Military Defends Shooting of Knight Ridder Reporter in Iraq

[sabra]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001220329

Military Defends Shooting of Knight Ridder Reporter in Iraq

NEW YORK The U.S. military investigation of the June 24 shooting death of Yasser Salihee, a Knight Ridder Iraqi correspondent, has confirmed that he was killed by an American soldier and then left dead in his car--but concluded that the killing was necessary.

Salihee, 30, a doctor and Knight Ridder correspondent, was on his way to get gasoline for his car to take his daughter to the swimming pool, on his day off.

The report concluded the shooting was justified because the soldiers thought Salihee could have been a suicide bomber or attempting to run them over as he approached an intersection in Baghdad.


The military made $2,500 in payment to Salihee's family for his death and an additional $2,500 for property damage to the car.
It also sent an unspecified number of soldiers to "remedial training on consequence management" after they left Salihee's body "in plain view" and then leaving the area, which "could not have had a positive impact on the local populace."

[Dhalgren]

1. Good gods...that's all I can say...

[wtmusic]

2. So Iraqi lives are worth $2.5K -- same as the family car

This is truly pathetic.

[htuttle]

11. "This is your receipt for your husband..."

"...and this is my receipt for your receipt."
-- Ministry of Information Extraction official, Brazil, 1985

[wtmusic]

3. And the only reason we hear about it

is because he *was* a reporter...how many die every day that we don't?

[Blue_Tires]

24. good question

i wonder how many more there are

[mike_c]

4. his death was "necessary" because he "might" have been hostile....

Generic excuse number 5,377 for every murdered civilian in Iraq.

[Supersedeas]

14. is the 'might have been hostile' a falsifiable excuse-or a works everytime

alibi.

Disgusting

[fooj]

5. "remedial training on consequence management"...

OMG! OMG! OMG!

[sabra]

6. yeah, that caught my eye too!

disgrace.

[ninkasi]

7. What consequences?

Everything we do there is quickly justified, so what could this training possibly teach them? Oh, I know...there may be consequences for having to pay the insulting sum of 2,500 apiece for the man and the vehicle. That's money that didn't go to Halliburton.

What's next? Will killing children be justified because they "might" grow up to be terrorists? I hate the way our country has been overrun with these criminals. We are becoming the world's largest rogue nation.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. Gotta cover up the crime

before we piss off too many Eye-rackies by leaving all those bodies lying around.

[confludemocrat]

8. Part of why it's said the US Military is "broken". It sure is.

and anyone who wants more troops there is fooling themselves, hear that Hillary. More nervous, abandoned-by-Bush, overworked troops to engage in incidents like this. They are not justifiably there to stop the insurgency, that's evident. Their "operations" in western Iraq are a clear failure, they can't protect even the green zone. But they regularly shoot rescued hostages and their rescuers, innocent civilians, journalists, anything that moves, while busily torturing somewhere in the background.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

9. of course they did

:puke:

[Mandate My Ass]

10. He was working on a story about the death squads

so yeah, he could quite possibly have posed a big threat.

Leaving his murdered body exposed like that was a message to anybody else who might have been tempted to talk about it.

[daleo]

12. A car is worth as much as a man's life, and a doctor no less

That about sums it up.

[Judi Lynn]

13. They are the ones who are going to have to live with their consciences.

Everyone in the world knows what they're doing. Just because no one can keep them from doing it doesn't lend them any credibility. They face the world as total murderous liars.

No way that will ever be clean. Mere power is NOT good enough. There is something stronger.

Poor, foolish, murderous bastards acting as the "muscle" for the most corrupt, cowardly, twisted criminals in the world.

[burythehatchet]

19. the long term cost will certainly be borne by the

perpetrators.

[UpInArms]

15. One soldier told them not to look too closely at the corpse.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1567737,00.html

excerpt:

By the time relatives and colleagues arrived American armoured vehicles had sealed off the street and Kadhem, slightly wounded from fragments, was under arrest. Having found nothing suspicious the troops allowed the car to be towed away and handed relatives a body bag. One soldier told them not to look too closely at the corpse. "Don't bother. It's not worth it." Other soldiers standing a few feet away joked among themselves.

