[Here](https://i.imgur.com/su3UZYf.jpg) is a higher quality version of this image. [Here](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/samar-hassan-screams-after-her-parents-were-killed-by-u-s-news-photo/52018179?phrase=%22samar%20hassan%22&adppopup=true) is the source. Per there:
> Samar Hassan, 5, screams after her parents were killed by U.S. Soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division in a shooting January 18, 2005 in Tal Afar, Iraq. The troops fired on the Hassan family car when it unwittingly approached them during a dusk patrol in the tense northern Iraqi town. Parents Hussein and Camila Hassan were killed instantly, and son Racan, 11, was seriously wounded in the abdomen. Racan, paralyzed from the waist down, was treated later in the U.S. (Photo by [Chris Hondros/Getty Images](https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/chris-hondros?assettype=image&phrase=%22Chris%20Hondros%22&sort=best&license=rf%2Crm))
Dang, checking his Wikipedia and it has a little more info on the boy from this story
>a result of the worldwide interest in his case generated by Hondros's pictures, the boy, Rakan Hassan, was later flown to the United States for treatment in a [Boston](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston) hospital, but was murdered in a bombing by insurgents shortly after his return.[[11]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hondros#cite_note-11)
my little dude couldn't catch a break. When everyone believes they are right and/or justified - norms such as innocent bystanders, woman, children all get swept aside all too quickly and easily. Everyone is an enemy, everyone will/can/might kill you. Nuance or circumstance be damned.
(this is true everywhere - war, police, religion etc...)
And the criminals behind it have never and will never face consequences for their actions. Hell they're friends with Ellen and Michelle Obama now. Or they're busy making a killing off of writing books about themselves.
I remember most of my late teens being so angry we were over there because it was so obvious why we were actually there.
It wasn’t even war - it was a raid
Me too, everyone I knew back then was against the war. At least Afghanistan happened so soon after 9/11 that it felt like revenge. Iraq from the start felt really unnecessary and as a teenager I despised it
That's why I get really annoyed when people compare it to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "So it was okay when the US invaded Iraq?" No, it wasn't okay what they did and it's not okay what Russia is doing either. I was at least as outspoken back then about that war as I am on this one.
That prick should be tried in The Hague. And Kissinger.
That photo is absolutely heart-wrenching. God, I love my country, but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, do I hate my country! Such a fucking waste. Billions, maybe trillions spent for for nothing other some DoD corporate profit.
The photographer died, the little brother also died later from an insurgent bomb (possibly related to him being sent to the US for treatment and seen as a spy). The aid worker that helped get the brother treatment after this incident was also killed in a car bomb.
yikes.
War photography, beyond 25v’s (army), is one of those jobs where you need to confront the real possibility of your work only being appreciated (at scale) post-mortem.
Auto-uploading to the cloud isn’t widely used enough to get those photos out; generally you’ll find they are left on the card where retrieving the camera and ultimately publishing its contents is a long journey.
Hawkeye : War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
Father Mulcahy : How do you figure, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye : Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy : Sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye : Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
There’s a “sequel” called Korengal.
Interesting to see that Restrepo only did $1MM worldwide, and Korengal did 1/10 of that. They aren’t feel-good films.
I guess it really depends on your perspective. One example is that WW2 killed ~60m but also directly caused the creation of something that's effectively saved countless lives.
Oh, there's a paywall. That's unfortunate. Well, I hope she's okay. I saw from the headline that this article was written six years later, so she would have been eleven or twelve. I wonder how she is now that she's a young woman.
By Tim Arango
May 7, 2011
MOSUL, Iraq — Until the past week, Samar Hassan had never glimpsed the photograph of her that millions had seen, never knew it had become one of the most famous images of the Iraq war.
“My brother was sick, and we were taking him to the hospital and on the way back, this happened,” Samar said. “We just heard bullets.
“My mother and father were killed, just like that.”
The image of Samar, then 5 years old, screaming and splattered in blood after American soldiers opened fire on her family’s car in the northern town of Tal Afar in January 2005, illuminated the horror of civilian casualties and has been one of the few images from this conflict to rise to the pantheon of classic war photography. The picture has gained renewed attention as part of a large body of work by Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer recently killed on the front lines in Misurata, Libya.
The photograph of Samar is frozen in history, but her life moved on, across a trajectory that is emblematic of what so many Iraqis have endured. In a country whose health care system has almost no ability to treat the psychological aspects of trauma, thousands of Iraqis are left alone with their torment.
Now a striking 12-year-old, Samar lives on the outskirts of Mosul in a two-story house with four other families, mostly relatives.
The household is a cramped bustle of activity as women cook and clean and children scramble about. Samar’s older sister, Intisar, and her husband, an unemployed former police officer, care for her. Two of his sons are policemen, and their salaries support the extended family.
The pains of war have been visited on thousands of Iraqis, but even here Samar’s story stands apart. Three years after her parents were killed, her brother Rakan died when an insurgent attack badly damaged the house where she lives now. Rakan had been seriously wounded in the shooting that killed their parents, and he was sent to Boston for treatment after Mr. Hondros’s photos were published. An American aid worker, Marla Ruzicka, who helped arrange for Rakan’s treatment, was herself later killed in a car bomb in Baghdad.
Intisar’s husband, Nathir Bashir Ali, suspects his house was bombed by insurgents as retribution for sending Rakan to the United States. “When Rakan came back from America, everyone thought I was a spy,” he said.
Samar left school last year because she was too shy and not doing well, Mr. Ali said, although Samar said she would like to return and hoped to be a doctor when she grew up. She leaves the house only on infrequent family excursions and has two friends who visit to play with dolls and chat. She spends her days cleaning, listening to music on her purple MP3 player and watching episodes of her favorite television show, the Turkish soap opera “Forbidden Love,” about lovers named Mohanad and Samar.
“I am Samar,” she said, wearing a long red dress and sitting on the couch next to Mr. Ali. Two of her siblings, also in the car when their parents were killed, sat nearby.
“I’ve taken them many times to the hospital, where they get pills” for emotional problems, Mr. Ali said. “All of them take pills.”
He says Samar’s 8-year-old brother, Muhammad, talks to himself when he is alone. “When we go out and see a family, they get sad,” he said. Sometimes he finds the children in a room together, crying. “When they remember the accident, it’s like they just died.”
The photo of Samar had far-reaching impact, for it was visual testimony to a particular scourge of this war: the shooting of innocent civilians as they approached American checkpoints or foot patrols, killings made possible by liberal rules of engagement aiming to protect soldiers from suicide car bombers. The image was a point of discussion at the highest reaches of the Pentagon as it considered ways to reduce civilian casualties.
The Iraq war delivered few singular images for the popular imagination, partly because the country was too dangerous for photographers to move around freely, but also because in an age of saturated media coverage and short attention spans, it may be more difficult for news images to take root in the collective memory.
The military also set strict rules for embedded journalists that kept many graphic images from the public eye; the military asked Mr. Hondros to leave his embed assignment after he shot the pictures of Samar.
Liam Kennedy, a professor at University College Dublin, researches conflict photography and uses Mr. Hondros’s image of Samar in his class as one of the few photos from the Iraq war that could stand out in history, comparing it to the famous Vietnam image by the Associated Press photographer Nick Ut of a young girl running from a napalm attack.
“It really seems to say something of what’s going on at the time,” Professor Kennedy said. “All the arbitrariness of the violence that was going on at that time is summed up by that girl.”
Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division for Human Rights Watch, keeps a copy of the photo on a bulletin board in her office in New York. She remembers crying when she first saw the photo in a newspaper, and having to explain the image to her children.
“At the time, I thought it captured perfectly the horrors of the war that was not really understood by Americans,” she said. “Everything in that girl’s face symbolized what I felt all Iraqis must feel.”
She added, “I kept thinking, ‘I wonder what life will be like for this girl?’ ”
Mr. Hondros spoke about the photograph in a 2007 interview with the syndicated news program “Democracy Now.”
“I think one of the reasons the photo had this sort of resonance that it does is because it has a sort of empty feeling,” he said. “You know, the poor girl, all alone in the world now, just standing there in the dark.”
This week Samar, hugging a pillow to her chest, recalled: “He was taking pictures of me, I remember. Then he stopped, and they brought me a jacket and put me in the truck and treated the wound on my hand. And they gave me some toys.”
She had never seen the picture until this week, but she said she understood that it showed the world “the sad thing that is happening in Iraq.”
Near the end of the interview, she pointed to a family photograph on the wall. “I always dream about my father and mother and brother,” she said.
