You should try to stop yourself taking different aspects of a post and link them together as that makes them mean something.
I pointed out that all the stuff that is shot into the air comes down somewhere. I didn't suggest that the market place disaster was caused by shrapnel. It may have been caused by a ground to air missile that didn't explode in the air. I didn't see any large hole at the market. An errant bomb would surely have caused a large crater. Didn't seem to be there.
Fisk says it was two missiles from a jet. I have no idea how he knows - but he writes with the authority of certainty so perhaps he's right.
I was relating the wild reports of lives lost by the hundreds to three coffins in a street crowded with people. In fact, the crowds of people in the streets along with the street markets apparently doing business seems to me to be an indication of a populace that doesn't believe American bombers are indiscriminately bombing.
If the bombing was killing hundreds of people, don't you think the Saddamites would have lined them along the street, while the cameras lovingly focused on every body?
You then bring in something that happened after my post. A loss of 58 people and you try to relate it to my discussion of shrapnel. Shame on you!
I don't think I related my mild experience with Hitler's bombs to civilians in Baghdad. Rather, I said that we received nothing like the Germans got. I also mentioned the palpable feeling of sympathy for the Germans as we watched and heard the 1,000 bomber raids on their way to Germany. I suppose the comment of the average Briton would have been "Poor sods!"
I mentioned that the morning London body count was likely to be in the range of 400. However, the major casualties were in the dock areas which were a sea of flame with firefighters struggling hopelessly as more bombs came down on them.
Later the German airmen were as scared as the people on the ground. They would simply unload a string of bombs, then head for home - without particularly aiming at anything. We could actually guess where the next one would land and try to be somewhere else.
However, compare this with hundreds of Tomahawks, maybe thousands of bombs including 'bunker busters' with explosives unknown back in the forties.
The result? - Three coffins and a mob filling a Baghdad street. I also mentioned the Red Cross report of 200 injured, also the Iraqi report of three dead and 200 injured. It seems to me that 58 dead reported by Iraq is a more likely result of an errant bomb. But, I must confess that I wondered whether it might have been a Saddamite effort. However, we just don't know. I assume it was one of ours.
I've been wondering why they keep pounding away at Baghdad. Surely, it's been bashed enough? But, apparently they have been targeting missile batteries and have wiped them out allowing medium level bombers to be put to use. (Except, strangely, many missile batteries around northern Baghdad which the Iraqi haven't used.) This makes misses more likely, I would think - particularly if the missiles are sited in residential neighborhoods.
I gave the reasons why it could have been American missiles, before you made your remarks about American missiles, so I won't repeat them. I would say that the miracle is that so few civilian deaths are taking place - considering the weight of explosive that is raining down.
I was lucky in WWII. When eventually I was in embarkation camp, Gwen had a baby and I was given 48 hours leave. When I got back, my unit had left for Singapore. After messing around for two or three weeks, I was posted to Newquay on the coast of Cornwall in the west country - about as nice a place as one could be.
Then there was this US President who dropped a couple of horrible bombs and stopped the war - so I never left England. As anyone who has been in the military, or in a war, one never knows what will happen and luck is the determinant of your service career.
I wonder, as did Ed, won't anyone say something nice about the Americans?
Harry ----------------------------------
Lawrence wrote:
Shrapnel just happens to 'come down' and kill 58 people? I'm not sure what war you are following, Harry.
Both Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been hit by US cruise missiles aimed at Iraq. Can you really not conceive that a cruise missile may have hit a market in Baghdad, given that sort of accuracy?
You see a picture of three coffins in Iraq and conclude from that that casualties are light. You see a picture of the market and conclude that it must have been done 'shrapnel'.
Can you not conceive that war is nasty business (despite your own survival of WWII), and that maybe US policies and actions are questionable? Though I AM intrigued by your comparing yourself as a young boy facing the weaponry of Hitler, to civilians in Baghdad facing the weaponry of the US.....
Cheers, Lawry
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