U.S. Forces In Iraq Ban GPS Phones 659
Brian Enigma writes "According to a report last night on NPR and these two articles, Central Command has banned a particular satellite phone from reporters. It seems that it not only has a GPS--to help locate which satellite to use--but also (if activated) transmits the users location back to the phone company. Eavesdropping this signal is nontrivial, but still possible."
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Funny)
There isn't a reason they shouldn't. They're doing the right thing. I think the point of posting this story was to rile up the knee-jerk "banning technology is oppression!" ppl. It's kind of like running into a crowd of Mac people, putting on a helmet, and shouting "3 gigahertz!!"
*hoping the mods are open to a little humor today*
Re:Good .... but .... (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, a simple "fix" would have been to tell the reporters to turn off the GPS feature, but guess what: by mandate of the U.S. government the user can not disable it!
Re:Good .... but .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good .... but .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good .... but .... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good .... but .... (Score:5, Funny)
Second, just because the government doesn't tell everyone its intentions behind mandates doesn't mean there is a huge conspiracy behind it. What if Washington were honest in its intent to pusue justice and freedom for the Iraqi people? Whoah! Perhaps there are people in power who actually care about oppressed people and
Americans who are risking their lives to stop it!!!
Re:Good .... but .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Same deal with the government. Usually what they say is true prima facie, but there are usually many other things going on, and it's naive to assume otherwise.
Re:Good .... but .... [Conspiracy Theories] (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, I've never quite sorted the politics of this whole situation out... I came across a really neat article [washingtonmonthly.com] in the Washington Monthly that points out a very interesting "conspiracy theory"... It's all about a supposed plan to topple virtually every government
Cell phone – Friend or Foe? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good .... but .... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was never claimed that these were cell phones or that Uncle Sam had made the industry put the GPS receivers in these phones. I simply pointed out the irony that while they think it's great to impost this technology on a supposedly free society with basic privacy rights, they sure don't like it when the same technology might provide information on them.
I personally like GPS technology, have had a GPS receiver for about 8 years. I think it would be great to have GPS technology in a cell phone, and the information available to the other party. Makes the "Where are you?" question so simple. But the owner of the phone should have the ability to disable the GPS information from being sent (not just to the other party but to the government as well) without having to completely disable their phone. It's a basic privacy issue.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Provided that this phone isn't in widespread use or a replacement is provided, I don't have a problem with it. However, if it is used to censor the reporters in order to cover up embarrasments, etc. then we have a problem (including freedom of press issues). The embedded reporters are not supposed to be there to be the mouthpiece of the military but rather people who can report on the facts.
Ha'aretz has reported on a claim that a million anti-tank RPG's were distributed to civilians in Bagdad for civil defence uses. This number seems implausable and likely largely inflated, but even 1% of that number could really be a problem for US troops when they reach Baghdad (along with the rifles/carbines and sidearms that have been distributed as reported by BBC). Official Iraqi numbers stated that there were 120 militiamen and soldiers in Umm Qasr who held out for 5 days and of course that number is not being reported by US media outlets because it is embarrasing to the current generals, politicians, etc. that the sophistication of weapons don't buy you *anything* agains civil defence. We can't even take Basra, a city with a long Anti-Saddam history.
According to the Asian Wall Street Journal (pub. Dow Jones & Co.) for this last Thursday had some very interesting coverage of how Saddam is becoming a war hero in the Arab world, and Ha'aretz has reported on Israeli fears that this could bolster Palestinian resistance.
The point is that none of these stories have been readily available through American media outlets already, and so most Americans are not aware of how much of a world PR disaster this whole thing is. I certainly hope it doesn't take a third September 11th disaster to cause people to wake up and realize that this war is sowing deep resentment and ultra-nationalism across the Middle East. What happens if the Military starts deciding to try to cover up their mistakes and we get an even more distorted picture of the war.
I may seem to be being a bit harsh here, but this is business as usuall for war-time politicians. Take a look sometime at how the propaganda of a war becomes the popular history of each war-- with the real reasons generally well hidden because they hurt their propaganda and undermine support for the war. Who here knows the economic issues that lead to the American Civil War? Anyone remember that these were issues like import tarrifs? Or that Woodrow Wilson refused to warn the American people that the Germans were planning to sink the Lusitania because it was running arms (the German embassy later bought a full-page ad in the NYT)? Or how before Pearl Harbor every American naval base on the Pacific was ordered to prepare for attack (and Pearl Harbor disobeyed orders)?