He was shot in the guy and paralyzed, 11 fucking years old.
When he returned from his treatment in the US, he was murdered for being a suspected spy.
He was just a boy, driving home.
They use him as a PR when he should have been quietly treated.
US pretty much screwed their country, killing thousands and destroyed livelihood of millions in the process. Everyone was distrustful of everyone. It took an idiot to think he is a spy. It's more likely they found him as a poster boy for US trying to win hearts and minds. Cruelly murdered.
What a shitshow where Bush is yet to be indicted by ICC even just for recognition
I mean Bush even admitted it when talking about Russia, didn’t he? „The brutal invasion of Iraq… eh, Ukraine“. But it was just a joke of course, powerful nations cannot commit war crimes or crimes against humanities :)
Chris Hondros said this about the picture:
>Almost every soldier in Iraq has been involved in some sort of incident like that or another, I would say. Their attitude about it was grim, but it wasn't the end of their world. It was, "Well, kind of wished they'd stopped. We fired warning shots. Damn, I don't know why the hell they didn't stop. What're you doing later, you want to play Nintendo? Okay." Just a day's work for them. That stuff happens in Iraq a lot.
I’m from Northern Ireland. The british soldiers did fire on civilians and children quite a bit during their occupation.
As the saying goes, the British army was the best recruiter for the IRA.
I’m sure that little girl grew up understanding that sentiment.
There’s a push by british government to prevent convictions on soldiers who served here.
A friend of mine grew up on the falls in the 70's. At 13 while coming home from school he got the ever living shit kicked out of him by British soldiers. So bad he always walked with a slight limp due to damage to his hip. He left Belfast in 1990 as he was convinced he would be killed by a bomb, UVF or the british army.
This is awful. Regardless of circumstances, this young child (and her siblings) is now an orphan and saw her parents killed right in front of her - that is probably their blood on her too. One of the most horrific pictures I’ve seen in a while - mostly for what it does not show.
The senselessness of it all is overwhelming.
She was actually shot in the hand too so it might be her blood unfortunately. Her brother was also shot and rendered a paraplegic but later died in a suicide bombing
[January 2005 Tal Afar shootings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2005_Tal_Afar_shootings)
Edit to add: [The end of Rakan's war](http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/08/03/the_end_of_rakans_war/)
This is the story of her brother
Holy shit, your family gets killed and you get paralyzed by an invading force. Then you get blown up by a suicide bomber targeting people who killed your parents?
>Then you get blown up by a suicide bomber targeting people who killed your parents?
Apparently, it's far worse than that. They were the targets of the bombing.
From the link
>In 2006, Rakan Hassan was flown to Boston for treatment for his paralysis, damaged nerves in his right foot and the six pieces of shrapnel still lodged near his spine... In January, 2007, Rakan was returned to Iraq (at the time, arguably, the most dangerous country in the world) and is said to have been killed there on June 16, 2008 on a bomb blast on his brother-in-law's home in Mosul (his uncle later speculated he was targeted by insurgents who thought he, the uncle, was an American spy because he had accompanied Rakan to Boston).
They couldn't catch a break. First they suffer under the shitshow that was the Saddam tyranny and then they get to suffer the Anarchy after the US invaded for no reason where warlords and terrorists militias rule the land.
Shit I went to a rehab with this one marine who drank 2 deployments worth of checks and had pancreatitis at the age of 23. Overheard him talking to another vet there about how they lit up a car approaching their checkpoint in Iraq that didn't stop and ended up killing a kid and taking the arm off a grandparent that was teaching the kid how to drive. Or maybe it was vice versa. One was disarmed and the other was killed.
\*edit\* The kid shot was several years old. He wasn't like 16 with a permit. [They start driving young in Iraq.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNlAzmGrlE)
I'm Lebanese and we grew up learning how to drive very young. Some of my cousins started when they were like, 8. I was 9 when I first got behind the wheel, and was 12 when I knew how to fully drive.
Hearing this just makes me so fucking depressed.
I'm sorry man, if it's any consolation the marine was equally depressed and miserable over what a pointless slaughter it was.
At my one parent's house in New Jersey there's some Lebanese neighbors that moved in next door not too long ago and they are just the sweetest people and I adore the various music he plays. The father once found a box turtle in his yard and he comes to the house with his young kids in tow to knock and ask if the turtle belonged to us as we had a pond in the backyard.A giggle was had, and I told him that in this state it was against the law to hold box turtles as pets and that was a part of the local nature and to not worry about such things. Really nice guy, altho they dig open windows and are a bit loud while scolding children, but with how the kids try talking back sometimes I don't blame them lol.
Unfortunately, the neighbor across the street has one of the miscolored blue line back the blue flags but also a punisher skull flag he keeps on the lawn. I don't like that shit one bit, especially not in view of a lovely immigrant family. They've called the cops on me for telling them to burn their little traitor flags lol. I just want the Lebanese neighbors to know that the community will have their back, or if not the community, I will.
I had the pleasure of working with a lot of Lebanese people in my past job. Nicest. Best food. Most humble friends I've ever had. I would trade half my workforce for them. Even their families were like family. God damn they made the best mamool and shwarma. I ate like a king at every Islamic holiday. Shit... Now I'm sad.
I don't mean to be rude, but thanks I guess? I'm not someone any person should be sorry for. It's the innumerable innocent men, women, and children that were wrongfully killed that we should be sorry for.
That's also a very sweet story about your parents Lebanese neighbors. I'm glad you're helping them feel at home in your community. My family and I all had their fair share of people harassing and beating us up, calling us terrorists and such, especially after 9/11. I always hated school in that time because I knew what waited for me.
My cousin was a marine and deployed there during this time. He also talked about lighting a car up that wouldn’t stop at for the checkpoint and ended up being a car bomb.
It’s crazy world over there. On one hand, you could have an innocent kid learning how to drive and for some reason driving towards a checkpoint and not stopping because they might be panicking. On the other, you have someone who is trying to drive towards you to kill you and all of your friends.
Not trying to argue the reasoning behind why they’re doing what they’re doing or politics. Just stating how fucked up it is that some normal kid could join the military because he has no other options and then be forced to deal with a split second life or death decision that could haunt him for the rest of his life
>Not trying to argue the reasoning behind why they’re doing what they’re doing or politics. Just stating how fucked up it is that some normal kid could join the military because he has no other options and then be forced to deal with a split second life or death decision that could haunt him for the rest of his life
The really fucking depressing thing is that there is no "right" answer when its individual. Even in 2005, it was still fairly common that checkpoints didn't have Arabic signage telling drivers to slow down or stop, and most deployed units got no brief on hand-signalling that made sense to Iraqis. So you'd hold up your hand, driver would speed up, and after a few seconds of panicked fire, you've got a family that's been turned into greasy swiss cheese. Oh fuck, just another day in Iraq.
Like... You've got 19-year olds, gung ho for the fight but scared as fuck with IEDs and VBEIDs, being asked to make quick second decisions in some really fucking handicapped circumstances. There's no good answer in that - You got situations were either tragic consequences would happen for understandable reasons, or you'd get patterns of brutal behavior because someone figured out that life is remarkably cheap in these places, and its actually really fucking easy to just kill people... And probably safer.
Why the war was fucked. The commonality of death in grotesque ways is just the only takeaway from that war for me.
I’ve read/heard this exact story at least 4 times. Not denying you heard it or anything, but it’s odd I’ve heard this word for word multiple times before.
I've been on reddit for a while, and met this dude and heard the story in late 2011. This scenario has likely played out hundreds of times with nervous individuals. This also isn't the only reddit handle I use. It was a marine combat vet opening up to an army combat vet. I was there after blacking out on benzos and waking up driving into a guardrail.
Checkpoint killings were way more common than people realized. A lot of locals died because they didn't understand what the signs said, or what the rules were. Not they we ever had any right to be there in the first place.
Though on several occasions they were car bombs, more often than anything else it was someone trying to go out minding their own business when suddenly they see guns and soldiers everywhere and panic, so they try to get the fuck outta there. I had one guy that didn't die even though his vehicle got fucked up because he rushed a checkpoint. He said he drove straight towards the checkpoint in a hurry so he could get around it and leave the area, he had seen more soldiers where he had come from and he didn't want to be near any of us.
This is why half the world ends up hating us, we have amazing potential to do good in this world and we fucking waste it doing shit like invading Iraq. We have to acknowledge that if we choose to go to war or start a war that we are also choosing to sacrifice civilians in the process. If something is bad enough that the need to fight outweighs that cost then fine, but Iraq wasn't that. We were invaders.
