U.S. Military Says Soldiers Fired on Civilians

Source: NYT

BAGHDAD — The American military admitted Sunday night that a platoon of soldiers raked a car of innocent Iraqi civilians with hundreds of rounds of gunfire and that the military then issued a news release larded with misstatements, asserting that the victims were criminals who had fired on the troops.

The attack on June 25 killed three people, a man and two women, as they drove to work at a bank at Baghdad’s airport. The attack infuriated Iraqi officials and even prompted the Iraqi armed forces general command to call the shooting cold-blooded murder.

It also bolstered calls from Iraqi politicians to pressure the American military to leave Iraq after this year, when a United Nations mandate expires, unless the United States agrees to permit its soldiers to be subject to criminal prosecution under Iraqi law for attacks on civilians.

In a statement issued late Sunday, the American military said that “a thorough investigation determined that the driver and passengers were law-abiding citizens of Iraq.” It added that the soldiers were not at fault for the killings because they had fired warning shots and exercised proper “escalation of force” measures before they opened fire on the people in the car.





Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html?em&ex=1217390400&en=7530c3dc8e858cea&ei=5087%0A

It is now deemed safe to issue this report.

And it has sucked every iota of popular media attention on the incident, because they can't cover more than one story at a time anymore. So it's quite safe for the military to issue this admission of war crime guilt because nobody's watching.

But you're probably right.

who want us to leave.

Pack up. Get out.

It's him and his MFing cabal you owe it to.