This Happened to Me
Day to Day in Iraq - NYT Web Journal:
"This Happened to Me
A cowboy on his steel horse shot at me.
The four days of the Eid al-Adha holiday were calm and peaceful – no explosions, no roadside bombs, no clashes in the streets. But all that changed on Saturday, January 14th, the first day after the holiday.
I was driving home from my clinic around 5:15 p.m., the time I usually return home, because it's not safe to be out past sunset. I was 50 meters away from my house – which is located on a service road parallel to a main street. The street and the service road are separated by a curb two meters wide.
While I was driving slowly on the service road, an American patrol, which consisted of three armored-car Strykers, passed by on the main street, moving in the same direction as I was. When the first Stryker passed me, a soldier riding on top fired two shots in my direction. One bullet came in through the half-opened driver's window and hit the window of the opposite door, smashing it to pieces. Thank God, somehow it missed me.
I stopped the car and got out, thinking that the soldiers might stop and explain why they had shot at me. But they didn't. They kept on driving. There were no other people in the vicinity, except a neighbor at a shop nearby, who saw the whole thing. The next morning I went to replace the broken window. Nearly every person I met in the repair shop had a similar tale to tell.
I wonder now, if the shot had had killed me, how would the troops have explained it? Would I have become a terrorist killed while trying to explode himself near an American patrol? Or perhaps I would only be collateral damage, killed while soldiers chased a terrorist? Or maybe a terrorist had killed me, and the Americans chased him, though he managed to escape.
I will leave you to decide. In the chaos of this occupation, innocents are killed by all sides. But don’t we have the right to hate the people who are now occupying our country. Shall we celebrate the freedom and democracy brought to us by the occupation in spite of the perils our citizens face?
Questions need answers. Who will answer them?"
posted by Truth teller at 11:28 AM
7 Comments:
thank you for having this blog. i hope that you are able to continue it for a long time.
salam
2/09/2006 03:09:00 PM
so sorry to hear you were shot at, and I am very glad they missed.
I have no answers to your questions, but I think you have the right to hate the foreigners in your country who shot at you for no reason.
May God forgive them.
2/11/2006 11:11:00 PM
You should report incidents like this to the local base or if to a government official.
2/12/2006 08:33:00 PM
And are you sure "the cowboy on the steel horse" shot at you. Or some misquided tool of the mujadeen shooting wildly past them, hitting your vehicle instead.
You should have reported as the other anonymous writer said...not waiting until you got a couple of bucks from the NYT, or Al Jazeera West as we know it here. If you were correct as to who fired, the young man might have been disciplined, preventing further incidents that may be more serious. Or if my hypothesis was correct, another random killer might be removed from your streets, decreasing the need for those patrols you so resent.
Good luck.
2/20/2006 07:08:00 PM
I am trying to determine how a shot from the height of the soldier could have hit the passenger side window from the situation you describe. I would guess the standing soldier would be about the same height as a person standing in a pickup truck bed. It would be impossible for him to see or shoot the window from that position. He would barely be able to see to the arm rest position.
Have you considered that the shot could have come from the sidewalk and the soldier you saw aiming was distracted by the sound of the shot? Is it possible you have not considered that more logical conclusion?
2/25/2006 02:09:00 PM
The reason you got shot at was because you were too close to the American convoy. There is a large threat of car bombs out there on the street, and we take every precaution to ensure that our military vehicles are not easy targets. Everyone in Mosul knows to stay away from US and Iraqi military vehicles. If that means that you drive a little more carefully, then so be it. I have never seen worse drivers than in Iraq. They do not stop at intersections, nor do they use their mirrors, or even look out their side windows for other vehicles. The vast majority of people who do get shot for getting close to military vehicles do so because they are not paying attention. PAY ATTENTION!
3/27/2006 07:02:00 AM
jams
:I have never seen worse drivers than in Iraq."
I agree with you, we suffer a lot from those drivers. But in the past they were much better, most of the drivers today have no driving license, they learn driving by themselves in the new and cheep cars imported to Iraq racently.
"The vast majority of people who do get shot for getting close to military vehicles do so because they are not paying attention."
I agree with you again, but a warning shot is enough, not necessorly kill every ignorant driver.
"The reason you got shot at was because you were too close to the American convoy."
I don't agree with you this time. I was in different road and infront of them, they pass parallel to me and shot at me. that mean I was not too close, if they want to warn me or to avoid me, it was very simple for them.
3/27/2006 08:17:00 AM
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