H-Net Discussion Networks - Iraqi artifacts [Moise]

View the H-Diplo Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Diplo's June 2003 logs by: [date] [author] [thread]
View the Next Message in H-Diplo's June 2003 logs by: [date] [author] [thread]
Visit the H-Diplo home page.

From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@CLEMSON.EDU>
List Editor: "H-DIPLO [Hanks]" <h-d1plo@socrates.Berkeley.EDU>
Editor's Subject: Iraqi artifacts [Moise]
Author's Subject: Iraqi artifacts [Moise]
Date Written: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 11:25:05 -0700
Date Posted: Sat, 13 Jun 2003 14:25:05 -0400

>Elizabeth Sanders <mes14@cornell.edu> wrote:
>
>Pardon my skepticism, but is there hard, relatively unbiased evidence
>that the museum was indeed being used as a "sniper's nest"?

I share Sanders' doubts.  It seems very unlikely to me that the museum was
being used either as a sniper's nest or as a military command post.

>It is
>quite common for the US (and Israeli) military to give such excuses
>for their actions. This sniper story surfaced relatively late. The US
>Army also claimed that it was being fired on by snipers (never mind
>the overkill that an Abrams tank presumably retaliated for isolated
>rifle fire) from the hotel housing journalists in Bagdad, a claim
>that has been widely disputed, including by US journalists.

What appears to have happened (though I have not been able to trace this
back to primary sources as well as I would have liked) was that the U.S.
unit in question was under pretty serious fire, over an extended period, by
Iraqis using RPGs (shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons) and perhaps even
heavier weapons.  A journalist on an upper floor of the hotel was watching
the U.S. unit through binoculars.  The American unit commander decided that
the man watching through binoculars must be reporting the locations and
movements of the Americans to the Iraqi soldiers with RPGs.  Therefore the
tank fired at the hotel.

My guess would be that the false report of sniper fire from the lobby of
the hotel, which underestimated the magnitude of the fire (what the U.S.
unit was under was a lot more serious than sniper fire) but overestimated
the involvement of the hotel (I don't think the members of the U.S. unit
were under the impression that the actual fire was coming from the hotel),
did not originate with the unit in question.  It was the invention of some
briefing officer, who needed something to say to the press, and decided
that if a U.S. unit had shot at a hotel, it must have been because there
was reason to believe sniper fire was coming from the hotel.

Ed Moise

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online