Hat tip: LGF
Insurgents shot down a U.S. helicopter west of Baghdad on Friday, killing one soldier, and U.S. forces said they came under fire with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades as they guarded the burning aircraft. The military said the attackers who fired at U.S. forces after the crash near Fallujah were posing as journalists. But there was confusion over the claim, since the Reuters news agency reported that U.S. troops fired at its journalists at the scene and later detained three.
Didn’t Kurosawa do a film like this? Rashomon, or something like that?
U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said enemy fire likely downed the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior that crashed near Fallujah. Troops of the 82nd Airborne Division "are fairly convinced that it was enemy fire," said Kimmitt, who was in Baghdad. Soon after, five men "wearing black press jackets with ’press’ clearly written in English" fired on U.S. paratroopers guarding the crash site, Kimmitt said. He said it was the first time he had heard of assailants in Iraq posing as journalists.
| I'd have expected al-Jizz or al-Arabiya to open fire, rather than Reuters... |
Reuters said a team led by Iraqi cameraman Salem Uraiby was filming the crash scene from a checkpoint using a camera on a tripod and was wearing a flak jacket marked "press." "We were fired on and we drove away at high speed," driver Alaa Noury said. He said a second car driven by another Iraqi journalist had been fired upon in the same incident. One of the cars remained in Fallujah, Reuters said. Kimmitt said attackers in two cars fled the scene and that soldiers doing a sweep through the town, with helicopters circling overhead, tracked down one of the cars and arrested four "enemy personnel."
Read the whole thing. Some further comments, by Eric Raymond, can be found here, and the LGF thread can be found here. According to one report I read at Baen’s Bar, the deceased pilot was Captain Kimberly N. Hampton of Easley, South Carolina. |