{"id":7576,"date":"2006-06-02T12:29:03","date_gmt":"2006-06-02T16:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7576"},"modified":"2006-06-02T12:29:03","modified_gmt":"2006-06-02T16:29:03","slug":"its-not-freedom-thats-on-the-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-not-freedom-thats-on-the-march\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s not freedom that’s on the march"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tragedies and the incidents of violence against civilians in [tag]Iraq[\/tag] are nothing short of breathtaking. Consider these news items, just from the last 48 hours:<\/p>\n

[tag]Ishaqi[\/tag]<\/a>: “The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians…. According to the Americans, the building collapsed under heavy fire killing four people – a suspect, two women and a child. But a report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.”<\/p>\n

[tag]Haditha[\/tag]<\/a>: “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki upbraided the U.S. military over allegations that Marines killed two dozen unarmed civilians in Haditha, calling the killings “a horrible crime” in his strongest public comments on the subject since his government was sworn in last month.”<\/p>\n

[tag]Hamandiya[\/tag]<\/a>: “The Marine Corps will file criminal charges, including some murder counts, against several enlisted Marines and a Navy corpsman in the fatal shooting of an Iraqi civilian in April, officials close to the investigation said Thursday.”<\/p>\n

[tag]Samarra[\/tag]<\/a>: “Pregnant Iraqi Woman Shot Near Security Checkpoint… One of the survivors of this incident says they were rushing the pregnant woman to the hospital, because she was about to give birth and didn’t know the road was blocked.”<\/p>\n

Iraqi officials want answers<\/a>. No one can blame them.
\n<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-[tag]Maliki[\/tag] lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual [tag]attacks[\/tag] by troops against Iraqi [tag]civilians[\/tag].<\/p>\n

As outrage over reports that American marines killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha last year continued to shake the new government, the country’s senior leaders said that they would demand that American officials turn over their investigative files on the killings and that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry.<\/p>\n

In his comments, Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a “[tag]daily[\/tag] phenomenon” by many troops in the American-led coalition who “do not respect the Iraqi people.”<\/p>\n

“They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion,” he said. “This is completely unacceptable.” Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in Iraq, the prime minister added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie also told the NYT, “As you know, this is not the only [tag]massacre[\/tag], and there are a lot.”<\/p>\n

We really need to leave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tragedies and the incidents of violence against civilians in [tag]Iraq[\/tag] are nothing short of breathtaking. Consider these news items, just from the last 48 hours: [tag]Ishaqi[\/tag]: “The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians…. According to the Americans, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}