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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (43300)	4/20/2004 8:13:15 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

U.S. Says Troops Killed 2 Iraq Reporters By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military acknowledged Tuesday that American soldiers killed two employees of a U.S.-funded Iraqi television station, saying the men may have failed to heed warning shots. However, a wounded cameraman said troops opened fire on their vehicle without warning. Angry Iraqi journalists joined a chanting, weeping crowd Tuesday as two pickup trucks carried the flag-draped coffins of the slain men into Baghdad. The shooting of Al-Iraqiya correspondent Asaad Kadhim and his driver, Hussein Saleh, was galling for many employees because their station — funded by the Pentagon (news - web sites) and broadcasting from U.S. coalition headquarters — is derided by many Iraqis as a source of American propaganda. "Al-Iraqiya mourns its two heroic martyrs ... killed by the treacherous fire of American occupation forces," read a black banner carried by the crowd. One man shot an automatic rifle in the air as mourners waved pictures of Kadhim. "People used to tell Asaad that he was a collaborator.... Now the Americans killed him. Tell me who is the collaborator?" said Kadhim's elder brother, Ali, who burst into tears when he saw his brother's coffin. Throughout the day, Al-Iraqiya broadcast a black band in the top corner of the screen as it continued normal programming. The station ran footage of the coffins and the mourners. Cameraman Jassem Kamel, who was wounded in the back, said he and Kadhim had just interviewed Iraqi police and members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps at a checkpoint on Monday in the central city of Samarra. "As we drove for about 500 meters (yards), we were fired upon" by U.S. troops and Kurdish gunmen at a nearby military base, said the 28-year-old Kamel. Kamel said he jumped from the vehicle. He was taken to the military base, where one soldier "punched me in the face," he said. He was later given first aid. Kadhim and Saleh's bodies were "riddled with bullets," Kamel said from his Baghdad hospital bed. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, U.S. deputy chief of operations, said coalition forces fired at the car after individuals were seen filming a checkpoint and coalition base, then drove toward the base. He said both areas had prominent signs banning filming — a measure to prevent insurgent surveillance. Warning shots were fired at least three separate times, he said. "The vehicle, apparently disregarding the warning shots, drove toward the soldiers and their base," Kimmitt said. He acknowledged these were only preliminary reports of the incident, which he said often turn out to be incorrect. U.S. spokesman Dan Senor said L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq (news - web sites), "is fully committed to a thorough and robust investigation to determine exactly what happened here." With Kadhim and Saleh's deaths, at least 26 Iraqi and foreign journalists and media workers have been killed during the Iraq war and its aftermath, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists Web site. Kimmitt detailed the sequence of events in the shooting, seeking to signal the military would be forthright in investigating the incident. Still, he and Senor faced angry questioning from Iraqi journalists on Tuesday. "To you Iraqi life is cheap. Is this the democracy you talk about?" one asked. "You are somehow suggesting that coalition forces intentionally went out of their way to kill them. That hasn't been proven," Kimmitt replied to another question. It was the second such incident in a month. On March 18, U.S. troops shot and killed correspondent Ali al-Khatib and cameraman Ali Abdel-Aziz of the Al-Arabiya news station.