The "Baghdad Sniper"

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The "Baghdad Sniper"

This is a post relating to Operation: Iraqi Freedom (I refrain from saying the Iraq War, because Congress has not yet declared war on Iraq, and hasn't declared war in years). There are media broadcasts going around, on many websites like google video and youtube, that showcase a sniper working for the Iraqi Insurgent groups calling himself 'Juba'. It is estimated (and keep in mind this figure comes from 20th century news media, and may be flawed) that he is responsible for the death/wounding of 100 US Soldiers. The videos show that he is a practiced marksman, and capable of accurate fire at a distance. I have watched several videos of him now, and have seen comments written exclaiming that he is a "hero", an "impressive marksman", a "coward", a "dog", and many other colorful bits of commentary. To me, this man is not a coward, but a man who is fighting for his country. Part of me says to put myself in his position- another country has come into my own and I feel I have been encroached upon by my enemy- what do I do? - - - - The answer is simple: Pick up my rifle and kill as many of them as I can. The second part of me is angry. Watching those videos has stirred deep into my soul, and opened a vein of pure, seething, venomous, unadulterated hatred and ferocity that I would love to unleash upon this 'Juba' with nothing but my bare hands.

The most famous video of this sniper is when he is sitting in the back of a car, holding a Dragunov rifle, making a statement to President Bush- (rough translation) "In this gun I have nine bullets. I will kill nine US soldiers. I have a present for President Bush."

I will not post the videos of this sniper, for three reasons:

1) If you want to watch them, you may find them easily through any number of search engines.

2) They are. in a word, disturbing. Many people cannot handle the sight of death, and while I consider myself used to it (to a degree), I find myself taken aback by the sight of US Soldiers being killed. If you decide that you want to see the videos: I warn you that they are the reality of war, and nothing like what you see in Hollywood.

3) Relating to Hollywood is our News-Media. Shortly after watching the sniper videos, I saw a US journalist reporting on the "atrocities" committed by US Marines in Iraq. The show proceeded to show a video of six marines engaged in a firefight with several insurgents in the street. The insurgents lost, and one of the wounded was crawling away when a Marine stood up and fired his SAW--- killing the wounded man. The reporter called the insurgent a 'civilian', and (to quote her) was "shocked at such violence on the part of the US soldiers". Well if I had my way, I would tie this reporter to a chair and FORCE HER to watch the videos of US soldiers being killed. Then MAYBE she will sing a different tune. Our soldiers must feel as though no one is there to support them. The news, the government, and even some of the American people have turned their backs on them. Now people can only talk of what "terrible acts" are committed by US soldiers and are forgetting that they are over there in defense of our country and all inhabitants therein. I for one, say God bless them, and keep up the damn fine work.

I am overly enraged at this point in time, and will end my post here. I am praying for the US, British, and other Allied soldiers in Iraq, and that they are brought home safely. I also pray, that this 'Juba' is captured and imprisoned in a small cell in an undisclosed location with many unfriendly faces around him and---- in a way I can only describe as deeply agonizing---- killed.

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SAS_Relish
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It is very disturbing to watch.

But it gives you a sense of what the soldiers there are living with.

I just hope that in the end Iraq does gain its freedom, then at least these lives were for something truely great.

I watched it on youtube, and I just gotta say there are far to many disturbed people out there who laugh at these videos.

SAS_Vet_Relish

SAS_Owned
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I dono how to reply to this other then I hope we dont pull out till the job is done.

SAS_Webmaster
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That seems the most important thing to me, Owned.
I feel it was an error to move in to Iraq, and now the American soldiers are paying for uncareful policy. However, an immedeate retreat would create a massive power vacuum, as there is no Iraqi government. Not really.

As for being pro or against this Juba character... it's a war and both sides fight for what they think is right. I haven't seen any videos showcasing Iraqis being shot by americans tough. Those videos are a typical example of Jihadi propaganda.

Spidey01
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I must generally agree with Rasa 98%.

Also Merge a look at military history. Those of the enemy that are good at killing your friends you want to see their entrails on your wall. Those of ours that are great at killing the enemy they want to see beheaded.While it saddens me to see an enemy so good at what he does, I know most soldiers would be rooting for him if the tables we're turned.

