Iraqi mayor accuses US troops of killing 5 children in overnight raid. This is why we're there?

[bigtree]

U.S., Iraqis dispute raid, at least 17 killed

By Ghazwan al-Jibouri
Reuters
Friday, December 8, 2006; 7:48 AM

ISHAQI, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi and U.S. officials gave sharply differing accounts of an overnight raid and air strike on Friday in which up to 20 people were killed, with a town mayor accusing American troops of killing five children.

The U.S. military issued a statement saying ground forces with air support killed 18 men and two women in the Thar Thar area of Salahaddin province, north of Baghdad. It suspected all of being al Qaeda militants and said it found weapons including rocket-propelled grenades and explosive suicide vests.

In the village of Jalameda, near Ishaqi, 90 km (50 miles) north of the capital, police said they found the bodies of 17 dead civilians in the rubble of the family homes of brothers Mohammed Hussein Jalmoud and Mahmoud Hussein Jalmoud.

Captain Nasser Abdul Majeed told Reuters that the 17 included six women and five children. They had been sent to the regional capital Tikrit to determine the cause of death.

The houses, surrounded by open fields, were flattened in the raid, leaving little but rubble and twisted steel rods.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/08/AR2006120800363_pf.html



http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

1. Shock and awe...

:cry: MKJ

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Winning the hearts and minds.

We still don't get it. We still aren't even fighting the right war. Please somebody have the courage to get us out of there.

[Sugar Smack]

3. My god. There are no words for this.

:cry:

[Beelzebud]

4. Sometimes "babykiller" is the correct nomenclature.

[bigtree]

5. "The Americans have done this before but they always deny it," Ishaqi Mayor Amer Alwan told Reuters

In Ishaqi, grieving relatives showed the bodies of five children wrapped in blankets to journalists.

Only a handful of complaints involving civilian deaths in Iraq have led to criminal investigations by the U.S. military.

"I can promise you that, in every one of these incidents, they will be fully investigated," Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, the second-ranking U.S. general in the country, told Pentagon journalists by video-link.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsone&storyID=2006-12-08T202149Z_01_COL153081_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=IntNewsHome_R1_newsone-1

[malaise]

6. I'm sick of this slaughter

Get the fuck out of Iraq.