My point is that these very relavent facts have been forgotten because they were inconvenient to the war effort. The first casualty of war is truth, and this could be abused to further distort the image of the war.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Right... because we know that the Iraqis would have no reason to release bogus "Official Iraqi numbers". They are also reported shooting down the same AH-64D twice, and claim that
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I keep seeing reports from Baghdad on the BBC [bbc.co.uk] and other British TV stations [itv.com], and The Guardian [guardian.co.uk] newspaper is publishing regular reports from their people in Baghdad [guardian.co.uk] (assuming Patrick Graham isn't an Arabic name). Which Western journalists are you referring to exactly?
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
The BBC's [bbc.co.uk] correspondent Paul Wood is currently in Baghdad. ITN's [itv.com] John Irvine is also there. All the main UK newspapers have correspondents in Baghdad (I mean the newspapers with big pages and long words; the others just make up what they want anyway ;-)
According to the BBC website:
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
despite strong evidence to suggest that the damage was caused by malfunctioning SAMs
I'm going to call you on this: WHAT "strong evidence" is there? As far as I can remember, all the US did was claim on TV that it "probably wasn't ours but we don't know" and that it "might have been a faulty Iraqi weapon, or even a deliberate attack by Iraq". There was absolutely NO evidence presented whatsoever for or against any of these points of view.
Sure there is no reason to believe Iraqi propaganda (only a fool would), but only a fool would believe the US propaganda too.
Back up your claim with evidence, or retract it.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
I'll field this one. It's not so much that there's strong evidence that the explosions were caused by Iraqi SAMs as it is that there's strong evidence that they weren't caused by anything the Allies have, and some interesting circumstantial evidence that they might have been the result of Iraqi air defense oopses.
First, we have the timing. The first of these incidents occurred during a period of time when the Allies had no planes in the air over Baghdad at all. So that one couldn't have been caused by Allied gravity bombs or air-launched missiles. That leaves either cruise missiles, JSOWs, or artillery.
Artillery is easy to rule out; unless the Allies were able to sneak an M109 within about 20 miles of Baghdad without anybody on either side noticing, it wasn't artillery.
Cruise and JSOW present an interesting quandry. We know that we've had a failure rate of about 1% on the BGM-109's; that's not a bad rate, but out of the hundreds of missiles launched it adds up to several that have gone astray. So it's entirely possible than an Allied cruise missile could have gone off course and landed in a Baghdad market.
But two of them? Seconds apart? Landing on opposite sides of the same street? That's so unlikely that I'm willing to go the extra step and call it practically impossible. Getting two missiles to hit in that close proximity both in space and time is a hard thing to do even when we mean it; it simply wouldn't be possbile for it to happen by accident.
JSOW's are a different kettle of fish. We haven't gotten any good feedback on JSOW reliability; one possibility is, like our JDAMs, that we simply haven't had any fail yet. But if you postulate that it's possible, we have the same problem we had with the cruise missile theory: two of them, seconds apart, on opposite sides of the same street? Unlikely in the extreme.
Finally, we have the craters. Each of the craters in the first market incident was reported to be between two and four feet deep, depending on who was giving the account at the time. That doesn't make any sense at all. All of our Tomahawks and JSOWs have thus far been penetrators; one of them wouldn't have blown out a four foot crater; one of them would have blown out a forty foot crater.
So all the evidence in the first market incident points to some cause other than Allied ordinance.
One theory that's been floated was that the incident was caused by two Iraqi SAM's that fell to ground. That's certainly possible, and the damage assessment is not inconsistent with that theory, but we still have the sheer coincidence of it to contend with. On the other hand, we do have reports that the Iraqi general in charge of air defense around Baghdad was "fired" after the two market incidents, so that might support the theory that it was Iraqi fratricide. (When an Iraqi general is "fired," he's usually dragged out into the street and shot. Nobody knows if the alleged general is dead or alive.)
Another possibility is that the incidents might have been caused by Iraqi bombs, either planted in cars or just on the street. We have reports from defectors that the SSO-- the special security organization, kind of the Iraqi equivalent of a combination of the CIA and the Delta Force, only operating domestically inside of Iraq-- was planning to do just this sort of thing, setting off bombs inside Iraq and blaming the incidents on Allied attacks. Nobody knows whether these reports are credible or not, but it just adds more fuel to the fire of speculation.
The last piece of the puzzle-- not the last one period, but rather the last one that we have right now-- is the second market incident. In the first, about 14 people were reported killed, and in the second more than 50 were reported killed. While the first happened during a time in the mid-morning when there were no Allied aircraft overhead, the second happened during the night in the middle of an A
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
The 2000 election fiasco was and is a Constitutional crisis. These issues need to be resolved before we could even hope to offer Iraq an example of democracy to inspire them to create their own.
Do you honestly believe that the 2000 election was a fiasco? That we had no violence changing political leadership places us pretty high in the ways of the world.
I don't deny that it was a close election. But this last election was certainly the most scrutinized in the history of the United States. There are
If this were WWII.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We'd just carpet bomb the crap outta everything.
