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April 02, 2003

Were massacres at checkpoints avoidable?

I saw part of this interview and it seemed to be legitimate, unless the interpreter was completely making up things as he went along.

From World Net Daily:

A Shiite Muslim cleric in Iraq claims the driver of the van at a U.S. checkpoint in which at least seven women and children were killed was forced to disobey the soldiers' orders to stop, thereby causing the civilian deaths, reports Fox News Channel.

Mohammed Barkir Al-Mohari said in a translated videotape that the incident outside Najaf in southern Iraq on Monday was purposely set up to give Saddam's regime grist for criticizing the United States

Al-Mohari also claims the suicide bomber that struck over the weekend was told if he didn't carry out his mission his family would be killed, and that Saddam's regime gave the man's family hush money.

Fox says Al-Mohari, whom the network describes as an "influential cleric," says families have been threatened with mass killings and even chemical attacks in recent years if they didn't follow through with orders from the Iraqi regime to sacrifice themselves in suicide attacks.

"Those people, children and women, were put in the [van] by Saddam Hussein's forces," Al-Mohari said, "and their husbands and fathers were taken as hostages. And the driver was ordered to speed up at the checkpoint and not stop so that they would be shot at."

I'm surprised I have not seen this story from any other sources. Hope it's true.
Well, hope it never happens again, but hope it is accurate and shows that the U.S. is not doing as lousy a job as we might otherwise be led to believe.

At the same time, there are stories like this, which also seem all too true:

Surviving members of a family whose van was fired on by troops in Iraq said they were traveling toward allied lines because they thought an air-dropped leaflet had advised them to flee for safety.

In a report published Wednesday in the Miami Herald and other Knight Ridder newspapers, Bakhat Hassan said American soldiers had waved his family's car through a checkpoint as they left their village Monday. But at the next checkpoint, the soldiers fired.

"We were thinking these Americans want us to be safe," Hassan, 35, said through a translator.

"I saw the heads of my two little girls come off," said Lamea Hassan, 36. "My girls - I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead."

It goes without saying, but the sooner this war ends the better.

Posted by Mike at April 2, 2003 09:17 AM

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