U.S. Snipers Allegedly `Baited' Iraqis

[951-Riverside]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Army snipers hunting insurgents in Iraq were under orders to "bait" their targets with suspicious materials, such as detonation cords, and then kill whoever picked up the items, according to the defense attorney for a soldier accused of planting evidence on an Iraqi he killed.

Gary Myers, an attorney for Sgt. Evan Vela, said Monday his client had acted "pursuant to orders."

"We believe that our client has done nothing more than he was instructed to do by superiors," Myers said in a telephone interview.

Myers and Vela's father, Curtis Carnahan of Idaho Falls, Idaho, said in separate interviews that sworn statements and testimony in the cases of two other accused Ranger snipers indicate that the Army has a classified program that encourages snipers to "bait" potential targets and then kill whoever takes the bait.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAQ_SNIPERS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-09-24-19-38-58

[Justitia]

1. Whoa - that sounds like "shooting fish in a barrel". -eom

[provis99]

2. They sound like American inner city cops

breaking into the wrong house, shooting the occupants, then covering up their crime by planting drugs or guns on the victims. What the Rangers were doing is the same thing. Nothing new here, been going on in American ghettos for decades.

[saigon68]

6. Yes its Operation "Grease the Negro"

Throw away knives were popular when the police would not so accidentally kill the Black man

[frylock]

3. we believe that our client has done nothing more than he was instructed to do by superiors

where have I heard that before?

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Kind of scary, isn't it?

I've seen "incompetent" local government employees recycled between cities in the same county, just because they were capable of doing what they were told, and taking the heat for it. One guy, however, one guy was braver than most and stayed put in the same city. He looked old and decrepit, but in his last year, it was obvious they were rewarding him well for following orders. He drove around in a sportscar, which I think was a corvette, and had a chickie waiting for him outside after the city meetings. The girl looked like his 16 year old grand daughter.

I'll never forget what he said to me with a sneer. He said he would retire and go to the bayou country in Louisiana where no one could find him. I think he knew that the corruption level in this city had reached a level of ridiculousness that even he wanted to run away from. Little did he know that years after his departure, people are still as dumbstruck as ever.

I don't know if he was in the bayou country when Katrina hit. I always wonder.

[ohio2007]

4. I've read articles about road kill bait

where dead people are gutted and filled with explosives. Very dangerous bait that tends to kill family members

[Hatalles]

5. kick

[benEzra]

8. One of the things they were apparently doing was dropping ordinary small arms ammunition

and shooting anybody who picked it up. Ditto for spools of wire. This was apparently NOT stuff that only a terrorist would pick up.

Given the current situation in Iraq, there are a lot of good reasons why a law-abiding, nonviolent, non-insurgent Iraqi might stoop to pick up a box of ammunition or a spool of wire off the street. I certainly would if I were there. Owning a rifle for home defense is not only perfectly legal in Iraq (despite initial attempts by the Bush administration to enact harsh gun bans there), it is pretty darn necessary at the moment. Nor is picking up a spool of wire a sign of criminal/terrorist intent, because the vast majority of uses of wire are peaceful, particularly in the midst of a civil war that is devastating the country's infrastructure, not to mention the fact that copper is probably worth a lot of money in Iraq right now.

The last time I picked up a spool of wire, it was at Radio Shack, and I needed it to connect a pair of speakers to our sound system (our existing speaker wire wasn't long enough after we rearranged the room). Thankfully, I wasn't shot... :eyes:

[Zhade]

9. People are surprised?

NT!

[daleo]

10. Entrapment, followed by execution

That's what it sounds like to me.

Would real bombers need to find their bomb making materials lying around on the street, anyway?

[derby378]

11. Here kitty kitty kitty

Seriously, this is wrong on so many levels. Freedom on the march, indeed. :mad:

[fenriswolf]

12. i've gotta say

alot of the people i served with were caring a decent people, alot of them were against the war. But their are some people who view human life as not important. Some who get off on taking another life. While on rotation to come back to the states we had to have everything inspected so that we would not bring back flora and fauna. The inspector was a private citizen and i asked him what was some of the stuff they found (they check vehicles throughly, all personal property and do a pat down) he found fingers, ears, etc, just disgusting.