Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Iraq. Meglio non saper far di conto.

The Independent (UK)
Terrified US soldiers are still killing civilians with
impunity, while the dead go uncounted
By Patrick Cockburn
24 April 2005
An American patrol roared past us with the soldiers
gesturing furiously with their guns for traffic to keep back
on an overpass in central Baghdad. A black car with three
young men in it did not stop in time and a soldier fired
several shots from his machine gun into its engine.
The driver and his friends were not hit, but many Iraqis do
not survive casual encounters with US soldiers. It is very
easy to be accidentally killed in Iraq. US soldiers treat
everybody as a potential suicide bomber. If they are right
they have saved their lives and if they are wrong they face
no penalty.
"We should end the immunity of US soldiers here," says Dr
Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician who argues that
the failure to prosecute American soldiers who have killed
civilians is one of the reasons why the occupation became so
unpopular so fast. He admits, however, that this is
extremely unlikely to happen given the US attitude to any
sanctions against its own forces.
Every Iraqi has stories of friends or relatives killed by US
troops for no adequate reason. Often they do not know if
they were shot by regular soldiers or by members of western
security companies whose burly employees, usually
ex-soldiers, are everywhere in Iraq.
A member of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi's
party, was passing through an American checkpoint last year
when a single shot rang out from a sniper. No US soldier was
hit, but the troops at the checkpoint hosed down the area
with fire, wounding the INC member and killing his driver.
The rector of Al-Nahrain University in south Baghdad was
travelling to a degree ceremony on the other side of the
city when white men in a four-wheel drive suddenly opened
fire, hitting him in the stomach. Presumably they thought he
was on a suicide mission.
It was obvious to many American officers from an early stage
in the conflict that the Pentagon's claim that it did not
count civilian casualties was seen by many Iraqis as proof
that the US did not care about how many of them were killed.
The failure to take Iraqi civilian dead into account was
particularly foolish in a culture where relatives of the
slain are obligated by custom to seek revenge.
The secrecy surrounding the numbers of civilians killed
reveals another important facet of the war. The White House
was always more interested in the impact of events in Iraq
on the American voter than it was in the effect on Iraqis.
 From the beginning of the conflict the US and British
armies had difficulty in working out who in Iraq really was
a civilian.
Marla Ruzicka, the American humanitarian worker who was
buried yesterday in California, had established in her last
weeks in Iraq that figures were kept based on after-action
reports. Officially, she found, 29 civilians were killed in
fire fights between US forces and insurgents between 28
February and 5 April. But these figures are likely to be
gross underestimates.
US soldiers are notorious in Iraq for departing immediately
after a skirmish, taking their own casualties but sometimes
leaving damaged vehicles. They would not have time to find
out how many Iraqis were killed or injured.
The Health Ministry in Baghdad did produce figures and then
stopped doing so, saying they had not been properly
collated. Iraqi Body Count, a group monitoring casualties by
looking at media sources, puts the total at 17,384. But most
Iraqis die obscurely; it is dangerous for reporters, Iraqi
or foreign, to try to find out who is being killed. Much of
Iraq is a bandit-ridden no-man's land.
Even in Baghdad it is evident from the hundreds of bodies
arriving at the mortuary that this has become one of the
most violent societies on earth. The Iraqi Body Count figure
is probably much too low, because US military tactics ensure
high civilian losses --­ a bizarre aspect of the war is that
US commanders often do not understand the damage done by
their weapons in Iraq's close-packed cities.
US firepower, designed to combat the Soviet army, cannot be
used in built up areas without killing or injuring
civilians. Nevertheless, a study published in the Lancet
saying that 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq appears to
be too high. But the lack of definitive figures continues to
dehumanise the uncounted Iraqi dead. As Dr Richard Garfield,
a professor of nursing at Columbia University and an author
of the Lancet report, wrote: "We are still fighting to
record the Armenian genocide. Until people have names and
are counted they don't exist in a policy sense."
The immunity of US troops means that there is nothing to
inhibit them opening fire in what for them is a terrifying
situation. For all their modern armament they are vulnerable
to suicide bombers and roadside bombs. In the first case the
attacker is already dead and in the second the man who
detonates the bomb is probably several hundred yards away
and in cover. With nobody else to shoot at it is the
civilians who pay the price.

shot by 
Cioe' non sanno un ca**o ma affermano che sono "killed by US troops" :)
*LOL*
Taglio il resto delle solite puttanate :)
-Stefano

 *LOL*
Gia'.
*Pat pat*
Am.

 Taglio il resto delle solite puttanate :)
#_Si`...arridajie!
Il "taglio" me spetta su TUTTE le marcheteeeeeee !!!
Piuttosto, spediscime anche gli sghei che ho speso pel ventilatore.
Sempre tuo.

 #_Giannozzo spera che
Zitta baldracca e torna a battere invece di perdere tempo a scrivere
stupidaggini :)
-Stefano

 wrote in message
news:426D54A8...@people.it...

#_Questo vano tentativo di scambio dei ruoli fa parte di un femminismo ormai
sorpassato.
Ahime`! Ce ne vorra`per il maschio riacquistare il ruolo di leader!!
Piuttosto spedisci a Giannozzo le tue clienti femminili che lui sa
riportarle alla sana abitudine di desiderare il "maschio".
Giano

#_Questo vano tentativo di scambio dei ruoli
Baldracca, ho detto che devi andare "a battere", ma non i tasti della
tastiera.  Quindi muoviti! :)
-Stefano

 wrote in message
news:426D5E55...@people.it...

#_Abbattere ammeeeee ??? a GGGGiano il Magnifico???
Giannozzo fa il suo mestiere e avvia alla sana professione tutte le sperdute
che trova nella via della vita; GGGGiano c'ha altro da fa'!
Giano