The civilian deaths from yesterday's explosion in a Baghdad marketplace are reverberating through the Western and Arab media. It may very well turn out to be one of ours - it will happen more often than we like during such a military campaign.
But it may be more than coincidental that this explosion happened (a) to kill a large number of civilians, (b) in a public place where civilians were known to congregate, (c) at a time when the crowd was dense, (d) just a few days following another marketplace explosion, and (e) in a Shiite neighborhood - the very segment of the Iraqi population to which we want to appeal. Since the aftereffects are all bad for our side, and our military doesn't target innocents anyway, we know it wasn't deliberate. We also know the Iraqi authorities will kill their own population without hesitation. Reporters say they were urged quickly by the Iraqi government to speed to the scene, as opposed to being escorted to other areas at other times.
So the order of probability would seem to be: (1) a bomb planted by Saddam's security apparatus, (2) a misfired Iraqi anti-aircraft missile, or (3) an errant U.S. munition.
Posted by Alan at March 29, 2003 01:46 PM