Beating the Iraqi defenders is not hard. It's beating the Iraqi defenders while NOT killing scores of civilians that's a pain in the butt.
Re:If this were WWII.. (Score:4, Insightful)
After WWII we passed this thing called the Geneva Conventions. Perhaps you have heard of them. They specify treatment of non-combatants in war, whether civilian, POW, etc.
The tactics you describe today would be a crime against humanity called extermination (systematic attack of civilians).
No, you read the Geneva conventions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Situation: You know enemey forces are hiding out in an apartment building with civilians in it.
Current US policy:
do not do anything to harm civilians.
Possible US policy:
Blow up building.
Both are quite legal under the geneva conventions.
Just because we happen to have the technology to wage war with minimal civilian casualties, and are willing to trade some deaths on the part of our military for keeping Iraqi civilans alive, does NOT mean we are legally obligated to do so. We're not.
Now, if we just dropped a buncha bombs on a residential neighborhood because we could, *THAT* would be a violation of the geneva conventions.
But killing you because you're 50 ft from an anti-aircraft battery is not.
Re:No, you read the Geneva conventions. (Score:4, Insightful)
Militias create a problem though. Just because there are militiamen who live in their homes, does that give the US the right to bomb residential neighborhoods? I personally doubt it, and this defence did not help Milosevic, nor did it save Ariel Sharon in 1982 from an internal Israeli government inquiry relating to the Sabra and Chantila massacres (my guess is that the Belgian court will reject this defence as well).
The point is this-- collateral damage is legal if it is reasonable. But systematic attacks of civilians or civilian infrastructure are illegal. That is clearly the case regardless of whether there are military personell hidden there.
The point is targeting the anti-aircraft battery is OK, but if it is in a residential neighborhood, dropping a moab on it would probably not be legal. Striking its radar dish with a HARM is probably the safest way to do this.
Re:No, you read the Geneva conventions. (Score:5, Insightful)
What this really means is that under international law, a combatant has the right to shoot at another combatant wherever he may be, regardless of whether or not there may happen to be civilians standing in the way. It's perfectly legal to shoot at a SAM battery in an elementary school playground, during recess. Combatants are supposed to make efforts to reduce the risk of civilian casualties, but can still target enemy combatants NO MATTER WHERE THEY ARE. Enemy combatants are always fair game, and cannot hide behind their own civilians to protect themselves from combat. Human Shields aren't, at least under international law.
Of course, combatants still have a duty to minimize civilian casualties to the greatest extent possible, so dropping a MOAB on the elementary school playground is still not permitted.
Furthermore, while combatants may not deliberately target civilians, they may deliberately target civilian infrastructure, such as industry. In the present conflict, if it were of a more drawn out nature, we would be bombing Iraq's oil fields (instead of them doing it themselves), and we would be doing so legally.
Also, and this is a bit disturbing, there is the concept of legal "reprisals" against violations of the law of armed conflict. It is permissible to attack targets (ie, civilians) legally in retailiation for war crimes committed by the enemy. The bombing of Dresden, for example, is justified in part by numerous Nazi war atrocities, even though the purpose of bombing Dresden was to see how much devastation carpet bombing could achieve if we REALLY tried.
I would also like to point out that expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank isn't really a war crime - at least not to the extent of suicide bombings, etc. It's a land grab, and it's wrong, and it's a really bad idea if you actually want peace someday, but it's not really an atrocity in and of itself.
Re:No, you read the Geneva conventions. (Score:3, Informative)
You seem to be mistaken here.
Placing a SAM battery within a school yard is a war crime, however the crime has been committed by those placing the equipment. A country bombing said target and taking out the school and surrounding area has committed no crime. This is clearly discussed in the Geneva Conve
Re:No, you read the Geneva conventions. (Score:4, Insightful)
This statement is flawed on many levels, not the least of which is the notion that this is "occupied territory."
Golan is Syrian territory occupied by Israel. The Shebaa farms are (as recognized by the UN) Syrian territory, and Lebannon is probably fabricating this dispute at Syria's behalf in order for Syria to regain their land.
If the Palestinians are not in an occupied land, then why don't they have citizenship rights, as the Arab Israelis do?
If you are going to invoke the authority of the UN... I noticed no less than 16 SC resolutions on the matter in 1948... 3 in 1955, 3 in 1956, 1 in 1966, 5 in 1967, 8 in 1968 and I will stop counting there (not counting the general assembly resolutions which provided for compensation to the Arab refugees who were displaced, etc.).
It is clear that the UN considers the valid borders of Israel to be those borders of the 1948 and 1949 ceasefire lines.
You probably also believe the obsurd Arab presses that claim that Jews use human blood for rituals [memri.org].
