What the fuck?

Will this turn the public against the troops?

Seriously, these two incidents appear to be only the tip of the iceberg. If more shit starts oozing out, it could fracture the anti-war movement, which would play out very loudly in media.

Does anyone here remember the Vietnam era? (I don't) What effect did My Lai have on the protestors and public opnion?

Someone should tell the president about this.

At what point can we seriously consider charging Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld with war crimes?

Well, just make noises about 'bad apples' etc no matter how often the US military gets caught murdering civilans. Talk loudly about 'investigations'.

And us non US people will compare with how truthful the US government was about torture,renditions,wmds, war crimes etc etc. And wonder why the US military should be given an inch of credit when they're trying to avoid accusations of war crimes.

the liberal BBC says a video they got from terrorists is "believed" to be accurate. how about we wait for some actual evidence? the marine corps report should be done within weeks. is waiting for that too long, or do you lefties want to start calling americans baby killers early?

At what point can we seriously consider charging Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld with war crimes?

Posted by: Amit Joshi on June 1, 2006 at 7:55 PM

Do it any goddam time you like and the rest of the world will be cheering you on. Alternatively, just impeach the little imbecile. Just make sure you impeach Cheney too. You don't want to just replace an incompetent fascist with a competent fascist.

The BBC has a videotape that seems to confirm another American massacre of civilians in Iraq, this time in the town of Ishaqi, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. It comes from a "hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces,"

You probably don't realize this but it's really easy to create fake videos and images by using Photoshop. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised liberals would so easily believe terrorists saying the worst about American troops.

We desperately need to do the right thing.

No, no, no! All the real patriots like Malkin, Hindrocket, and theri ilk will be the first to tell you: We must commit many, many more atrocities. The only possible way to make the people of the Middle East love us is to kill, torture, and maim as many of their friends and relatives as possible.

Just ask InstaCracker--He'll explain to you how we're just not massacring enough brown people.

the liberal BBC says a video they got from terrorists is "believed" to be accurate. how about we wait for some actual evidence? the marine corps report should be done within weeks. is waiting for that too long, or do you lefties want to start calling americans baby killers early?

Sure, waiting seems fair. Then, when the truth comes out in the report, I'll expect your swift condemnation of these isolated incidents. Furthermore, I would hope they would provide more depth to your view when you next come upon a similar situation in the future, or it would increase your skepticism. But, it and you won't.

You probably don't realize this but it's really easy to create fake videos and images by using Photoshop. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised liberals would so easily believe terrorists saying the worst about American troops.

Evidence of evolutionism at its finest.

plum >"...Seriously, these two incidents appear to be only the tip of the iceberg. If more shit starts oozing out..."

In a real war, as opposed to the movie/television variety, this sort of stuff happens regularly & so, yes, there is plenty more "shit" to come out & there ALWAYS IS.

Of course it is, as always, unacceptable to focus, in polite company, on the equally barbaric behaviors of the Shia/Sunni death/IED squads that are destroying Iraqi society while claiming to fight the infidel invaders

And on a side note :

Once you have actually worn the uniform and gone through the experience American Hawk, I might actually give you some credibility but for now you are just bullshit

"Every once in a while, you've got to do something hard, do something you're not comfortable with. A person needs a gut check." - Corporal Chad Ritchie, U.S.M.C.

Alternatively, just impeach the little imbecile. Just make sure you impeach Cheney too. You don't want to just replace an incompetent fascist with a competent fascist.

Unfortunately, it's imbeciles and incompetents all the way down...

This sort of shit is par for course when it comes to the political garbage that spews itself out of right wing radio. When you have comments like Michael Savage claiming that you need racist stereotypes in order to hate the enemy, when other clost homosexual-conservatives whine about the "wussification" of US troops, you can then see how this childish and insecure way of thinking leads to the degrading of our political discourse.

Don't you "people" have no shame? Non-chalantly passing over the massacre of civilians reveals your loss of humanity, and puts a spotlight on your failings as a person, and as a movement.

Yet you think actions like this are strength, or just a "frat-boy" steaming off session (as in Abu Ghraib). Cowards, what you see as a weakness on the part of the moral superiors is just the strength of human dignity and morality. It is you who are immoral.

Come this fall, here is hoping some justice is in order.

What was all that nonsense about Iraq not being Vietnam?

...or do you lefties want to start calling americans baby killers early?

I don't want to call any of our troops baby killers, but more importantly I don't want any of them to be baby killers.

Waiting for the investigations and their conclusions is prudent. One thing that should be considered in the interim, is the strain and stress of this war has put our troops in for no good reason. Our Army is very nearly broken and we're sending soldiers who previously would have been deemed too psychologically damaged for line duty back into the line of fire.

I lay any and all atrocities of this kind at the feet of GWB (well, Rumsfeld too).

