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| Middle East |
| The Gaurdian just hates those tactics |
| 2002-04-02 |
That's because it was full of gunnies. "Come out, come out, whoever you are" doesn't work. Then, they seized Mr Nader Mansi, a 22-year-old architecture student from a neighbouring building, asking him to coax the policemen to surrender. Good idea. Use a translator to make sure they understand exactly what to do. That way not so many of them will do something stoopid. 'The officer said he wanted all the Palestinian soldiers to come out of the buildings first, and to take off their boots, their trousers, and their jackets,' Mr Mansi said. Good tactics when any one or all of them could have had boomer belts strapped on them or concealed weapons. Who's in a mood to do a pat-down on them? The policemen's humiliating surrender was evident from a jumble of boots, khaki trousers and insignia discarded in the stairwell of the building. It has the added advantage that they don't look like such big, tough guys in their BVDs. They emerged from the building, spinning around to show they were unarmed, before they were handcuffed, blindfolded, and bundled into an armoured personnel carrier. Yep. That's what you do with POWs, unless you don't feel like giving them a ride, in which case you make them walk. 'The first one who came down was stupid or inexperienced,' Ms Randa al-Zeer, who watched the drama from her second-floor flat, told The Guardian. 'He came downstairs with his gun in his hands above his head. So they shot him.' The army said the dead man was a suspected suicide bomber. Good move. What part about "throw down your arms" didn't he understand? The lady is correct: he was stupid. Another policeman, who was shot in the back during the firefight, was left to bleed to death. Probably they paid attention to him after they'd finished dealing with the others. It's a chance you take, isn't it? Presumably the firefight was upstairs and he had the strength to walk down? Or was he still lying upstairs, breathing his last? The rest of the raid passed without further bloodshed, unlike on Saturday when five uniformed policemen were shot dead in a windowless room of a nearby building, apparently at close range. Think we showed that was a non-atrocity. Maybe Mr Guardian Reporter would like to try some room-to-room fighting? Somebody else who's never done it would probably be happy to critique his technique. After the surrender of the policemen, civilian male residents of the flats stripped, marched down stairs, and surrendered. Then came the women, pulling their shirts up above their waists, residents said. Don't you just hate that? Y'know, if people in the neighborhood didn't run around with those boomer belts on, I'll betcha that would have been unnecessary. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |