Our pro-life president has yet more blood on his hands. This time, it was a pregnant woman, her full-term unborn child and her cousin on the way to the hospital for delivery.
From Mark G. Brennnan, writing for LewRockwell.com, on another consequence of our insane occupation of Iraq:
Yesterday’s events in Iraq vividly illustrate the preceding proposition. Wednesday afternoon the Associated Press reported that U.S. forces had killed two Iraqi women when the car in which they were riding failed to stop at an American "observation point" near the city of Samarra. One of the women, 35 year-old Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, was about to give birth and her brother, Khalid, was rushing her to the hospital for the delivery. The article quoted the distraught brother as saying, "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." Granted, in the heat of the moment, those with guns fire them without perfect information. We occasionally see it happen here when a police officer shoots an unarmed citizen. It is terribly unfortunate but it happens. What we don’t usually hear from the victim’s surviving relatives is how Mr. Jassim finished his anguished testimony: "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives." And by the way, the baby died too.
The Associated Press reports that the car was signalled to stop and failed to do so. The driver and brother of the pregnant woman, Khalid Nisaif Jassim, says otherwise:
"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."
My conservative and pro-interventionist-war libertarian friends (read: fake libertarians) will no doubt pooh-pooh any criticism of this action and place the blame solely on the pregnant woman and her family for being in a rush, in their own country, to get to the hospital. How dare Mr. Jassim attempt to move about freely in his own "liberated" nation!
Actions like these are the direct result of a foreign policy gone insane, a perspective that skews toward empire, and a world view that defines other nations as falling under the dominion of the President of the United States.
But Landrith, some of you will undoubtedly ask, aren't you being too harsh on our military and divinely annointed POTUS? I'm sorry, but when you point a weapon at someone and pull the trigger, you better damned well be justified. An "oops, my bad" or "he didn't slow down for our sign, even though we are occupying his nation, seizing his property, killing his friends and family, and curtailing his civil liberties" doesn't cut it. There is no excuse for slaying the innocent.
I am disgusted beyond words.