That story is no more true today than it was when the Church started that rumor as a way of discrediting the Jews in the Middle Ages. And for the record my ancestors were kicked out of Spain in 1492 because they were Jews...
You seem to think that I am some sort of an anti-Semite (but since Arabic is a Semitic language, should not that term also apply to anti-Arabs as well as anti-Jews or am I missing something?), but the Israeli national security council released a report a few months ago arguing that Israel needed to have firm borders with full citizenship rights extended to everyone in those borders. Former Ehud Barak has also been talkign about unilateral separation, so a retreat away from the Territories is not exactly limited to the fringes of Israeli society. I suspect it is you who has an agenda.
And let's get one more thing straight-- if current trends continue, Jews in Israel will be a minority *of citizens* within 40 years, and a minority of residents west of the Jorden within 10 years.
And by the way, Lebanese masssacres were commited by Lebanese Christians, not Israeli soldiers. Sharon was found, by the far left Israeli inquiry, to have known the massacres were occurring and doing nothing to stop them.
And providing tactical support to those Lebanese soldiers. The Israeli troops not only knew about the massacres *and controlled the area* but actively assisted the Phalange soldiers who carried out the massacres. This is what the Belgian court is looking at. And before you get too huffy, remember that they are also prosecuting Arafat for those very crimes against humanity I mentioned before (funny how everyone forgets that one). Between you and me, we need a war crimes tribunal to prosecute war crimes by all sides of this conflict.
I suppose the following statement is horribly offensive to you:
Following World War II, the British withdrew from their mandate of Palestine, and the UN partitioned the area into Arab and Jewish states, an arrangement rejected by the Arabs. Subsequently, the Israelis defeated the Arabs in a series of wars without ending the deep tensions between the two sides. The territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 war are not included in the Israel country profile, unless otherwise noted.
That is the opening statement from the CIA World Factbook, and we all know how anti-Israel the US Government is...
Back to the Iraq war and international law. Leaving aside the question for the moment of whether the war is legal, I think it is clear that the 'self-defence' arguement has been dropped because that is not legitimate. The question is what sort of tactics are legitimate and legal. One has to take reasonable precautions to spare the lives and livelihoods of civilians, but is there a bright line? I don't think one has been identified. But if the ICC or the IWCT finds that war crimes occured (as the tribunal did after the first Gulf War) it will do further damage to American legitimacy in the region.
Re:No, you read the Geneva conventions. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mid-east history 101: The war of Independence left Israel with a border with Egypt (which still held Gaza), Jorden (which held the West Bank and East Jerusalem), Syria, and Lebanon. In the 50's Israel took Gaza and Suez (and Suez was later returned to Egypt). In the 6-day war, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan were occup
Re:Beacause It Is Censorship On A War Gone Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
By US military estimates the US has destroyed perhaps a Brigade worth of Iraqi soldiers. I'd guess it's closer to an Iraqi Division or 6-9,000. It's in the "thousands" but it's thousands of combatants who are using tactics that lead to large number of combatant deaths. Assaulting superior equipment, house to house fighting and not having capable air defense to attrit the American and British bombers and strike aircraft.
The Iraqi government has tossed out numbers in the hundreds and the International Red Cross says an average of about 100 people are killed or wounded every day in Baghdad because of bombing by U.S. and British forces. Iraqi AAA and SAMs falling back into the city aren't helping matters much either I suspect.
Less are dying this time than the last time because the Allies aren't carpet bombing Iraqi units in the field.
This ban on these comm devices isn't censorship in a war gone bad, its called lowering the emissions of the units in the field.
If anyone here really thought a military operation to defeat a large army in the field in a country the size of Oregon and Washington was going to happen in 3-10 days is an idiot. If Rummy thought that, he is an idiot as well.
There is a list as long as my arm of tiny cutoff islands in Japan whos capture cost the Americans a 100 times more casualties an hour than Iraq and many of them had been shelled and bombed for days before the first soldiers set foot there.
The current campaign on Iraqi isn't an "arrogant miscalculation" it's a remarkably well organized and carried out operation to this point.
Re:Beacause It Is Censorship On A War Gone Bad (Score:4, Insightful)
That was the initial estimate during the war. Afterwards, the number was found to be a couple of orders of magnitude lower. Iraqi units that were bombed had far fewer soldiers than had been estimated, and they were smart enough to mostly stay away from where the bombs were dropping.
Re:Beacause It Is Censorship On A War Gone Bad (Score:3, Informative)
War Gone Bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well alot of people need to look at modern military history to see how fast armies move and how long it takes to eliminate enemy opposition.
February and March 1945 the Marines attacked an island 2 miles by 4 miles in the Pacific. In 36 days 6,800 Marines died and 19,000 were wounded.
21,000 Japanese soldiers were killed.