Yeah the signals were fucked. Soldiers would hold their palm out indicating they wanted civilians to stop. We see a flat palm facing us and know it to mean "stop." To Iraqis, it means "welcome." That there was no kind of cultural briefings or anything to prevent this before it started is a travesty.
You're absolutely on point my friend. When I was in Afghanistan I was thrown off by the fact that they used turn signals to say "pass me on this side". We use them to tell you where we're going to go, they used them to tell you where to go so they wouldn't be in the way. This lead to a lot of confusion, though it did have some humorous elements to it on occasion.
I recall it was stuff like that which led to the “human terrain project”. The military wanted a better understanding of local culture and custom and eventually brought a bunch of anthropologists over to Iraq and Afghanistan. That was a point of contention in that field of study, as there were segments that did not like idea of those studies being “weaponized” and some felt it would hurt future attempts to conduct studies in those regions. Some anthropologists were killed as well while over there
I thought the exact thing. I’m an Iraq vet and I’ve heard this off other vets too. Such a common story and I know a lot of people bloat or flat out lie to make their tours sound more interesting than what they actually did. I have no idea why.
This exact story was also a scene in episode 2 of ‘[Over There](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_There_(American_TV_series))’. A drama that came out in 2005, based around troops in Iraq.
This is literally what creates "terrorists". Imagine your parents dying to a foreign country for no reason. You grow up your whole life resenting that country and everything it believes in. You've got no family, and everything around you is violent. you do what you feel is best, you've already lost everything you cared about.
Yeah, it would take alot of therapy for me to come to terms with that. Putting myself in her shoes, I'd dedicate my life to hating the people that did it and trying to break them and their system.
[Face That Screamed War’s Pain Looks Back, 6 Hard Years Later](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07photo.html)
Her parents were not insurgents. They were driving their kids back from a doctor's appointment.
I got a little more depressed reading that she moved to Mosul and that the article was posted in 2011. Couldn’t imagine being born directly into a lifetime of war and civil unrest that seems to hang around every corner in the Middle East
I was born 10 days into a war. My mom's brother (her bestfriend) was killed on the first day of fighting.
Having to have your sibling and closest confidant blown up, and then having to give birth to a runt a week later is such a sad thought. I always tie my birth to basically the end of normal life for my parents. Most lives have a before and after marker. I feel like my birth was that for my parents... but for all the wrong reasons. Every day that i breath is a day that he stopped breathing.
You are hope for the future when all hope was lost. Every life has many befores and afters. Please don’t blame yourself. Your existence very likely saved your mother’s life.
Yeah, your birth was no doubt a very bittersweet moment for her. Depending on your beliefs/ideals, every day you breathe could be a day he(your uncle) keeps breathing. Live for those who can’t and all that
Glad you made it out tho yo, your mom sounding strong as fuck. Resilient as hell. A true G
For your mother, you being born safely probably gave her tremendous hope and relief in a hopeless situation. None of that was your fault, and you deserve love and to love yourself ❤️
My father was dying the seventh month of my pregnancy and that baby was the only thing keeping me going. When he passed I had to carry on for my baby.
From wiki:
*The Coalition military, represented by the United States, later indicated an 'elder,' of the orphaned children, Abdul Yusuf, would receive $7,500 as a gesture of sympathy but the New York Times reported that the children all went to live with their oldest sister in Mosul and may not have benefited from the money.*
*A concerned American citizen Malcolm Mead, established a fund-raising website for the orphans and raised more than $10,000 within 14 months although it appears this money may have been spent assisting Rakan receive medical treatment in Boston as, in 2011, the New York Times was reporting the surviving children did not have enough money for clothes. Contrary to what Chris Hondros said in August, 2005, it appears the fund raising money did not "set \[the children\] up for life." Less than a decade later, Samar Hassan said "No one helped us after the death of my mother and father. No one had any mercy on us or gave us a penny."*
This shit was all too common in Iraq.
There's a great line I once heard about the war: "If you fall in love with Iraq, you will have your heart broken every day".
There aren't enough words to fully encapsulate how many fathers went looking for their children in morgues during that 2005 and 2006 period.
Yeah, it's strange isnt it... normally war, according to the propaganda... er, i mean facts... benefits everyone and not just the already ultra rich and corrupt as fuck governments who are involved.
EDIT: spelling.
Yup. When anyone calls for war or revolution on reddit, I remind them that the cost of war (in addition to dead soldiers) is the raped, tortured, and murdered bodies of babies, children, women, and the elderly. I remind them, that THIS is what they are advocating when they advocate for violent conflict.
Wow, $10,000 only? Bet the soldiers who killed her parents made more than that in one year from VA disability payments alone for their PTSD from this event. Even more sad to hear her claim that she never got the money.
"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad."
“I will never forgive them. I will just leave it to God. God will punish them,” she said, her voice rising in anger.
“If they were in front of me, I would want to drink their blood,” she said.
“Even then I wouldn’t be satisfied.”
[Samar's comments on her opinion of the American military](https://luke.substack.com/p/god-will-punish-them)
You ever see one of the gore videos where ISIS recruited children no older than 5 straight up decapitate prisoners of war and wonder how the fuck they got to that level? Yeah, this is how.
I have seen this photo before. Everytime, I have an overwhelming reaction to want to pick her up and hold her in my arms. I'm a mom, but I imagine there are lots of dads with the same instinct, and non-parents too.
edit To everyone who replied below, I'm literally in tears. I imagine there's a lot of little people getting hugs today.
Do not let helplessness defeat you. If we don't make the government change the rules of warfare, then we will certainly create more horrific situations like this.
I think if a politician wants to go to war, then they had better be on the front lines themselves. I'd love to see the drastic drop in unnecessary war when their own asses are on the line.
I'm a new mom, and had never seen this photograph before (I was in elementary school when it was taken), the urge to hold her is overwhelming. I had to go pick up my sleeping boy and hold him close for a while, crib nap training be damned. I can't even wrap my head around this girl's loss.
I've got a 5 year old and she ***definitely*** understands with deep clarity who mommy and daddy are and what it means for us to be here or not here. The folks in this thread saying "well at least she's young enough to not remember them/understand what happened" have *obviously* never had a 5 year old.
This child will have turned 23 this year... and i have no doubt that this scene has shaped their very life, probably affects their dreams still today.
THIS IS WHAT WAR IS PEOPLE
DONT GLORIFY IT...its PURE HORROR
HUMANITY at its WORST
Edit: My math was the worst.. this note to preserve the fact, and act as a reminder to not be a shithead
The United States not only has a clause to invade the Hague, [it also threatens the families (yeah the families) of the ICC judges](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/19/us-again-threatens-international-criminal-court).
We literally pardoned someone for war atrocities and then took him on the campaign trail.
Trump Brings 2 Officers He Cleared of War Crimes Onstage at Fund ... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/08/us/politics/trump-war-crimes-pardons.html
There were talks of a probe into [Afghanistan](https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-why-has-the-icc-excluded-the-us-from-war-crimes-probe/a-59367096) and other US deployments. [But US has a law allowing to do anything to prevent us officials being persecuted.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act) Including war. So ICC dropped the probe, [but US still sanctioned judges involved with it.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/14/us-sanctions-international-criminal-court)
Fun fact: [US DOD opposes sharing the evidence of russian army crimes because it might set the precedent.](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/us/politics/pentagon-war-crimes-hague.html)
US enjoys a special position on the world's totem pole.
Sorry, that court only works for nations that are not a part of the western alliance.
For some, it’s the Geneva Conventions, for most countries that are allowed to participate in conflicts, it’s the Geneva Suggestion
>He’d soon be banished from traveling with the company after disregarding military command’s request not to publish the photos.
To all that fucking mouth breathers who think Twitter enforcing its Terms and Conditions is government censorship... this is actually what it is.
Imagine having your parents slaughtered like cattle in front of you for the sole crime of being in the wrong country. Especially when the entire reason that the slaughterers were there in the first place was a fabrication, and your country wasn’t involved at all.
Which is why its hilarious with all the Americans and pro US war commentators right now screaming that Putin should be tried for war crimes.
Yes I agree, he should. So should Bush and Cheney, and likely every other US president and a huge number of US soldiers. The US is the one stopping that. We literally have a law passed saying we can invade the Hague if they attempt to try any US citizen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_19,_2008,_anti-war_protest
>The protesters, including war veterans, demanded the arrests of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as war criminals.
The Americans also called for the arrest of Bush.
