Damn... Iraqi market hit in Baghdad

[Dowding]

Just what we didn't need.

'Many casualties' after Baghdad market hit

[Fishu]

An angry crowd of several hundred people gathered in the area following the strike, waving the shoes and clothes of victims

..and few minutes after they were bragging at home how they got clothes for free.


Anyway.. since the first day, I've been wondering if Iraqis would resort to bombing their own civilians - heck, killing some three dozen own civilians in right place would be an excellent propaganda strike against your enemy.
..and who would try to prove it wasn't US bomb?
nobody.

[Curval]

It could well have been a US bomb.  It was expected and inevitable that some civilians would die in this war.  It is a horrible thing.

Sadaam should be the one to take responsibility though...he could, and should, have gone into exile.

[muckmaw]

How could you prove it was not a US bomb?

All they have to do is trot over the one of the military targets, grab a piece of a tomahawk, and bring it to the market place.

Were we bombing in that area? I suppose if we could put a tomahawk in Iran, and one in Turkey, we could have accidentally put one in the market.

This sort of thing is going to happen. It's unforunate, and a very disheartening event, but we all knew there would be some civilian casualties in this war.

Sad....very sad.

[Mickey1992]

I have read multiple reports that the area was hit by two separate missiles.  Seems that someone got their GPS coords screwed up.

[blur]

Relax folks.

I have it from a reliable source that a member of Saddam’s Feyadeen wrapped himself with dynamite,  climbed into a cardboard box painted up to look like a US JDAM and threw himself off the top of “Saddam’s Place” downtown mall building.

The bastards.

Don’t worry though. Once the eye slits in the cardboard are found the truth of this incident will be set straight.

[Toad]

Or maybe one of those Russian GPS jammers, eh?

Lots of possibilities.

[llyr69]

If the BGM109 had the 1,000 lb warhead there should be a BIG freaking crater.

 I've never seen any info on the blast effects of CBU's-I thought they were more of a fragmentation effect weapon, though.

In short, the blast patterns look rather......odd.....to me.

[Fishu]

Ps. not saying that I suspect iraqis doing so, just wondering :>

[Dowding]

I'm sure if they thought it was an Iraqi bomb they would have said so by now.

[muckmaw]

I'm no expert on this area, but should'nt there be a crater?

There at least should be fragments of the missle scattered all over the place.

Leave it to the experts, but do not expect a straight answer from anyone.

[eddiek]

..........more like the blast came from within the building, and at ground level rather than from a Tomahawk.

I wonder too about the constant Iraqi claims of civilian deaths.  With the coalition reports of Iraqi soldiers dressing as civilians, who can really tell if the victims were truly innocents, or military personnel?
The Iraqi propaganda machine is in full swing, this we know.  Front line imagery from reporters is immediately called lies by the regime.  What are they gonna do if and when we decide to use a zoom lens and catch them in the act of forcing their civilians to be shields for them?  They will call it lies, and sadly, it appears that many in the Islamic world will feed into it.

[Mickey1992]

"Associated Press Television News video showed a large crater in the street, a smoldering building, demolished cars, and bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting in the back of a pickup truck. "

[Sabre]

Originally posted by Dowding
I'm sure if they thought it was an Iraqi bomb they would have said so by now.

I'm not sure who you mean when you say "they" in the above sentence.  From the CENTCOM briefing this morning, the briefer said they were looking into the Iraqi claim, and could neither verify or rebuke the origins of the blast.  What the US military is trying to do is verify such stories first, rather than simply claiming it must be Iraqi propaganda.  A knee-jerk denial, if proved wrong, would be more damaging to coalition credibility than admitting after careful investigation that a bomb or missile missed it's target.  Give the US some credit for trying to be as honest as operational security allows.  It is quite possible it was an errant coalition bomb or missile.  It is equally plausible (based on many independently reported incidents of Iraqi treachery on and off the battlefield) that it is a simply more Iraqi propaganda, manufactured at the expense of it's citizens.

[Preon1]

Originally posted by llyr69
If the BGM109 had the 1,000 lb warhead there should be a BIG freaking crater.

 I've never seen any info on the blast effects of CBU's-I thought they were more of a fragmentation effect weapon, though.

In short, the blast patterns look rather......odd.....to me.

Actually, during Operation Desert Fox, Iraq complained about too many collateral civilian casualties.  In response, the Air Force started filling it's warheads with cement instead of explosives.  The effect is that we have GPS guided rocks.  There's enough energy to take out the target, but there's no added explosion to cause the collateral damage.  The Air Force calls the bombs "kinetic weapons" and we use a lot of them still today.