And just for clarification, I reserve honor for those who fight with honor, and I don't want innocent people killed on both sides. Yes, it is eventual in war, but when it happens you punish out of principle.

The military can be an honorable tradition, it is situations like this that really hurt our military, not the practice of free speech.

Personally, I'll take Paul Hackett at his word that: while it IS possible that American Troops just "snapped" in these cases, they represent a very tiny fraction of all US troops, and the wrongdoers in these cases will be punished by the UCMJ.

Opine all you want about the culpability of superiors, or of the architects of the war. It ain't ever gonna happen.

The sick part of it is going back to 2002-2003 time frame, and remembering talking (on blogs) to loudmouth wingnuts who claimed to have joined up for the purpose of "going over there and getting some payback for 9/11." - I sincerely hope that boot-camp filtered that shit out of who we sent over there. At least in the Marines, I understand there's extensive ethical training. But who knows what the polices are under Rumsfeld.

In the end - this will probably be a much welcomed excuse for the Right to call for a withdrawl, so in the future, they can blame Liberals for calling the troops baby-killers, and forcing the withdrawl, bringing about the inevitable genocide of Iraqi Sunnis. Just as Liberals today, are blamed for the Killing Fields of Cambodia - we will be blamed for the Sunni Genocide in Iraq. Mark my words. These incidents will be the catalyst that make it happen.

Paul Hacket also pointed out that Murtha has wrongly named a marine officer who was removed from command, and implied he was part of the Haditha massacre, when in fact, he had nothing at all to do with it, and was relieved for completely unrelated reasons (his troops appeared on a German TV interview using profanity).

This all hangs on the head of aWol like a very dead fish. If he had paid more attention while in the TANG, he may have known more about war and its consequences.

"You probably don't realize this but it's really easy to create fake videos and images by using Photoshop."

You mean we really didn't paint those schools?

Wingnut hawk writes: "...how about we wait for some actual evidence?..."

Sure. Who's doing the investigating? And who will decide when it's done? What will be actually published?

And why is the Haditha investigation supposed to end only after there was a huge outcry from the left?

And what happens when damaged men and women like this return to the US and are thrown back, with minimal treatment, into a society which is, not incidentally, full of guns?

These people have been reduced to the stage where they can commit crimes such as this, and in six months time they'll be dumped into US society to fend for themselves.

The people who did this will be walking around your suburban streets. Wanna bet that they'll be able to forget - to just 'switch it off'?

Washington Sniper.

Oklahoma City.

At least in the Marines, I understand there's extensive ethical training. But who knows what the polices are under Rumsfeld. Posted by: Osama_Been_Forgotten

As a matter of fact, the ethical training for this kind of thing is spotty at best. I have a friend who teaches just this at the Army War College. His students are mostly senior officers. Very little of this gets down to the enlisted ranks. I had an exchange with this friend after the Haditha killings were reported. I'd sent him LTC Bateman's most recent post at Altercations.

Very interesting, thanks.

I've had to sit through the Army's annual "ethics training" that he mentions, and it's as bad as he says.

We definitely need officers like him, questioning their troops to elicit their assumptions (which obviously are sometimes wildly wrong), explaining what they should do in situations like the hypothetical one he described, and running them through realistic exercises, ideally so they come to understand what the right thing to do feels like (in the words of a wise colonel I heard in the fall of 2003).

I talk with my students every year about the My Lai massacre and what it says about human nature, a spectrum of likely behaviors, organizational and peer pressures etc.

"You probably don't realize this but it's really easy to create fake videos and images by using Photoshop."

You mean Bush didn't really visit Iraq a couple Thanksgivings back?

Freedom, Freedom, Kevin hates America, You are all surrender monkeys.

There. Kevin, aren't you humilated enough?

Take any good kid, any young American, and put him in that situation--a CIC who has no plan to end (much less win) a war, a war that shouldn't have been started, irrational hatred from an enemy that blends in with the innocent, irrational sporadic violence, toxic patriotism, fear, fatigue--then give him combat training, tell him he is a Hero and that killing these terrorists is a-okay, put powerful weapons in his hands--and he could behave exactly the same.

I heard a Seymour Hersh lecture recently in which he described meeting the mother of one of My Lai massacre soldiers. "I sent you a good boy," she said, "and the government sent me back a murderer."

Oh, but were all the "good deeds" of the insurgency and Al Qaeda and the Taliban rendered asunder by their ethical "mistakes" (the head choppings, strapping bombs onto the mentally challenged, killing of children receiving candy, assassinating elementary school teachers in front of their students, drilling holes in captives with power tools prior to shooting them, etc.)

This war is being fought in the news even more than the last. Ethical lapses can bring the whole house of cards down. For us, that is. Not for the enemy. He can just keep head chopping and child bombing.

And btw, "At the risk of repeating the obvious, this is a very delicate situation. We desperately need to do the right thing."

And what is the right thing??

