The US military knee-jerk reaction to the killing of dozens of women and children was to call them terrorists who they had been following for days. This from the Independent reporter on the scene yesterday:
A tiny bundle of blankets is unwrapped; inside is the body of a baby, its limbs smeared with dried blood. Then the mourners peel back the blanket further to reveal a second dead baby.
Another blanket is opened; inside are the bodies of a mother and child. The child, six or seven years old, is lying against his or her mother, as if seeking comfort. But the child has no head.
These are the images that American forces in Iraq had no answer to yesterday. They come from video footage of the burials of 41 men, women and children. The Iraqis say they died when American planes launched air strikes on a wedding party near the Syrian border on Wednesday.
US forces insist that the attack was on a safe house used by foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria. They do not dispute that they killed about 40 people, but claim American forces were returning fire and the dead were all foreign fighters. For the video footage that shows dead women and children they have no explanation.
Please let my military and yours come to the conclusion early that they must make an abject apology here. I don't want dissembling. I don't want to see the manufature of terrorism because of our actions.
The next wave of terrorists are here:
A member of the Rikad Nayef family, foreground, name not given, explains to other family members how 27 members of his family were killed during a funeral ceremony in Ramadi, 110 km west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 20, 2004. The Nayef family lost 27 of their family members, when a U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party in the remote desert near the border with Syria, killing more than 40 people, mostly women and childrenWe need to behave honorably and admit to these mistakes, or the world is going to see us as bombing innocents on purpose. I just don't want the world to think we are all like Mr. Rumsfeld.
