Well, they've done it again. A US soldier shot a guy who was unarmed,wounded,, and to top it off, was in a mosque- with a TV crew filming the entire event. Now i'm ex forces, so i understand there could be a valid reason for killing the guy, but what sort of shitstorm is gonna erupt in iraq now over this. It was a US Tv crew as well, should they of got rid of the film ? pretend it did'nt happen as it was US troops? Will the US forces clamp down on media coverage?
I'm suprised the "embeded" reporter was allowed to pool this tape and even more suprised they did!! most of the "embeds" are pro war self censoring anything slightly dodgy, is this a sign of some of the reporters becoming slightly disatisfied with what they see or just going for ratings. Yeah the transcript of the event is pretty sick in the head. Aparrently the mosque was "taken" by US troops and the wounded instead of being sent to the back lines for evac and meidcal attention were lined up agains the wall in a back room and just left there. The US Troops then Left and a 2nd group "re-took" the building, found the prisioners, one of whom was "almost dead but just about breathing" THe soldier stands over him and shouts this ones faking it, he's dead, he's faking it he's dead, shoots him, and says he's dead now. Way to go hero. Some who have seen the video clips of this seem to say they understand why he did it so maybe the still's and transcript in good old media fashion were chosen for most sensational impact and i'm getting the wrong impression but at the end of the day all i know is this is out, and a lot of people are going to want blood for it.
Oh and Falluja was never going to be anything BUT a PR disaster, every British regiment and General has said so before this happened and i even belive iircc some tried to talk the Yanks out of it but it happened and they did their job. Now we've flattened a city of 350,000 half of whom were apparently still in the city, many of whom tried to leave with their families but were turned back by US Troops if they were male and of fighting age (15 - 55). We've got a humanitarian disaster on our hands and a lot of very upset Iraqi's that are going to want to turn every city into a new Falluja. Just like the first invasion we are promising to "re-build" falluja and return it to the people. We said the same about everything else that was destroyed on our way in and most of that is still in ruins, why will anyone belive us about Falluja and what are the 150,000 - 300,000 homeless or displaced Iraqi's going to do now. They sure as hell won't be throwing flowers at our troops and answering our questions when we go asking them about those resistance fighters we so want to capture and kill.
the scary part is that there might be not much of a shitstorm In fact Fox might have broadcasted it because much of the audience would say "Let them have it!"????
"there might be no shitstorm !" Try to understand, an American conscience does not matter in this case. The USA has already lost this war because the shitstorm is worldwide, Arab, and especially Iraqi. From this point forward, our superiority in forces and weaponry can never bring Iraqi, Arab, and world opinion around to accepting our invasion, our occupation, or our political offspring in Iraq, because we are overwhelmingly despised as a rogue intervening power in this case. More American firepower and anger can compound this reality, but will never overcome it. It's hard for Americans to comprehend actually being the "bad guys", but that is precisely the role we are playing in this war, and that is precisely the role that world history will assign us in this case.
Yeah that was the best part "he's faking his own death!" *machine gun fire*. And he said it like pretending to die is the most heinous crime anyone has ever committed. Shooting a wounded iraqi in a mosque wasn't the bad part, he was a resistance fighter, an opponent, someone who was shooting at them days earlier and wants them to die, as far as I'm concerned shooting him was the only right thing to do. I just wish we'd see more honesty and none of this pussy footing nor these embarrassingly ridiculous excuses for killing people. "he's faking his own death!!" That just sounded so stupid. He should have said "this one's still alive" *machine gun fire*, that would have been fine. Ofcourse, it's the whining liberals that make them feel like they need excuses, so they aren't completely to blame.
Well, it seems Condoleeza Rice is the new "moderate human face" for the outside world to verbally smooth the edges of Bush policies, after Powell (I believe he was trying to be sincere) could not bear it any longer to play the good cop bad cop game (where Rumsfeld is the Bad Cop naturally).... I must think of what MarcolmX said about the difference housenegroes and fieldnegroes, I believe Condee would feel pretty sick if the master felt sick, but that seems the price for upward mobillity....
For those who find this acceptable, reverse the roles and see if it still seems ok. I tried to be a good soldier. But you can't be a good soldier in a rotten war, sir. - Jason Patric as Koverchenko in the movie The Beast, about a Soviet tank crew in Afghanistan.
Let's keep in mind; - The event took place in a combat environment - The "insurgents" are know for boobie-trapping their wounded/dead - Some of them (by no means all) would love to take a bunch of US soldiers with them - This incident will get MUCH more play and touch off MUCH more hand wringing than this ; “ The video shows a militant firing a pistol into the head of a blindfolded woman wearing an orange jumpsuit, Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said. "She was presumed to be Mrs. Hassan," he told The Associated Press. ” “ On Sunday, U.S. Marines found the mutilated body of what they believe was a Western woman on a street in a Fallujah during the U.S. assault on the insurgent stronghold. Besides Hassan, the only Western woman known held was Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq who was seized last month. ” “ Al-Jazeera reported on Nov. 2 that Hassan's captors had threatened to turn her over to followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. ” http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...iraq_hostage_12 ...and no I don't think it is OK - understandable perhaps - but not OK. And the fact that it is being investigated speaks volumes about the difference between the Islamists and a force that does try to follow some rules. Barkhorn.
The whole damn war is a public relations disaster. Abu Grabe should have caused outrage in the American public towards the Bush administration, but it didn't. Why now should Bush start caring about what other people think?
I really think you are missing the point here. And this may come as a surprise to you but many of the members of the "American public" that I speak to are FAR MORE outraged at the actions of the Islamists and really wonder why these don't get nearly as much media play as Abu Grabe (the perpetrators are being prosecuted BTW). Barkhorn.
You can see it on Democracy Now!s Nov 16 news. 2:15 time-hack for the ghoulish part (for those who only seek that) but the entire newscast is informative.
You think Bush & Co. give a shit about the geneva convention? What's extreme is the lock-down on this story in the media. One of the main purps, Alberto Gonzales might get a position as Attorney General. Gonzales helped pave the legal groundwork that led to the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib. In 2002 he claimed in a memo that that the war on terrorism renders obsolete portions of the Geneva Conventions. What's ridiculous is that some people think Abu Grabe was an isolated incident by low-level soldiers.
I have reached the conclusion that many of the extreme right wingers are psychopaths. Their brains lack the ability to empathize. I remember reading that up to 10 percent of the population would be considered psychopathic. You can't reason with them. They can only see and understand their own viewpoints which is often paranoid and dominated by fear. Killing someone is a first choice, not a last choice. There is no impact of the concept of killing a defenseless, wounded prisoner. It simply doesn't register within their brains if it happens to someone else. It can only have an impact if it happens to them. Real communication is next to impossible with a psychopath.
I'd point out that a booby-trapped insurgent is booby-trapped whether dead or alive, and ask what the death of the woman has to do with it, except that Jagger's right.
Ok, barkhorn, so they should have put on the wounded insurgant an orange jumpsuit before shooting him in the head to get really even Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
What I dont understand is that you guys keep talking about the insurgent being "booby trapped"....does that mean that if you move his body he would detonate some explosive? if so then why would killing him make a difference he would still explode later right? or does that mean he had some secret button to push when US soldiers got close enough to detonate some bomb? because he could have already of done that if he wanted to right?
