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U.S. rocket attack damages Baghdad hospital

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Nothing surprising, US forces have always attacked the wrong targets.

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Now, anyone out there still want to debate over whether the Iraqi citizens in Sadr City who have been affected by these air strikes are resentful of the U.S. military presence? Yes, I'm so sure they are grateful for the U.S. presence.

And ever notice that everytime these things happen, the standard military reason is "human shields." I highly doubt these Sadr brigade guys are out there chaining Iraqi civilians to their meeting areas. They're trying to be relatively low key in not showing their locations throughout the slums, so of course if you bomb these buildings innocent people are going to get hurt, without having human shields.

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Hey, if militants had injured 23 people you guys would be blaming the US, so since the US injured 23 people I guess we'll go ahead and blame the militants.

Turnabout is fair play. ;)

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Nothing surprising, US forces have always attacked the wrong targets.

Ahh the double standard pops up again. Supberlib has a point. If the US kills civilians, its the fault of the US. If the militants kill civilians (which is blatantly intentional), its the fault of the US.

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You are correct midievaltimes about certain outlets engaging in those very double standards.

Just another reason why the U.S. should get out of Iraq already. If people want to then blame the U.S. for anything that happens afterward, fine, do so. But at least more U.S. and coalition lives won't be sacrificed for this insanity.

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A five-member Iraqi delegation was sent to Tehran this week to try to choke off suspected Iranian aid to militiamen.

Suspected? What part of "Made in Iran" on weapons found in Iraq does the MSM not understand?

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U.S. and Iraqi forces have waged street battles with Shiite militias since late March in Sadr City, the power base of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

A broader picture of activity in Sadr City:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=49763

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I don't think it's true that if the militants injured 23 people, "us guys" would be blaming the US. Some would, yes. But I think most would criticize the US response to terrorism, both in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the 6 some years that has followed it. I think most would express understanding of what the militants are doing. Understanding implies acceptance (otherwise we are either denying a reality which we claim to understand or understanding something that is not a reality), but acceptance does not imply approval.

These days it seems that people are constantly accused of "failing to condemn". In particular, people who do not condemn the militants are accused of endorsing their actions. What is often unnoticed is that there is no failure to condemn among these people. We choose: we condemn one thing or we condemn another. I think what we are condemning here is the continued US presence in Iraq--if not the folly of the war against terror in general. So, yes, when the US injures 23 people, we blame the US and when the militants injure 23 people we understand that it is the militants who have done this. We accept this and find no motive to condemn them.

Yes, we could take a high moral stance and condemn both. That would be very high-minded and impartial, very even-handed and moral. But there is nothing even-handed or moral about the present situation in Iraq and people tend to come down on one of two sides. And these sides are prolonging the conflict or finding a way to wind down our involvement in it. The sides are not anti-terrorist and pro-terrorist.

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I accept the US's actions here and find no motive to condemn them.

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SuperLib,

That is perfectly OK. We don't accuse you of holding a double standard, or at least I don't.

I too accept the US's actions here and have no motive to condemn it. However, from this particular article there is not enough information for me to tell what target was actually hit or if the US was correct in identifying its target. A similar thing is true as to the identity of the injured.

Were it to turn out that the target was misidentified or if the only people injured--or the majority--were not militants, then I think I could find a reason for condemnation. Good intentions do not excuse errors or lack of precision.

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The U.S. military fired missiles into the heart of Baghdad’s teeming Sadr City slum on Saturday, leveling a building 50 meters away from a hospital and injuring dozens of people.

People what are we firing rockets at anywhere this close to a hospital? This is absolutely absurd. A hospital people.

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US and Iraqi forces continue to target the Mahdi Army as an Iraqi delegation visited Iran to confront the country over its support of Shia militias battling the government. The US military conducted a guided rocket attack on a Special Groups headquarters adjacent to a hospital in Sadr City, while 14 Mahdi Army fighters have been killed during clashes over the past 24 hours.

The US Army targeted and destroyed a Special Groups command and control center in a Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System strike in Sadr City at 10 AM local time Saturday morning, Multinational Forces Iraq reported. "There were six GMLRS rocket strikes on these Special Groups criminal command and control nodes," Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, the chief Public Affairs Officer for Multinational Division Baghdad, told The Long War Journal while refuting claims that the US used aircraft to attack. "We conducted a precision strike, hopefully got a few leaders, and sent a very strong message."

The Special Groups have been using the location near the hospital for an extended period of time and US intelligence has followed the activities at this site. "We had been tracking it for some time," Stover said. "Operations made the call to hit it. There may have been damages to the hospital - broken glass. There was likely ambulances damaged; however, it was the Special Groups criminal leadership that purposely put their command and control node there."

The Special Groups are a subset of the Mahdi Army that receives backing from Iran's Qods Force, the foreign clandestine operations wing that has supported Shia terror groups in Iraq. The Mahdi Army and the Special Groups have intentionally fought amongst the civilian population and use civilians as human shields in an attempt to inflate civilian casualties and create a media backlash against Iraqi and US operations.

The Rusafa health department media director claimed 28 Iraqi were wounded in the strike, and nine ambulances and 40 civilian vehicles were damaged. The Sadrist bloc ran the Health Ministry prior to withdrawing from the government in 2007, and the hospitals in Sadr City are known to be infiltrated with Mahdi Army and Sadrist bloc members. The Mahdi Army used hospitals as staging areas for sectarian attacks and weapons storage depots.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/05/gmlrs_strike_knocks.php

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The Mahdi Army used hospitals as staging areas for sectarian attacks and weapons storage depots.

Thanks for the info Suzu1. Gives a different slant on the story.

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