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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:23 pm Post subject: |
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Grotto: you're still dense as a rock.
Plig: you might consider getting some perspective with respect to Bulsajo because, like he said above, we know he's not one of the notAmericans. Maybe you two just clashed on something early on this thread, and you kept going in that direction uneccessarily? (I admit to not having read each and every post, but I can see how the conflicting accounts of this incident might have upset him.)
Bulsajo: in the grand scheme of things, this is a unfortunate accident, a non-event, and we should move on. It's not like someone tasked those troops with a fire mission to hit your diplomats, right? That's what my govt and your govt are going to say to each other in private, I'm almost certain.
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Jun 27, 2006 10:43 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Plig: you might consider getting some perspective with respect to Bulsajo because, like he said above, we know he's not one of the notAmericans. |
I know, which is why it is shocking that he has taken that route: dismissing my opinions as ignorant or hopeless while maintaining the moral high-ground and doing the exact same thing I'm doing.
| Gopher wrote: |
| Maybe you two just clashed on something early on this thread, and you kept going in that direction uneccessarily? (I admit to not having read each and every post, but I can see how the conflicting accounts of this incident might have upset him.) |
This is what started it for me...
| Bulsajo wrote: |
| Re-read the story but this time pull your head out of your arse first. |
This was after I stated my opinion of what happened.
Not "Your opinion is understandable, but I think you may be misguided."
Not "I am more interested in the conflicting stories offered by both the Americans and the people in the car than the event itself."
It was "You're hopeless." You have a "persecution complex." You don't have a clue what is going on while I am enlightened and morally superior. Your opinons are flawed because I don't share them. |
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Grotto
Joined: 21 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher you're......ahhh you're not worth it  Talking to you is a waste of breath!
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Grotto wrote:
Standing around getting shot or being blown up is just plain bad luck! |
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Pligganease wrote:
Indeed, unless it happens when you are in a warzone in the service of your country. |
The service of your country statement is debateable at best. Just how does having troops in the Middle East qualify as service to your country?
I myself have qualms about why Canadian soldiers are mucking around in Afghanistan still.
Are any of these troops over there defending USA or Canada? Not really. What they are doing is trying to push a system of government onto a people that may not be ready for it or even capable of accepting it.
The mandate to remove Saddam was finished months ago. The weapons of mass destruction were never found. Its time to get our soldiers out of there and back home before more of them die.
A soldier dying for big business and oil interests isnt heroic...its a tragedy! |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:29 pm Post subject: |
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Service to your country means that you are a member of the group of people that serve the members not in that group.
The Canadian and American soldiers (among others) in Afghanistan are there for the greater good of both their country and yours. Removing the Taliban and terrorist training camps in Afghanistan was good for all the citizens of the world.
| Grotto wrote: |
| A soldier dying for big business and oil interests isnt heroic...its a tragedy! |
Yes. It is a tragedy. However, you can't blame the soldier for doing what he/she was asked by his country to do, can you? The fact that a soldier puts his/her life at risk in the service of his/her country is what makes them heroes, whether you agree with why they are there or not. |
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Grotto
Joined: 21 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Yes. It is a tragedy. However, you can't blame the soldier for doing what he/she was asked by his country to do, can you? The fact that a soldier puts his/her life at risk in the service of his/her country is what makes them heroes, whether you agree with why they are there or not. |
Fair enough |
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Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 12:14 am Post subject: |
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| Pligganease wrote: |
Yes. It is a tragedy. However, you can't blame the soldier for doing what he/she was asked by his country to do, can you? The fact that a soldier puts his/her life at risk in the service of his/her country is what makes them heroes, whether you agree with why they are there or not. |
All of all the American soldiers I personally know that have served in Irak didn't agree with why they were there. |
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laconic2
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Wonderful World of ESL
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 1:44 am Post subject: Did |
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| Hollywoodaction wrote: |
| Pligganease wrote: |
Yes. It is a tragedy. However, you can't blame the soldier for doing what he/she was asked by his country to do, can you? The fact that a soldier puts his/her life at risk in the service of his/her country is what makes them heroes, whether you agree with why they are there or not. |
All of all the American soldiers I personally know that have served in Irak didn't agree with why they were there. |
Did any of them refuse to do their duty while they were there? |
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Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:12 am Post subject: Re: Did |
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| laconic2 wrote: |
| Hollywoodaction wrote: |
| Pligganease wrote: |
Yes. It is a tragedy. However, you can't blame the soldier for doing what he/she was asked by his country to do, can you? The fact that a soldier puts his/her life at risk in the service of his/her country is what makes them heroes, whether you agree with why they are there or not. |
All of all the American soldiers I personally know that have served in Irak didn't agree with why they were there. |
Did any of them refuse to do their duty while they were there? |
Not that I know. It's a Catch 22. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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I haven't read this thread from where I posted last... I'm calmer today and while I still hold the same position I realize that I could have (should have) been more diplomatic in expressing that position.
Pligganese: yes, I flew off the handle. I took your obvious exaggeration on the 'conspiracy' as a serious comment (I guess that comes with arguing with igotthisguitar too much) and then went ballistic from there. My position hasn't changed but I apologize for my behaviour.
Newbie, see my response to your PM. (that might have been a tad too harsh as well).
Cheeba, I think you were deliberately goading me and I certainly rose to the occasion, but as with Pligganese I could have been calmer and less bombastic in my responses to you.
