"Highway of Death" ( US warcrimes or not ? )

[Nie Trink Wasser]

I would like to see more discussion on this.

Is it a war crime ?

what actually happened ?





The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on "The Highway of Death"


I want to give testimony on what are called the "highways of death." These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.
U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. "It was like shooting fish in a barrel," said one U.S. pilot. The horror is still there to see.

On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description - tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, fire trucks, according to the March 18, 1991, Time magazine. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. While 450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it's impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.

"Even in Vietnam I didn't see anything like this. It's pathetic," said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the U.S. and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history.

The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by U.S. troops as the Bush administration maintains. They were not retreating in order to regroup and fight again. In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home, responding to orders issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660 and leaving Kuwait. At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time) Baghdad radio announced that Iraq's Foreign Minister had accepted the Soviet cease-fire proposal and had issued the order for all Iraqi troops to withdraw to postions held before August 2, 1990 in compliance with UN Resolution 660. President Bush responded immediately from the White House saying (through spokesman Marlin Fitzwater) that "there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight. . . We continue to prosecute the war." On the next day, February 26, 1991, Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad radio that Iraqi troops had, indeed, begun to withdraw from Kuwait and that the withdrawal would be complete that day. Again, Bush reacted, calling Hussein's announcement "an outrage" and "a cruel hoax."

http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:WHcW_jIskO8C:www.deoxy.org/wc/wc-death.htm+highway+of+death+iraq+geneva&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[Skeptic]

It's WAR, for god's sake. Killing enemy soldiers is allowed, even when they are withdrawing, because they might withdraw to rear positions and still fight you. What is not allowed is to kill soldiers that SURRENDERED, but that's something else entirely.

If this is a "War Crime", then (for example) the entire US campaign in europe in WWII was one long war crime--since the Germans were withdrawing most of the time.

[Nie Trink Wasser]

I highly doubt Saddam's speech about retreat was genuine.

The more research I do on his track record, it would seem more likely that he was more interested in creating a myth in the media than actually looking out for his soldiers lives.

What is important to me about this is that there is hardly any response to anti-US/Bush rhetoric concerning the "Highway of Death" .

It's regarded as a "secret awful US secret that the public was not informed of"

[Michael Redman]

The idea that it was racist anti-Arab killing is just stupid. The public was most certainly informed of it. Pictures ran on CNN, and the covers of many national news mags. It was excessive. Whether or not a war crime, I don't know. Depends on the definition of war crime, and the actual facts. We don't know what the pilots were seeing, or being told. Still, once the column was stopped, they might have left it alone for a while to let the men get out fo the vehicles. I don't know just how the incident played out, though, so I can't pass judgment.

[Michael Redman]

Originally posted by Skeptic
If this is a "War Crime", then (for example) the entire US campaign in europe in WWII was one long war crime--since the Germans were withdrawing most of the time. I take it you haven't heard the word out of Germany these days? . . .

[Baker]

Originally posted by Nie Trink Wasser
I highly doubt Saddam's speech about retreat was genuine.

The more research I do on his track record, it would seem more likely that he was more interested in creating a myth in the media than actually looking out for his soldiers lives.

Ok so you admit that there is no proof of a mass killing of innocent civilians.


It's regarded as a "secret awful US secret that the public was not informed of"

The highway of death was reported on every news channel it was hardly a secret.

[ceo_esq]

Article 41 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (“Safeguard of an enemy hors de combat [“out of combat”]) states that:
1. A person who is recognized or who, in the circumstances, should be recognized to be hors de combat shall not be made the object of attack.

2. A person is hors de combat if: (a) he is in the power of an adverse Party; (b) he clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or (c) he has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself;

provided that in any of these cases he abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape.
The Iraqi soldiers retreating on the so-called “Highway of Death” had not been captured, had not capitulated, and were not unconscious or incapacitated. Regardless of what their subjective intention may have been, they deliberately declined to place themselves hors de combat and they were not entitled to the protections of Article 41, Protocol I.

Ergo, no war crime.

[Michael Redman]

Originally posted by ceo_esq
The Iraqi soldiers retreating on the so-called “Highway of Death” had not been captured, had not capitulated, and were not unconscious or incapacitated. Regardless of what their subjective intention may have been, they deliberately declined to place themselves hors de combat and they were not entitled to the protections of Article 41, Protocol I.