For Reuters and many other foreign media organisations in Baghdad the August 28 shooting was further evidence that American troops are out of control. Since the 2003 invasion US forces have killed at least 18 media workers in incidents for which no one has been charged or punished. "Whitewashes. There have been no satisfactory investigations that we know of," said Rodney Pinder, director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), a Brussels-based advocacy group.

<snip>

More journalists have been killed in Iraq in two years than during the 20 years of conflict in Vietnam, according to Reporters Without Borders. It counted 66 dead in Iraq compared to 63 in Vietnam and 49 in the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. INSI estimates the Iraq toll at 81 while the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists reckons 74.

<snip>

In a rare cracking of the opaque military Phillip Robertson, a reporter for the online magazine Salon.com, found the sniper who shot his friend Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi employee of the Knight-Ridder newspaper group. Salihee died instantly when a bullet entered his right eye as he drove towards a checkpoint in Baghdad in June. Named only as Joe, the sniper said his unit was braced for a suicide bomber and that the car appeared suspicious. Joe was troubled by the feeling that his victim was not an insurgent. "I really hope he was a bad guy. Do you know anything about him?"

...more at link...

[0rganism]

16. Oh fuck it all: "I really hope he was a bad guy."

Isn't that just typical?

"I really hope we find weapons of mass destruction."

"I really hope Saddam had links to the Al Qaeda terrorists."

"I really hope the insurgents are foreign fighters."

"I really hope we killed Al Qaeda's number 3 guy."

I've just about had it with all this hoping. Let's try certainty for a change.

[UpInArms]

18. I am certain that the only way to stop

the US military deaths and the US killing of journalists is for the US to pull out of Iraq - let the UN put together a force (not under our command) and help Iraq rebuild (with us (the US) footing most of the bill.

[Peace Patriot]

20. Knight-Ridder is one of the few--maybe the ONLY--U.S. corporate news

service that is doing honest reporting, and investigative journalism, regarding the Bush regime--most particularly in Iraq.

I don't think it's a coincidence at all that Knight-Ridder and Reuters are the ones getting killed, starting with a U.S. tank blowing away the corner of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, where the Reuters news crew was housed--a hotel that everybody knew was the journalists' headquarters. Reuters, like Knight-Ridder, is ALSO trying to do an honest job on Iraq war stories. So is Al-Jazeera (an additional target--their headquarters in Baghdad blown up, after they had sent their coordinates to the U.S. military).

Part of it MAY be that these journalists take more chances--are doing their job and are out and about more (not "hotel journalists" re-typing U.S. military press releases). But that is not all of it, by any means. The best journalists ARE being targeted, and have been killed in a great number of highly questionable attacks.

It is sickening and outrageous.

[cantstandbush]

21. It puzzles me that journalists world-wide are not enraged by the

number of journalists that the US military has killed or jailed.

[IndianaGreen]

22. Do you still support the troops?

Remember that if you support the troops, you are also supporting and encouraging their war crimes.

A righteous German would not have supported Hitler's armies!

[Miss Chybil]

23. 2500 for his life and another 2500 for his car...

I don't think I can feel any lower as an American. I really don't.

[thecodewarrior]

27. Our military

Has hit rock bottom. Its getting pretty damn hard to support a bunch of twisted killers. To think some of these maniacs will be back in the US, alot will get jobs as cops and prison guards because they only know how to handle a PUC. I'm starting to think the main difference between the BTK killer and some of these nutballs in the military is camoflauge and a government issued check.

[currents]

25. Real Question is: What was David Haselhof doing in Iraq?

That's what I want to know.

[Solly Mack]

26. Rotten pieces of shit

I'm sick of the outrages and I'm fed up with those who defend the outrages.

Spreading democracy my ass.