This blog post was published on June 21 2005. §
US troops do kill Iraqi children (Update)
First, I want to salute Mr. Mark Kraft, his courage and his honesty for bringing this story.
I read every available religion book to show me the path where can I find justice, history books to see when does all started, Philosophy books to discover how to achieve it and I failed to find the answer.
This why I joined the International committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), my goal was to find the answer to this question.
Through this journey, I learned many things (not the answer) and this is one of them:
There are no nationalities, countries and groups. There are no bad Americans, good Americans, bad Iraqis and good Iraqis.
There are bad people, good people, liars, honest ….etc, for me every human being is transparent I don’t look at their faces or their origins, I just look through them to their souls and their aura.
“I am just trying to find the answer”.
They [the pictures] indicate that a group of U.S. soldiers planted weapons — the same weapon, in fact — in front of killed, wounded, and captured Iraqi kids. I cannot authenticate whether Mr. Hersh is correct and that the teens in question were innocent or not, but clearly, something significant is amiss. At the very least, it indicates how uncertain the situation is over there. Our soldiers literally do not know who the enemy is, and apparently are willing to manipulate the evidence in order to justify their actions.
The pictures were taken with a digital camera in Buhriz, Iraq on Oct. 22nd, 2004, and their file names are numbered, apparently from the digital camera in question. They show the basics for you: no weapons in the first photos, then weapons inserted into the pictures later.
It appears to me that these teenagers are not insurgents, in that they showed no signs of having either weapons or wearing khafiyas, or headscarves, which are typically used as a kind of uniform by insurgents, as displayed in the Associated Press photos below. To me, the whole situation is indicative of the terrible uncertainty of the conflict, where everyone is a potential insurgent, and where that fear and uncertainty leads to a situation where U.S. soldiers try to manipulate the reality of the situation.
It’s also worth noting that medical treatment was apparently not offered until shown in the later pictures, leading me to wonder whether the assistance, in itself, was part of the “staged” element of these photos.
Read the rest and see the images here
(Thank you Nadia)