Rudyard Kipling
US SOLDIERS POINT GUNS AT BRIT FORCES IN IRAQ
Thu Apr 15, 2004 20:18
142.163.11.12

"It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later. They are very concerned about taking casualties and have even trained their guns on British troops, which has led to some confrontations between soldiers."



One senior British officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Telegraph over the weekend that America's aggressive tactics were causing friction among coalition commanders.

Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, this officer even invoked Hitler's term for Jewish, Slavic, and Gypsy "subhumans." "My view and the view of the British chain of command," said the officer, "is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen.

"They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude toward the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful. The U.S. troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned, Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them."

Under British rules of engagement, troops would never be given authority to conduct attacks similar to the ones the U.S. carried out in Fallujah and elsewhere last week. The British military orders troops to open fire only when attacked, using minimum force and striking at specific targets. "When U.S. troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad," the officer said, "they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area.

"They may well kill the terrorists in the barrage, but they will also kill and maim innocent civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later. They are very concerned about taking casualties and have even trained their guns on British troops, which has led to some confrontations between soldiers."

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0415/mondo3.php

• Radioactive materials disappearing in Iraq: — ICH, Thu Apr 15 23:56
• As Ludwig von Mises writes in Human Action: — Roderick Long, Thu Apr 15 21:09