It's a good thing the U.S. got that World Court exemption...

Never mind, there also was a similar incident in Mosul.

Just like all stories, the bang always makes the front page. The retraction or mundane follow up never does.

Or have you got some way to search for incident inquiry reports that isn't google?

 

I had no idea Lexis-Nexis also catalogued Military inquiries.

 

Just like any other crime, evidence must be gathered. Then the independant prosecution decides whether or not there is ample evidence to warrant a trial.

Then a court marshall session comes and judges decide guilt based on the discourse of a defense and prosecutor.

No one knows if its true or not, but the simplest explanations are usually the correct ones, and there is a notion of 'innocent until proven guilty' that is cherished here in the states.

 

" there is a notion of 'innocent until proven guilty' that is cherished here in the states."

- unless you're an arab or "french"...
hate to do it.. but it's true. So it's not a notion that is cherished all that much.

 

Not sure exactly what the proof is required for me to believe it, but a single article on reuters doesn't do it. (Interestingly enough, AFP also reported the Mosul incident in a similar manner to the recent incident--very skeptical of US statements, but not of the Iraqi).

Even stories that are picked up by many news agencies are just plain wrong. The widespread looting of the museum in Baghdad, for example, falls into this category. Everybody was reporting it, but in the end everybody seemed to be duped. Beyond that, sometimes the "ground level" view is not in context and appears to be something that it isn't.

Highly politically charged issues like this are extra suspect, because of several factors:
1) There are people who have a vested interest in presenting the US in as bad a light as possible without any scruples at all
2) There are people making eye witness reports that are pissed off (for example these Iraqis being insulted by being occupied)
3) And there are biased reporters who let (intentionally or not) their personal animosity against the US or its current administration bleed through--either by slanting the reporting, or simply by not fact checking because they'd rather believe what they're reporting.
4) There's just stupid reporters out there.

Of course, reversing the political leanings of the list above also leads to the same thing.

I think the story needs widespread coverage and legs, or ongoing pattern, or widespread eyewitness reporiting before I'll be satisfied with it being a somewhat accurate reporting of the situation.

 

There is no evidence to say it did.

 

I don't remember anything about fakes.

I found this interesting take on the museum.

http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/as/Uus-baghdadmuseum-commentary.R8sK_DuD.html

Strangely, the email goes to Joe Bob Briggs (I presume the host of the cheezy movie review show of cheezy movies)http://www.joebobbriggs.com/

Wierd

 

Interesting commentary on your part. I've read in many places that any thefts of the really expensive stuff was likely an inside job and that the museum spokesman wasn't necessarily on the up and up.

 

Agreed. That's why one needs to use common sense when trying to derive fact from a world full of biased, sensationalist, and/or ignorant media outlets.

In the aggregate, the truth is somewhere in between, as you say. In this particular case, there is no "in between" I can find: either American troops summarily executed a number of handcuffed enemy fighters who posed no danger; or someone else (presumably the victims' fellow fighters) did; or the reports of Arab fighters handcuffed and dead of close-range bullet wounds to the head are false.

Anyone with the aforementioned common sense would realize that the last two scenarios are wildly more plausible than the first. The anti-American bias of AFP's Mideast Bureau, the source of the report, merely makes it all the more obvious that critical thought must be given before accepting the conclusions of the news report.

Instead, the original poster accepted this at-best extraordinarily dubious report at face value. Moreover, the implicit assumptions reflected in the thread title--namely that enough evidence exists to secure a conviction at the ICC of a war crime, but that the US military will not instigate court martial proceedings even in the face of such strong evidence of a war crime--show him to be even more tilted in the direction of unthinking anti-Americanism.

 

I doubt any of you know the 100% unblemished truth.
Everyone is either throwing punches left or right but yet have I heard anyone say they don't have all the unspoilt facts so they care not to comment.

I will be the first. I care not to comment as I do not know the 100% unblemished truth about the situation. I keep reading different opinions but I do not know which opinions are non-fictional.

There, I said it.