How you interpret the effects of bullet trajectory on the fire discipline is entirely up to you and the people with whom you were arguing about that with. I’m more bothered about the things I’ve actually been discussing, not just the things you dishonestly attribute to me.
I await your apology for your uncalled for rudeness and repeated lies with baited breath. 
Is that what rent-boys call them?
I have a terrible headache!! 
Flaming posts, insults and so on. The eternal war between IRONMAN and the Brits…
http://www.ww2incolor.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=316&start=315
Yea, well, shooting unarmed Iraqis walking down a street, like some Brits did not long abo violates all of the rules I’m sure! [/quote]
If the shooting was negligent then yes, if not then no.
Do you have a link to the story please ?
I doubt it since the weapons fire was into the air like that. They didn’t fire aimlessly at the streets.[/quote]
Rds fired into the air are treated as NDs in the British Army. (Unless during the warfighting phase the soldier(s) are aiming at a/c.)
If this is a reference to the shooting of the Iraqi on the streets you mentioned above I’ll check it out when I have the link.
Neither is dropping bombs in city streets and killing groups of Iraqi citizensm like the British did at Basra.[/quote]
When was this ?
OK, so soldiers in both the US and british military have to account for what they shoot at. So I don’t see the point of bringing it up then. Why were you carrying on about it? Surely you can seem my point.[/quote]
It’s about the unaimed discharge of weapons and the accountability of the allies’ own troops.
Well look, I’m not into trying to make the British look bad. I’m only reacting to this mythical garbage spewed by some that US soldiers are careless wildcats and a british soldier’s sh*t doesn’t stink. It’s simply perposterous. Bad things happen in war, and all armies make bad mistakes, the US, the British, everyone. But it’s simply hypocritical for anyone to carry on about a soldier shooting a weapon out of a window into the dessert to make noise to clear the street when he’s being shot at by grenades in his moving vehicle on a crowded Iraqi boulevard. Surely you can see the attitude of such blather.[/quote]
No, all armies have had occassions when pond life do something stupid or dangerous, and these incidents must always be investigated.
I am not being hypocrytical in the slightest, I have never discharged my weapon into the air nor could I enviseage a scenario in which my troops or I would.
In the video the soldier is firing at about a 35 degree angle or so, off into the clouds. But it’s just silly to complain about that when British soldiers have made far aggregious mistakes (as the US has I am sure). It is hypocritical and hatefull.[/quote]
It is not a ‘tit-for-tat’ arrangement.
That some clown in the British Army may have committed a crime, (for which I sincerely hope he is punished,) does not make unaimed firing ‘to make a noise’ any less reckless.
Personally I have seen no hatred from any of the other posters on this subject, as I said earlier I’d be making the same comments - arguably even more vehemently - had it been a Squaddie.
As the only ‘brit’ here with access to this forum, I suppose I should make a comment.
IRONMAN brings it on his own head. My first post here was on the subject of Jet Engines. I know a lot about them, because it’s a fundamental part of my degree. I made a series of factual posts, not just saying ‘IRONMAN is wrong’, but actually explaining why, and taking pains to explain how it in no way reflected badly on him - he had made an innocent error. All these were thrown back in my face as ‘imbecile insolent anti-american blather’. I suspected IRONMAN was in idiot as a a result.
Then I read the Gurkhas threads. Erwin has been good enough to read around, and has realised he was initially incorrectly informed about the Gurkhas. He has learnt from this, and both he and the site have benefitted. IRONMAN has yet to retract the claim that British Officers regularly abuse Gurkhas. This claim, as I have said before, is despicable. It shows a malicious intent, and is libel against the Officers who serve with the Gurkhas. For him to say this and refuse to retract it despite having no evidence means that in my eyes he is at best very stupid and at worst malicious scum.
The current debate about iraq, shooting people etc has taken on a life all of its own. I am trying not to be drawn into the larger debate on the difference between US and UK operations. But, I do agree with many of the other comments made on video posted. The argument about the max range of weapons should never have become so heated. Stoat made a valid point that the max range of a weapon is achieved at an angle of less than 45°. IRONMAN posted a valid response, which was a simple ballistics calculation. So far so good. It went downhill when he hurled abuse at Stoat, as to him 45° was the max range angle. I posted, to explain why the simple ballistics calculation was misleading in this case. I, and all others who posted similarly have been met with torrents of abuse.
