we are not going to win their hearts by kicking in doors in the middle of the night:

[rodeodance]

Sunday, July 22, 2007
News of the Day for Sunday, July 22, 2007

Iraqi men carry the body of the casualties of a US airstrike into the morgue of a hospital in Baghdad's impoverished district of Sadr City. The US military said today six insurgents were killed and five wounded when a warplane dropped a bomb on a building near the town of Hussainiyah, north of Baghdad.(AFP/Wissam al-Oakili) I draw your attention to the size of the body. -- C

Husseiniya (north of Baghdad)

U.S. claims helicopter assault kills six "insurgents," injures five; Iraqi witnesses say 18 civilians killed, 21 wounded. I just have to point out that the core of Gen. Petraeus's shiny new counter-insurgency doctrine is that the goal of counter-insurgency is to protect civilians, and this outweighs killing insurgents. Yet we read of incidents like this several times a week. It is getting so tiresome that moral outrage is exhausted. -- C McClatchy has more on this story. This was a Sadrist-controlled area. "Iraqi residents told a different version: The dead came from two Shiite Muslim families who lived in an area controlled by the powerful Mahdi Army militia. The bodies pulled from the rubble, locals say, were ordinary parents killed with their children in the middle of the night. Locals counted 11 corpses - two men, two women and seven children. Another 10 were injured. Some Iraqi authorities put the death toll as high as 18." See below for VOI report on the aftermath.


VOI reports angry demonstration in Husainiya following helicopter assault. Excerpt:

In Husainiya, on the north-east outskirts of Baghdad and on the main road linking the capital with Diyala province, angry reaction to the late Friday raid on the predominantly-Shia district continued.

While the US military said Saturday that six militants were killed during the airstrike on the Shiite stronghold, local residents told VOI and al-Jazeera TV channel that 18 civilians had been killed in the attack and that three houses were destroyed.

While al-Jazeera aired Sunday footage of hundreds of angry Husainiya residents demonstrating in the streets, VOI quoted a source in al-Sadr's office saying 'US forces had laid a siege on the neighbourhood for three days now, conducting house searches late in the evenings, terrorizing families and children.'

The al-Sadr office source, who spoke to VOI on condition of anonymity, said angry residents demonstrated in the streets demanding the end of airstrikes and that house searches take place in the morning and by Iraqi, not American, forces.

[Bobbieo]

1. Every time I see our soldiers breaktng down doors in Iraq,

I wonder when is it going to happen here.