US vehicle runs over family in Ninewa (Iraq)

Source: Voice of Iraq

NINEWA / Aswat al-Iraq: Three people from one family were killed and three others of the same family were wounded when a U.S. vehicle ran them over in the northwest of Mosul city.

“The incident occurred yesterday evening, on the highway northwest of Mosul city,” a local security source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency on Wednesday.

He noted that the family’s father and mother died in the incident, in addition to their daughter.

Read more: http://en.aswataliraq.info/?p=133585

Huh??? :mad:

The soldiers are still in siege mentality even though the threat to them is minimal now.

we are still engaged in combat operations against AQ in Mesopotamia there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/middleeast/22mosul.html?scp=1&sq=mosul&st=cse

The towns are far enough apart that the soldiers were not in combat or even close to the combat operation.

"the incident happened on the highway northwest of mosul city". ninewa is the province.

per my link, american troops are involved in combat operations in mosul city. these troops may not have been directly conducting those operations, but they weren't driving to the beach.

The province is more than 15 miles from the combat area.

Again, the soldiers in the vehicle were not on the front lines or even part of the combat operations.

The old city of Ninevah is right across the Tigris river from downtown Mosul. Americans do in fact patrol that area. A year ago, al Qaeda was murdering Christians (lots of Christians since Ninevah is the founding city of the Assyrian and Chaldean churches) in both Mosul and in Ninevah.

I know where Ninevah is because we flew over it and the Iraqi pilot at the controls at the time was from Mosul and pointed it out.

Nice use of avoiding reality.

Surely someone drove the vehicle. Surely this classifies as a vehicular homicide.


Drilling platform incident. Same thing.

The up-armored vehicles don't have the best of visibility. If they were traveling through a congested city area, I could see an accident occurring. Vehicular homicide indicates neglect or willful malice. There's nothing here to prove that...not saying it couldn't have happened the way you depict, but I thought we were a country that believed in innocent until evidence proves otherwise.

All I'm saying is instead of jumping up and down saying the driver killed this family on purpose is wrong, because the article doesn't provide anything beyond the facts that people got hit by a vehicle. It doesn't even state what kind of vehicle, the circumstances or anything else. As I said, are we not a nation built on the presumption of innocence and that guilt must be established by fact? Or are we going to turn into a nation ruled by the mob and whatever people think at the time?

If the driver knowingly ran over the family, or was otherwise violating any stated policies or driving recklessly then he/she deserves to be disciplined under the law. But if the circumstances indicated the driver may not have been able to do much about it, then stop trying to crucify them. People get hit in the US all the time from walking out behind a building/vehicle or other obstacle that prevents the driver from seeing. If this was an up-armored vehicle (and it most likely was in Ninevah), those vehicles are hard to stop, have blind spots and aren't the most maneuverable. The family may not have had any situational awareness, or vice versa.

Having been to Iraq 4 times and knowing how things are there, the chances that some soldier just decided to run down a family for the hell of it is pretty low...not inconceivable, but just not likely. More like a case of a tragic accident.

visibility. You mean the driver doesn't, surely.

We've got to quit forcing responsibility onto inanimate objects. PEOPLE do these things.

Those vehicles often have blast-resistant glass, and are shaped to help absorb the pressure wave of an explosion. Most of those vehicles have blind spots. It's a trade-off...you can't have a vehicle with lots of expansive windows and still provide maximum occupant safety, but you've still got to see the road. If this was a situation that had required a quick reaction, reduced visibility from the vehicle COULD have been a factor. There are other factors too...most of those vehicles are NOT very maneuverable nor can they stop as quickly as a car. I've seen people step out in front of me before, and it's usually because they are preoccupied with something else. Luckily most cars can stop quickly and/or swerve to miss the pedestrians, but in some of those situations, an up-armored Humvee or MRAP would have a hard time avoiding an accident.

There is a chance this was caused by negligence and/or malice, but rather than condemn someone based on very little evidence other than a family got killed is a HUGE assumption considering the chances it was more an accident are quite a bit more likely.

Again, I'll remind you that we're a nation that assumes the best until the worst can be verified and/or proven. If you'd like to get rid of that due process of law, then I'd ask you why you call yourself a progressive and a liberal in the first place. And don't give me the "but it was a soldier and obviously...blah blah blah". No, it's either everyone gets treated fairly or no one. PFC Snuffy may have said "hey, let's run down that family", but I don't know why he'd do that since it would create a huge problem for everyone and he'd have to know he's likely to get prosecuted (for God's sake, the MPs were giving people SPEEDING tickets on base). There's a mindset here on DU with some people that the military does what they want to and no one is accountable, and after having been there four times I can assure you that's NOT the case.

The vehicle does not drive itself. The vehicle does not see. Forget the accident or malice crap. Whatever happened is the result of actions of the driver.

Let's just take the responsibility for people and admit that whether accident or murder, the driver did it, NOT the vehicle.

Okay? I am a progressive, and that is why I did not and do not support our military actions in either country when they started or now. I do not support our military presence across the globe. I do not support the race to the bottom on wages and benefits that the governments of the world are creating with so-called free trade agreements.

I certainly don't assume the best - there certainly is no evidence that a rational 60 year old could find to support that thesis. Due process disappeared long ago, some of the outstanding examples being the kidnapping and illegal detention of people at Gitmo and other undisclosed locations around the world, the refusal to release photos of torture of children and others in a number of places, the refusal to do anything about the electrocution of soldiers by criminally negligent corporations making all the bucks they can, the sale of used shower water back to the military as drinking water, and a whole long list that would go back to experimenting on mentally retarded children with radioactive breakfast cereal by our government.

All I'm wanting you to do, and you are completely resisting it, is to acknowledge that whatever happens, people did it. Machines don't do a thing in the world without their masters, designers, operators. That's all. Just admit that people do things, whether accident or whatever, but that people do them.

- I mean the whole family?

In those cases, and even the cases of one person being run over - at what rate do they blame the vehicle and not the driver? I'm not sure of this ever happening in America with run-overs, before - the "blame the vehicle" approach.

I'm not saying there wasn't any negligence involved here, I'm just saying cool the rhetoric condemning the driver until you have more information.

sad and tragic.

K&R

otherwise I'm going to consider this on purpose and the US is not sorry. Right now this looks like a deep humanitarian violation.