For 70 days the island was bombed and for 3 days it was shelled by battleships.
On 1 April 1945 the Marines and Navy attack Okinawa. The fighting for the most part ended on 30 June 1945. In 90 days of fighting 12,000 Americans died and more than 38,000 were wounded. 34 ships were sunk, 368 damaged and 763 aircraft lost. 26,000 American soldiers left the battle because of combat fatigue and other non-battle causes.
And lets remeber how long the last wars took.
Gulf War '91 - 44 days of bombing before a 3 day ground war.
Serbia - 77 days of bombing before Milosevic threw in the towel.
I'd like to be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'd like to be the first to say... (Score:2, Funny)
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
In related news, embedded reporters are also being instructed not to carry Iraqi homing beacons, or gigantic signs saying ``US Troops Here ----->>''
I mean, why is this news?
Re:In related news... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm all for freedom of information, but the ammount of apparently strategically useful information being flooded over public airwaves is a bit disturbing.
Not completely true (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not completely true (Score:4, Informative)
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a heated discussion [slashdot.org] with at least one sceptic who didn't believe it was at all possible just here on slashdot only last week.
Suffice to say that Twirlip of the Mists [slashdot.org] didn't believe that the US military would do anything to harm journalists going about their daily business of informing us about this war and that the journalists who first reported this story must have "misunderstood" what the Pentagon meant when they said that all independent transmissions were legitimate targets. Bless his cotton little socks.
2. It is news because not all journalists in Iraq are "embedded" with US or British units.
A journalists main objective (the bias of his or her parent organisation aside) is to get to the truth. It's pretty hard to do that if you only see what the US and British commanders on the ground want you to see. Just as you shouldn't trust everything that's broadcast by Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine on Iraqi TV, you also shouldn't trust everything that the mainstream press's embedded journalists report. To get a more accurate picture you have to do what the military themselves teach their commanders to do with their intelligence reports; look at lots of different news sources, filter out the garbage and actively search for the truth rather than just accept what's handed to you on a plate.
Accordingly, the less superficial news gathering services and agencies have a lot of journalists in Iraq that aren't embedded.
(Remember, CNN, NBC, CBS or whoever are commercial news broadcasters. It's in their interests to tell the American public what they believe the American public wants to hear. Nobody wants to eat their dinner whilst hearing about how a US patrol killed fleeing women and children, so the networks don't show them that side of the war.)
Sorry if this seems like a rant but the amount of ignorance that the general public has about this war (and, unfortunately, this is especially true of the average American) is frightening.
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In related news... (Score:4, Insightful)
One real good example is a friendly fire incident (yet another one, but this one was quite hefty) that happened three days ago. Got one mention on the BBC,
Self-censorship (Score:4, Informative)
Why is it that I have to go outside this country for good news? Why is it that CNN's coverage improves the instant you leave the USA? Why is it that although there is more widespread support for this war in Israel than there is in the US, that Ha'aretz is far more ballanced than even the New York Times?
Why is it that when the American troups parachuted into Northern Iraq, the press portrays this as a glorious moment, rather than the result of a diplomatic failure (to get Turkey to let us use their land as a staging area for a northern front)?
Here are some links I suggest people look into (all in English):
http://www.haaretzdaily.com (a respected Israeli newspaper).
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly (an Egyptian weekly news magazine).
http://www.bbc.co.uk
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Insightful)
And again, to call your choice of what you say `censorship' is an act of doublespeak of which Orwell's MiniTrue would be proud indeed.
Of course you choose what you say based on your audience. If you say `I eat puppies' in polite company you will be stared at. This doesn't mean that you have been `censored' from saying it. As long as you make the choice, however, you have not been censored.
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, no. Summarizing events necessarily results in loss of detail.
Or are you suggesting that every time you take less than eight hours to answer the question `what did you do at work today' you are lying?
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Informative)
Sunday March 30, 2003
US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge of death
Mark Franchetti, Nasiriya
THE light was a strange yellowy grey and the wind was coming up, the
beginnings of a sandstorm. The silence felt almost eerie after a night of
shooting so intense it hurt the eardrums and shattered the nerves. My
footsteps felt heavy on the hot, dusty asphalt as I walked slowly towards
the bridge at Nasiriya. A horrific scene lay ahead.
Some 15 vehicles, including a minivan and a couple of trucks, blocked the
road. They were riddled with bullet holes. Some had caught fire and turned
into piles of black twisted metal. Others were still burning.
Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or in
nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern town overnight,
probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and heavy
artillery.
Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the
coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young
American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved.
One man's body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked
away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes.
His savings, perhaps.
Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and dressed in a pretty
orange and gold dress, lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who
may have been her father. Half his head was missing.
