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U.S. decries Iraqi ’’human shields’’
The United State's top military officer decried Iraq's apparent plans to recruit civilians to act as human shields around high-value targets if there is a war, but said in some cases -- particularly where self-defense is concerned -- those targets would be attacked anyway. "I think there will be some situations where military necessity, if it's a case of defending ... friendly forces, that you'd have to take action, probably. And there are other cases where, if you can avoid it, you would, of course," Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday. "You know, the object is clearly to not engage noncombatants." "We're not into killing," Myers said at a Pentagon news conference. "That, I think, is one thing that separates us from the al Qaida, certainly from the Iraq regime. ... We don't want to take on civilian populations, we don't want to take on noncombatants, and we'd take every measure to avoid doing that."Military officials say Iraq already puts civilian populations at risk when it stations anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles in residential neighborhoods in the northern and southern no-fly zones. That practice has led the U.S. military, which enforces the zones, to adopt an indirect response when its aircraft are fired on. Rather than automatically bombing the source of the fire, the jets sometimes wait and go after large, stationary command-and-control headquarters or communications facilities that have only the most tenuous links to the missile batteries. Of course, cutting the links also reduces the effectiveness of those missle batteries and AAA guns. Baghdad announced in December it was seeking civilians to act as human shields for certain targets to dissuade a U.S. attack. Myers said if any civilians were injured as human shields, the Iraqi officers that oversaw their recruitment and use would be considered war criminals under the Geneva Conventions. Heh, heh Posted by: Steve 2003-01-16 |
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