More Whacky US Soldier Antics

[Mr Manifesto]

I just bet the Iraqis are glad they've been liberated by those we're-here-to-give-y'all-freedom Yankees.

With friends like these

An hour later, family members recalled, the soldiers led a hooded man from the house and told the family they were arresting Bawi. Only after the soldiers left with what appeared to be a prisoner did Bawi's brother find his bloodied body, shot five times and stuffed behind a refrigerator underneath a pile of mattresses.

So, what do you have to do, exactly, to get into the US army? Figure out which end you have to wipe one time out of three?

 

[Bottle or the Gun]

Well, it beats the Iraqi military entrance exam of knowing how to turn on the prison wood chipper.

 

[chrisberez]

Well, it beats the Iraqi military entrance exam of knowing how to turn on the prison wood chipper.

Oh, so two wrongs make a right now?

When did this happen? Did I miss a meeting?

 

[LTC8K6]

Well, the soldiers claim that he tried to grab one of their weapons.

That would explain shooting him, but not the rest.

The OP is a bit misleading, imo.

I wonder why there is an automatic belief of either side of the story?

 

[crimresearch]

Hey, the massacre of thousands of innocents at Jenin turned out to be true and unimpeacheble, the British soldier's torture photos turned out to be authenticated beyond refutation, the US soldier raping children and killing parents, then making the Iraqi child hold up a sign saying so turned out to be unassailable fact, and the Palestinian child strapped to the Iraeli force's vehicle as a shield agaiinst bullets was proven to be a case of rock solid reporting.

After so many years of journalistic infallibility and integrity, there just isn't any room for skepticism in regards to media reports such as this current one.

 

[Bottle or the Gun]

Oh, so two wrongs make a right now?

When did this happen? Did I miss a meeting?

You may not have missed a meeting, but I think you missed the call for brains when they were handing them out. There is a big difference between what is policy of the government, and the act of an undisciplined individual.

I'm tired of the inequity in the media coverage. Where is the outrage of years of institutionalized torture and abuse their government inflicted on them?

I hope we pull completely out of Iraq at the changeover and see what happens then. Maybe the actions of the occasional idiot soldier who squeeked past the evals and can't apply simple common sense won't seem to be all that bad against what will take our place.

If you had to make a choice, which system would you rather live under?

>>"While I was a prisoner of war, US soldiers made me wear womens' undergarments."

>>"While I was at work, my younger brother was taken out of school by police because a neighbor reported I was against Sadamm. I never saw him again."

We should go after Osama and anyone else that supports him like we should of in the first place.

 

[chrisberez]

So our government is sanctioning it officially, but they don't appear to be doing much about it either. Obviously we'll see more from whatever reports the pentagon allows to be released, but what was said to be the actions of only a 'few idiot soldiers' continues to grow. War crimes are war crimes. Just because Sadam's government opening sanctioned torture, that excuses the actions of these soldiers? The difference is that the U.S. holds itself up as the moral example, the country that doesn't let this stuff happen. And the actions of a 'few soldiers', which the red cross and Amnesty International have been investigating and for two years were activly supressed by the military until footage was leaked to the media. Further, now we have news that Rumsfeld ordered this particular prisoner to be kept secret from the red cross- another violation of the geneva convention.

I hope we pull completely out of Iraq at the changeover and see what happens then. Maybe the actions of the occasional idiot soldier who squeeked past the evals and can't apply simple common sense won't seem to be all that bad against what will take our place.

Maybe, or maybe not. The question still remains whether it was ever our war to fight in the first place. If the Iraqis want us out, then they want us out. But adapting a "boys will be boys" attitude and saying that "oh, well, what they did was worse" doesn't excuse anything our soldiers do. Nor should just a 'few soldiers' who did these things be made to take the fall if it turns out their actions were sanctioned by their superiors.

There is a big difference between what is policy of the government, and the act of an undisciplined individual.

This is true, but it also matters how our government responds. Bush may not have approved these actions himself, but he is the commander-in-cheif, and as such, it falls on him to see how far up the chain of command this goes and to undertake disiplinary actions.

 

[Bottle or the Gun]

Yes, war crime is war crime. I'm not condoning or advocating it, it just seems blown out of proportion. I think our percentage of misconduct is very, very far below that of the Iraqi forces. And again, it is not US policy. One of the most disturbing things I heard in the last few days was the news saying some memo floated around saying it was 'legal' to violate the Geneva Convention. I'm not happy that some in the US services are violating it.

One of the things I always believed in and treated as inviolate while I was in the service was the Rules of Engagement and the Geneva Convention. The conduct it required servicemembers to follow separated us (and made us better than) from the regimes that would beat you and your family to death for 'speaking like a traitor'.