Sorry for making you all read so much - well done for getting so far. The pattern I am trying to illustrate is this: Flame wars erupt because IRONMAN replies with abuse, so others defend the original poster. Then they are given abuse, and more defend. Presto! A flame war. There are many users on this site who I will defend. This is because I know them through other means - most frequently www.arrse.co.uk. It’s worth a look. On some threads, where IRONMAN has responded without abuse, even where people have disagreed with the content, the thread hasn’t descended into a flame war. It’s the frequent abuse hurled at people who disagree with him which causes problems.
If you think I’m picking on IRONMAN, then I offer this to hopefully dispel such ideas:
There. All done now.
OK, I’m assuming that your statement was with regard to levels of proof. You want more proof? Go to to this website [url ]http://www.european-patent-office.org/epo/addresses/adresses_e.htm
Scroll down to where it says “European Patent Office - Branch at The Hague”, ring the telephone number there & ask to speak to extention 8942. You will find that I will pick up the phone.
I’m here for another hour, probably. I’m awaiting your call, troll.[/quote]
Dude, you were helplessly confused about a simple illustration of a textually described utterly simple device. You thought the insulator was the conductor and the conductor was the insulating material, you even thought a primer could not blow without electrically conductive explosive, like patented devices already do. No. I do not believe you are a patent inspector. You can post a letter from the Chief Patent Inspector for all I care. Either way, you made many false assumptions and were totally lost. I have no interest in the subject anymore, so now you want to drag it in here like you do with all the shitbags subjects you you draaaaag around from one thread to another. Always draaaaaging something around behind you, stinky and filled with false implications and hatefulness. Draaaag it aropund for here to there.
Man of Stoat. I don’t give a chit. K?[/quote]
Yeah, whatever, troll. I couldn’t remember what number was what, cos you kept posting versions of the figure that didn’t have the numbers on & I was working from memory as to which bit was 8, which was 9 & which was 10. Big deal (althouh it seems to be to you since it creates a very easy straw-man argument for you to softly tap me on the head with - and this seems to be your best argument of the lot :? ). Seeing as you even have difficutly in working from something in front of you (see up the thread), I don’t feel that you have any cause for complaint over someone working from memory & forgetting which number referred to what.
In any case, 3 examiners looked at your docs & figures & came to the same conclusion as me INDEPENDENTLY about the functioning of your device, and its lack of any real relationship to the RA patent, which you said was “exactly the same”. 8 years combined experience in assessing patentability said that it wasn’t, “I once read a free publication from the USPTO” said it did. Hell, you can’t even remember my job title - it’s PATENT EXAMINER, not patent inspector, which is a term you just made up, along with so many other terms.
I can see, though, that you’re not interested in the truth if it’s inconvenient to you. I’m still waiting for your call.
And people keep dragging other topics around with them because they’re useful to illustrate your breathtaking hypocracy and ignorance, particularly when projecting one of your traits onto someone else.
And you know how to make people shut up? When resoundingly proven to be wrong, ADMIT IT. I notice for instance that you have not put in an appearance on this thread: http://www.ww2incolor.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=377 which resoundingly proves you wrong on another of your famous points which you said that I would discover to be correct if I did some reading up: I did; it wan’t.
Another thing which is very interesting - when shown/proved to be wrong on something, IRONMAN does one or more of the following:
: divert the thread with straw-man arguments
: express disinterest & disappear from the thread
: not even put in an apperance on the thread at all
: tries to change the subject completely (dead dog, anyone?)
(edited for clarity & to remove off-topic image)
On reading through the thread it would seem that other comments have been added. I can not believe that at the time I would have let them stand and not answered them.
Lets go back to the start to clarify.
It started with saying that the US did things different from HM forces and to illustrate this the subject of sunglasses was used.
http://www.ww2incolor.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=316&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=45
I then posted two comments from another forum, one from a serving officer in the post of troop comd serving at the time in Iraq. He had had a presentation and training from HM forces on peacekeeping and noted the difference in attitude and the way things are done.
I then referred to two film that I had seen that involved very similar attacks and the different ways the respective armies deal with the situations. Ironman found the second a posted it. He then had a kitten.
The links no longer work.
This then led to the below comments.
