Seriously people, is this right here the sort of future that we want for our Country?
Via Reuters:
BAGHDAD, Jan 24 (Reuters) – U.S. troops shot dead a couple and wounded their eight-year-old daughter during an early morning raid on their house in northern Iraq on Saturday, a senior Iraqi police officer said.
Major-General Turhan Abdul Rahman, deputy chief commander of police in Kirkuk province, said U.S. forces stormed the house of Dhiya Hussein, a former officer in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein, in Hawija, 210 km (130 km) north of Baghdad.
A U.S. military spokesman confirmed that a man and a woman had been killed and a child wounded in the raid, but gave no further details.
The spokesman said the incident took place during a joint operation with Iraqi forces. The Iraqi police general said no Iraqi troops were present at the raid.
Kirkuk is one of the northern provinces where unrest persists despite a reduction in violence in the country. U.S. forces there have yet to hand over responsibility for security to Iraqi troops as they have done in most of Iraq. (Reporting by Tim Cocks and Khalid al Ansary; Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Elizabeth Piper.
However, upon closer examination we find.
This part comes via the AP:
The U.S. military said the operation was “fully coordinated with Iraqi authorities (who were also present for the operation) and conducted with full respect for the Iraqi Constitution and the laws of Iraq .”
After a security agreement took effect Jan. 1 , the U.S. military can conduct operations on their own if Iraqi authorities approve them and they are coordinated with Iraqi authorities.
Ali Dabbagh , the Iraqi government spokesman, said he had no information on the raid.
Brig. Gen Abdel Kareem Khalaf , the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior , told National Public Radio that no Iraqi forces were present at the raid, and he demanded an investigation. It was unclear if the raid was approved, he said.
“We have asked for a joint investigative committee plus we have asked for an explanation from the American side regarding what happened,” he told NPR . “Up to now there were victims on the ground and we have to know why.”
In the small village where Dhia Hussein Ali lived, his children and his father questioned the reason for the raid. Ali was a modest farmer with a small fish pool where he raised the popular carp eaten in Iraq , they said. The man was a former officer in Saddam Hussein‘s army.
Omar Dhia Hussein , 14, was in shock Saturday night. He said in a telephone interview that in the morning he’d seen his parents’ bodies side by side in their bed, the sheets covered in blood. The wall was covered with his father’s blood, he said.
At 2 a.m. , Omar said, he heard a bang of a percussion grenade. When he opened his eyes he saw American soldiersIraqis standing over him in the room where he slept with his two sisters. Except for an Iraqi interpreter there were no with the Americans, he said.
The interpreter shouted at the young boy.
“You are hiding weapons,” Omar recalled the interpreter saying. “Where are you hiding the weapons? You are terrorists, you are hiding weapons in that unfinished house. Confess!”
Omar began to cry and his sisters wept with him, he said. Then the American soldiers left and he heard gunfire next door. The soldiers carried Omar’s wounded sister from the room and took the remaining four children, including Omar, to his uncle’s home. Outside were at least four U.S. Humvees and two SUVs, Omar said. His grandfather, Hussein Ali , who lives next door saw no Iraqi soldiers, either.
….and now the part that bugs the living hell out of me, it’s from the same article:
After the Americans left, Omar and his sisters returned to their home with their grandfather. In his parents’ bedroom, Omar said, he saw his father’s body at the very edge of the right side of the bed, motionless and bloody.
His mother lay in the middle of the bed in a pool of her own blood. She’d been shot in the head, the family said.
“I will avenge my father’s death,” Omar said calmly Saturday evening.
Seriously people, is this the sort of America that we want to leave to our children? An America where people in other countries hate our damned guts, because we came in and just fucking slaughtered people, because we happened to believe that the person was a terrorist? “I will Avenge my father’s death” It’s those words that brings me chills. I mean, that kid is not going to be 14 years old forever. He will grow to be man, a damned bitter man. One who will grow up to hate us.
I sometimes have to ask myself. Who are the real terrorists? Could it be that our actions caused September 11’th 2001? Could it be Osama Bin Laden was paying us back for acts committed by our Military, in the name of democracy?
I’m not saying cut and run, but damn it, something wrong, seriously fucking wrong. 😡
(Via Anti-War)