Robert Kennedy Jr. is publishing an article in Rolling Stone in which he makes the case that the election of 2004 was stolen by the Republicans.

What if that were true? What would happen next? Could we toss Bushco in its vicious entirety out the door--just pack the lot of them off to the War Crimes courts in Europe?

We lost this war shortly after it started.

This is just the eventual outcome. Of course there are more examples of atrocity. There seems to be plenty to go around.

America is too damn lazy to do much about it though. They would rather view their military as saintly heroes than the tool of political will that they are.

These kids in the Marines are tools, and tools can be used to do great works or great destruction.

Fish rot from the head. This goes back directly to the complete incompetence of GWB and his pack of cronies.

They of course will never be held to account though. And when we leave Iraq, it will be blamed on the liberals who didn't "support" our troops.

You watch.

Oh, but were all the "good deeds" of the insurgency and Al Qaeda and the Taliban rendered asunder by their ethical "mistakes" (the head choppings, strapping bombs onto the mentally challenged, killing of children receiving candy, assassinating elementary school teachers in front of their students, drilling holes in captives with power tools prior to shooting them, etc.)

Gee, you sound just like the 'liberal' media.

BTW, this is textbook moral relativism: "Yeah, but they are worse than us!" A morally reprehensible act is morally reprehensible, no matter who does it.

You sound like a postmodernist, Mike.

Oh, and since when did being against this war equate with being pro-terrorism? Of course the insurgency is committing crimes. They are fighting to win, in an assymetrical war, and they are using the tactics of propaganda and terror to do so.

You are surprised?

If you want to think of yourself (and your country) as being better than they are, morally speaking, you need to be better than they are, morally speaking.

Morality is absolute, Mike. Isn't that the whole conservative creed?

This war is being fought in the news even more than the last. Ethical lapses can bring the whole house of cards down. For us, that is. Not for the enemy. He can just keep head chopping and child bombing.

Well duh.

Mike has an epiphany and discovers one of the basic truisms of insurgency. It's all political - military 'victories' mean nothing. America could win every battle and encounter and still, inevitably, lose this war.

Funny, but that's why a lot of us were against it to begin with...

Red State Mike: "This war is being fought in the news even more than the last. Ethical lapses can bring the whole house of cards down. For us, that is. Not for the enemy. He can just keep head chopping and child bombing."

But that is why the enemy is the bad guy. We are trying to be the good guys here--the ones that people cheer for. We don't want to be vicious enemy #2. This is not about the news media. It is not about marketing communications. It is about reality, about what we are doing. This is about Americans being vicious bastards no different from the enemy in the eyes of the Iraqis.

But I don't blame the American soldiers though. Put any one of us in their shoes, and we might do the same. The blame goes straight to the TANG-shirking CIC who treats war like a political game.

The BBC's record on deciding if photos are real

For every family killed in the American bombing I get a pudding cup. I have 7 pudding cups!!! Thank you Uncle Sam!!"

Even if the BBC decides the pictures are fake, the damage to our reputation in Iraq will be real.

Foxnews confuses the BBC with the Daily Mirror.

Yeah its well past time to start holding military and civilian leadership responsible for their criminal mismanagement. Long past time.

Atrocities are the norm in any war. War is an atrocity. Innocent people are killed. Good boys and girls are turned into murderers. The social fabric is always frayed. As insurgencies drag on all troops become more and more fatigued both physically and emotionally. As they lose more and more of their friends to an enemy that blends in with the civilians, troops become more and more frustrated. Occasionally one or more of our soldiers snap. Innocent civilians die and the honorable soldier become a murderer. That seems to be what happened in Haditha. I haven't heard enough about Ishaqi, but I wouldn't be shocked to find Americans killed Iraqi civilians. Why would anyone?

War is organized murder. It isn't just another political tool. It seems the people in Washington forgot that simple truth or, if they didn't forget, they decided to ignore it. Don't blame the troops. Blame the people who put the troops in an impossible position.

If the United States abided by international law, George W. Bush could be tried as a war criminal, just like Slobodan Milosevic was, for war crimes committed by troops under his command. But since the GOP has demonstrated their contempt for international law time and time again, such as when the World Court found the U.S. guilty of war crimes in Nicaragua, I don’t expect the right-wing American fascists to change now. The downward spiral continues under this sick Administration….

Reason number (n) to fire Rumsfeld. If a President with a normal level of involvement in the goings-on in his administration was not informed immediately of this, how many seconds would elapse before heads started to roll?

The lack of accountability in this administration boggles the mind.

A few bad apples can do massive harm when they are in the White House.

You mean Bush didn't really visit Iraq a couple Thanksgivings back?

Not only that, but he's not really the president. Pass it on.

Ethical lapses can bring the whole house of cards down.

Interesting choice of words there, Mr Freud.