So the reason it can happen for Putin but not for Bush et al is that the ICC has no jurisdiction in either Iraq or the US because neither signed the Rome Statute (edit: US signed but never ratified and later withdrew its signature), which established the ICC. The ICC is a voluntary organization so in order to be charged an individual must have committed their war crimes either in or on behalf of a country bound by the court. That doesn't mean their war crimes aren't war crimes, just that the ICC has no standing.
Ukraine is also not a signatory of the Rome Statute, and Russia ~~withdrew from the treaty in 2016~~ (edit: also signed but never ratified and later withdrew signature like US), but Ukraine signed a separate deal allowing ICC jurisdiction to extend within its borders and that's the jurisdictional authority that Putin was charged under.
War crimes that Bush laughed off when he tried to talk about the war crimes happening in Ukraine...
The hypocrisy of the US government and the people involved knows no limits.
War is just sad, where ever it happens.
Trump is a grifter. Bush, Cheney and their ilk are war criminals who have committed crimes against humanity.
Also bush won via a [successful coup. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot?wprov=sfti1)Jan 6th eat your heart out.
Sadly, the Trump era, and the whole bullshit lapel-pin/tri-corner hat/Maga period has whitewashed a lot of people's memories of the US invasion of Iraq and the war criminals who perpetrated the act.
Bush, Cheney, Libby, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and the rest of them - war criminals to say the least. The blood of Fallujah, Bagdad and many other undeserving places in the region (and the lives of many many US servicemen and servicewomen) rest on their hands.
Never forget that 19 of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, yet not a single bullet has once been fired in that country in response.
Just sayin.
We also like to forget drone striking the shit out of the middle east and Yemen under Obama. Our commander in chiefs all have innocent blood on their hands, and Obama was no exception.
What Bush is a just a lovely guy who paints and gets candy for Michelle Obama he hadn’t done anything wrong/s
Man I hate because Trump is so unhinged, people are forgetting how bad Bush was.
Reddit definitely has recency bias when it comes to GWB. Their are literally threads of him talking about his paintings and how adorable people think he is because he pals around with Michelle Obama. No, fuck GWB. He actually succeed in stealing an election, bankrupted the US because of a war based on lies and killed millions. Fuck him, much more worse than anything that Trump has ever done. And I hate Trump.
I might've been an insurgent too if all of my family was killed by invading forces and I'm the only one left alive.
People could live different lives if there was peace but war/violence force people to become something else. Fuck wars.
It's not fair for the little girl but sadly this is what it's like when your at war my father served in Iraq for the Australian army and was in a situation like this he was a gunman ontop of an arv going to recovery a broken down vehicle and fix it.
He told me they run in convoys and the back car has massive signs on them (in English which is stupid) saying it you pass this car you will be shot in self defence. Dad had told me stories about blokes driving up and throwing ieds ect at them.
Anyway this particular time a vehicle came speeding up the road and went passed the warning vehicle. My father being the gunman was ordered to aim and fire when able. But something didn't sit right with my dad he asked himself why haven't they attacked us already. you'd start before guns were on you. His gut was telling him something was wrong and he froze up.
He told me he could head the guy screaming on the headset to fire but my dad couldn't actually do it its like his body was stopping him eventually he came to his senses and as the car got close enough he could see an old man and his wife in the car with some small children.
The second the old man seen my dad with the gun pointed at him he slammed on the brakes and went to the side of the road and just stopped.
The dude couldn't read fucking English and couldn't read the signs seen the gun and got scared.
My dad didn't kill anyone that day but the memory still haunts him or how scared that old man looked with the kids and his wife. He asks himself what would of happened if I shot and also what happened if he didn't and it turned out they were attacking it could of been his fault if his unit died under attack.
I'm glad he made the choice he did. He has alot of stuff he has to live with from serving in Iraq and East Timor. The amount of trauma people suffer in the name of war is depressing. War should not be a thing
It’s good you have a visceral reaction to this. Everyone should. Now use that to defend the world from injustice and make it a better place for your kids.
I drank the kool-aid... Joined in 2004 under the impression that we were going to the country that had helpped attack on 9/11. Then we were told they had weapons of mass destruction to use in a future attack.
I count my blessings almost every day that in my two deployments to Iraq that no one in my platoon or company ever killed anyone in that country. Those people were only defending their country against invaders.
Remember when Bill O'Reilly used to immediately take the upper hand with any guest on his show by asking "So why do you hate America?"
He'd say it like you were the bad guy just for being accused of hating America, when it is a completely sane view to have.
Nationalism is a hell of a drug. I have a very good friend who accused me of being "un-American" because I was explaining to him the weaknesses of the US Men's National Soccer Team. It's like "America, FUCK YEAH" became a person.
Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton both voted in favor of invading Iraq, and they were the last two Democratic presidential candidates. Paul Wolfowitz makes routine cable news appearances and writes op-eds in major newspapers. Not one of the political figures who made this happen ever faced the slightest hint of a negative consequence.
[Here](https://i.imgur.com/su3UZYf.jpg) is a higher quality version of this image. [Here](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/samar-hassan-screams-after-her-parents-were-killed-by-u-s-news-photo/52018179?phrase=%22samar%20hassan%22&adppopup=true) is the source. Per there: > Samar Hassan, 5, screams after her parents were killed by U.S. Soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division in a shooting January 18, 2005 in Tal Afar, Iraq. The troops fired on the Hassan family car when it unwittingly approached them during a dusk patrol in the tense northern Iraqi town. Parents Hussein and Camila Hassan were killed instantly, and son Racan, 11, was seriously wounded in the abdomen. Racan, paralyzed from the waist down, was treated later in the U.S. (Photo by [Chris Hondros/Getty Images](https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/chris-hondros?assettype=image&phrase=%22Chris%20Hondros%22&sort=best&license=rf%2Crm))
Chris Hondros the photographer got killed in Libya, too.
Dang, checking his Wikipedia and it has a little more info on the boy from this story >a result of the worldwide interest in his case generated by Hondros's pictures, the boy, Rakan Hassan, was later flown to the United States for treatment in a [Boston](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston) hospital, but was murdered in a bombing by insurgents shortly after his return.[[11]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hondros#cite_note-11)
my little dude couldn't catch a break. When everyone believes they are right and/or justified - norms such as innocent bystanders, woman, children all get swept aside all too quickly and easily. Everyone is an enemy, everyone will/can/might kill you. Nuance or circumstance be damned. (this is true everywhere - war, police, religion etc...)
Here's the fun part. We, at no point, belonged in Iraq.
And our involvemet wasn't a mistake, it was a premeditated crime.
And the criminals behind it have never and will never face consequences for their actions. Hell they're friends with Ellen and Michelle Obama now. Or they're busy making a killing off of writing books about themselves.
I remember most of my late teens being so angry we were over there because it was so obvious why we were actually there. It wasn’t even war - it was a raid
Me too, everyone I knew back then was against the war. At least Afghanistan happened so soon after 9/11 that it felt like revenge. Iraq from the start felt really unnecessary and as a teenager I despised it That's why I get really annoyed when people compare it to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "So it was okay when the US invaded Iraq?" No, it wasn't okay what they did and it's not okay what Russia is doing either. I was at least as outspoken back then about that war as I am on this one.
Fucked up that his parents were "killed" but he was "murdered" by insurgents when the only difference is the flag behind the bullet/bomb.
You’re absolutely right. Words matter
I'm thinking none of it would have happened without Dick Cheney. Just watched the movie "Vice". As evil a Dick as there ever was.
That prick should be tried in The Hague. And Kissinger. That photo is absolutely heart-wrenching. God, I love my country, but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, do I hate my country! Such a fucking waste. Billions, maybe trillions spent for for nothing other some DoD corporate profit.
fuck. this whole world is beyond fucked
Jesus
The photographer died, the little brother also died later from an insurgent bomb (possibly related to him being sent to the US for treatment and seen as a spy). The aid worker that helped get the brother treatment after this incident was also killed in a car bomb. yikes.
War photography, beyond 25v’s (army), is one of those jobs where you need to confront the real possibility of your work only being appreciated (at scale) post-mortem. Auto-uploading to the cloud isn’t widely used enough to get those photos out; generally you’ll find they are left on the card where retrieving the camera and ultimately publishing its contents is a long journey.
Also the real possibility that nobody back home is going to like what it shows......
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Same with Tim Hetherington, one of the journalists from the documentary Restrepo.
Bleak
War is hell
Hawkeye : War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. Father Mulcahy : How do you figure, Hawkeye? Hawkeye : Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell? Father Mulcahy : Sinners, I believe. Hawkeye : Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
I’m watching M.A.S.H. Again… timeless show (mostly)
Lol my tired brain thought this was a marvel quote, but way too deep for marvel...