Nearby, in a battered old Volga, peppered with ammunition holes, an Iraqi
woman - perhaps the girl's mother - was dead, slumped in the back seat. A
US Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the bodies.
This was not the only family who had taken what they thought was a last
chance for safety. A father, baby girl and boy lay in a shallow grave. On
the bridge itself a dead Iraqi civilian lay next to the carcass of a
donkey.
As I walked away, Lieutenant Matt Martin, whose third child, Isabella, was
born while he was on board ship en route to the Gulf, appeared beside me.
"Did you see all that?" he asked, his eyes filled with tears. "Did you see
that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I could but
I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being killed like this,
but we had no choice."
Martin's distress was in contrast to the bitter satisfaction of some of his
fellow marines as they surveyed the scene. "The Iraqis are sick people and
we are the chemotherapy," said Corporal Ryan Dupre. "I am starting to hate
this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get
hold of one. I'll just kill him."
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-6282
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is important to get this news. You're right that American media isn't carrying it.
Just curious. Does anyone know if the Arab media carrying the reports that Iraqi Military and Paramilitary are firing on civilians trying to leave Basra? I couldn't find any reference to it from English-language Arabic news sources on news.google.com, but then the English-language Arabic news sources don't seem to be much referenced on news.google.com, lately
There were lots of English-languag
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.arabnews.com [arabnews.com]
This series [arabnews.com] from a reporter that managed to get inside of Iraq is pretty interesting. That link is to part 2 of the daily series. Notice that no matter how critical that guy is about the US, when the bullets start flying, there is no doubt in his mind who the good guys and the bad guys are.
Re:In related news... (Score:4, Informative)
Here is another article found using Google News that confirms the story:
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=3789220
That is a damn shame for sure. But I wouldn't go out driving around in vehicles in the middle of a war zone in the dead of night...
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Interesting)
This kind of story perfectly illustrates why combatants dressing as civilians is morally apprehensible; it makes the innocent civilian population more suspect to this sort of attack.
I'd like to see... (Score:3, Insightful)
The honest reporter? (Score:3, Insightful)
These particular civilians, this particular story? Well, the reporter was stationed with U.S. troops and talked to those around him who had some semblence of an idea what had happened there. If there had been any mystery over what had happened there (and if there was some sort of cover-up attempted, tha
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
B) I never challenged the existence of such an article. I was merely pointing out that such overblown claims are almost surely factually false. The article, like the original poster, insinuates a lot and says very little. Women and children were killed by fire in a combat zone in Nasiriya trying to escape a warzone. That statement is undoutedly true. Were they killed by American bullets? Perhaps. Perhaps, as you can imagine from reading that article, a group of civilians was mistaken for a group of combatants in the middle of the night. When your enemy doesn't wear uniforms and pretends to surrender, and doesn't respect the rules of warfare, accidents happen, and I'm willing to accept those. I saw no evidence in that article that US soldiers intentionally shot on civilians, only that a particular soldier made a comment that sounded like it was taken very much out of context, where he talked about killing Iraqis (most likely meaning soldiers). In short, I reject that article as providing absolutely no evidence for the conclusions the journalist made. If it were true, and it were provable that in fact soldiers fired on civilians intentionally and without provocation, I would hope the perpetrator's would be held accountable for commiting murder through the military justice system - clearly, that can't be represented as typical acts of American soldiers in Iraq or in any recent conflicts. However it clearly sounds like a piece that is not presenting the whole story.
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh-huh. Here we've got a nation which has already killed 1.5 million of its own people and exiled another 4 million, in a nation which only had 23 million people to start with. A nation which has been building weapons of mass destruction for years, and which has already used them against its neighbors and its own people. A nation whose own people [tnr.com] are crying out for liberation.
And you would deny them that liberation, and continue their torture just so that you can score cheap political points against t
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm, no, no one died `because of the sanctions'. Mr. Hussein received billions and billions of dollars in food aid every year that the sanctions were in place. Instead of using this money to feed his people (remember there were no sanctions on food imports), he skimmed this money, and even re-exported food he was given for sale on the black market to get money to build spacious palaces and WMD programs.
If we gave him ample food and food money, and he spent that money on weapons instead, how does this
Re:Moronic Chomskeyite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just for the record, I consider myself a liberal, I am opposed to the war in Iraq for a variety of reasons that I won't get into in this post, and I am not a neoconservative by any means (I do not believe that might makes right, though I reject the morally relativist shit that comes from the far left), though that seems to be the reaction to my opinions here on Slashdot, but I cannot stomach Chomsky's political writing and "thinking" (if you can call it that) - and I don't mean that as an ad hominem attack against the man, who as I said, I respect for his other contributions to society.
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Insightful)
All this proves that these media sources are as bad as Western sources. Just as disconnected from reality was the 3 tanks leaving Basra being reported as nearly 200.