You are right wombat. Bush learned about Haditha from a reporter. You would think that somebody should have given him a heads up. That somebody should have been Rummy. This is not the first time Bush has been bushwacked by Rummy's failure to keep the President informed of important information. Any other President would have fired Rumsfeld out of hand for failing to keep him informed on such sensitive matters.

Do the right thing!? You mean sorta like offering a warm towel and an aspirin to a woman after you've raped her? WTF would be the right thing at this point? Short of a very public hanging for every S.O.B. involved I think the right thing is a pretty damned elusive concept.

According to the BBC:

The US military has announced that coalition
troops in Iraq are to have ethical training
following the furore surrounding the alleged
killings.

For the next 30 days, they would receive lessons
in "core warrior values", a military statement
said.

It might be more reassuring if they were receiving lessons in "core MORAL values."

This isn't a surprise. The prime minister of Iraq or something other high ranking official said it earlier this week. Hadithas happen all the time in Iraq.

Do the right thing!? You mean sorta like offering a warm towel and an aspirin to a woman after you've raped her? WTF would be the right thing at this point? Short of a very public hanging for every S.O.B. involved I think the right thing is a pretty damned elusive concept.

Thank you. That "do the right thing" comment is laughable. What the hell would that mean, Kevin? Being thorough with an investigation, after trying to squash the incident for a few months, and only after you've been called on it by a non-American media outlet? If you think that's the "right thing," I would hate to hear what you think would be the "wrong thing" to do.

"Of course it is, as always, unacceptable to focus, in polite company, on the equally barbaric behaviors of the Shia/Sunni death/IED squads that are destroying Iraqi society while claiming to fight the infidel invaders"

Wasn't the claim that the US got into Iraq because of the terrible things Hussein did? What's your argument now --- "well the Hussein follow-ons are doing terrible things therefore we can do terrible things therefore ... ???".

It is completely IRRELEVANT what everyone else in Iraq is doing. If you go into Iraq to prevent this sort of thing, you can't then complain when everyone else points out that you're doing the exact same thing (and that gee, maybe it really was actually all about oil).

Short of a very public hanging for every S.O.B. involved

It would be a start to demonstrate that we are a nation of laws. Failure to punish crimes is the same thing as condoning crimes.

In my opinion, when this is over, we need to have a truth and reconciliation system, like South Africa after apartheid. We need to give the troops a means to confess their sins and crimes, and receive absolution or punishment, and we need to remove the worst from the military (and in cases society).

The Army took 15-20 years to recover from Viet Nam: it just so happens that 20 years is the length of a military career. We cannot let the worst of this lot spoil the Army and Marines for another 20 years.

At the risk of repeating the obvious, this is a very delicate situation. We desperately need to do the right thing.

Yes, it's called leaving. It's long past the time for Americans to leave Iraq.

There's no way to fix this, to make this right, to make amends. Even if this was a rare and isolated occurrence (which it is NOT - it happens DAILY), there is no way to make the Iraqis trust Americans.

There is an exodus of the middle class going on in Iraq. Even if Bush's last declared reason for attacking Iraq (to turn it into a democracy that would spread throughout the Middle East) was the truth (and it wasn't), without a middle class you can't have a democracy.

The only chance for Iraq now is for the U.S. to leave, NOW.

We desperately need to do the right thing.

These people are genetically incapable of doing the right thing. Their track record is complete.

And the whitewashers in Congress have their paintbrushes at the ready.

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Does anyone here remember the Vietnam era? (I don't) What effect did My Lai have on the protestors and public opnion?

Posted by: plum on June 1, 2006 at 7:54 PM | PERMALINK

As I recall, Americans didn't learn about My Lai until a long time after it had happened -- and then there were "investigations" that were dragged out and stalled, and then whitewashed. All the while, the war continued and we were told that atrocities like My Lai were anomalies. They weren't. Colin Powell was also (tangentially) involved in an investigation of abuses of civilians by U.S. military. You don't get to be a 4-star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, by not playing ball, and as I recall, Powell was up to his oak leaf clusters in burying the stories.

I remember watching televised hearings, with testimony about what they did to those villagers, and thinking "How the hell can Americans be doing this to other people??" I know that many other Americans were asking the same thing, and the anti-war movement which had already been in full swing only got bigger and louder. But even then, after the truth of My Lai came out, Nixon got re-elected and the war went on.

That's why there are so many of us who remembered those days, and were so adament in the pre-Iraq-war days to not rush into this. We knew why Bush was so desperate to get started - once in, it's difficult to get out.

Maeven, the war in Nam ended on May 4th, 1970. It just took a few years to dawn on everyone.

It gets dirtier and dirtier. But why should we be surprised? Did anyone really think a nice clean war with only bad guys getting killed was possible? Answer: A large percentage of Americans, including America’s prophet, Kevin Drum, thought it was possible. Naive fools! Will the erupting collection of awful incidents finally break our belief that war can be a reasonable tool for achieving laudable goals? It has never happened. It never will.