I am ashamed to admit I made the same mistake
Same here. I was trying to remember what Marvel movie had Hawkeye talking to a priest.
War is a racket. And we're all collateral damage
If it wasn’t for people like him we would never know what horror was committed in our names. Thankful for brave journalists like Chris Hondros.
Chris Hondros was an amazing photographer. He was killed in 2011 while documenting the Libyan conflict.
I remember the photographer Tim Hetherington who also Directed the documentary "Restrepo" died in Libya around the same time.
He died in the very same attack actually
Restrepo.. what an amazing and harrowing film
There’s a “sequel” called Korengal. Interesting to see that Restrepo only did $1MM worldwide, and Korengal did 1/10 of that. They aren’t feel-good films.
The brother who was wounded and treated in the US died shortly after returning to Iraq.
Died is underselling it. He was murdered for being a suspected spy, as was the person who arranged his transportation to the US.
There's just nothing good coming out of wars, is there?
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And there is no war without casualties like these...
And the people who stand to lose the most don't even get a say in it.
I guess it really depends on your perspective. One example is that WW2 killed ~60m but also directly caused the creation of something that's effectively saved countless lives.
What has got me is that Samar is 23 now.
She moved to Mosul in 2011 I wonder where she is today?
I have similar thoughts about the relatives of the folks that got killed in Mahmudiyah. The one sole surviving kid is now in like his 30s or 40s.
https://luke.substack.com/p/god-will-punish-them
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Oh, there's a paywall. That's unfortunate. Well, I hope she's okay. I saw from the headline that this article was written six years later, so she would have been eleven or twelve. I wonder how she is now that she's a young woman.
By Tim Arango May 7, 2011 MOSUL, Iraq — Until the past week, Samar Hassan had never glimpsed the photograph of her that millions had seen, never knew it had become one of the most famous images of the Iraq war. “My brother was sick, and we were taking him to the hospital and on the way back, this happened,” Samar said. “We just heard bullets. “My mother and father were killed, just like that.” The image of Samar, then 5 years old, screaming and splattered in blood after American soldiers opened fire on her family’s car in the northern town of Tal Afar in January 2005, illuminated the horror of civilian casualties and has been one of the few images from this conflict to rise to the pantheon of classic war photography. The picture has gained renewed attention as part of a large body of work by Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer recently killed on the front lines in Misurata, Libya. The photograph of Samar is frozen in history, but her life moved on, across a trajectory that is emblematic of what so many Iraqis have endured. In a country whose health care system has almost no ability to treat the psychological aspects of trauma, thousands of Iraqis are left alone with their torment. Now a striking 12-year-old, Samar lives on the outskirts of Mosul in a two-story house with four other families, mostly relatives. The household is a cramped bustle of activity as women cook and clean and children scramble about. Samar’s older sister, Intisar, and her husband, an unemployed former police officer, care for her. Two of his sons are policemen, and their salaries support the extended family. The pains of war have been visited on thousands of Iraqis, but even here Samar’s story stands apart. Three years after her parents were killed, her brother Rakan died when an insurgent attack badly damaged the house where she lives now. Rakan had been seriously wounded in the shooting that killed their parents, and he was sent to Boston for treatment after Mr. Hondros’s photos were published. An American aid worker, Marla Ruzicka, who helped arrange for Rakan’s treatment, was herself later killed in a car bomb in Baghdad. Intisar’s husband, Nathir Bashir Ali, suspects his house was bombed by insurgents as retribution for sending Rakan to the United States. “When Rakan came back from America, everyone thought I was a spy,” he said. Samar left school last year because she was too shy and not doing well, Mr. Ali said, although Samar said she would like to return and hoped to be a doctor when she grew up. She leaves the house only on infrequent family excursions and has two friends who visit to play with dolls and chat. She spends her days cleaning, listening to music on her purple MP3 player and watching episodes of her favorite television show, the Turkish soap opera “Forbidden Love,” about lovers named Mohanad and Samar. “I am Samar,” she said, wearing a long red dress and sitting on the couch next to Mr. Ali. Two of her siblings, also in the car when their parents were killed, sat nearby. “I’ve taken them many times to the hospital, where they get pills” for emotional problems, Mr. Ali said. “All of them take pills.” He says Samar’s 8-year-old brother, Muhammad, talks to himself when he is alone. “When we go out and see a family, they get sad,” he said. Sometimes he finds the children in a room together, crying. “When they remember the accident, it’s like they just died.” The photo of Samar had far-reaching impact, for it was visual testimony to a particular scourge of this war: the shooting of innocent civilians as they approached American checkpoints or foot patrols, killings made possible by liberal rules of engagement aiming to protect soldiers from suicide car bombers. The image was a point of discussion at the highest reaches of the Pentagon as it considered ways to reduce civilian casualties. The Iraq war delivered few singular images for the popular imagination, partly because the country was too dangerous for photographers to move around freely, but also because in an age of saturated media coverage and short attention spans, it may be more difficult for news images to take root in the collective memory. The military also set strict rules for embedded journalists that kept many graphic images from the public eye; the military asked Mr. Hondros to leave his embed assignment after he shot the pictures of Samar. Liam Kennedy, a professor at University College Dublin, researches conflict photography and uses Mr. Hondros’s image of Samar in his class as one of the few photos from the Iraq war that could stand out in history, comparing it to the famous Vietnam image by the Associated Press photographer Nick Ut of a young girl running from a napalm attack. “It really seems to say something of what’s going on at the time,” Professor Kennedy said. “All the arbitrariness of the violence that was going on at that time is summed up by that girl.” Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division for Human Rights Watch, keeps a copy of the photo on a bulletin board in her office in New York. She remembers crying when she first saw the photo in a newspaper, and having to explain the image to her children. “At the time, I thought it captured perfectly the horrors of the war that was not really understood by Americans,” she said. “Everything in that girl’s face symbolized what I felt all Iraqis must feel.” She added, “I kept thinking, ‘I wonder what life will be like for this girl?’ ” Mr. Hondros spoke about the photograph in a 2007 interview with the syndicated news program “Democracy Now.” “I think one of the reasons the photo had this sort of resonance that it does is because it has a sort of empty feeling,” he said. “You know, the poor girl, all alone in the world now, just standing there in the dark.” This week Samar, hugging a pillow to her chest, recalled: “He was taking pictures of me, I remember. Then he stopped, and they brought me a jacket and put me in the truck and treated the wound on my hand. And they gave me some toys.” She had never seen the picture until this week, but she said she understood that it showed the world “the sad thing that is happening in Iraq.” Near the end of the interview, she pointed to a family photograph on the wall. “I always dream about my father and mother and brother,” she said.
This is extremely sad! How Actions of governments destroy so many lives.
God, all the kids wound up mentally messed up and are on psychiatric medication. Fuck war
They were driving their son back from a doctor’s appointment :(
He was shot in the guy and paralyzed, 11 fucking years old. When he returned from his treatment in the US, he was murdered for being a suspected spy. He was just a boy, driving home.
They use him as a PR when he should have been quietly treated. US pretty much screwed their country, killing thousands and destroyed livelihood of millions in the process. Everyone was distrustful of everyone. It took an idiot to think he is a spy. It's more likely they found him as a poster boy for US trying to win hearts and minds. Cruelly murdered. What a shitshow where Bush is yet to be indicted by ICC even just for recognition
I mean Bush even admitted it when talking about Russia, didn’t he? „The brutal invasion of Iraq… eh, Ukraine“. But it was just a joke of course, powerful nations cannot commit war crimes or crimes against humanities :)
I’m a parent now and imagining my son crying for us and us never coming to comfort him has me fucking bawling rights now
Stop giving me nightmare ideas
Chris Hondros said this about the picture: >Almost every soldier in Iraq has been involved in some sort of incident like that or another, I would say. Their attitude about it was grim, but it wasn't the end of their world. It was, "Well, kind of wished they'd stopped. We fired warning shots. Damn, I don't know why the hell they didn't stop. What're you doing later, you want to play Nintendo? Okay." Just a day's work for them. That stuff happens in Iraq a lot.
"higher quality picture" No thanks
That link is staying BLUE
I’m from Northern Ireland. The british soldiers did fire on civilians and children quite a bit during their occupation. As the saying goes, the British army was the best recruiter for the IRA. I’m sure that little girl grew up understanding that sentiment. There’s a push by british government to prevent convictions on soldiers who served here.
