At 08:49 AM 3/29/03 -0800, Sarad AV wrote: ...
How ever I wonder if the report of an Apache helicopter being shot down by a farmer with his rifle-the chopper was certainly downed but I find it hard to beleive that a bullet brought it down.
I heard (I think on BBC) that a whole bunch of the choppers we sent out on some mission came back so shot up they were basically unsalvageable. It sounded like they'd been hit with small arms fire, but I don't know enough about the different kinds of helicopters used (I think these were Apaches) to know if that's plausible. Anti-aircraft artillery, SAMs, or those Russian 20mm anti-aircraft machine guns might have done the damage. Or maybe they really were messed up badly by hundreds of rounds of 7.62 mm, but it sure seems like it would be unhealthy to be one of the people shooting at the helicopters in that situation--like a bunch of people shooting at a lion with .22 pistols or something. Even if you eventually drive the helicopter off, it's going to leave a big pile of bodies behind!
The images shown at the begining of the war showing iraqi soldiers surrending and walking up with their hands behind their head might have cost US dear again. > I think the usual inducement to treating POWs you > hold properly is that you > want your soldiers who've been taken prisoner to be > treated > properly. (There's also world opinion, which we > care about a lot more than > Iraq does.)
I wont beleive that any more-the US doesn't listen any more to the world,its gone blind and deaf.
Unfortunately, you have a point. World opinion is important for the long-term future of the US, and it has an impact, but the current president is more willing to ignore it than most presidents we've had in recent memory. Also, US public opinion seems a lot more willing to accept mistreating prisoners we characterize as terrorists than it used to be, pre-9/11. This is tragic for a whole bunch of reasons.
Suspected al-queda/taliban prisoners were put in 6*8 meter cages in the open sun and badly beaten up-I remember seeing that on tv.They weren't given pow status either.May be they didn't look like humans :)
I think there was some complicated argument about the Taliban not being a legitimate government, though this looked to me like a legalistic excuse for doing crap we knew we ought not to be doing, but which we figured we could get away with. In general, we ought to be much more careful to respect human rights than we're legally required to be, rather than looking for loopholes that let us get away with mistreating prisoners. This will backfire on us in a lot of ways. For example, there have been rumors in the media (again, from BBC) that we're planning to ship a bunch of the unlawful combatants from Iraq to Camp X-Ray. If I were a high-ranking Baath party official, I'd be convinced that the US was going to either send me there or shoot me as soon as I was captured, and I'd act accordingly. That means there's zero incentive for those guys to play by any civilized rules in fighting off the Americans. Why not have your soldiers dress up as civilians? Why not use gas as part of your urban warfare? Why not set bombs and gas shells to go off after you've pulled out of a city, and the US/UK forces have taken it? What's the consequence to *you?*
I'm not sure how important the Iraqi > government considers our > treatment of their captured soldiers, though, and > we're not going to shoot > them all even if the Iraqis do that to our captured > soldiers.
hopefully they are treated well as its no fault of theirs that they are dragged into this war with iraq.
I'd say that's typically true of POWs, which is the reason for the rules guaranteeing their proper treatment. Soldiers don't make policy, and so you don't shoot all the soldiers you capture. This also leaves some chance that people will surrender, rather than hold out to the bitter end. If I know that you're just going to shoot me if I surrender, I'm probably going to try to take a few more of your soldiers with me before I go. What's the downside?
Regards Sarath.
--John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