And following this I became an anti-America idiot who knows nothing about infantry work. :roll:
And he calls me liberal and uses AI :roll:
http://www.petrifiedtruth.com/archives/001676.html
The link is the battle of Danny boy and explains what happens. I used this as an example that HM forces can be aggressive when needed. But ironman pooh poohed it as too liberal. The link the Bun has timed out, but if you go to the original shore link there is a link to the Salvadorian soldier fighting off inserjents with a knife.
The one thing I love about you is that you answer my augument for me, your just great but you don’t see it. 
To fire aimed shots in the air from a vehicle when sitting in the back and pointing your weapon out the window requires you to sit on the floor. If you are not then they are not aimed and so must be indiscriminate. It is obvious that you did not read the article.
If one of my soldiers pointed his weapon into the air and let off a mag, when he had come round and got up I would have ripped his head off. If it is not aimed fire it is converting ammo nothing more.
But it was the film you posted!
No I clearly wrote US MPs as you can see from the above.
Please do but I will not hold my breath.
And that leads us to ironmans inability to understand another of his posts.
One of the ares where hypocrisy is being shown in large amounts, is in the sourcing of Ironman’s “rebuttals”, regarding the alleged behaviour of British troops.
Some time ago, on another thread, I was told by Ironman, quote:
“Ahhh hah hah. You have fallen prey to the ole’ media liberals slanting things eh? Do you not think for yourself?”
and in the same post :
“You let the media think for you that time.”
He has also dismissed several other people’s sources on the grounds that they come from left-wing, liberal media.
So, where do Ironman’s rebuttals come from?
Well, he posted URL’s, in good poster form.
However, the URL’s in each case go to the article which he wishes to highlight, not the websites home page.
Those are illuminating.
On page 8 of this thread, Iroman posted the URL to an article thus :
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0511-02.htm
The homepage of this site contains the followin headlines :
Thursday, June 30
Norman Solomon:
“Memo to Iraq War: This Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Death”
Simon Tisdall:
“No Solution and No Apology as President Runs Out of Ideas”
Robert Parry:
“War or Impeachment”
There are others similar, but you get the drift.
So, no leftwing bias there then.
On the same page he posted this article :
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=4330&fcategory_desc=Iraqi+Civilian+Casualties
From it, he quoted this:
[i]"British forces used 70 aerial cluster bombs and 2,100 ground-launched cluster shells containing a total of 113,190 bomblets, in the Iraq war. It is the army’s use of its new Israeli-made artillery shells that comes under particular scrutiny in the today’s report.
HRW accuses the Ministry of Defence of breaking a pledge not to use the weapons “in and around Basra”. The report examines the impact of several cluster shell strikes in Basra districts which caused “dozens of casualties”. " [/i]
Strange that he didn’t quote it’s opening line, to wit :
"Cluster bombs used in Iraq by US and British forces caused “hundreds of preventable civilian deaths”
Or even this paragraph :
“[i]The army used them in populated areas, causing hundreds of civilian deaths,” HRW’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, claimed. He said the US army’s continued use of cluster munitions was all the more extraordinary as it ignored the experience of the air force in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
“This was largely as a result of a lack of communication among services,” Mr Roth said. “The air force had two wars to learn from. The army didn’t and didn’t bother to check next door.” [/i]
On the same page again, we have the classic site to post a hard nosed, factual account rebutting all the “left-wing, liberal media crap” posted by others, namely :
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/apol-s05.shtml
And which truthful, honest, unbiased site does Ironman trust to back up his assertions?
Well, the wsws in the title is a clue.
It leads to the homepage of the “World Socialist Website”.
Enough said on that.
On to the very next page, page 9 of this thread, where he posts this URL:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/printer_041003F.shtml
with the quote "“Hassan said at least 1,200 civilians had been killed since British troops encircled Basra on March 25. He said he doesn’t know how many people died when the fighting escalated last weekend.”
and
“WOW. That’s a lot of wreckless (sic) British shooting. British cowboys!”
The article is dated Tuesday 8 April 2003, still during the war phase IIRC, nothing to do with the point under discussion.
Again, the homepage:
http://www.truthout.org/
is worth a look. Unbaised reporting? Hardly.
He has also for some bizarre reason posted this :
http://www.hsconnect.com/war/story/03282003_war01war.asp
(An article about Iraqis killing Iraqis.)