 

[evildave]

Well, it beats the Iraqi military entrance exam of knowing how to turn on the prison wood chipper.

You know, they never did find a single bloody wood chipper.

We have photographs of our attrocities.

And it looks like they're continuing.

Good job with that training and discipline, folks!

 

[Bjorn]

You know, they never did find a single bloody wood chipper.

I've been wondering about that one. Is it true that they never found it? Was it 'pulling babies out of incubators' once again? Anyone?

 

[Grammatron]

You know, they never did find a single bloody wood chipper.

We have photographs of our attrocities.

And it looks like they're continuing.

Good job with that training and discipline, folks!

Ignorance is bliss.

From History Channel to A&E there have been more than plenty videos and photos of torture and genocide.

If you ever need to see it you can always buy this episode.

http://www.aetv.com/global/listings/series_showcase.jsp?NetwCode=AEN&EGrpType=Series&Id=10635969

 

[chrisberez]

Yes, war crime is war crime. I'm not condoning or advocating it, it just seems blown out of proportion. I think our percentage of misconduct is very, very far below that of the Iraqi forces. And again, it is not US policy. One of the most disturbing things I heard in the last few days was the news saying some memo floated around saying it was 'legal' to violate the Geneva Convention. I'm not happy that some in the US services are violating it.

One of the things I always believed in and treated as inviolate while I was in the service was the Rules of Engagement and the Geneva Convention. The conduct it required servicemembers to follow separated us (and made us better than) from the regimes that would beat you and your family to death for 'speaking like a traitor'.

OK, fair enough. In this case then I agree with you. I'm still not sure that this has been blown out of proportion. I think the reason it continues to be such a big deal is that the majority of Americans, and the rest of the world as well, were truly surprised. One hears of such things in China and doesn't bat in eye, but America holds itself to different standards. Most people really didn't expect this.

And yes you are right that compared to what Saddam did, this really isn't that bad. But these actions are still very wrong and need to be punished, that's all I'm saying.

Something I forgot to mention last time- the worst thing about this is how badly it undermines our position and endangers the 95% of our troops out there who ARE doing the right thing. It's the good American/allied soldiers/civillian contractors who will bear the brunt of this anger. The perpetrators will be in jail, yes, but in an American jail- which is better then having you head sawed off by terrorists.

 

[evildave]

Yes, I remember the Iraqi gas attacks.

Does that mean that it's OK for US troops to round people up and torture them? To (as in this case) torture, kill them and try to conceal what they have done?

What else have they successfully concealed?

What we're doing is on a par with the gas attacks, especially as long as the people who have encouraged this behavior are getting away with it.


No wood chippers, though. You'd think that they'd find at least one of the things and parade it across the media, with even more colorful stories of people being fed in alive, begging for mercy than when they spread this rumor.

I think that they needed something "fresh" to outrage people, so they wouldn't *think*. The gassings were old history by then. Everyone had seen the dead babies and bloated carcasses. Of course, the propaganda and lying doesn't help the government's case. It basically makes it less likely that what truth they tell would not be believed.

 

[gnome]

Which outrages me more, a serial killer in my county knocking off dozens of people, or someone in my own family unfairly pounding someone?

Just because they're not as bad as the serial killer doesn't change the fact that I feel intense outrage that evil came from my own house...

 

[Mr Manifesto]

Yes, war crime is war crime. I'm not condoning or advocating it, it just seems blown out of proportion. I think our percentage of misconduct is very, very far below that of the Iraqi forces. And again, it is not US policy. One of the most disturbing things I heard in the last few days was the news saying some memo floated around saying it was 'legal' to violate the Geneva Convention. I'm not happy that some in the US services are violating it.

One of the things I always believed in and treated as inviolate while I was in the service was the Rules of Engagement and the Geneva Convention. The conduct it required servicemembers to follow separated us (and made us better than) from the regimes that would beat you and your family to death for 'speaking like a traitor'.

And that's my point. We are increasingly seeing an incompetant military. Someone should be taken to task for turning the US military into the embarassment it is at the moment. There are too many 'undisciplined individuals' for my liking.

 

[evildave]

Which outrages me more, a serial killer in my county knocking off dozens of people, or someone in my own family unfairly pounding someone?

Just because they're not as bad as the serial killer doesn't change the fact that I feel intense outrage that evil came from my own house...

That's eloquently put, and matches my feelings precisely. Thank you, gnome!

Frankly, I have higher expectations for my own government and its military than I have for terrorists and thugs.

Unfortunately, my own government's own military are behaving like a bunch of terrorists and thugs.

