With all the attention on the alleged Marine massacre at
Haditha, Iraq, the Prime Minister of Iraq says that he is not surprised. Troops, he says, have been regularly targeting innocent Iraqi citizens:
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians.
The country's senior leaders said that they would demand that American officials turn over their investigative files on the killings and that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry.
In his comments, Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many troops in the American-led coalition who "do not respect the Iraqi people."
"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable." Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in
Iraq, the prime minister added.The denunciation was an unusual declaration for a government that remains desperately dependent on American forces to keep some form of order in the country amid a resilient Sunni Arab insurgency in the west, widespread sectarian violence in
Baghdad, and deadly feuding among Shiite militias that increasingly control the south.
The news from Iraq grows more and more depressing. The buck stops at the incompetent leaders who put our troops there in the first place.
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It does indeed stop at incompetant leaders. What equally surprises me is that American's can support a war and then be shocked when people die. Part of why war is so abhorrant is that the innocent die more often than not.
~CallieV