This :
http://www.rense.com/general35/raid.htm
(An article about a joint US/UK airstrike, dated 03/03/03, before the war even started, and quoting an Iraqi, i.e.Saddam regime, spokesman.)
And of course, a link to the by-now world famous Mirrror “abuse” pics, which cost the Editor, the unlamented Piers Morgan, his job when they proved to be faked.
Now, the one “reliable”, i.e. honest, source Ironman quotes at some length is Amnesty International.
However honest and right are not quite the same thing.
I read the article with some care.
Now, firstly, despite what Ironman states, Amnesty International state nowhere in the article that they are reporting to the UN.
Amnesty, as most of you will know, is an NGO, with no particular links to the UN, and no legal weight to their investigations.
As for the repeated claim by Ironman that “British soldiers are killing civilians, often by dozens”, the largest number of civilian casualties mentioned in any single incident is 3.
Next, none of the cases mentioned are considered to be proven, even by Amnesty.
They have said that these cases should be investigated more fully, nothing more.
They have witness statements form one side only, since MoD policy, like that of the US, is one of non-cooperation with Amnesty in these matters, considering them to impinge on sovereign rights.
It is worth noting, in context, that while the MoD confirmed that British troops had been involved in the killings of 37 civilians at the time of the report (not all necessarily negligent killings), the US policy is not to keep any figures for civilian casualties.
In line with Ironman’s use of Amnesty, I refer him to a report by Human Rights Watch.
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hrw251003.htm
And a quote from the above report:
“Second are civilian deaths caused by U.S. soldiers who responded disproportionately and indiscriminately after they have come under attack at checkpoints or on the road. Human Rights Watch documented cases where, after an improvised explosive device detonated near a U.S. convoy, soldiers fired high caliber weapons in multiple directions, injuring and killing civilians who were nearby.”
My apologies for the length of the post.
Hardly required - a rather amusing read. Same goes for the whole thread really - I particularly like TW’s statement that he doesn’t believe Stoaty is a Patent Examiner, so won’t bother checking even though he was given the opportunity to do so…
A mighty impressive bit of detective work, Reiver. I enjoyed that :D. He probably won’t read it, of course, and if he does, he’ll just interpret it in some bizarre way so that he can create some contorted straw-man argument which will fool no-one but himself…
The following quotes are from reports made by Amnesty International
http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=42C1E8D46E7223DF80256E5C00479F27
It looks more like British soldiers are hotheads with guns than bullet counters, certainly more than the US when in comes to killing civilians with small arms anyway, as they have done a lot more of that the US troops have.
Winning the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people must be hard. It seems that the Iraqis have no faith in the British military to bring murderers to justice:
“Iraqis appear to have no confidence that the British Army or the Iraqi police can protect them from such attacks or that the perpetrators will be held accountable before the law.”
As they have been doing, the British governement contimues to try to sweep the matter under the rug:
“Amnesty International requested meetings with the Commander Legal attached to UK forces stationed in Iraq and with the RMP. Both parties refused such meetings, referring Amnesty International’s delegates back to the UK Ministry of Defence. The RMP told a delegate on the telephone: “We have nothing to say to you.” Further information on the UK government’s response to killings of Iraqi civilians by UK armed forces was obtained from UK parliamentary reports.”
Many cases of unaimed or careless fire without insuring the target:
“In a number of cases UK soldiers have opened fire and killed Iraqi civilians in circumstances where there was apparently no imminent threat of death or serious injury to themselves or others. In most such cases documented by Amnesty International, soldiers resorted to lethal force even though the use of such force did not appear to be strictly necessary in order to protect life. The following cases are just some of those studied by Amnesty International.”
The British forces have failed the families of iraqi citizens unjustly killed:
“Amnesty International also believes that the UK armed forces and the Iraqi Police Service have failed many of the families of people who have been killed by individuals and armed groups. They have failed by not exercising due diligence in preventing such abuses or in investigating, prosecuting and punishing those who carried out the killings.”
