FROM: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/dailybriefing/story/0,
12965,927233,00.html
'You
didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!'
A journalist's account
of the killing of a car full of Iraqi civilians by US soldiers differs
widely from the official military version, says Brian Whitaker
Tuesday April 1, 2003
The invasion forces suffered
another self-inflicted disaster in the battle for hearts and minds yesterday
when soldiers from the US 3rd infantry division shot
dead Iraqi seven women and children.
The incident occurred
on Route 9, near Najaf, when a car carrying 13 women and children approached
a checkpoint.
A US military spokesman
says the soldiers motioned the vehicle to stop but their signals were
ignored. However, according to the Washington Post, Captain Ronny Johnson,
who was in charge of the checkpoint, blamed his own troops for ignoring
orders to fire a warning shot.
"You
just fucking killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot
soon enough!", he reportedly yelled at them.
In another checkpoint
incident this morning, US forces say they killed
an unarmed Iraqi driver outside Shatra.
Meanwhile it has emerged
- as a result of detective work on the internet by a Guardian reader
- that the explosion in a Baghdad market which killed more than 60 people
last Friday was indeed caused by a cruise missile
and not an Iraqi anti-aircraft rocket as the US has suggested.
A metal fragment found
at the scene by British journalist Robert Fisk carried various markings,
including "MFR 96214 09". This, our reader pointed out in
an email, is a manufacturer's identification number known as a "cage
code".
Cage codes can be looked
up on the internet (www.gidm.dlis.dla.mil),
and keying in the number 96214 traces the fragment back to a plant in
McKinney, Texas, owned by the Raytheon Company.
Raytheon, whose headquarters
are in Lexington, Massachusetts, aspires "to be the most admired
defence and aerospace systems supplier through world-class people and
technology", according to its website (www.raytheon.com).
It makes a vast array of military equipment, including the AGM-129 cruise
missile which is launched from B-52 bombers.
On the political front,
two new quarrels have broken out. One centres on an attempt by the US
to set up its own inspection team to find the alleged Iraqi weapons
that United Nations inspectors did not find. The US appears unaware
that such a project will have little credibility internationally and
has pressed ahead, offering jobs to some of the UN inspectors.
The two chief UN inspectors,
Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy
Authority, are reportedly furious.
Dr Baradei, in remarks quoted by the BBC, insisted that the
IAEA is the sole body with legal authority to verify any nuclear programmes
in Iraq.
The other row concerns
the new Pentagon-controlled Iraqi government that the US is establishing
in Kuwait, with 23 ministries, each headed by an American and with four
US-appointed Iraqi advisers.
Former US general Jay
Garner, who was placed in overall charge of the "interim government",
is annoyed by the efforts of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary,
to impose several controversial Iraqis as advisers in the government.
They include Ahmed Chalabi,
head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, who will be offered
an advisory post in the finance ministry. Mr
Chalabi was previously convicted in his absence of a multi-million dollar
banking fraud in Jordan, though he denies the charges.
Mr Wolfowitz wants posts
in other ministries to go to Mr Chalabi's nephew, Salem, and to three
of his close associates, Tamara Daghestani, Goran Talebani and Aras
Habib.
In an interview with
the BBC yesterday, the British home secretary, David Blunkett, conceded
that at present the invasion forces are "seen as villains",
but he added:
"Once this is over
and there is a free Iraq, with a democratic state ... the population
as a whole will say that we want a free country, we want a state to
live in where we can use our talents to the full."
The veteran American
war correspondent, Peter Arnett, was sacked by NBC television yesterday
for giving an interview to an Iraqi TV journalist
in which he said the US had "misjudged the determination of the
Iraqi forces". He was immediately offered a new job by a British
newspaper, the Daily Mirror, which opposes the war.
Another war-related tragedy
has occurred in Israel, where two elderly sisters were found dead -
apparently suffocated - in a room that they had made airtight against
a possible Iraqi chemical attack. Three others died in similar circumstances
a fortnight ago.
On the ground in Iraq,
battles continue in various locations. US forces "testing"
the southern defences of Baghdad are reportedly fighting Republican
Guards and other forces at Hindiya, some 50 miles from the capital.
Fighting has also erupted
along the Euphrates river near ancient Babylon. US marines entered Shatra,
20 miles north of Nassiriya, after storming it with planes, tanks and
helicopter gunships, and British Royal Marines clashed with Iraqi paramilitaries
south of Basra.
Bombing of Baghdad continued
overnight. Targets included the Iraqi national
Olympic committee, which is run by Saddam Hussein's son,
Uday.
At least one American
soldier has been reported killed at Hindiya. A British soldier was also
killed yesterday - the 26th since the war began. The defence ministry
said he died "in the course of his duties" but gave no details.
FROM: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/dailybriefing/story/0,
12965,927233,00.html
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