Reports suggest Iraqis forced to rush U.S. checkpoints

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/natio...3-26484762.htm Reports suggest Iraqis forced to rush U.S. checkpoints
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


U.S. military officials said there is growing evidence that the seven Iraqi civilians killed by American soldiers at a checkpoint Monday were coerced into carrying out a suicide mission.
Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, acknowledged in his daily press briefing yesterday that several Muslim clerics are reporting that checkpoint charges by Iraqi civilians are being "done under duress."
"It's not just the coalition that's identifying that there are some problems here with the way the regime is doing its business and the way it's brutalizing the population," Gen. Brooks said.
There has not been a dramatic increase in suicide missions, "but we know that these tactics are used out there on the battlefield. This is a regime that is seeking tactical advantage by doing these types of things," Gen. Brooks said.
In Monday's incident, American soldiers fired upon a van as it approached a U.S. Army checkpoint near the town of Najaf, killing seven Iraqi women and children and wounding two others, according to U.S. Central Command. The U.S. troops fired warning shots into the air and then at the vehicle engine before firing on the passengers in the van.
The incident followed a suicide bombing Saturday, in which four U.S. soldiers were killed when a driver blew up his car at another checkpoint.
A respected Shi'ite Muslim cleric said suicide bombers ? including women and children ? are being forced into action by Saddam Hussein's forces, which are threatening to kill family members if Iraqi civilians do not cooperate.
Imam Sayyid Mohammed Barkir said 13 women and children were ordered by the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary fighters to carry out a suicide mission Monday by charging the checkpoint.
"Those people, children and women, those were put in the bus by Saddam Hussein's forces and their men, being husbands and fathers, those were taken hostages. And the driver was ordered to speed up at the checkpoint and not stop so that they would be shot at," Imam Barkir told the Fox News Network.
U.S. Marines on Tuesday killed an Iraqi driver who drove his pickup toward another checkpoint near the town of Shatra and wounded the passenger. Although neither person was armed or in uniform, it was thought the truck carried a bomb.
Imam Barkir said the Saturday suicide bomber acted under threat that his family, including two infant children, a son and a daughter, would be killed if he did not run that checkpoint with a car bomb.
The Iraqi regime has praised the bomber as a martyr for Saddam. But he was in fact a reluctant victim, Imam Barkir said. His family was financially rewarded for the bombing, which Imam Barkir called hush money.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely said incoming information suggests incidents such as those that occurred Monday were a "setup."
"That was a setup by the forces there, perhaps Fedayeen Saddam, trying to put those innocent people in the back and then making it look like, of course, the coalition forces killed all these innocent civilians intentionally," he said on the Fox News Channel program "Hannity & Colmes."
On the same program, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the care that allied forces take to protect their forces and rescue prisoners of war is in sharp contrast to that of Iraqi leaders.
"Compare that with the savagery of Saddam's regime, which kills its own people, which pushes them into battles they can't win, which threatens to shoot them if they don't drive through checkpoints, which hangs women if they applaud or if they wave at American forces," said Mr. Gingrich.
"The difference between their brutality and our concern and our compassion is stunning. And yet we seem to have great difficulty in Europe and around the world drawing such a simple, such an obvious and such a 100 percent contrast in values," Mr. Gingrich said.