The British goventment puts on a false face that they are seeking justice for the Iraqis:
“On 7 January 2004 the UK Minister of State for the Armed Forces stated that UK forces “are working in partnership with the Iraqi people to establish a safe and secure environment, and are doing so under the rule of law.” This is not the picture found by Amnesty International delegates in Iraq. As this report has shown, in certain cases UK armed forces have opened fire and killed Iraqi civilians in breach of international human rights standards relating to the use of force and firearms. Moreover, the British Army’s response to suspected unlawful killing of civilians has undermined, rather than upheld, the rule of law. It has failed to conduct investigations into all killings of civilians, and the investigations that have been carried out have failed to ensure that “justice was done and seen to be done” in the eyes of victims’ families or the Iraqi or UK public. The investigations have been shrouded in secrecy - some victims have not even been aware that they have been opened. Families of victims have also not been given adequate information on how to apply for compensation.”
The British government has left many iraqi families “high and dry” who were entitled to compensation:
“However, other families of civilians killed by the British Army have received nothing, even though they were also suffering economic hardship. The impression gained by Amnesty International is that such ex gratia payments have often been made to “buy off” particular tribal or political interests which could make problems for the British Army.”
This is the one that blows my mind. Talk about being cheap. Good Lord. The British government made payments totaling 8,125 pounds to 23 families for the deaths of thier loved ones. 8.125 pounds total for all of them! That’s just 353.26 pounds each… enough money to perhaps pay thier rent for 2 or 3 months. GOOD LORD. Each one of those families deserved far more than that EACH. Talk about winning the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people! Here it is:
“The Minister of State for the Armed Forces stated on 5 January 2004 that 23 compensation claims for compensation for deaths allegedly caused by UK forces since 1 May 2003 had been submitted.(5) Of these, seven had been repudiated, 13 were still under investigation, and three had received compensation payment, amounting in total to £8,125.”
And to keep them quiet about it thereafter…
“According to the UK Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Iraqi civilians who receive compensation payments are required to sign a declaration accepting the offer and stating that they understand it to be “a full and final settlement of all claims whatsoever relating to the incident”.”
And to futher win their “hearts and minds”…
“As we have seen, in practice many families whose relatives have been killed by UK forces are not advised, when they come into contact with UK forces, of the procedures for applying for compensation. In several cases, UK forces have even provided families with wrong information, suggesting that they can only apply for compensation from a future Iraqi government or determining themselves that compensation is not payable.”
There is much more, but why beat a dead horse with a stick? Now, you might see this as an attempt to make britain look bad. It is not. It is for the purpose of showing the hypocricy that some here (all British actually I believe) display when attacking a US soldier shooting bullets harmlessly into the desert to clear the streets while under fire, all the while British troops are killing civilians and refusing compensation to their families and hiding the facts.
It’s very silly, offensive, hypocritical, and absurd for some of you to carry on like you have under the circumstances. Every army makes mistakes in war, and for you to post about and gang-up like pack animals after a soldier that caused no harm and acted with restraint under attack while British soldiers are making far worse mistakes is perposterous. To claim that the British make no mistakes and are flawlessly carefull because they count their rounds etc. is ludicrous in light of what is really going on.
Why don’t you, gentlemen, instead of acting like a pack of wolves after a wounded chicken actually have the courage to discuss warfare in it’s true light: a terrible thing in which armies of all sides make agreguious errors. Why don’t you, men of Britain, stand proud of your nation and yet affirm you nation’s goodness and it’s redeming qualities by acknowledging that British soldiers are not unreproachable, and where they are not, like any other nation’s men, they deserve chastisement, and also acknowledge that while men of other nations forces make the same terrible mistakes, that the soldiers of Britain are not exempt from that chastisement. I will be the first to admit that US soldiers and military leaders make mistakes that cost the lives of civilians. As well meaning as the military man is, his condition is one of tension and confusion, danger and uncertainty. This condition causes good men to make fatal errors, either individually or by the accumilation of one mans minor error and another, which cause someone to make a judgement error that costs a person or many persons to unjustifiably loose their life.
Does the United States make mistakes and try to keep them as quiet as possible? Ofcourse they do. So do the British and the French and any other nation who places itself into the work of insuring freedom for others in the world. The price of freedom for some is not only the lives of the men who die, but the cost of pain caused by the errors of war.
