US Soldiers "Firing Blindly" on Civilians

US Soldiers "Firing Blindly" on Civilians

US Raids Baghdad Slum; 26 Iraqis Die
By Hamid Ahmed
The Associated Press

Saturday 30 June 2007

Baghdad - American soldiers rolled into Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City slum on Saturday in search of Iranian-linked militants and as many as 26 Iraqis were killed in what a U.S. officer described as "an intense firefight."

But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused U.S. forces of firing blindly on the innocent. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault into a district where he has barred U.S. operations in the past.

Separately, two American soldiers were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis, the U.S. military said Saturday. And in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of the capital, police said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a crowd of police recruits, killing at least 23 people and wounding 17.

A U.S. soldier was killed Friday and three wounded when a sophisticated, armor-piercing bomb hit their combat patrol in southern Baghdad, the military announced a day later.

The U.S. military said it conducted two pre-dawn raids in Sadr City, killing 26 "terrorists" who attacked U.S. troops with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. But Iraqi officials said all the dead were civilians.

An American military spokesman insisted all of those killed were combatants. "Everyone who got shot was shooting at U.S. troops at the time," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. "It was an intense firefight."

U.S. troops detained 17 men suspected of helping Iranian terror networks fund operations in Iraq, a military statement said. There were no U.S. casualties.

Witnesses said U.S. forces rolled into their neighborhood before dawn and opened fire without warning.

"At about 4 a.m., a big American convoy with tanks came and began to open fire on houses - bombing them," said Basheer Ahmed, who lives in Sadr City's Habibiya district. "What did we do? We didn't even retaliate - there was no resistance."

According to Iraqi officials, the dead included three members of one family - a father, mother and son. Several women and children, along with two policemen, were among the wounded, they said.

The assault brought quick criticism from al-Maliki. "The Iraqi government totally rejects U.S. military operations ... conducted without a pre-approval from the Iraqi military command," al-Maliki said in a statement released by his office. "Anyone who breaches the military command orders will face investigation."

Sadr City is the Iraqi capital's largest Shiite neighborhood - home to some 2.5 million people. It is also the base of operations for the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighters are blamed for much of the sectarian killing in Baghdad.

Last year, al-Maliki banned military operations in Sadr City without his approval after complaints from his Shiite political allies. But he later agreed that no area of the capital was off-limits, after President Bush ordered reinforcements to Iraq as part of the Baghdad security operation.

Houses, a bakery and some other shops were damaged by U.S. tank fire during the assault, Iraqi officials said. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Sheik Salah al-Obaidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr condemned Saturday's raids: "The bombing hurt only innocent civilians."

A policeman wounded in the raid, Montadhar Kareem, said he was on night duty when U.S. troops moved in and "began bombing houses in the area."

"The bombing became more intense, and I was injured by shrapnel in both my legs and in my left shoulder," Kareem said from a gurney at Al Sadr General Hospital.

Hours afterward, a funeral procession snaked through Sadr City. Three coffins were hoisted atop cars.

One resident who goes by the nickname of Um Ahmed, or "mother of Ahmed," stood outside her home as mourners passed by.

"We are being hit while we are peacefully sleeping in our houses. Is that fair?" she cried. The woman gave only her nickname, fearing reprisal.

The U.S. military statement said American troops opened fire on four civilian cars during the assault - one that failed to stop at a checkpoint, and three that insurgents were using for cover as they shot at U.S. soldiers.

"Every structure and vehicle that the troops on the ground engaged were being used for hostile intent," Garver said. Some of the 26 dead were in civilian cars, some had been hiding behind cars and others had fired on U.S. troops from nearby buildings, he said.

In the murder case, the two American soldiers are accused of killing three Iraqis in separate incidents, then planting weapons on the victims' remains, the military said in a statement. Fellow soldiers reported the alleged crimes, which took place between April and this month near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, it said.

The U.S. military on Saturday identified the soldiers as Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley from Candler, N.C., and Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval from Laredo, Texas.

Hensley is charged with three counts each of premeditated murder, obstructing justice and "wrongfully placing weapons with the remains of deceased Iraqis," the military said. He was placed in military confinement in Kuwait on Thursday.