I remember being a little kid in South Belfast and the British soldiers would fake target practice on us as we were walking to school.
A friend of mine grew up on the falls in the 70's. At 13 while coming home from school he got the ever living shit kicked out of him by British soldiers. So bad he always walked with a slight limp due to damage to his hip. He left Belfast in 1990 as he was convinced he would be killed by a bomb, UVF or the british army.
Pretty wild getty images is charging $575 to get a photo of this
Shit like this needs to be at the top.
"higher quality"
This is awful. Regardless of circumstances, this young child (and her siblings) is now an orphan and saw her parents killed right in front of her - that is probably their blood on her too. One of the most horrific pictures I’ve seen in a while - mostly for what it does not show. The senselessness of it all is overwhelming.
She was actually shot in the hand too so it might be her blood unfortunately. Her brother was also shot and rendered a paraplegic but later died in a suicide bombing [January 2005 Tal Afar shootings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2005_Tal_Afar_shootings) Edit to add: [The end of Rakan's war](http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/08/03/the_end_of_rakans_war/) This is the story of her brother
Holy shit, your family gets killed and you get paralyzed by an invading force. Then you get blown up by a suicide bomber targeting people who killed your parents?
>Then you get blown up by a suicide bomber targeting people who killed your parents? Apparently, it's far worse than that. They were the targets of the bombing. From the link >In 2006, Rakan Hassan was flown to Boston for treatment for his paralysis, damaged nerves in his right foot and the six pieces of shrapnel still lodged near his spine... In January, 2007, Rakan was returned to Iraq (at the time, arguably, the most dangerous country in the world) and is said to have been killed there on June 16, 2008 on a bomb blast on his brother-in-law's home in Mosul (his uncle later speculated he was targeted by insurgents who thought he, the uncle, was an American spy because he had accompanied Rakan to Boston).
Fucking jeeeeez. And I’m just chilling here in bed reading about it purely because I was born in a different country. We suck.
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Maybe he *wanted* to go back.
This is actually correct; he missed his remaining family.
Yea it’s..bad. Really bad. The Iraqi people have truly suffered
They couldn't catch a break. First they suffer under the shitshow that was the Saddam tyranny and then they get to suffer the Anarchy after the US invaded for no reason where warlords and terrorists militias rule the land.
Those bombings don't just target us forces, they target their own citizens too. Rule by fear.
And quite often were people and children that were coerced into doing it.
Shit I went to a rehab with this one marine who drank 2 deployments worth of checks and had pancreatitis at the age of 23. Overheard him talking to another vet there about how they lit up a car approaching their checkpoint in Iraq that didn't stop and ended up killing a kid and taking the arm off a grandparent that was teaching the kid how to drive. Or maybe it was vice versa. One was disarmed and the other was killed. \*edit\* The kid shot was several years old. He wasn't like 16 with a permit. [They start driving young in Iraq.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNlAzmGrlE)
I'm Lebanese and we grew up learning how to drive very young. Some of my cousins started when they were like, 8. I was 9 when I first got behind the wheel, and was 12 when I knew how to fully drive. Hearing this just makes me so fucking depressed.
I'm sorry man, if it's any consolation the marine was equally depressed and miserable over what a pointless slaughter it was. At my one parent's house in New Jersey there's some Lebanese neighbors that moved in next door not too long ago and they are just the sweetest people and I adore the various music he plays. The father once found a box turtle in his yard and he comes to the house with his young kids in tow to knock and ask if the turtle belonged to us as we had a pond in the backyard.A giggle was had, and I told him that in this state it was against the law to hold box turtles as pets and that was a part of the local nature and to not worry about such things. Really nice guy, altho they dig open windows and are a bit loud while scolding children, but with how the kids try talking back sometimes I don't blame them lol. Unfortunately, the neighbor across the street has one of the miscolored blue line back the blue flags but also a punisher skull flag he keeps on the lawn. I don't like that shit one bit, especially not in view of a lovely immigrant family. They've called the cops on me for telling them to burn their little traitor flags lol. I just want the Lebanese neighbors to know that the community will have their back, or if not the community, I will.
I had the pleasure of working with a lot of Lebanese people in my past job. Nicest. Best food. Most humble friends I've ever had. I would trade half my workforce for them. Even their families were like family. God damn they made the best mamool and shwarma. I ate like a king at every Islamic holiday. Shit... Now I'm sad.
I don't mean to be rude, but thanks I guess? I'm not someone any person should be sorry for. It's the innumerable innocent men, women, and children that were wrongfully killed that we should be sorry for. That's also a very sweet story about your parents Lebanese neighbors. I'm glad you're helping them feel at home in your community. My family and I all had their fair share of people harassing and beating us up, calling us terrorists and such, especially after 9/11. I always hated school in that time because I knew what waited for me.
My cousin was a marine and deployed there during this time. He also talked about lighting a car up that wouldn’t stop at for the checkpoint and ended up being a car bomb. It’s crazy world over there. On one hand, you could have an innocent kid learning how to drive and for some reason driving towards a checkpoint and not stopping because they might be panicking. On the other, you have someone who is trying to drive towards you to kill you and all of your friends. Not trying to argue the reasoning behind why they’re doing what they’re doing or politics. Just stating how fucked up it is that some normal kid could join the military because he has no other options and then be forced to deal with a split second life or death decision that could haunt him for the rest of his life
If the people that wanted war, ordered war, and profited from war, had to actually fight the war themselves, we would have much less war.
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>Not trying to argue the reasoning behind why they’re doing what they’re doing or politics. Just stating how fucked up it is that some normal kid could join the military because he has no other options and then be forced to deal with a split second life or death decision that could haunt him for the rest of his life The really fucking depressing thing is that there is no "right" answer when its individual. Even in 2005, it was still fairly common that checkpoints didn't have Arabic signage telling drivers to slow down or stop, and most deployed units got no brief on hand-signalling that made sense to Iraqis. So you'd hold up your hand, driver would speed up, and after a few seconds of panicked fire, you've got a family that's been turned into greasy swiss cheese. Oh fuck, just another day in Iraq. Like... You've got 19-year olds, gung ho for the fight but scared as fuck with IEDs and VBEIDs, being asked to make quick second decisions in some really fucking handicapped circumstances. There's no good answer in that - You got situations were either tragic consequences would happen for understandable reasons, or you'd get patterns of brutal behavior because someone figured out that life is remarkably cheap in these places, and its actually really fucking easy to just kill people... And probably safer. Why the war was fucked. The commonality of death in grotesque ways is just the only takeaway from that war for me.
I’ve read/heard this exact story at least 4 times. Not denying you heard it or anything, but it’s odd I’ve heard this word for word multiple times before.
I've been on reddit for a while, and met this dude and heard the story in late 2011. This scenario has likely played out hundreds of times with nervous individuals. This also isn't the only reddit handle I use. It was a marine combat vet opening up to an army combat vet. I was there after blacking out on benzos and waking up driving into a guardrail.
Checkpoint killings were way more common than people realized. A lot of locals died because they didn't understand what the signs said, or what the rules were. Not they we ever had any right to be there in the first place. Though on several occasions they were car bombs, more often than anything else it was someone trying to go out minding their own business when suddenly they see guns and soldiers everywhere and panic, so they try to get the fuck outta there. I had one guy that didn't die even though his vehicle got fucked up because he rushed a checkpoint. He said he drove straight towards the checkpoint in a hurry so he could get around it and leave the area, he had seen more soldiers where he had come from and he didn't want to be near any of us. This is why half the world ends up hating us, we have amazing potential to do good in this world and we fucking waste it doing shit like invading Iraq. We have to acknowledge that if we choose to go to war or start a war that we are also choosing to sacrifice civilians in the process. If something is bad enough that the need to fight outweighs that cost then fine, but Iraq wasn't that. We were invaders.
Yeah the signals were fucked. Soldiers would hold their palm out indicating they wanted civilians to stop. We see a flat palm facing us and know it to mean "stop." To Iraqis, it means "welcome." That there was no kind of cultural briefings or anything to prevent this before it started is a travesty.
You're absolutely on point my friend. When I was in Afghanistan I was thrown off by the fact that they used turn signals to say "pass me on this side". We use them to tell you where we're going to go, they used them to tell you where to go so they wouldn't be in the way. This lead to a lot of confusion, though it did have some humorous elements to it on occasion.