Also to report trash like that other post claiming that US soldiers are ru
Only makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
The US is so confident.... (Score:3, Funny)
Would be a fun game to watch.
Re:The US is so confident.... (Score:2)
Would be a fun game to watch.
There is, they're playing it here. [af.mil]
Re:The US is so confident.... (Score:2)
non-trivial? (Score:5, Insightful)
while it may be non-trivial, it is high-value. it's nice to see people realize that this could be a problem *before* someone gets bombed.
e
Re:non-trivial? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly.
And since Iraq has no functional Air Force, we'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine who would be doing the bombing.Re:non-trivial? (Score:2)
Your post might seem insightful if an Iraqi cruise missile didn't hit Kuwait City recently.
Re:non-trivial? (Score:2)
Re:non-trivial? (Score:2)
while it may be non-trivial, it is high-value. it's nice to see people realize that this could be a problem *before* someone gets bombed.
Err...
The phones are not acting as "homing" devices. The US Military doesn't use them to target. Rather what is happening is this...
The phones, during conventional use, transmit the GPS coordinates along with the actual signal payload data (
Well considering... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well considering... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know. Why don't you ask the Iraqi General in charge of Air Defense who just got sacked yesterday, apparently due to the high incidence of Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles falling back on civilian areas? Or maybe you should ask the Iraqi Fedayeen fighters who have been piling explosives at the base of buildings in Shiite neighborhoods?
No really -- do you have any evidence that these were US bombs?
Re:Well considering... (Score:2)
For that matter, Iraqi ministers and generals aren't usually fired. Unless by "fired" you mean "killed."
The whole thing smells fishy. Not fishy in the "it was a US bomb" sense; if that had been a US munition, it would have made
About the new ban... (Score:2)
Did anyone notice that there is a brand new
Wowzers! I didn't realize that the Department of Defense was that fast...!!!
Re:About the new ban... (Score:2)
Yeah, it really sucks for all the Slashdot visitors in Iraq that are embedded reporters for the US Army.
Re:About the new ban... (Score:2)
GPS in a cellular phone is new and fancy. GPS in a satellite phone is old hat.
Handing over phones... (Score:4, Funny)
"Officers have ordered me to hand my phone in and I am giving it to one of the officers," correspondent Matthew Green said.
In a related story, the U.S. military seems to have growing concerns that the printing inks used in reporters' copies of Maxim and the smoke from reporters marijuana cigarettes could be detected by sophisticated equipment in Iraqi possesion.
"Officers have ordered me to hand my copies of Maxim and my marijuana cigarettes in and I am giving them to one of the officers," correspondent Matthew Green said.
------
And they were allowed in the first place? (Score:2)
What ever you do, don't say where we are! (Score:3, Insightful)
These particular phones do just that... transmit the GPS location back to the telecom provider, people outside of the military who have no clearance to be handling such secret info. Yeah, it's likely that the telecom provider can be trusted, but why trust somebody to keep a secret when you can just not tell them the info in the first place?
The exact GPS location of our troops is a military secret, and for a good reason too!
Someone tell Congress!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Someone should tell congress this before they pass anymore privacy-invading laws!
neurostarWasn't there just a case (Score:4, Interesting)
Sniffing the GPS signal not entirely necessary (Score:5, Informative)
This ban makes it harder to track down the journalists, but not impossible. It does require three sensors in mutual contact, instead of one lone sniffer -- this is true.
I suspect there are signs they know where we are, and we're worried these phones are the reason why.
--Dan
In othernews... (Score:2)
And in other news (Score:4, Funny)
More on this breaking story as it happens. Coming up next, How to eat all the fat and preservatives you want and still lose 40lbs a day.
In addition to the new ban... (Score:2)
The have been doing the same thing in Afghanistan for a long time. When one things about it, this is a pretty good way of pinpointing possible locations of the resistin
Ok... so.. (Score:4, Funny)
you don't need the same tech to target them (Score:4, Insightful)
if you hand me your lat/lon within 100m, i can find you - maybe with a missile, maybe with a truck, maybe with a lot of stuff. and i can do it with a $100 gps, close enough to kill you. i don't want this happening to our troops so that some media diva can be avant garde.
truth is the npr story mentioned some whiney reporters having to use a plain old sat phone and dictate stories to a copy desk and pitching a fit. they need to understand they are just barely able to do this period, they do not have a god given right to be ther, and that there is a more than acceptable risk of becoming pink mist on no notice.
suck it up, do your job, and listen to the professional warriors.
BANNED? (Score:5, Interesting)
Intelligence problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Signal Ops with Hum Int is very powerful. In this case the Hum Int may be the bigger concern.
