http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/01/08/iraq-bomb050108.html

some poor US pilot bombs a house in mosul, iraq. wrong target. kills the people inside.
in a statement from the military,
"Multi-National Force Iraq deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives,"...
possibly innocent lives?
are all iraqis terrorists and insurgents?

Until proven otherwise.

Seems the laws of our country that we tend to extend to the rest of the world when dealing with it don't apply to political martyrs.

JediKirby

Ok, how can anyone get a target like that confused with something else? Friggin idiots...

drizzt, who's to say the proper target wasn't another three houses down the street?

although i know this thread will go in a different direction, possibly innocent lives?
WTF?!?!?!?

AMERICANS ARE AT IT AGAIN.

JOB WELL DONE.

BURGERBOYS.

Generalization at its finest.

Most retarded generalization ever.

<3 you too FGR

Our military does make some pretty interesting mistakes. Bleh. Seriously, I'm with Evad.

I sure hope to hell you are joking or I'm gonna slap you with something for being so stupid and I'm not even an American.

As a canadian comedian said "Here we are, in the desert, dressed like trees, and the American's STILL managed to kill some of us."

<3

"the loss of possibly innocent lives" seem so wrong. It seems like the military is saying, "well, there is the possiblity that terrorists were there." It's a sad way to portray a "less-sensitive" side of a tragic story for the public.

Yeah, he says basically what I was thinking.

Possibly innocent lives, because not everybody in Iraq is innocent. Nobody talked to these people before they were killed, so nobody knows if they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or if in some huge twist of fate, at the time of their death they were preparing a suicide bombing. If the statement had said "...regret the loss of innocent lives" and a week later information comes out that the people killed were indeed insurgents, you people would then come out here and complain about how we called insurgents "innocent."
As for how they can get a target confused, maybe they miscalcuated the wind. Maybe the target looked exactly the same but like FL said was a few blocks down. Iraq doesnt exactly have big signs like the US that says "This is a military installation." Mistakes happen. The American military is run by humans.

so the blacks in brooklyn are possibly innocent.
they live in brooklyn. they're black. there's a high crime rate commited by blacks. do they must be possibly innocent.

doesn't cut it even if it were the hq for the terrorists and bin laden was in the building.
someone speaking for the military can not call people in a country they're trying to 'liberate' possibly innocent.

They didn't call all people in Iraq "possibly innocent." They called the people in that building possibly innocent.

He didn't call all the blacks in America possibly innocent, he only called the blacks in brooklyn such.



<3 FGR

Building is to Iraq as Brooklyn is to the U.S.?

I really dont think you can compare the crimes in Brooklyn to Iraqis blowing up themselves and vehicles trying to kill as many military perssonel as possible.

we're debating in both places roach.

i don't care much for political correctness but a military rep can not call people he is trying to liberate and grant all the freedoms and right of american citizens 'possibly innocent'.

this military guy has just added another 10,000 - 100,000 people to the 'i can't take it any more. i hate america.' list.

A guy goofs up a statement and some of you make it sound like the US and every inhabitant is evil.

whatever happened to innocent until prooven guilty?

Big Brother decided he toyed with us for long enough.

Okay.

.

Agreed.I really doubt that it was the statement's intention to imply that the people who were killed were terrorists or that all people in Iraq are potential terrorists.

but...
here you have a military action that is HIGHLY controversial world wide. the offenders are looking for support anywhere they can get it for a few reasons. every hour has more and more support dropping away.
therefor the offenders that are looking for support need to be extremely careful not to make any mistakes (and i don't think it was a mistake. i think he read it right from his speech the way it was written).

and when you say something stupid like that and there are literally billions of people on the planet that hate the US and every last one of it's citizens, you add many thousands more people to the list of haters.
any speech issued by the military or the government in the US should be very very careful of what they say. it should be scrutinized until the very last minute before reading.
at best the US has set up a country in which terrorist actions will continue for probably decades.
sadaam or car bombings? it's not for us to decide. ask the people that live there which they'd rather have. but from my warm chair behind my desk, the US ****ed up this operation.
they must have known there would be terrorist actions and insurgencies from north to south.
the tax payers of america can kiss billions more of their money away to this operation for years to come.

and for what?

What a hilarious debate tactic. Trying to bringing race into the issue in an analogy that makes absolutly no sense.

i really hate america.. i think i might move to canada for the next 4 years

It makes perfect sense.
Saying that the people they killed MAY HAVE been innocent just because they're living in Iraq doesn't seem to far from saying a bunch of blacks in Brooklyn that were shot by cops MAY HAVE been innocent.

Evad, you're reading too much into this. The military admitted the wrong house was bombed and that there's a possibility innocent people died. Really, if you want to criticize military action, find a mistake they tried to cover up instead of acknowledge.

but i already said earlier in this thread it's not about bombing the house. it's about what they call the iraqi's in the house. there were children in the house. even the guy that called them possibly innocent knows that.

i noticed the words possibly innocent instantly. i know every news service on earth has reported this and every news service on earth has probably released the statement. i can only assume that the millions of people reading it caught it also.
they need to be more careful.

They could have replaced "possibly" with "some" because you have to assume children are innocent. I understand what you're saying but don't over react to a poorly chosen word. If you think about it, it's a little strange to react worse to that than the fact that it happened at all.

Your link says otherwise.

Seperate Possibly and innocent lives. Not possibly innocent and lives.

There might not've been anyone in the house.

That's actually the way I understood it. Basically that they regret the possibility of innocent lives being killed. Whatever. Over reacting here, I think. To the statement, anyway.

Now that you mention that, I can see what they might have been trying to say. It makes more sense to me now. I'm thinking it was just poor wording and that they were trying to say that it was possible that innocent people were killed by the bomb (not knowing for sure at the time of the statement).