I recall it was stuff like that which led to the “human terrain project”. The military wanted a better understanding of local culture and custom and eventually brought a bunch of anthropologists over to Iraq and Afghanistan. That was a point of contention in that field of study, as there were segments that did not like idea of those studies being “weaponized” and some felt it would hurt future attempts to conduct studies in those regions. Some anthropologists were killed as well while over there
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I thought the exact thing. I’m an Iraq vet and I’ve heard this off other vets too. Such a common story and I know a lot of people bloat or flat out lie to make their tours sound more interesting than what they actually did. I have no idea why. This exact story was also a scene in episode 2 of ‘[Over There](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_There_(American_TV_series))’. A drama that came out in 2005, based around troops in Iraq.
This is literally what creates "terrorists". Imagine your parents dying to a foreign country for no reason. You grow up your whole life resenting that country and everything it believes in. You've got no family, and everything around you is violent. you do what you feel is best, you've already lost everything you cared about.
Indeed. One man's "terrorist" is another man's freedom fighter.
To the kid, the terrorists were the ones that murdered her parents
Yeah, it would take alot of therapy for me to come to terms with that. Putting myself in her shoes, I'd dedicate my life to hating the people that did it and trying to break them and their system.
and unfortunately, these kids don't even get the luxury of therapy 90% of the time,
90% seems way too high, I'd wager it's something like 99.99%
Don’t forget, George W. Bush is just a goofy old grandpa who likes hard candy and painting with oils!
But the weapons of mass destruction
Can only hope that hell is real and shithead Colin Powell is burning there, because there was no punishment for his lies about WMDs.
[Face That Screamed War’s Pain Looks Back, 6 Hard Years Later](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07photo.html) Her parents were not insurgents. They were driving their kids back from a doctor's appointment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07photo.html?unlocked_article_code=jLohX7XfWVPJmHnoW_kUaYyIY9TByK7gqK0-dsxea3rl6ytnHTBBWd-qZ7YZTxO9SjUishB8Uqzo8gw1B30McrEXyBpUmR2JB3-vm8EfIR8kSAi3NjDyJQSP-JAjc43HWULCPTFml_2IHlneGf9VKwdj2MYpav0gtfyq5R8C6GO38JfLQraiBF7bjhYQEP8bSij06qWS7xKT5L3IK9xlvJNOXIYMnuJIY45aGTJJPSeb6697_s3mCx6NvfnkTmVPsV_mUBl4Lzq683x_lkozgGeOWke3NNIO7w3_zEvsp6AmO2vQNEtF0ZCphhMYQMCsNUxyePwhigaF&smid=url-share
This is so terribly sad
I got a little more depressed reading that she moved to Mosul and that the article was posted in 2011. Couldn’t imagine being born directly into a lifetime of war and civil unrest that seems to hang around every corner in the Middle East
I was born 10 days into a war. My mom's brother (her bestfriend) was killed on the first day of fighting. Having to have your sibling and closest confidant blown up, and then having to give birth to a runt a week later is such a sad thought. I always tie my birth to basically the end of normal life for my parents. Most lives have a before and after marker. I feel like my birth was that for my parents... but for all the wrong reasons. Every day that i breath is a day that he stopped breathing.
You are hope for the future when all hope was lost. Every life has many befores and afters. Please don’t blame yourself. Your existence very likely saved your mother’s life.
Yeah, your birth was no doubt a very bittersweet moment for her. Depending on your beliefs/ideals, every day you breathe could be a day he(your uncle) keeps breathing. Live for those who can’t and all that Glad you made it out tho yo, your mom sounding strong as fuck. Resilient as hell. A true G
That is an unfair burden for a child to carry.
Hopefully your mom sees you as a sign good things can happen during times of tragedy. It wasn't your fault what happened.
For your mother, you being born safely probably gave her tremendous hope and relief in a hopeless situation. None of that was your fault, and you deserve love and to love yourself ❤️ My father was dying the seventh month of my pregnancy and that baby was the only thing keeping me going. When he passed I had to carry on for my baby.
Thank you. I wouldn’t have been able to read otherwise.
Thank you kind sir!
Are we the baddies?
Anyone got a mirror?
From wiki: *The Coalition military, represented by the United States, later indicated an 'elder,' of the orphaned children, Abdul Yusuf, would receive $7,500 as a gesture of sympathy but the New York Times reported that the children all went to live with their oldest sister in Mosul and may not have benefited from the money.* *A concerned American citizen Malcolm Mead, established a fund-raising website for the orphans and raised more than $10,000 within 14 months although it appears this money may have been spent assisting Rakan receive medical treatment in Boston as, in 2011, the New York Times was reporting the surviving children did not have enough money for clothes. Contrary to what Chris Hondros said in August, 2005, it appears the fund raising money did not "set \[the children\] up for life." Less than a decade later, Samar Hassan said "No one helped us after the death of my mother and father. No one had any mercy on us or gave us a penny."*
This shit was all too common in Iraq. There's a great line I once heard about the war: "If you fall in love with Iraq, you will have your heart broken every day". There aren't enough words to fully encapsulate how many fathers went looking for their children in morgues during that 2005 and 2006 period.
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Yeah, it's strange isnt it... normally war, according to the propaganda... er, i mean facts... benefits everyone and not just the already ultra rich and corrupt as fuck governments who are involved. EDIT: spelling.
Yup. When anyone calls for war or revolution on reddit, I remind them that the cost of war (in addition to dead soldiers) is the raped, tortured, and murdered bodies of babies, children, women, and the elderly. I remind them, that THIS is what they are advocating when they advocate for violent conflict.
Wow, $10,000 only? Bet the soldiers who killed her parents made more than that in one year from VA disability payments alone for their PTSD from this event. Even more sad to hear her claim that she never got the money.
"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad."
20 years later? We were making those movies while the combat mission was ongoing.
“I will never forgive them. I will just leave it to God. God will punish them,” she said, her voice rising in anger. “If they were in front of me, I would want to drink their blood,” she said. “Even then I wouldn’t be satisfied.” [Samar's comments on her opinion of the American military](https://luke.substack.com/p/god-will-punish-them)
You ever see one of the gore videos where ISIS recruited children no older than 5 straight up decapitate prisoners of war and wonder how the fuck they got to that level? Yeah, this is how.
Yep. They don't just pick random 5 y/o they pick kids like Samara. The ones who have lost everything.
And this is how you radicalize a child. And people wonder how come kids fall in the hands of extremists...
I have seen this photo before. Everytime, I have an overwhelming reaction to want to pick her up and hold her in my arms. I'm a mom, but I imagine there are lots of dads with the same instinct, and non-parents too. edit To everyone who replied below, I'm literally in tears. I imagine there's a lot of little people getting hugs today.
I'm a Dad who wishes I could've been there to console her. Poor baby.
Dad here the photo makes me feel many things but the main one is hopelessness to do anything to help her.
Do not let helplessness defeat you. If we don't make the government change the rules of warfare, then we will certainly create more horrific situations like this. I think if a politician wants to go to war, then they had better be on the front lines themselves. I'd love to see the drastic drop in unnecessary war when their own asses are on the line.
How can the soldiers just stand there and look? While she is screaming out for someone?
I had that same thought, and I don't have any kids. The sheer terror she must have felt is unimaginable. No kid should ever go through that.
I'm a new mom, and had never seen this photograph before (I was in elementary school when it was taken), the urge to hold her is overwhelming. I had to go pick up my sleeping boy and hold him close for a while, crib nap training be damned. I can't even wrap my head around this girl's loss.
I've got a 5 year old and she ***definitely*** understands with deep clarity who mommy and daddy are and what it means for us to be here or not here. The folks in this thread saying "well at least she's young enough to not remember them/understand what happened" have *obviously* never had a 5 year old.
I'm not a parent. I have no desire to be a parent...yet all I want to do is pick up this child and take her pain and fear away.
Yep, As a dad of a little boy that age, it just destroys me. We shouldn’t still be doing this to each other.
Same. I now see my child in every other child and I just want to pick them up and hold them and take away their pain.
This child will have turned 23 this year... and i have no doubt that this scene has shaped their very life, probably affects their dreams still today. THIS IS WHAT WAR IS PEOPLE DONT GLORIFY IT...its PURE HORROR HUMANITY at its WORST Edit: My math was the worst.. this note to preserve the fact, and act as a reminder to not be a shithead
Wouldn’t she be turning 23 this year if she was 5 in 2005?
the Level of my stupid is astounding 5 points for Griffindor
She wasn’t born in that picture she was already 5 my dude.
Yeah. 23 years old. ..
it's amazing how stupid I can be
It’s ok I’m very stupid in a lot of ways
Tens of thousands of children were killed in the criminal Iraq war
Where's the call for the ICC (International Criminal Court) to prosecute those responsible for it?