In the meantime the following Globe and Mail article shines more light on the Canadian version of the incident:
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A NASTY SHOCK IN IRAQ
By PAUL KORING
WASHINGTON — Inside the white Envoy with a Maple Leaf flag plastered to the windshield, the first inkling that a routine daily trip for Canadian diplomats in Baghdad had gone nightmarishly wrong sounded like an explosion.
"It wasn't until we noticed the car was filled with gunpowder and dust and debris, and we looked around and saw the gunshots on the hood and the cracked windshield that we realized, 'oh crap, we were shot at,' " said Michelle Cameron, one of the four Canadians inside the SUV when a U.S. gunner opened fire on them inside the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad on Tuesday.
The U.S. military's version is starkly different and irreconcilable with the Canadian story of being fired on without warning or reason. A joint investigation to determine which version is correct is under way.
Ms. Cameron is a Ankara-based consular officer who has been in Baghdad working to free two Canadian peace activists held hostage by a shadowy Islamic group. She has provided the most detailed and only first-person account of how a routine trip turned suddenly into a near-fatal case of friendly fire as U.S. troops unleashed a machine gun burst at the Canadian vehicle.
As the dust settled and the shaken Canadians realized they were unhurt, a U.S. soldier approached. He asked whether everyone was okay, Ms. Cameron said.
"So we introduced him to the acting ambassador and he apologized."
In the car along with three other Canadians was chargé d'affaires Stewart Henderson.
"We just so weren't expecting the convoy to open up on us," Ms. Cameron said. She had been back in Baghdad for several weeks after spending a month there earlier, so she is familiar both with the dangers and the special driver etiquette required to operate safely in close proximity to heavily armed military convoys.
Diplomats and others stationed in the Green Zone, including the Canadians who were shot at Tuesday, go to a special driving school to learn how to behave around military convoys.
"Basically, you are learning how not to get shot," she said. "You have to take an orientation course in how to drive, then you have a week when you're a student driver riding as the passenger to an experienced driver, and then you take a two-hour driving test."
Until gunfire pierced the windshield, the trip had been unremarkable, she said.
After leaving the British embassy, where Canada's diplomats are housed while its new embassy is constructed, "we yielded to an oncoming convoy of five Humvees with gunners on the top," she said.
"This is a typical occurrence in the Green Zone. It happens fairly often. They passed, we proceeded through the traffic circle and followed them at a large distance. We [were] all travelling in the same direction. Nothing unusual . . . this happens every day, nothing new.
"About three to five minutes into the journey, they [the Humvees] turned to enter a forward operating base. So they turned left into a special lane for the forward operating base. . . . Like we do every day, we stay at 20 to 25 kilometres an hour and we continue on . . . and then all of a sudden we heard what we initially deemed an explosion."
Ms. Cameron and Mr. Henderson were in the back seat. Although the two front-seat occupants -- both Canadians and holders of diplomatic passports -- have not been identified, the driver is believed to be a Canadian soldier.
"Our driver had taken that course and he had been driving in the Green Zone for months, so immediately when the explosions rang out, while those of us in the back seat put our heads down as the shrapnel hit, our driver put on the brakes," Ms. Cameron said.
The white Envoy was travelling very slowly when it was hit by the gunfire. "It's interesting to note there were no skid marks, which gives you an idea of how slow we were going," she said.
The U.S. story is that the Canadian vehicle was speeding and tried to pass the U.S. convoy. Soldiers in the "rear vehicle of the convoy noticed a vehicle speeding toward the convoy," U.S. Marine Major Tim Keefe said yesterday from Baghdad. A soldier "gave hand signals to stay back," and when those were ignored he "fired a warning burst aimed at the front of the vehicle away from the passenger compartment," he said.
While the U.S. account portrays reckless driving that could reasonably have been interpreted as an unfolding suicide attack, Ms. Cameron's account, backed by other Canadian officials, paints an entirely different picture of trigger-happy Americans needlessly firing on a well-marked vehicle.
"From what I know, if the hand signals had been seen -- and I'm not saying the Americans didn't give them -- they would have been followed," said a Canadian embassy spokeswoman in Jordan.
"The Canadian ambassador's vehicle sustained damage from U.S. military gunfire yesterday afternoon in Baghdad, when it attempted to pass a U.S. military convoy after ignoring signals to stop," is the official version of events released by U.S. military in the Iraqi capital.
"The U.S. convoy vehicle defended itself by firing a three-round rifle burst."
"We know there are conflicting stories," said Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Marie-Christine Lilkoff, but she repeatedly declined to say whether the department backed the version of events given by its diplomats on the ground.
Prime-minister-designate Stephen Harper told an afternoon news conference that the Privy Council Office had kept him informed about the diplomatic fallout from the shooting in Baghdad.
"I understand there are some disagreements with what has occurred. Our officials are clear that they were operating within the rules," said Mr. Harper.
"I understand that there has been communication between the Chief of Defence Staff and American authorities to reflect our concerns and to make sure such events are avoided in the future. I also understand that there has been contact from the ambassador of the United States certainly expressing his regrets about the course of events."
In Washington, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "I wasn't there. I, obviously, don't know" what happened. "It's being investigated, and we'll see."
The Bush administration voiced regret but, so far, no official apology.
"We've talked to the Canadian government about this incident," said U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "It's regrettable."
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060202.wxshooting02/BNStory/National/
This article certainly has more details than the one posted in the OP.
As far as I'm concerned it reinforces exactly what I've been saying already so I'll just leave it at that. |
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