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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (89199)	4/2/2003 12:43:34 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Iraq's civilian ploys force deadly decisions by Jules Crittenden Wednesday, April 2, 2003 SOUTH OF BAGHDAD, Iraq - In Monday's battle for an Euphrates River bridgehead outside Al Hillah, what has become a familiar pattern emerged as Iraqi Republican Guard troops maneuvered their gun trucks behind a shield of women and children. ``We didn't engage. We couldn't engage,'' said Staff Sgt. Gordon Baker, a tanker on 4/64 Armor Battalion commander Lt. Col. Philip deCamp's tank Hannibal. Baker said he was spared the decision of whether to fire through the massed civilians because the Iraqis did not use that ploy to approach the bridge. But he said, ``If they do that with an anti-tank weapons system, we'll have to engage.'' Saddam Hussein's decision to dragoon civilians into his fight, dress some soldiers as civilians, and use civilians as shields has dragged the fight to a dirty level, forcing tough choices on American soldiers, according to intelligence and combat soldiers. On Monday, soldiers killed at least seven women and children at a highway checkpoint near the town of Karbala when the van they were riding in refused to stop. The Washington Post, which has a reporter embedded in the unit, reported that 10 Iraqi civilians were killed in the van. The soldiers were from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which lost four soldiers Saturday at another checkpoint when an Iraqi soldier posing as a taxi driver detonated a car bomb in a suicide attack. ``They are using ambulances to carry troops and resupply. They jump out blazing,'' said an intelligence sergeant, who witnessed the abuse of civilians and questioned some who managed to surrender at the battle of As Samiwah in the Euphrates Valley last week. ``They are pulling people out of their farms and houses, giving them weapons and forcing them to fight the Americans or they get shot. You have an officer behind you with a rifle to your head. Others have had their families taken away, they don't know where,'' said the intelligence specialist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the bitter street fighting in the towns along the way to Baghdad, he said, ``We've seen them pull women and children into buildings so the Americans won't shoot. I witnessed this.'' REST AT:http://www.bostonherald.com/galleries/jules/jules.html