Exposing lies

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/12/02/MNGLP3E5LF1.DTL


I quote:
In a house on the outskirts of Samarra, Abir Mohammed Al-Khayat, 28, said a rocket hit the minibus in which she and several others had commuted from their jobs at a local pharmaceuticals factory. "There were about 20 of us, men and women," she said, cradling her arm, injured by shrapnel, in a sling.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/01/cnna.jones/

I quote:

JONES: [M]y understanding is it was only supposed to take us about 30 minutes in the actual Iraqi currency exchange, to drop off the money. And I estimated that about an hour and a half, two hours, is what I would just estimate. The firepower that the U.S. had, as far as we had some tanks out there. We had some Bradleys. I had an MP squad with me and I had another one at the other bank. We were using 40-millimeter machine guns. We were also using our regular M-4 rifles and 249 SAWs plus some 50-caliber machine guns.

If you need to know what Saws are check out the post below that sandcastle was kinda enough to make.

I read up on the Bradley fighting vehcies. These vechiles do have high explosive rounds, but a high explosive round is a lot different from a rocket. The high expliovise rounds would have the same effect as a rpg it seems, but you would not see them coming, only hear them. The high explosive rounds might have been used by the americans in this tatactial situtaion. Then again, given the close quaters they may not have been used. The bradlies are also outfitted with the stinger missle system, which is used to engage "low-altitude jet, propeller-driven and helicopter aircraft", and would have seemed out of place in this tactial situation.

In short, I would love to see an inventory of the bradlies before and after the battle to decide exactly what the woman saw.

Although, i admit that a lot could have been lost in the translation (rocket = mortor etc.). If you take the woman literaly, the americans did not use rockets, and she was hit by her own contrymen's RPGs.


Also a friend pointed this out to me

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,104437,00.html


"Luckily we evacuated the children five minutes before we came under attack," said Ibrahim Jassim, a 40-year-old guard at the kindergarten. "Why did they attack randomly? Why did they shoot a kindergarten with tank shells?"


My friend asked, "Why did you evacuate the School?"

Possible answers: The insurgents told them to evacuate, or the insurgents took over part of the school and they decided to evacute the rest of the school.

Note: The guard used the words "tank shells" instead of rockets or motors, both of which would have been used by the insurgents.

cube