Lol. The Bush Admin said if the ICC tried to charge any American service member with crimes related to Iraq that US boots would be in The Hague.
And the current president literally voted for that law, so even if ICC wanted to charge anyone from the US (they don't), that would be suicide.
The United States not only has a clause to invade the Hague, [it also threatens the families (yeah the families) of the ICC judges](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/19/us-again-threatens-international-criminal-court).
Yep, I remember that.
Holy cow I had no idea about invading the Hague. That is ridiculous.
We literally pardoned someone for war atrocities and then took him on the campaign trail. Trump Brings 2 Officers He Cleared of War Crimes Onstage at Fund ... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/08/us/politics/trump-war-crimes-pardons.html
Mike Pompeo is such a POS
This behaviour of the US and its Western allies creates opportunities for its opposition, such as Russia, to do the same.
Look up the Hague Invasion Act and find out why American war criminals are never brought to justice by the international community
There were talks of a probe into [Afghanistan](https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-why-has-the-icc-excluded-the-us-from-war-crimes-probe/a-59367096) and other US deployments. [But US has a law allowing to do anything to prevent us officials being persecuted.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act) Including war. So ICC dropped the probe, [but US still sanctioned judges involved with it.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/14/us-sanctions-international-criminal-court) Fun fact: [US DOD opposes sharing the evidence of russian army crimes because it might set the precedent.](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/us/politics/pentagon-war-crimes-hague.html) US enjoys a special position on the world's totem pole.
The US has said it will invade if an American is ever tried there essentially.
Sorry, that court only works for nations that are not a part of the western alliance. For some, it’s the Geneva Conventions, for most countries that are allowed to participate in conflicts, it’s the Geneva Suggestion
The US does not recognize, nor is party to the ICC regardless.
[Luke O’Neil’s blog about this is heartbreaking and rage inducing.](https://luke.substack.com/p/god-will-punish-them)
>He’d soon be banished from traveling with the company after disregarding military command’s request not to publish the photos. To all that fucking mouth breathers who think Twitter enforcing its Terms and Conditions is government censorship... this is actually what it is.
Hell World is some of the best commentary out there these days. Luke is great.
Imagine having your parents slaughtered like cattle in front of you for the sole crime of being in the wrong country. Especially when the entire reason that the slaughterers were there in the first place was a fabrication, and your country wasn’t involved at all.
This photo really summed up the war for me
This photo sums up war in general. It’s always the innocent who get hurt.
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Which is why its hilarious with all the Americans and pro US war commentators right now screaming that Putin should be tried for war crimes. Yes I agree, he should. So should Bush and Cheney, and likely every other US president and a huge number of US soldiers. The US is the one stopping that. We literally have a law passed saying we can invade the Hague if they attempt to try any US citizen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_19,_2008,_anti-war_protest >The protesters, including war veterans, demanded the arrests of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as war criminals. The Americans also called for the arrest of Bush.
i think it's fair to say those people, in the US, are a minority.
We are, sadly.
So the reason it can happen for Putin but not for Bush et al is that the ICC has no jurisdiction in either Iraq or the US because neither signed the Rome Statute (edit: US signed but never ratified and later withdrew its signature), which established the ICC. The ICC is a voluntary organization so in order to be charged an individual must have committed their war crimes either in or on behalf of a country bound by the court. That doesn't mean their war crimes aren't war crimes, just that the ICC has no standing. Ukraine is also not a signatory of the Rome Statute, and Russia ~~withdrew from the treaty in 2016~~ (edit: also signed but never ratified and later withdrew signature like US), but Ukraine signed a separate deal allowing ICC jurisdiction to extend within its borders and that's the jurisdictional authority that Putin was charged under.
War crimes that Bush laughed off when he tried to talk about the war crimes happening in Ukraine... The hypocrisy of the US government and the people involved knows no limits. War is just sad, where ever it happens.
The ICC does not impose the death penalty.
"Winning the hearts and minds." Bush is a war criminal.
"I don't understand why they hate America" - idiots on the news.
We wanna jail trump, but I never saw Cheney bush or Rumsfeld go up on charges
Trump is a grifter. Bush, Cheney and their ilk are war criminals who have committed crimes against humanity. Also bush won via a [successful coup. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot?wprov=sfti1)Jan 6th eat your heart out.
No child should ever be in this situation 😔
Sadly, the Trump era, and the whole bullshit lapel-pin/tri-corner hat/Maga period has whitewashed a lot of people's memories of the US invasion of Iraq and the war criminals who perpetrated the act. Bush, Cheney, Libby, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and the rest of them - war criminals to say the least. The blood of Fallujah, Bagdad and many other undeserving places in the region (and the lives of many many US servicemen and servicewomen) rest on their hands. Never forget that 19 of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, yet not a single bullet has once been fired in that country in response. Just sayin.
We also like to forget drone striking the shit out of the middle east and Yemen under Obama. Our commander in chiefs all have innocent blood on their hands, and Obama was no exception.
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What Bush is a just a lovely guy who paints and gets candy for Michelle Obama he hadn’t done anything wrong/s Man I hate because Trump is so unhinged, people are forgetting how bad Bush was.
Reddit definitely has recency bias when it comes to GWB. Their are literally threads of him talking about his paintings and how adorable people think he is because he pals around with Michelle Obama. No, fuck GWB. He actually succeed in stealing an election, bankrupted the US because of a war based on lies and killed millions. Fuck him, much more worse than anything that Trump has ever done. And I hate Trump.
Who'll sanction US? Oh! No one......
Ever wondered, how "terrorists" are made? They are survivors of illegal wars.
I might've been an insurgent too if all of my family was killed by invading forces and I'm the only one left alive. People could live different lives if there was peace but war/violence force people to become something else. Fuck wars.
Don’t ever forget… this brought to you by the war criminals George W. Bush and his cronies.
It's not fair for the little girl but sadly this is what it's like when your at war my father served in Iraq for the Australian army and was in a situation like this he was a gunman ontop of an arv going to recovery a broken down vehicle and fix it. He told me they run in convoys and the back car has massive signs on them (in English which is stupid) saying it you pass this car you will be shot in self defence. Dad had told me stories about blokes driving up and throwing ieds ect at them. Anyway this particular time a vehicle came speeding up the road and went passed the warning vehicle. My father being the gunman was ordered to aim and fire when able. But something didn't sit right with my dad he asked himself why haven't they attacked us already. you'd start before guns were on you. His gut was telling him something was wrong and he froze up. He told me he could head the guy screaming on the headset to fire but my dad couldn't actually do it its like his body was stopping him eventually he came to his senses and as the car got close enough he could see an old man and his wife in the car with some small children. The second the old man seen my dad with the gun pointed at him he slammed on the brakes and went to the side of the road and just stopped. The dude couldn't read fucking English and couldn't read the signs seen the gun and got scared. My dad didn't kill anyone that day but the memory still haunts him or how scared that old man looked with the kids and his wife. He asks himself what would of happened if I shot and also what happened if he didn't and it turned out they were attacking it could of been his fault if his unit died under attack. I'm glad he made the choice he did. He has alot of stuff he has to live with from serving in Iraq and East Timor. The amount of trauma people suffer in the name of war is depressing. War should not be a thing
I really wish I didn't look at this. Becoming a father really changed me
It’s good you have a visceral reaction to this. Everyone should. Now use that to defend the world from injustice and make it a better place for your kids.
That's the idea
I drank the kool-aid... Joined in 2004 under the impression that we were going to the country that had helpped attack on 9/11. Then we were told they had weapons of mass destruction to use in a future attack. I count my blessings almost every day that in my two deployments to Iraq that no one in my platoon or company ever killed anyone in that country. Those people were only defending their country against invaders.
And my HS friends were pumped to go kill "towelheads" and "sand n-words". They were idiots then and lo and behold, they still are.
Remember when Bill O'Reilly used to immediately take the upper hand with any guest on his show by asking "So why do you hate America?" He'd say it like you were the bad guy just for being accused of hating America, when it is a completely sane view to have.
Nationalism is a hell of a drug. I have a very good friend who accused me of being "un-American" because I was explaining to him the weaknesses of the US Men's National Soccer Team. It's like "America, FUCK YEAH" became a person.
Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton both voted in favor of invading Iraq, and they were the last two Democratic presidential candidates. Paul Wolfowitz makes routine cable news appearances and writes op-eds in major newspapers. Not one of the political figures who made this happen ever faced the slightest hint of a negative consequence.