Massacres always happen in war. The troops have been trained to hair-trigger readiness. They have been trained to become killing machines, even using kill-a-second video games designed to overcome their natural aversion to killing. And we are surprised when they kill?

The “realists” in the military expect massacres. Sure, they’d prefer that they didn’t happen, but hey, that's war. The ensuing cover up is standard operating procedure. The only way to avoid massacres is not to go to war in the first place.

Time to change course. Let’s throw out our militarism along with George the Bush. We can continue to be the 21st century’s Sparta, spending as much as the rest of the world combined on our machines of death and expect massacres to happen, or we can greatly reduce our forces and train them to fight defensively only. What a delusion, that we need this vast military edifice. If we don’t have it, a delusional president can’t use it to fight “pre-emptive” wars and slaughter innocents.

KILL KILL KILL FOR PEACE!

Actually the AP and CNN had reports on March 15, the day of the killings. The Knight Ridder report followed on Sunday March 19. The earliest news reports already indicated that the Army's official version was false, and that the local police were investigating the killings. Four days later, according to KR, the Army spokesman said he had only just heard of any allegations of wrongdoing, from a reporter.

In other words, the unraveling of the official story with this massacre is parallel to the unravelling of the official story about Haditha.

I'd recommend that everyone read Lt. Col. Bateman's piece at Altercation (already linked by JeffII). Here's another excerpt:

I had just put forward the question, “What would you do?” to a hypothetical situation in which several prisoners had been captured who may, or may not, know about an ambush the enemy had emplaced for our unit some distance away. The prisoners appeared to be civilians, taken in a village from which we had, in this notional scenario, recently taken fire.

“I’d shoot one of them sir, to see if it got the next one to talk,” said Ericsson with a perfectly straight face. The room remained silent.

“WHAT?!” It was not my calmest reply because I was, frankly, stunned. Standing at the front of the room I looked around at the assembled men seated before me. Nobody was leaping to contradict his comment. Their attention was split between us.

Ericsson repeated his response, looking me straight in the eye. “I’d shoot one of them sir. And then, if that didn’t get the next guy to talk, I’d shoot another.”

About half the troops agreed. Note that this was back in 1995, long before the invasion of Iraq.

Apart from the stress of facing an insurgency and a civil war, our troops in Iraq are apparently also under the impression that Iraq was complicit in 9-11, which means that they consider Iraqis to be our nation's enemy.

In addition to ethical training, our troops could benefit from a little honesty concerning the war in which they find themselves.

Bad Jim:

In addition to ethical training, our troops could benefit from a little honesty concerning the war in which they find themselves.

Nice post.

Let's just reaffirm something here:

War is fucking hell.
Always has been.
Always will be.
It brings out the absolute worst in everybody.

That's why going to war should always be the...
ABSOLUTELY LAST FUCKING CHOICE OF A SANE LEADER.

Bush went to war on a lie and on a whim.
It wasn't near the last choice.
It wasn't even near the penultimate choice.

Rather it was:
Contrived
And...
Premeditated.

Ergo:

BUSH IS THE BABY KILLER.
BUSH IS THE WAR CRIMINAL.
BUSH IS HISLER...

This is HIS war.
This is HIS mess.
These are HIS crimes.

In a fair world...
He would be tried...
Hung from a lamp post...
And stoned.

Of course...
If the world was fair...
He'd also be an auto mechanic...
Wearing a bowling shirt...
And getting in bar fights every Friday night...

Alas... the world is FFF...
(far from fair)

"The American-led forces "do not respect the Iraqi people; they crush them by vehicles and kill them by suspicion," Mr. Maliki [Iraqi Prime Minster] said. "This is extremely unacceptable."

Why boys... thems are fighin' words!

What do you say repugs?

Shouldn't we invade Iraq and teach them ragheads a thing or too????

ROTFLMAO @ every repug in America.

Alas... the world is FFF...
(far from fair)
Posted by: koreyel on June 2, 2006 at 12:34 AM | PERMALINK

Yes.

In THIS world, his appointees get to retire with cushy "consulting" gigs making millions, and write books making more millions, and get insider info on sweet investment deals making more millions, and then they get appointed to future criminal administrations. And Bush gets to retire with a Secret Service detail for the rest of his life. And of course, gets the same treatment wrt consulting and speaking gigs.

It's the American Way.

Ya... O_b_f...

And to add to that:
In a fair world...
Rummy would never be one of People Magazines "most sexiest men."

Yuck.
How depraved is that?

Also... to amend what I wrote up above...

In a fair world,

He'd also be an auto mechanic...
Wearing a bowling shirt...
And getting in bar fights every Friday night...
And he'd also be snaggletoothed

Because lets face it...
Bush wold be shitty in a bar fight too...

Extremely sobering and depressing thread ... I read every post carefully. Many were quite poignant in their thoughtfully understated outrage.

Something to think about during Memorial Day week, for sure.