Sandoval faces one count each of premeditated murder and placing a weapon with the remains of a dead Iraqi, a statement said. He was taken into custody Tuesday while at home in Texas, and was transferred to military confinement in Kuwait three days later, it said.

Saturday's blast in Muqdadiyah ripped through a crowded market area where Iraqi police recruits were having coffee, police said.

One witness, 30-year-old Abu Omar, said he rushed to the area where his brother has a shop, and saw police loading mutilated bodies into the back of a pickup truck. Fire engines sprayed water onto burning storefronts, and ambulances evacuated the wounded, he said.

At least seven shops were destroyed by the explosion, and the market street soaked with blood, Omar said.

Finally, the Truth Comes Out

Senate Panel Questions C.I.A. Detentions - New York Times

Senate Panel Questions C.I.A. Detentions - New York Times

Wtf is with people? America is so Hung up On Reality TV they can't see what is really happening here.

WASHINGTON, May 31 — The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday questioned the continuing value of the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program for terrorism suspects, suggesting that international condemnation and the obstacles it has created to criminal prosecution may outweigh its worth in gathering information.

The committee rejected by one vote a Democratic proposal that would essentially have cut money for the program by banning harsh interrogation techniques except in dire emergencies, a committee report revealed.

“More than five years after the decision to start the program,” the report said, “the committee believes that consideration should be given to whether it is the best means to obtain a full and reliable intelligence debriefing of a detainee.”

It added: “Both the Congress and the administration must continue to evaluate whether having a separate C.I.A. detention program that operates under different interrogation rules than those applicable to military and law enforcement officers is necessary, lawful and in the best interests of the United States.”

The sweeping report, which accompanies the annual bill authorizing the activities of all of the spy agencies, reflects a striking reassertion of aggressive oversight since Democrats took control of Congress this year. Some Republicans joined in the skeptical language about several spying programs, and the report as a whole was approved 12 to 3, with the backing of all eight Democrats and four of the seven Republicans.

The committee declared that it would block changes sought by the Bush administration in the law governing domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency unless it received long-sought administration documents on the secret surveillance program, including orders signed by President Bush.

The report criticized the intelligence agencies’ ballooning use of contractors, saying the outsourcing had created conflicts of interest because some major purchasing programs are themselves run by contractors, some of which have ties to vendors. It said a government employee cost taxpayers $126,500 a year on average, or half the $250,000 price tag for a worker supplied by a contracting company.

“People are leaving the intelligence agencies for more lucrative job offers with contractors, who send them back to the agencies at far higher cost,” said Andy Johnson, the committee’s staff director.

The committee said half of space-related programs, mostly involving spy satellites, had shown cost overruns of 50 percent or more. Such overruns do “severe damage” to the intelligence effort, the committee said, and its proposed bill would require that the president personally certify the necessity of such programs when costs grow more than 40 percent above original estimates.

But the most novel element of the report is the assessment of the C.I.A. detention program, which the committee has rarely discussed in public. While only the chairman and the vice chairman were briefed on the program during the first five years after it was created following the 2001 terrorist attacks, all committee members have now been briefed for the first time, the report said.

The report acknowledged that the secret detention program “has led to the identification of terrorists and the disruption of terrorist plots.” But it says that achievement must now “be weighed against both the complications it causes to any ultimate prosecution of these terrorists, and the damage the program does to the image of the United States abroad.”

Mr. Johnson, the staff director, said the committee’s chairman, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, was concerned that the program might be hurting the battle against terrorism by “alienating moderate Muslim and Arab communities around the world.”

Elisa C. Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First and a longtime critic of the C.I.A. program, said the panel’s statement showed that Congress “is no longer willing to blindly accept the assertion that the C.I.A. secret interrogation program using unlawful techniques serves the national interests of this country.”

But the committee stopped short of using its budget authority to shut down the program. In a closed session on May 23, two Democrats, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Dianne Feinstein of California, proposed barring spending on interrogation techniques that go beyond the Army Field Manual, which bans physical pressure or pain. Under their proposal, the only exception would have been when the president determined “that an individual has information about a specific and imminent threat.”

The amendment failed when Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, joined all the Republicans in voting no.

A C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said the program “has helped our country and others disrupt plots and save lives” and has been “conducted lawfully,” with the approval of “multiple elements of our government, not just the C.I.A.”

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