Refresh my memory -- where have we seen this movie before?
Confronted by a recent series of suicide attacks and roadside bombings, Canadian troops opened fire on a civilian taxi late Tuesday, killing one person.
And was killing someone in a taxi really necessary?
"Despite repeated warning by our crew in our vehicles, (he) approached to within two feet of our vehicle," said Basinger.
A gunner on one of the vehicles fired two warning shots, but Basinger said they were not aimed at the vehicle.
"Due to the moving vehicle, they hit one passenger," Basinger said at the nearby Kandahar airfield, where most of Canada 2,200 troops in Afghanistan are based.
Ah, I see. Apparently, the job of defending oneself in hostile territory is made that much more difficult if the target is, you know, moving. That does complicate military logistics, doesn't it?
So much for that "winning hearts and minds" thing.
3 comments:
Yes, indeed, "so much for that winning hearts and minds thing". I was wondering how long it would be until our troops were emulating their US counterparts? (This is why I've been questioning the way we are involved in this 'mission'.)
Please read this post I put up late last night, about how our role should be undertaken in Afghanistan:
http://verbena-19.blogspot.com/2006/03/canadian-analyst-says-current-strategy.html
It is an excellent analysis written by Peggy Mason. Let me know what you think. Thanks!
best,
amd~
I think you're being a little harsh here. The soldier involved has been relieved of duty duty pending an investigation, compensation is being discussed and the taxi did run a police roadblock. The article even mentions that the family has accepted the explanation. This doesn't really look like a case of being trigger-happy, though the soldier should have know to fire well wide of the vehicle if it was supposed to be a warning shot.
Whoa! The Yahoo article at the other end of that link now is most definitely not the original one I linked to.
As you can see in the part I reproduced, the original article said only that the vehicle "approached to within two feet of our vehicle."
Now, however, the word "approached" is nowhere to be found, and the vehicle is described now as "barrelling through," a phrase I'm fairly certain did not exist in the original piece.
Methinks there's been some frantic revisionism happening here. Methinks I might have to start caching copies of articles to know when this sort of thing happens again.
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