Imagine that

01 Jun
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U.S. military shot and killed a pregnant Iraqi woman on the way to the hospital:

"Shots were fired to disable the vehicle," the military said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "Coalition forces later received reports from Iraqi police that two women had died from gunshot wounds ... and one of the females may have been pregnant."

Beautiful. And you gotta love the passive tense here: "Shots were fired to disable the vehicle." So there was basically no human agency? Shots were just fired? Another way to say this is that U.S. soldiers fired their weapons and killed a pregnant Iraqi woman on the way to the hospital. Also, if you want to disable the vehicle, then shouldn't you be aiming at the tires and not the windows? Apparently not, since "disabling" in Pentagon-speak means disabling the car's passenger or, in other words, killing a pregnant Iraqi woman on the way to the hospital.

And the second part, "Coalition forces later received reports from Iraqi police that two women had died from gunshot wounds ... and one of the females may have been pregnant." Why is it the Iraqi police are the ones informing the so-called "coalition" forces instead of, I don't know, the actual soldiers who shot and killed a pregnant Iraqi woman on the way to the hospital? And saying they "died from gunshot wounds" as opposed to acknowledging any human agency in actually doing the shooting, not to mention that since the woman was on the way to the hospital to give birth, I doubt there was any question about whether or not she "may have been pregnant."

Jassim's brother, who was wounded by broken glass, said he did not see any warnings as he sped his sister to the hospital. Her husband was waiting for her there.

What's more plausible, that this guy was listening to the radio to loudly and spaced out on opium so didn't "notice" the clearly marked signs, gates, soldiers, and warning shots? Or that none of these things existed and soldiers just jumped right to the kill shot without any reasonable attempt to communicate.

"I was driving my car at full speed because I did not see any sign or warning from the Americans. It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my sister and cousin that I stopped," he said. "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives."

Look, I don't want to put too much blame on the soldiers who shot and killed a pregnant Iraqi woman on the way to the hospital. They're in a shitty situation, they're scared and stressed out because their colleagues are dying every day. And there is no end in sight for them. Of course they're trigger-happy.  Core-Values are out the window when you're in survival mode.  The fault lies with Rumsfeld and Team Chimpy for putting them in this elective illegitimate war in the first place. Likewise, it lies on the MSMs shoulders for continuing to print these sanitized, passive-tense versions of these stories instead of doing their jobs and calling the Pentagon out on it.

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