The War Is Over, But This Battle Is Still Raging

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Was it a crime or just a tragic mistake? A Spanish judge opted for the former when he issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers alleged to be responsible for firing a 120-mm tank shell into the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on April 8, 2003, killing Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and José Couso from the Spanish network Telecinco. Judge Santiago Pedraz's order charged that the Americans had committed a possible "crime against the international community." He said he issued the warrant because his court had received no response to its request for information about legal proceedings under way in the U.S., nor to its request that a Spanish judicial commission question the soldiers in America.

But unless they vacation in Spain or travel to some country willing to risk Washington's fury for extraditing them, the soldiers will almost certainly not appear before a Spanish court. The U.S. is unlikely to extradite men who were cleared of any wrongdoing by a Pentagon investigation in 2003. In any case, a crime could be hard to prove. When the men's unit moved into Baghdad that day, "they were poorly informed, in a chaotic situation and under fire," says David Zucchino, a Los Angeles Times correspondent embedded with them. In Thunder Run, his book about the taking of Baghdad, he reported that a misconstrued intelligence report led the tank commanders to suspect the camera lenses they saw reflecting the sun from the hotel belonged to Iraqi artillery observers. The Pentagon's 2003 investigation found that the shelling "was fully in line with the Rules of Engagement," a position it reiterated last week.

David Schlesinger, global managing editor of Reuters, notes that Protsyuk was the first of four Reuters employees killed by American fire in Iraq. "We're not out for individuals; these are systemic problems," he says. "We haven't seen a real change in the way incidents are investigated, and it's not acceptable." The U.S. could probably take further measures to reduce the inevitable dangers of reporting from a war zone; exposing soldiers to Spanish justice won't be among them.