 

[zakur]

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_9069.shtml

 

[Ziggurat]

What we're doing is on a par with the gas attacks, especially as long as the people who have encouraged this behavior are getting away with it.

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of Kurds Saddam killed.

No wood chippers, though. You'd think that they'd find at least one of the things and parade it across the media, with even more colorful stories of people being fed in alive, begging for mercy than when they spread this rumor.

I frankly never heard this "rumor". I have no idea if it happened, I have no idea if anyone actually claimed it happened (using it as a metaphor doesn't count), and I frankly don't care. Because we KNOW he had the ears cut off of hundreds of soldiers for deserting. We KNOW he had people's limbs amputated as punishment (recall the recent case of seven Iraqi businessmen who were given prosthetic limbs in the US recently - Saddam had their amputations videotaped, and they are far from extraordinary in that regard). And perhaps most importantly, we KNOW Saddam created mass graves and filled them with victims. That's enough, and I will never regret the US bringing his reign of terror to an end. I know who the true villains in all this are (hint: it's not Bush), and I'm not going to take my eye off the ball to satisfy anyone else's self-indulgent sense of moral outrage.

 

[evildave]

Hundreds of thousands? Boy, talk about exaggerating....

http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/19675.htm

Human Rights Watch estimates that Saddam's 1987-1988 campaign of terror against the Kurds killed at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds. The Iraqi regime used chemical agents to include mustard gas and nerve agents in attacks against at least 40 Kurdish villages between 1987-1988. The largest was the attack on Halabja which resulted in approximately 5,000 deaths. o 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed during the campaign of terror.

So, *MAYBE* a hundred thousand. Though one would be too many.

The Baath regime launched 39 separate gas attacks against the Kurds, many of them targeting villages far from the Iran-Iraq border. Beginning at night on Thursday, March 16, and extending into Friday, March 17, 1988, the city of Halabja (population 70,000), was bombarded with twenty chemical and cluster bombs. Photographs show dead children in the street with lunch pails. An estimated 5,000 persons died. Although some analysts say the gas used was hydrogen cyanide (not in Iraq's arsenal), others have suggested it might have been sarin, VX, and tabun. Iraq is known to have these agents. (Iran is not known to have hydrogen cyanide, in any case).

http://hnn.us/articles/862.html

Over the past six months President Bush has repeatedly reminded the public that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people. What he has neglected to mention is that at the time Saddam did so the United States did nothing to stop him. Indeed, as Samantha Power makes clear in an account in her new book, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, the United States refused even to condemn the killing of civilians.

(Side note: I found this interesting...)
Turkey's killed 23,000 Kurds since 1987, according to Turkey.

BTW, Turkey has a history of incursions into Iraq to chase these so-called terrorists. 23,400 and all 'terrorists'? Hmm. Who'd have thought that everyone they killed would be a 'terrorist'. A bit telling when you consider the U.S. government *claims* all the thousands of people the U.S. has imprisoned NOW (and are busy torturing) are 'terrorists'.

 

[Ziggurat]

Hundreds of thousands? Boy, talk about exaggerating....

http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/19675.htm


So, *MAYBE* a hundred thousand. Though one would be too many.

Ah yes, I didn't recall the figures correctly. But seeing as how Saddam didn't restrict his killing to those years alone, I'd venture that 100,000 is not a bad estimate. And 7yes, I was a little too flippant: I did not mean to say that this figure was all (or even mostly) due to chemical weapons, rather that arguing that what we did is as bad as what Saddam did has no basis in any rational moral analysis. The fact that these Kurds died by conventional weapons does not somehow absolve Saddam of any guilt.

(Side note: I found this interesting...)
Turkey's killed 23,000 Kurds since 1987, according to Turkey.

I hear this kind of argument a lot (the idea that we're so hypocritical because some other country besides Iraq did something bad and we didn't invade them). But it's only used as some sort of vague implier that since we did something wrong in the past (though it's never specified exactly what we should have done), invading Iraq was therefore wrong. But of course, there's no real line of logic to connect these things, either given or even implied. It's an intellectual ruse, a slight-of-mind, nothing more. I've seen it time and again, with countless other examples of how bad we supposedly are, but I remain unimpressed by the lack of any coherent argument about what we should be dong now.

A bit telling when you consider the U.S. government *claims* all the thousands of people the U.S. has imprisoned NOW (and are busy torturing) are 'terrorists'.

Actually, that's not at all what the US gov't is claiming. They're mostly classified as enemy combatants, a term which includes terrorists but also Taliban soldiers. And back to the whole slight-of-mind thing you're playing, you say that this is "telling", but you don't say WHAT it's telling. That implies something nefarious or corrupt, but of course what exactly this tells us is left unsaid, so that it does not need to be defended.