Russians (Score:3, Insightful)
Breaking news! (Score:3, Funny)
The phone banned is Thuraya (Score:4, Informative)
The satellite-to-phone protocol is a very slightly modified GSM that runs in L-Band. This was done for two reasons. A - if it ain't broke, don't fit it. B - why put in totally separate comm gear if you don't need to? C - everybody knows GSM inside fscking out. (yes, that's three reasons)
it also has a GPS receiver in it which provides the Thuraya satellite the information to decide which L-band spot beam(s) would be the correct beam to use (sometimes, you're in between beems, and if you are, and beam A is busier than beam B, then the Thuraya NOC will decide to put you on beam B)
it also provides a means for Thuraya Inc. to payback the countries their cut... much like the mass confusion which plagued the licensing schema for Iridium, Thuraya phone calls are not all alike... if you're in country A, then you'll be paying country A's tarrif + the base cost you pay to Thuraya. The easiest way to keep track of where one is was to put a GPS in the handset, then calculate the tarrif charges abse on the absolute location.
http://www.thuraya.com/tech/ will let you know some of this information. You'll also see there the increasingly missnamed "country code" for Thuraya calls, as well as the neeto tidbit that Thuraya was launched from Sea Launch - which is quite a sight to behold. Looking down the shaft of the laucher into the ocean 100+ feet down was quite a stomach-moving experience.
Where i got the rest of this info is an exercise left to the reader to guess.
As cool as computers will ever be, space shit is far cooler, y'all. Sorry.
Location of phone (Score:4, Informative)
Thuraya (Score:3, Interesting)
The phones are using the Thuraya network. It covers Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and keeps going eastward with full coverage of India.
They're pretty nifty. The 450 grams Hughes handset can do GSM mobile phone, Thuraya sat phone, GPS and can act as an Hayes compatible modem. Ideal for a journalist that mostly does print. Helps a lot that an Inmarsat Mini-M is typically the size of a table phone and that Iridium does not automatically fall back to GSM or do GPS. Did I mention it's cheaper to operate even for sat calls? And IIRC, modem speed is 9600 bps instead of 2400 or 4800 for Inmarsat and Iridium. And it can fax too.
Thuraya is basically a Global Star with EMEA+India coverage instead of North and Central America. But it's much ahead technologically.
Alex
Re:http://www.aeronautics.ru (Score:4, Funny)
<sarcasm> Oh yes. You can tell that's a serious and accurate site from the article on the front page claiming they have a working anti-gravity device. </sarcasm>
Re:http://www.aeronautics.ru (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:2)
Good thing the mods didn't judge a book by it's cover then, isn't it?
Probably the other way around. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to advance the idea that the US stated this because they would really like to avoid hitting their own troops accidentally.
Call me nuts, but I have a sinking feeling that the Iraqis don't have GPS programmable missiles or sattelites to check out targets to verify their validity.
After all, if the Iraqis even had such an advanced missile arcing down on US troops, they had better be sure that it isn't a GI and some reporters, because that was too expensive to waste on a couple of guys in
Re:Probably the other way around. (Score:5, Interesting)
scripsit El Camino SS:
Come again? Why exactly would a reporter's using a phone which broadcast its location cause the U.S. to bomb him accidentally? AFAIK they don't use phone-homing bombs... (GPS guidance, BTW, doesn't home in on GPS receivers, it uses GPS to correct its own position. Is that the source of confusion?)
Re:Probably the other way around. (Score:2)
Re:Surveillance implications of E911 Phones in US (Score:2)
You can't have it both ways. Either the phone can be traced or it can't. You can't say "Well, it should be available to firefighters but not police."
You're not required to own a cell phone. If you're worried about being tracked, then don't use one. Just don't cry if a disaster happens and nobody can find you.
On the flip side, it makes a cell phone much h
Re:Surveillance implications of E911 Phones in US (Score:2)
GPS is only useful in rural areas where antenna density is lower.
Re:More worried about "friendly fire" (Score:3, Insightful)
It's no wonder Canada refused to be a part of this war considering they were bombed by the US in Afghanistan.
Re:My phone has this feature (Score:2)
The worse thing is, some of these dorks would have just ignored the instructions if they had just been told to turn it off.
Re:US communications are already intercepted (Score:4, Informative)
Ask about him in rec.aviation.mil
Some of his past spewings have been "2 B-2's and 3 B-52's shot down in Bosnia."
Russian plasma stealth technology
Russian antigrav technology deployed on current aircraft.
Take everything he says with several large grains of salt.
Re:U.S. Forces In Iraq Ban GPS Phones (Score:3, Informative)
Two recievers + one transmitters = three points. That's why it's called 'triangulation' It is a BIT of a misnomer, in that there are really only two angles being used to find the third point. But the two angles in question aren't