"Hell, anybody would be crazy to like to go out and kill folks. . . . I never did enjoy killing anybody. It's my job. If I don't get those bastards, then they're going to kill a lot of these kids. That's the way I look at it." - Carlos Hathcock

Taken from Juba's Wikipedia page:

Juba's existence has not been certified by any military source, but video footage purporting to be of this character's attack has been disseminated on the internet. It is said that the same individual has carried out a number of such attacks.

A single cartridge case and a note have been found at the location where the sniper was believed to have been. The message says, in Arabic, "What has been taken in blood cannot be regained except by blood. Baghdad Sniper." These items were found after the sniper attack when buildings were searched by U.S. forces. (reference needed) It is not known whether "Juba" is a single sniper, whether "Juba" represents a copycat phenomenon carried out by multiple individuals, or if "Juba" in fact exists at all.

Rouge
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I'd suggest that the Juba-history is plain propaganda.

From WWII, there were numerous stories about "famous" snipers. And we have all seen "The Days of the Jackall"

If you remember the war on the Balkans starting i 1992, you may remember the siege of Sarajevo, the capital. The main street runs all along the city, which itself is engulfed by mountains. The main strees was named "Sniper's Alley" during the siege, because of the sniping. There were also fairy-tales about one specific sniper that were supposed to be famous. If he has ever existed as one single person? Nobody knows.

But these kinds of stories builds up terror and rage, and suits well into a machinery of propaganda.

So... My opinion would be that the deeds of many men contributes to the deeds claimed to be performed by "Juba".

SAS_sceptical_Rouge

SAS_Owned
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Its funny to hear some peoples take on how to fight terrorists who use gorilla warfare. I mean seriously how are you suposed to end it without getting messy? I mean we had the two nukes for the harbor incedent but that was alot of inocent helpless lives there. But this is a new erra but still I just wonder how the peicefull bunch would deal with someone that can come into your country and kill thereself with a smile just to take you and a dozen others with you and you as a person have nothing to due with the bulshit behind all the politics and religion and BS like that. I just find it amusing. To hear so manny sides to this two sided story.

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Im think that we should put Saddam back in power because Democracy will not become a reality there in the next 20-30 years. If we just left Iraq, G.W.B. will achieve his main goal:
They will all kill eachother, then Bush could go in to take all the oil that he wanted.
Too bad bush is still think of part 3 of the plan....

SAS_Owned
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Ok oil aside how would you of delt with the tradecenters? I know bush is a dumb fuck but clinton didnt take care of that shit when he had a chance eather.

SAS_Owned
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Oh yeah why do the presidents always take all the heat when the people passing all his shit dont even get mentions he never has the power to do anything on his own its takes all three thats how I was told it works anyway. I could be wrong but in that case it wouldnt be a democracy then would it. But then again how are you suposed to choose when all you have to choose from is complete and utter shit stuff that is so far one sidded that eather way makes you cring. I dono and thats why I hate politics.

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Im think that we should put Saddam back in power because Democracy will not become a reality there in the next 20-30 years. If we just left Iraq, G.W.B. will achieve his main goal:
They will all kill eachother, then Bush could go in to take all the oil that he wanted.
Too bad bush is still think of part 3 of the plan....

Typical. If we wanted oil, we wouldn't be in Iraq, we'd be in Saudia Arabia full force or, a more important target, Venezuela for their oil resources as they are the two major suppliers to the US market. The program of Food for Oil mainly supplied European countries, not American. Then again, in recent news we've found one of the world's largest Oil reserves off the Gulf near Texas and is much larger than orginal evaulations had placed.

Is it me or are people forgetting that Post-war Germany after 1945 took decades to restore to a Democratic country due to Nazi insurgents and their rattenkrieg against American and Russian forces trying to rebuild both halfs of Germany. Iraq is no different, it will take decades before any thing, good or bad, will come out of the situation and even a half a century to a century before the historical importance of the battle can be analyzed (pending on classified documents to be released to the public by then).

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Spidey01
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The cold war didn't help ether Smoothies

Rouge
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Typical. If we wanted oil, we wouldn't be in Iraq, we'd be in Saudia Arabia full force or, a more important target, Venezuela for their oil resources as they are the two major suppliers to the US market. ...[/quote]

Eeeeek... Stay away from the North Sea... :smokin:

SAS_Rouge

SAS_Jakub
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Snipers are the cheapest (money wise) and easily the most feared soldiers on the field of battle, they are always shrouded in propaganda, hated by the enemy and made heroes by their own.

I touch on Rouges point here with an example - Vasily Zaitsev. Arguably the face of Russian resistance in Stalingrad.