One thing atrocities like this can do is bring out a good deal of eloquent reflection.

All things considered -- I think I'd rather have the snide troll-thwackery if it'd bring those people back to life -- and our soldiers back to the degree of frail and contingent normalcy they felt the day before.

Bob

What Haditha has brought is a little more realism to what war is about. US media has done a horrible job -- probably wrapped in the false flag of patriotism -- of investigating and informing all that has been going on. Seems like most Western main media has been too circumspect. We ignored amnesty international and the IRC.

For years Iraqis have been crying out about US forces behavior and liberal use of firepower. Same in Afghanistan. The military, without excception, has not been the one to initiate a response or discliplinary action, whether events took place "in the field" of behind US walls. And we're meant to believe every case is an "anomaly" and with never an officer in sight or with any knowledge. Some army.

The catalog of errors that has led to this point is becoming endless. But no responsibility is taken at the top either.

As soon as the ground war was won, the army should have come under a civil administration. It seems that Rules of Engagement are interpreted at the most liberal level, necessity and proportionality taking a back seat. Particularly the use of air weapons has inflicted unwarranted casualties on the civil population, from the wedding party in 2003 to the Afghan event last month.

The inability of US forces to relate to the population at a human level in a sympathetic manner in many cases is blatant and now expected. There have been some notable exceptions but it is not the rule.

When Ben Griffin, an 8-year vet of the Parachute Regiment with 2 years in the SAS, refused to return to Iraq he said he had witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US forces against Iraqis. "I did not join the army to conduct American foreign policy." He received an honorable discharge.

P.S. Tonight the BBC TV news said that there are "3 or 4" concurrent investigations. Wonder why the army is vague on the number? And in Afghanistan, Hamid Kasai is accusing coalition troops of firing into the riot.

And I might as well add that Afghanistan has seemingly dropped from the US consciousness but will come back to bite. We're trying to draw-down under the NATO commitment but, if I were them, I'd keep the US as lead so we have responsibility for the mess.

Time to remind David Brooks of his Nov. 2003 column "A Burden too heavy to put down" (or something close to that) in which he said that Americans would be too soft to support the troops after their atrocities are discovered.

"We desperately need to do the right thing."

"We", or the Bush Administration? The latter is inconceivable, the former implies there's something we can do about it.

In 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal defined Crimes against Peace (in Principle VI.a, submitted to the United Nations General Assembly) as

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

At the risk of repeating the obvious, this is a very delicate situation. We desperately need to do the right thing.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I have no confidence in the Bush adminstration's ability to do the right thing in this situation.

This war is being fought in the news even more than the last. Ethical lapses can bring the whole house of cards down. For us, that is. Not for the enemy. He can just keep head chopping and child bombing.

Well, when you spend several years demonizing Iraqis (for example Saddam and 9/11) and the Iraqis misbehave, it's no surprise. Dog bites man.

At the same time the other side of your mouth has been full of bullshit rah rah jingoist propaganda masquerading as patriotism--support the troops. With us or against us. PATRIOT Act. Mission Accomplished. Freedom on the march. Calling Afghanistan a "crusade." ad naus--when the Knights In Shining Armor are found executing children, well, now the Man is biting the Dog.

It's not that what The Bad Guys are doing isn't Bad. That's a constant. It's that the self-appointed Good Guys are also out of line. That's the variable.

And that's the story man. You don't even believe your own lies. America is behaving no better than terrorists by your own definitions. Terrorism is political violence directed at the innocent, right? That's what 9/11 was, right? People with no chance to defend themselves murdered in cold blood, en masse, as publically and as messily as possible. So what's the difference between 9/11 and Fallujah? What's the difference between kidnapping and executing foreigners and Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib, other than the level of coordination?

That's the story. Just cause they do it doesn't mean we can. Never has, never will. Bad acts are what we're purportedly there to stop.

Because the hawks can't come to grips with the fact that they fucked up and there's no nice way to put it, they will not see why we are bound to lose the war, they'll go on and blame the liberals, the media, the ungrateful Iraqis, the generals, Congress, the troops, and sex drugs rock and roll for whatever's within easy reach when the inevitable happens and America is forced to withdraw from Iraq.

The emperor's butt naked and you're still here bitching at people for not applauding.

But I know, it's all Bill Clinton's fault. Somehow. That bastard. We ought to impeach him.

Arabs don't feel pain and value life the way we do, you see.

Who will be this generation's John Kerry, the public face of Winter Soldier II?

The hate the Stay-At-Home Coward Right had for Winter Soldier was because it made their heads explode. How could they say "The troops don't support the troops!", or "The troops are calling the troops baby-killers!"?

How is this worse than the masacre of 100,000+ "collateral damage" during "shock and awe"?

koreyel

Nice post, but why the gratutious shot at auto mechanics? For the most part they are honorable and skilled individuals who work hard for their money. We all know about the presidents adversion to hard work.