It does not serve the British or anyone else to rant about a completely questionable if substanciable breech of conduct while soldiers of your own nation’s army, like those of others, continue to make the erros that truly matter. Have the courage to be honorable men and not to defend the undefensible while attacking the questionable. It would seem that such behavior is not a proper way to represent yourselves as British citizens. We all have the duty of puting hypocricy away for the purpose of standing upright for truth and justice. I will have far more respect for you if you allow yourselves to see the hypocricy of your actions and denounce it by not perpetuating it. We owe it to our nations, you and I, to praise it’s goodness and chastise it’s misdemeanors. If we do not, there is no power in citizenship, and we relegate ourselves to incapacity and leniency which undermines individuality. If I am unwilling to have distaste for my nations mistakes and a willingness to speak of the mistakes of another, I am doing unjustice to my nation, yours, and myself.
ok, so you counter our view on a single incident with a compilation of British incidents and call this hypocracy. We could then counter with a gajillion reports of US soldiers firing on civilians, or civilians getting caught in the crossfire, “weddings” getting bombed (I don’t buy that all of those were real weddings for a minute), the wounded insurgent in the mosque (personally I think the guy did the right thing). But we were talking about a single incident, and why what that chap did was wrong & could have got someone killed.
As to the compensation paid, how much have have the Americans paid out?
That’s an average of $600 per person, which at today’s exchange rate is UKP338.83. OK, so that includes injury & property damage as well as death.
And that source you cited - read it very very carefully, reading what’s there & not what you’d like to be there:
“The Minister of State for the Armed Forces stated on 5 January 2004 that 23 compensation claims for compensation for deaths allegedly caused by UK forces since 1 May 2003 had been submitted.(5) Of these, seven had been repudiated, 13 were still under investigation, and three had received compensation payment, amounting in total to £8,125.”
In simple, short sentences: There were 23 claims
Of which: 7 were turned down (so not paid out on)
13 are still being investigated (so have not yet been paid out on)
3 received compenstaion totalling 8,125
So that 8,125 is divided by 3 and not 23.
That’s UKP2,708, or $4,793 at today’s rate.
And what can that amount of money buy in Iraq? I have absolutely no idea. I certainly have no idea as to how much iraqi rent costs (and neither do you), but looking at annual salary info (taken from http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41722.htm), the average annual salary in 2004 was $1200 per year - so $4,793 actually represents 4 year’s average salary! Hell, my life insurance policy doesn’t pay out that much in terms of my salary!
As for the wounded chicken comment - :lol:
And you, the most unreasonable one, the one who cannot tell an insulator from a conductor in a simple line drawing accompanied by textual description, call that an excuse for your hypocricy?
Really, your hair cut says it all though. :shock:
You have not answered my question. Why do you hatefully go after a US soldier for a less than questionable act of shooting his weapon into the sky under those circumstances when so many British soldiers have killed unarmed Iraqi civilians? Answer that if you dare, if you have the courage. Untill you do, nothing that you say has merit worth considering.
Just answer that question.
And you, the most unreasonable one, the one who cannot tell an insulator from a conductor in a simple line drawing accompanied by textual description, call that an excuse for your hypocricy?
[/quote]
Great, this straw-man argument again based on working from memory cos the damn scans disappeared then re-appeared slightly truncated and lacking their reference signs & getting the numbers 8 & 9 mixed up from a man who cannot even read a simple table, or a simple description of how much money was given in compensation to how many people. Whatever. You are only fooling yourself.
Really, your hair cut says it all though. :shock:
WTF? No, really, wtf?
You have not answered my question. Why do you hatefully go after a US soldier for a less than questionable act of shooting his weapon into the sky under those circumstances when so many British soldiers have killed unarmed Iraqi civilians? Answer that if you dare, if you have the courage. Untill you do, nothing that you say has merit worth considering.
Just answer that question.
Because he was exhibiting Bad Drills - had the same happened with a British soldier I would be saying exactly the same thing. Trying to link my feelings about this event to brits killing civilians, or indeed yanks killing civilians is yet another straw-man argument. I could say “why are you defending this man’s actions when so many civilians have been killed by US forces?”, but that’s also a pathetic straw man argument, so I wouldn’t make it.
I have no idea whose face this is (I just plucked it off the web, I didn’t really need to block out the eyes cos it’s already up on the web anyway, but I did it so that if the person who it is came across it here he wouldn’t feel embarassed by being linked in anyway to ironman), but it would make a perfect avatar for Ironman:
From the Human Rights Watch report I mentioned above :
[i]"The individual cases of civilian deaths documented in this report reveal a pattern by U.S. forces of over-aggressive tactics, indiscriminate shooting in residential areas and a quick reliance on lethal force. In some cases, U.S. forces faced a real threat, which gave them the right to respond with force. But that response was sometimes disproportionate to the threat or inadequately targeted, thereby harming civilians or putting them at risk.
In Baghdad, civilian deaths can be categorized in three basic incident groups. First are deaths that occur during U.S. military raids on homes in search of arms or resistance fighters. The U.S. military says it has begun using less aggressive tactics, and is increasingly taking Iraqi police with them on raids. But Baghdad residents still complained of aggressive and reckless behavior, physical abuse, and theft by U.S. troops. When U.S. soldiers encountered armed resistance from families who thought they were acting in self-defense against thieves, they sometimes resorted to overwhelming force, killing family members, neighbors or passers-by.
Second are civilian deaths caused by U.S. soldiers who responded disproportionately and indiscriminately after they have come under attack at checkpoints or on the road. Human Rights Watch documented cases where, after an improvised explosive device detonated near a U.S. convoy, soldiers fired high caliber weapons in multiple directions, injuring and killing civilians who were nearby.
Third are killings at checkpoints when Iraqi civilians failed to stop. U.S. checkpoints constantly shift throughout Baghdad, and are sometimes not well marked, although sign visibility is improving. A dearth of Arabic interpreters and poor understanding of Iraqi hand gestures cause confusion, with results that are sometimes fatal for civilians. Soldiers sometimes shout conflicting instructions in English with their guns raised: “Stay in the car!” or “Get out of the car!”
In all of these scenarios, U.S. soldiers can be arrogant and abusive. They have been seen putting their feet on detained Iraqis’ heads—a highly insulting offense. Male soldiers sometimes touch or even search female Iraqis, also a culturally unacceptable act.
Of course, not all soldiers behave in this way. Human Rights Watch met many U.S. military personnel who dealt respectfully with Iraqis and were working hard to train police, guard facilities and pursue criminals. Some of these soldiers expressed frustration at the lack of sensitivity shown by their colleagues. “It takes a while to get the Rambo stuff out,” one officer told Human Rights Watch."[/i]
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hrw251003.htm
(My emboldenment)
Firing into the desert?
Where did that suggestion come from?
Strawman made it up, of course, to defend an action which is indefensible.
Defending the indefensible? Oh yes! I read about that somewhere today. Something very wise…
Do we take this to mean Ironman has not the courage to be an honourable man?
ooo, intresting. (whats going to happen next?)
So 37 killed is greater than 600 killed in one town? And that 600 is only an estimate as the US does not keep records. Ironman I wish you would read and understand what you links have written.
Please show where it said this?
“Amnesty International also believes that the UK armed forces and the Iraqi Police Service have failed many of the families of people who have been killed by individuals and armed groups. They have failed by not exercising due diligence in preventing such abuses or in investigating, prosecuting and punishing those who carried out the killings.”
Now this is not talking about HM Forces shooting people, but about the general insecurity, a problem exasperated by Rumsfeld’s disbanding of the Iraq army.
How is this keeping them quiet, quite clearly says that it if final payment, a document that all legal claims have, it said nothing about not talking.
Please explain why the US has not signed up to the international court unlike the UK. A number of legal proceedings have and are being carried out at this stage against HM Forces involved in the killing of civilians. This is part of the civilian legal process in the UK.
You have had a good time quoting the same document a number of time pretending that each time it is something new. Can you provide the same information for US forces?
And the French? Were did they come form? Have I missed a major news item?
Now explain to me how you can fire at 35° aimed shots sitting in the back of a Vehicle?
And can we have the link to the film again please.
Truncated? At first you claimed altered. Tis your great lie to try to save face in light of your inability to understand a simple line drawing which is marked and described in text. :shock:
Lacking reference? Good Lord dudey. Items 8 and 9 were marked with reference points and even described in text, and you still confused the two??? :shock: Mr. Patent Office Clerk.
Bad drills? Hardly. But if you would say the same, wht say you about the British soldiers who shot an unarmed Iraqi man walking home? Is that “bad drills”?
Handsome eh?