I believe that this Juba is the 21st century version of Vasha.

However I find it hard that he has gotten away so much. I have done a lot of work on scout/snipers and to know that this bloke hasn’t been handed a bullet back in the head is amazing. I'm sure the Americans alone have a number of counter sniper teams dedicated to this bloke.

Some of the video footage I have seen does prove inconsistent. There are a number of cases where more then 1 round has been fired where little chance of a kill was possible, yet there are clips where only 1round was fire where multiple kills could have been made. True, we don’t see the entire battlespace but this is still a major inconsistency for a sniper. Then there are the inconsistencies behind head and body shots. Even when the target is in total view and at close range, there has been a number of what seems to be in all through, poorly placed rounds. However on the other side of the coin, there have been many vids where body shots were much more safer bets, however headshots were taken.

As for the war. I think sadly that we will never have world peace. As long as brothers and sisters fight, so will nations. We are all cut from different stones and as much as we try, it’s a pain in the butt to get along together.

I don’t have a set view on the war, I sit on a big fence and take in all the information. Sure you can say we went in for oil but of course there are better places to go for that. Sure Saddam was a bad man but the nation functioned a hell of a lot better before we went in. Sure we went in for weapons and there was non there but who’s to say we stopped something worse from happening.

Was the war a mistake? I think we went in a little to hot headed, Bush wanted to keep up the family tradition and kick so Arabic ass. He wanted to make the world a safer place but I think he just went about it in the wrong way. I'm not saying war wasn’t the answer, I'm saying that it shouldn’t have been the immediate answer.

Agree or disagree? I won’t fight you over it, we are all initialed to our own opinion.

Cheers

Sgt Jakub

Train Hard - Fight Easy

SAS_WIZ
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Does anyone remember the old forum rule?

politics are banned

Lt_Col WIZ,  VC, MiD (Ret)

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He's a terrorist, shoot him like one. And btw, a dragunov can't penetrate kevlar from any kind of distance, besides 20 feet. I don't have time to read posts about not going to Iraq either, so skip it. And I don't care to watch americans die. Saddam is going to get a bullet in his head, and the we will never fully pull out of Iraq OR Afgahnistan. So please, just skip it. :tired: Skip the bullshit about oil, IDC! OK! IDC! I dont care if George wants to piss oil when the wars over, all I care is if the terrorists are dead. And you know what else, if we packed up and left, what would bush bashers say? "Oh, we left because we couldn't beat them, we lost the war!" To hell with them. We dropped nukes on Japan to SAVE lives, just think about that for a second. Just straighten the facts out, without war atrocities, war wouldn't end.

I cannot fathom that the Lord has blessed us with logic and rationality and have us forgo their use.

Spidey01
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I never knew that was a rule, but it's a darn good one.

My momma always said never talk about Polictics, it makes enemies.

Personally what annoys me is that the News Media pays more attention to "News worthy" then what actually matters.

A few of our soldiers snap, you hear about it to the cows come home. A few prisoners mistreated oh boy another week or two of same ol'news. Some guy that went missing got beheaded Uh oh, another thing to harp on for the week.

Engineers build a school, or a hospital, or women are given more freedom, or people are no longer taken some where held and torchured for nothing at all. DO you ever here that about that kind of thing on the News? I reckon the Infantry men in Iraq are killing machines at it's finest yet but we didn't sick the dogs of war to tear a land to pieces. A dictator and his supporters was removed by force and reconstruction and operations to regain stablit took place. It's not fair some of the things I see.

I don't give a damn about what people think of the war, our soldiers are there and I'm sure they don't want to be when they could be home with their familes. I'm proud that our forces serve, they could be home having a smoke & a coke but their not. So we may as well support them while they are doing the dirty work.

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Owned: Ok oil aside how would you of delt with the tradecenters? I know bush is a dumb fuck but clinton didnt take care of that shit when he had a chance eather.

First of all, we had Osama Bin Laden cornered, but too bad Bush is an idiot and sent us to Iraq because the IMAGINARY WMD's.

Owned:Oh yeah why do the presidents always take all the heat when the people passing all his shit dont even get mentions he never has the power to do anything on his own its takes all three thats how I was told it works anyway. I could be wrong but in that case it wouldnt be a democracy then would it. But then again how are you suposed to choose when all you have to choose from is complete and utter shit stuff that is so far one sidded that eather way makes you cring.