Ron Byers. Agreed. My bad.

"... need to do the right thing?"

It's too late.

Alternatively, just impeach the little imbecile. Just make sure you impeach Cheney too. You don't want to just replace an incompetent fascist with a competent fascist.

Unfortunately, it's imbeciles and incompetents all the way down...

Yes. There was a great exposé early on in the Bush regency that showed how Cheney has always had the reputation of great competence but has always chosen the blinkered, stupid, incompetent road. Early on he mastered the confidence posture and the rest was gravy.

A medical study several years ago tried to analyze the kinds of things that testosterone does. Basically, aside from the physical manifestations -- hair in various places and longer vocal cords -- what it mostly does is give the male irrational confidence. Cheney in a nutshell. Irrational confidence. I suppose when you're a huddled mass of freezing cro-magnons uncertain of which way to turn, it's better to move than to starve, and following the dunce who says, "Hell, I know the way" makes evolutionary sense. That hasn't been as useful in the last 60,000 years, but people still follow the dunce with the knowing snarl.

We are a country at war, and at war with terrorists at that. I think this should be encouraged. There's just too much hoopla surrounding this issue by the liberal media and public.

We must not bow to international pressure, the law of the land does not applies to us, this was stressed by Bush again, again. Our army of GOD must be able and encouraged to attack and destroy even more devil worshipping terrorists. It's the Christian thing to do.

@all

What about the thousands of innocent Iraqis killed by US bombings of "wrong houses", or whole families, pregnant women, little children, babies etc., murdered by US soldiers shooting the shit out of "suspicious looking, a little too fast driving cars" at dusty improvised checkpoints. What about the US air force bombing Iraqi wedding parties, or the central hospital of Fallujah in 2004 ? What about the new US massacre of 11 IRaqi civilians (incl. 5 women and 4 children) dicovered by the BBC in Ishaqi ?h ttp://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2006/06/ishaqi_massacre_video/ . What about all the regular massmurder the US does in Iraq EVERY DAY. It makes no difference to a Iraqi family if they get murdered by US soldiers because the US soldiers felt disappointed or 'threatend' or simply because of pure rage and frustration like it was obviously the case in Haditha. See, Dead is dead. That's why all the talking but punishing these down the chain of command sorry undereducated marine goofys is completely hypocratic and worthless, as long as the daily massmurder of Iraqi people by the US military continues. The marines and the Iraqi people are both victims of the criminals that kicked loose this horrible illegal war against an innocent nation. Iraqis never attacked the USA, but still the US occupies IRaq and attacks IRaqis EVERY DAY. So damn - get out of IRaq NOW !!!

You ought to impeach the real criminals responsible respectivly Bush, Halli-Cheney- Wolfowitz, Pearl, Rumshead etc. etc. and not the sorry idiots down the chain of command in the US military -> as they are - like the civilians they kill - victims too !!!

This hurts....This hurts so much! What is going on?!

This is quite an active -- and profane -- blog. Perhaps profanity and blogging go hand-in-hand. I don't know how that helps the dialogue, but maybe some of you cyberspace vets can explain it.

I'm amazed at the vituperativeness of the comments. I know many hate Bush, but really. Does anyone out there remember what the trigger for the Iraq War was? It was Saddam's refusal over 12 years to openly comply with U.N. resolutions.

I suspect many of the Bush-haters are ironically also people who support and defend the institution of the United Nations. Some call folks like that One-Worlders. [I'm not sure whether that's a term of endearment or not, but the U.S. was the only power able to enforce the U.N.'s will against Saddam.]

Of course, the Bush Administration badly mangled the public affairs management of the War. I recall critics questioning the War, only to have the administration provide a new reason. Oh, it was because he was a dictator. Or, oh, it was because he had a nuclear program, etc., etc.

Saddam dug his own hole by resisting the world in his macho manner, which plays well with some in that part of the world. In fact, check a 2003 article in the Washington Post by Barton Gellman that explains that generals in Saddam's inner circle actually thought weapons of mass destruction existed. That's what they told Saddam. My guess is that they lied to avoid Saddam executing them for failure.

Even if we had a "mole" in Saddam's inner circle, which I perversely believe we did, he (probably not a she - am I beng sexist?) would have felt that the existence of WMD was a given. He was hearing this from the horses' proverbial mouths. In other parlance, per George Tenet, he would have thought it was a "Slam Dunk."

It's more than clear that the campaign in Iraq is not without its problems. Only time, and some objectivity, will conclude if the U.S. and its military are craven incompetents or whether more went well than not. After all, the media is designed to report man-bites-dog stories -- the exceptions are the rule in that venue.

One thing's for sure. As soon as any negative reports surface, correct or not, many jump to conclusions, which they want to be true. Of cours,e you'd have to ask yourself why someone would want these stories to be true, unless there was a desire to portray America in a poor light. I won't go as far as saying people hate America, want to see it fail, or aren't patriotic, and all that foderol that the Administration's supporters throw at critics, but one can see why some in that camp would come to that conclusion.