Ergo, no war crime. Come on, we're looking for the touchy-feely definition of "war crime", not the definition definition.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I'm not sure if it's a war crime in the legal sense.

A gratuitous and totally unnecessary slaughter of helpless, retreating conscript troops when the war had already been won? Sure.

But killing people for no good reason while they are running away is not legally a war crime so far as I am aware of.

I'm guessing it goes under the heading of "atrocity" rather than "war crime".

I've heard somewhere that a significant chunk of the people killed in this incident were noncombatants, civilian Iraqis who were part of the retreat. Does anyone know if that's true?

[Tony]

Originally posted by Michael Redman
I take it you haven't heard the word out of Germany these days? . . .

I havent, whats the word comming out of germany?

[The Fool]

Originally posted by Tony


I havent, whats the word comming out of germany?

WW2 was another world. Allied Nations had been completely numbed about civilian casualties. If it was announced in the papers that thousands of German civilians had been killed in bombing raids on residential areas or machinegunned by allied fighter planes the reaction probably would have been "so what".

American fighter planes that escorted bombers over germany were given free rein to shootup anything they liked in Germany on thier return trip. Many young pilots took this up with gusto and many German Civilians were shot up by low flying US Fighter planes. To judge this by todays standards is a little unrealistic, it was apocalyptic times.... Young pilots were God in thier own Aircraft. After the war many could not handle what had happened and suffered serious depression and guilt. Civilians retreating before the battlefront were subject to aggression release by angry young men in flying machines. German pilots had done the same earlier in the war and in Russia. Nobody cared at the time. Nobody talks about it now......

[MRC_Hans]

"Targets of opportunity" was the expression, which meant most anything that moved, certainly anything that moved on wheels, which was not entirely inappropriate, since with the acute shortage of fuel in German at that stage, anything still allocated fuel could be assumed to be a military target.

Interestingly, both sides had grave qualms about attacking civilian targets in the beginning of WW2.

Now, for the "Highway of Death": A retreating enemy column is a military target. You cannot, from a plane, distinguish between combattants and non-combattants in such a formation. That said, some restraint is desirable against an enemy whom you know is beaten, but you can't let soldiers think too much along those lines: If soldiers start thinking too much, they cease to be soldiers.

Hans

[Michael Redman]

Originally posted by Kevin_Lowe
I've heard somewhere that a significant chunk of the people killed in this incident were noncombatants, civilian Iraqis who were part of the retreat. Does anyone know if that's true? Um, the highway was in Kuwait. What would Iraqi civilians have been doing in Kuwait?

[Michael Redman]

Originally posted by Tony
I havent, whats the word comming out of germany? Besides what the Fool said, I've heard radio stories recently about a book released describing how terrible WWII was for German civilians. Things like the fire-bombing of Dresden, etc. They say that they have been hesitant to complain about it before (seeing as how they caused it, I suppose.)

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by Michael Redman
Um, the highway was in Kuwait. What would Iraqi civilians have been doing in Kuwait?

I have a letter from a soldier who said that in the latest war the Iraqis used civilians to surround their vehicles. They also used ambulances to report US troop positions. That might explain what civilians were doing in Kuwait.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto


I have a letter from a soldier who said that in the latest war the Iraqis used civilians to surround their vehicles. They also used ambulances to report US troop positions. That might explain what civilians were doing in Kuwait.

In that case, the death of the civilians (if any) is a IRAQI war crime. The laws of war specifically forbid any army for using civilians as hostages against attack, and places the responsibility for their death if the army IS attacked squarerly on those who take the hostages.

[Jon_in_london]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto


I have a letter from a soldier who said that in the latest war the Iraqis used civilians to surround their vehicles. They also used ambulances to report US troop positions. That might explain what civilians were doing in Kuwait.

I have also seen footage of them using amulances to transport RPG rounds. In the first gulf war they used busses to transport SCUDS.

[Michael Redman]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto
I have a letter from a soldier . . .I'm sorry. Maybe you're sincere, but that reads to me as, "I am now inventing facts . . ."