Second, the U.S. isnt a complete democracy, or else we wopuld spend everyday of our lives voting for all the crap that congress and senate vote for every day.

Smoothies:Iraq is no different, it will take decades before any thing, good or bad, will come out of the situation and even a half a century to a century before the historical importance of the battle can be analyzed (pending on classified documents to be released to the public by then).

Third, Iraq and a lot of other Arab countries are at least 50 years behind the countries with democracy. Also, the Arab countries like Iraq have always been that way for 100's of years; Germany had only been under Nazi control for less than 50 years.

About why we are in Iraq, there are SO many other countries that are under control of people just like Saddam Hussein. Why we went to Iraq instead of other countries under rule of a dictator, there is no explanation.

BTW, at least Saddam kept the Iraqi's under control.

Langley
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I can't believe what I'm reading...

Saddam kept his country under control? With fear!? Of course, Stalin did the same thing. A comment like that is just appalling. Saddam was harboring and funding terrorist organizations, killed millions of civilians and his own brothers. If you have a problem with the way democracy works, try to overthrow it, I'd love to watch and laugh. Stop blaming this on Bush, he did what he had to do, it's up to the Generals now. So you can just stick those oh so cleanly pulled generalizations and stick them back in.

I cannot fathom that the Lord has blessed us with logic and rationality and have us forgo their use.

Merge
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The way it is

Either way, whether you believe Bush was right or a liar-- it doesn't matter now. We're in it to win it, pulling out would destabilize the entire region and ignite a massive conflict that would eventually pull us back in. I don't necessarily agree with the way Bush justified the "War", but I'll stand behind our troops 100% until this is over (and hopefully one day I can stand shoulder to shoulder with them in the process of serving our country).

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SAS_Owned
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We might of had him cornerd but we still let his ass train terrorists to fly plains into the tradecenters. This isnt a military we are fighting it is terrorists that hide behind the comon man and only kill the comon man untill the military steps in and asks them to pic on someone that can fight back. Frankly after 9/11 we should of whent in there weather there were WMD becosue me personally I am not worried about missles I am worried about the people behind the missles. So that inludes Binladen and all his brain washed fallowers that like to kill inocent people. Then hide in a country that is full of inocent people just so the extream peice loving people who think freedom is actually free have a reason to bitch and complain about us going over there and taking care of something that should of never gotten as far as it did. As for having him cornered as much technology that we have we could of pi**ed in his cornflakes the first time he started fu**ing up but we didnt becosue we couldnt get enought people to give the ok to kill the sob in the first place. Hell after 9/11 we still cant get enough people to agree that the terrorist need to die and they tell us all the time that they wana kill use and kill themselvs doing it.

I dono I might be wrong but if they wana kill me they can go rot in hell.

Oh and bush is an idiot he took the job as president. I wouldnt wana deal with a nation as split as this one if I had a lifetime suply of zoloft. too manny people to please and not enough people on the same page when we are at war.

I dono how were suposed to bargin with people that openly threaten to kill people and actually succed at it more then once.

Going after terrorist was about the only thing I actually like about bush but then again I didnt wana sit around and wait for it to happin again.

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Well, ill let you guys argue about this subject since im always wrong. some people have thier point of view and no other; At least see it from other peoples point of view. You arent always right, but im tired of getting my opinions shot down. bwt, noone died when clinton lied.

SAS_Adze
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I agree with what SDsnipe said about Iraq being kept under control, although I'd rather describe it as being kept stable. Stability which has been lost as a result of foreign interference. No one is arguing that he's not a total shit - but I'm of the opinion that it's 'Better the devil you know'. He was, to a certain extent, predictable politically.

Something had to be done, but with the benefit of hindsight, this approach clearly hasn't worked. What makes it worse is that it's impossible to have the perfect resolution because it just doesn't exist. Conflict is a part of innate human behaviour and it's important to realise that you cannot impose your beliefs on everbody. Otherwise this happens.

What made me post more than anything on this subject was the point, with words to the effect of: He is a terrorist and should be shot like one. In my opinion this is absolutely 100% the wrong approach and by doing that you're just as bad as they are. I would expect, on account of this war (and let's be honest, it is a war) being waged by the most civilised countries in existence that we're better than that.

It's when soldiers aren't better than that that they grab the headlines. Unfortunately the fact of the matter is bad news makes good news. Let's not forget also, that soldiers are out fighting on behalf of a man, Mr Bush, who should not even be president as he lost the election.