I don't know the total number of troops who have cycled in and out of Iraq since the War began. 130,000 are there now, give or take. But if two dozen deviants (of the 130K) are responsible for outrageous criminal behavior, that means 1 in every 5,000 soldiers went off the track and fell into a terrible abyss. As hideous as these alleged atrocities are -- and may or may not have been committed as reported (of course, no one would mis-report something like this, right? No one would want to spread inaccurate, anti-American messages in the world, right?)-- perspective is necessary, for no other reason than it's the right thing to do.

Place all this is the context of war, with its inherent risk for mistakes whether out of a soldier's need for self-preservation or an unfortunate outburst of instanteous outrage. [Some comments on this blog make me wonder how well contributors would do with a gun in their hands... Just another one of my perverse thoughts]

In any case, if any soldiers have committed such crimes, punish them appropriately. Please don't generalize.

"You're Entitled To My Opinion," A Balanced Point of View
www.yetmo.com

PTate
But I don't blame the American soldiers though. Put any one of us in their shoes, and we might do the same. The blame goes straight to the TANG-shirking CIC who treats war like a political game.

No, you should blame the American soldiers, if they did it. It was their fingers on the triggers, and they know better. People are responsible for their own actions. Period.

floopmeister
BTW, this is textbook moral relativism: "Yeah, but they are worse than us!" A morally reprehensible act is morally reprehensible, no matter who does it.

I'm not saying otherwise, floopmeister, as much as you want me to. Believe me, nobody cringes when this sort of thing happens more than someone in the military. It stains us all. Always.

There was an article (CNN?) just the other day, something along the lines of, "Ex-Marine Fights Off Muggers." When you read the article, the guy had been a Marine for 4 years active duty, and that had been over 15 years ago. They could have just as easily said, "Ex Little Leaguer Beats Off Muggers."

Seele
You ought to impeach the real criminals responsible respectivly Bush, Halli-Cheney- Wolfowitz, Pearl, Rumshead etc. etc. and not the sorry idiots down the chain of command in the US military -> as they are - like the civilians they kill - victims too !!!

Wrong. They're criminals (if it happened). They are moral actors and make their own decisions.

Does anyone here remember the Vietnam era? (I don't) What effect did My Lai have on the protestors and public opnion?

IMHO, the My Lai massacre just hardened positions on both sides. The other side's hardened support for the war showed the anti-war side just what they were up against. Things were still hopeful for the anti-war side, for King and Kennedy were still alive. History, history.

Now, though, despite a lack of anyone of King's and Kennedy's stature, as support for the war keeps melting poll by poll, the result might be different, and that historical model might not apply.

To every wingnut and knee-jerk Bush supporter who keeps making excuses for this kind of thing: just remember, karma is a bitch, and you're building up a LOT of bad karma.

For once I have to agree with Red State Mike. The individual soldiers involved in the massacre should be charged, tried and if convicted, punished.

That still doesn't give Bush, Rummy and the rest a free pass. The Iraq war was preemptive. We invaded the other country for some undetermined reason, while the official reason keeps shifting, the bottom line is that we probably invaded to steal oil. Bush, Rummy and the rest should have anticipated that bad things might happen. In a sane world they would be off to the Hague to defend themselves. At the very least they would be answering to congress.

"Does anyone out there remember what the trigger for the Iraq War was? It was Saddam's refusal over 12 years to openly comply with U.N. resolutions."

Saddam did comply with the U.N. resolutions that he abandon his WMDs. The trigger(s) for the U.S. invasion of Iraq were the specious claim that aluminum tubes being sought by Iraq were for uranium enrichment, the specious claim that Iraq sought to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger, the specious claim that Iraq had mobile bioweapons facilities and the specious claim that Saddam had a working relationship with al Qaeda.

Please don't continue to tell lies here about the reasons this Administration gave to invade Iraq. We all know the facts, and your attempts to distract fall on deaf ears.

". . . the U.S. was the only power able to enforce the U.N.'s will against Saddam."

The U.N. did not authorize the U.S. to invade Iraq.

Has anybody noticed that Maliki seems to be asserting Iraqi independence quite aggressively? He's been very outspoken the last few weeks, trying to set some kind of timetable for US troops to leave, criticizing our attacks on civilians, and generally letting us know that he's not a US puppet.

Of course, we all know that UN resolutions apply to everybody except the US and Israel. All other countries must follow them or risk being bombed.

Victims??? When Saint Ronny went to the Bitburg Cemetery, he spoke the words of Pat Buchanon by referring to the SS Panzer dead as "victims" - The soldiers had all been volunteers and were some of the most fanatical killers in the war. Have any untoward act by the locals inflicted upon any of the Germans and they would kill local men, women and children in reprisal - They wer