A Setup

The BBC provided me with an additional reason to believe that the six British soldiers were killed by treachery, and not by an angry crowd. Their own picture. In an article titled Eyewitness: Walls riddled with bullets, BBC correspondent Clive Myrie says: "Yesterday hundreds of people protested in front of the police station," he told me. "The soldiers fired shots and the people fired back. They then attacked the building."  The local people say four Iraqis were killed and four were injured. By all accounts the attack on the police station was frenzied. Scores of people armed to the teeth flooded in and the British military policemen taking cover in the desolate building didn't stand a chance. Four of them died in a small room at the station and two more were killed outside in the yard.

Bullshit. Look at the BBC photo below showing the "bullet-riddled" police station building. The marks on the building were made by one or two bursts of assault rifle fire, perhaps 15 rounds total. It isn't aimed fire. The shots are not clustered around windows. The lightbulb near the water pipe isn't even scratched. If hundreds of frenzied armed men were firing at a building, it would really would be "riddled".

Some other things that may occur to you, dear reader, which will never occur to a BBC reporter are:

1. why British MPs should fire at a crowd and not call for reinforcements;
2. why no Iraqi policemen were injured in the attack;
3. why an ambush on a UK Parachute Regiment patrol involving RPGs and heavy machineguns (try moving those around secretly) occurred in the same town at the same time. Frenzied crowds sure do get around.

By the way, the British Army's version, which is given one line in the BBC account is:  "The British authorities say it was an unprovoked attack by the crowd - cold-blooded murder." You decide.