Comments on: Shooting in Tal Afar

By: aghast

aghast — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 07:56:15 +0000

1 there wasnt a ROADBLOCK 2 again stupid GIs kill without reason, only no babies this time

By: aghast

aghast — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 07:54:47 +0000

1 there wasnt a ROADBLOCK 2 again stupid GIs kill without reason, only no babies this time

By: Robert Ramsdell

Robert Ramsdell — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 21:36:45 +0000

I saw picture #4 in Newsweek, next to (or a few pages apart from) a picture of the Bush twins in ball gowns for the inaguration. I have a son and daughter the same age as the Iraqi children, and the pictures make me want to cry.

By: jet

jet — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 20:05:01 +0000

That one of the little girl kind of makes it hard to breath.

By: bryna

bryna — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 19:32:02 +0000

fyi: i saw the photos online and the next day i saw them shown in sequence on, i think, cnn. i belive it was either on paula zahn or 360. but definately the whole series. then the discussed them briefly and provided a quote by someone in the military saying that as bad as it was we should remember that as soon as the soldiers realized what happened the sprung into action to help the children. not to be snide, but i’m sure that made the children feel a lot better. i feel sorry for everyone in this situation, children and soldiers. there plenty of nightmares to go around.

By: RS

RS — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 16:33:01 +0000

Oh, should point out that Clegg killed someone, he didn’t just fire at the car.

By: RS

RS — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 16:15:36 +0000

Didn’t Lee Clegg & Co fire at a stolen car, as it came at their check-point, claiming self defence – he was then done for firing a couple of rounds at the car as it drove off, which was deemed not to be self defence (although I think he had his charge quashed in the end). Not quite the same, but I admit that was my first thought when I read the comment.

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 15:55:38 +0000

>> Brits have avoided such stuff in the past. Lee Clegg?

By: billyfrombelfast

billyfrombelfast — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 15:22:35 +0000

It was on the front of the Boston Globe, if I remember correctly, and the front of the Irish Times too.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 08:58:18 +0000

It’s important to attach (ugly) realities to abstract, distant constructs like “curfew”, “lockdown”, “maximum security” etc.

By: Jake McGuire

Jake McGuire — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 06:01:05 +0000

“One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” Looks like Uncle Joe was smarter than we give him credit for. And these photos seem a lot less awful than they could be – you don’t see this after most suicide car bombings, for instance. For what it’s worth, which is not much.

By: Dawna

Dawna — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 05:38:24 +0000

Estimated 100,000 innocent Iraqi’s killed in this war, half of those were children. I wonder how many times that scene was repeated without cameras to capture it.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 04:45:38 +0000

One of these pictures was all over the liberal blogosphere. Jeanne d'Arc linked it to the New York Times and also linked the photographer's account at Newsday. I don't remember seeing it in the L.A. Times, but then I would have seen it on line before the paper arrived.

By: Kathy

Kathy — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 03:38:09 +0000

Kieran, why should it be “asking for trouble” to post these photographs and ask why and how something like this can happen? When people say “Well, it’s war, and terrible things happen in war,” to me, that’s totally begging the question. It’s a total evasion of the issue. It’s the same as if people in Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran said, after 9/11, “Well, it’s terrorism, and terrible things happen with terrorism.” Yeah, man, right. That’s why terrorism and war (really the same thing) are WRONG. I cannot look at that picture, or so many more like it, without feeling like my insides are being ripped out. And it will never be over, for that girl. I don’t know if you read warblogging.com, but George Paine, who writes that blog, had a photograph very similar to the one you posted. It was the same situation. Soldiers ordered a car to stop, fired warning shots, and then shot up the car. It was a girl and her parents. Both her parents were killed. Shot dead in front of her eyes. And she was covered in blood, with her mouth open, screaming.

By: Peggy

Peggy — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 01:15:13 +0000

Steve Gilliard posted the pics. “Every day in Iraq brings a tragedy like this. The kids who are expected to make life and death decisions. The kids who suffer from them. The kids who don’t come back. A cycle of misery which was preventable and may never end. What happens to these people? The soldiers who have to live with a nightmare of a decision, the image of a toddler screaming in pure terror and covered in blood. The children who are orphaned by this.” “I don’t think for a second that everyone involved wouldn’t like to take back that moment, do something different, so they didn’t kill a family or get killed. But there are no do overs in life.” SG