Iraqi family coming under US fire

Currently, on The BBC's main webpage they have a picture of a bloodied and crying Iraqi girl with this caption:

In pictures
Shocking images of an Iraqi family coming under US fire

You have to go to the first photograph to learn what happened.

US soldiers in Iraq approach a car after opening fire when it failed to stop at a checkpoint. Despite warning shots it continued to drive towards their dusk patrol in Tal Afar on 18 January.

Chris Hondros a photographer with Getty News was on hand to record these pictures.

Tragic for these kids no doubt but this raises a lot of questions.

Let's start with the BBC's paragraph first. The BBC could have worded it such as this:

After a car failed to stop at a checkpoint, despite warning shots, US soldiers opened fire, killing two occupants. But no they say "US soldiers in Iraq approach a car after opening fire...", making it sound like the US were the aggressors.

Bear in mind, this is happening when car bombs and IED's are going off daily, killing US troops; there were 4 today.

Given that, one has to wonder why a family would continue to deliberately drive towards a checkpoint manned by armed US soldiers, despite warning shots being fired? It may be some time before more details come out but could it be that the parents committed suicide to create a scandal? Were they willing to sacrifice their children in a cause to discredit US troops? Were they forced to do it because some of their family members were being held as hostages? That has happened before.

That fact that a Getty photographer just happened to "be on hand" may lend credence to this theory. Or he may have just been lucky while the Iraqis were unlucky.

The BBC also fail to tell you the importance of Tal Afar

BAGHDAD, 28 Sep 2004 (IRIN) - Water and electricity have been restored to the former insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar, near the northern city of Mosul, and many residents have returned to their homes, a US military official said on Sunday on condition of anonymity. [...]

In the last week, foreign fighters manning illegal checkpoints on the main road into Tal Afar were either captured, killed or have fled, the US military official said, paving the way for residents to return home.

Insurgents and terrorists coming from Syria were said to be using the city as a transit base for operations at the beginning of the month. Tension rose after US-led forces set up checkpoints on the roads. "Construction projects planned for the region can now go forward," the official said in a briefing for journalists.

As I said it may be some time before the true story emerges but the BBC once again use a tragic event to paint America in a bad light.

UPDATE:

Recently questions were raised about how AP photographers just happened "to be on hand" at the right place at the right time.

Yesterday I posted about the Belmont Club's questions concerning how an AP cameraman just happened to be in the right place at the right time to capture on film the murder of Iraqi election officials.

Here was where the killers really lucked out. The AP photographer, though caught at unawares, who definitely had no "foreknowledge" of what was going down and at the worst expected a street demonstration, did not take cover, even as soldiers and Marines are trained to do when shooting starts. He was made of sterner stuff and held his ground, taking pictures of people he did not know killing individuals he did not recognize for reasons he would not have known about. This -- in the midst of "30 armed insurgents, hurling hand grenades and firing guns" -- as the Associated Press report says. And he continued to take photographs for a fairly long period of time, capturing not just a single photograph, but a sequence of them.

The Belmont Club notes the results of the AP cameraman's "luck".

Two or three dozen people, at the most, would normally have witnessed these events. But due to the great good fortune of the killers, a photographer from the Associated Press was present and pictures of the execution were carried on newspapers throughout the globe, sending the executioner's message not merely to a handful of bystanders to hundreds of millions of readers throughout the world.

Deja Vu?
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