package the U.S. military gives to the families of
innocent civilians its troops kill in Iraq.
"No matter how much money you give me, it's not going to give me my
son back," Mara'e said. Then, he said "thank you" and took the money.
Capt. Ray Osorio, 31, from Orlando, who handles the colonel's
relations with Iraqis, said he did not feel the $2,500 could
compensate for the loss of a life.
"I always try to put myself in their shoes -- what if it was my sister
who got killed, and someone is giving me money?" Osorio said. "You
can't solve it by paying. We just want to make things right."
When the 2-7 battalion's soldiers are responsible for the killing of a
civilian, the commanders investigate the killing, the way they have
been doing since June, when a soldier mistakenly shot and killed an
Iraqi fire engine driver who had arrived at the site of a suicide car
bombing. But when the civilians are killed by other units driving
through the 2-7's territory, Wood only finds out about their deaths
from their families or local residents or not at all.
In Jamal Hussein's case, the mayor of Tikrit told Wood about the
killing and arranged a meeting for the colonel to pay condolences to
Mara'e.
Wood found out about the killing of Zahoya Nasser two days ago when a
woman in a black abaya covering approached him as he was inspecting
polling sites ahead of the Saturday referendum on the new Iraqi
constitution in Khansa Square in downtown Tikrit. She was Zahoya's
sister-in-law, Intisar Abdallah Abid, and she had been in the car when
Zahoya was shot.
Abid said they were traveling south behind two other Iraqi civilian
cars. When the cars approached a procession of U.S. military trucks,
the first two cars sped up and cut in front of the convoy.
"One round missed the second car and hit our car," said Abid. "It hit
my sister-in-law in the head. She didn't make it to the hospital. The
convoy kept going."
Wood promised Abid that he would visit the family the next morning.
Now, he sat in the beige plastic chair in front of grief-stricken
Nasser. He stared down at his combat boots and at the concrete floor
sticky with spilled soda as Nasser cried, searching for words that
would make the bewildered man feel better and finding none. He handed
over the $2,500.
When Abid turned to leave, Wood stood for a while, stooping in the hot
October sun.
+
"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)
"Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their
dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens."
- William H. Beveridge, 1944
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism
by those who have not got it." - G. B. Shaw
Want to know what's really going on in Iraq?
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/wakeup.html
The Rise and Fall of the Holy Roller Empire
The God-Awful Truth about Christian Zionism
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/armageddon.html
Listen to Spanish Dervish by Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=78840&songID=2721724
---
http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.notserver.com/
http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
http://www.rightard.org/ http://www.thedarkwind.org/
Bush is a Christian. Get over it!
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