Marine charged with assaulting civilians

[saigon68]

Marine charged with assaulting civilians

Aug. 16, 2006, 7:51PM

By THOMAS WATKINS Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4122387.html

SAN DIEGO — A Marine officer was charged Wednesday with assaulting three civilians in the Iraqi town of Hamdania last spring.

The Marine Corps said 2nd Lt. Nathan P. Phan beat the three men so severely April 10 that they could have died. He is accused of choking two of them and putting a loaded M9 service pistol into the mouth of the other.


The case came to light when the Naval Criminal Investigative Service probed a separate incident in Hamdania, a town northwest of Baghdad. Seven Marines and a Navy corpsman are accused of kidnapping and murdering a 52-year-old Iraqi man there on April 26. Those eight troops are in the brig at Camp Pendleton.

[BushOut06]

1. Support the troops?

Not me. Not while they're illegally in Iraq, committing all sorts of heinous crimes each and every day. I'm not against the military per se, and I have all the respect in the world for our veterans who have actually fought for our freedom. But I refuse to support the troops who are carrying out Bush's illegal orders. Sorry, but this whole "they're just following orders" doesn't cut it. Didn't cut it after WWII, and it isn't going to cut it nowadays.

The best way to show your support for the troops nowadays is to demand their immediate withdrawal from Iraq. None of this "strategic redeployment" bullshit, but bring them HOME. They don't need to be in some foreign country, terrorizing innocent civilians. I saw on the news today that 17,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since just the beginning of this year! This is DIRECTLY a result of our forces royally screwing everything up over there, and not being able (or willing) to protect them.

[saigon68]

2. Its amazing how the ramsey thread has more than 170 replies and this one

ignored.

As thugs and murderers roam the planet. A blond 6 year old beauty queen is on top of the heap.

And a few brown children being murdered by rustic thugs are shrugged off by a chimp

Who calls these brown people IslamoFacists who deserve to die.

[countryjake]

3. Make that "ignorant" thugs and murderers...

Army acknowledges taking more low-scoring recruits
Military meets goals by accepting thousands who do poorly on tests
By David Wood The Baltimore Sun
August 16, 2006
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.recruit16aug16,0,7811745.story

~snips~

WASHINGTON // At a time when the Defense Department is calling for "the best and the brightest" to fight today's tricky unconventional wars, the Army is quietly signing up thousands of low-scoring recruits, who historically have performed less well, in order to meet its recruiting goals.

Only two years ago, the Army accepted fewer than 500 of these recruits, who scored below the 31st percentile on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) given to all recruits. Those scores put them in Category IV, the lowest category the military can accept...

The willingness to accept lower-scoring recruits seemed to contradict top Defense Department guidance that demands a sharp increase in soldiers' ability to master languages, adapt to different cultural sensitivities and endure high stress in situations like Iraq where wrong decisions, even by young privates, can have huge repercussions.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I couldn't help but be reminded of today's news article when I read your topic. If this has been policy for two years, I wonder what percentage of the atrocities being committed were carried out by these "low scorers"?

[saigon68]

4. I refer to the low scorers as rustics

Knew a lot of them.(They were DRAFTED by McNamara)(Unlike Cheney, Shrub, Wolfowitz et al)

Most were drivers, orderlies and the like. Not bad people just slow.

A few were craven killers who all of a sudden got to play out their fantasies.

Then they returned to amerika and raped and continued killing.

[countryjake]

5. Yeah, I do to. But back then, they had race-relations training...

for those who couldn't "get along" (after all-hell was breaking loose in some of the boot camps); the ones with outright prejudices were snatched right away and put into those type of programs, hoping they could become "properly oriented". Of course that didn't stop them from encouraging hatred for the Vietnamese. But I wonder if they are still doing any "sorting" of the types who have obvious problems and dealing with them, before they are assigned duty?

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Judi Lynn]

6. It probably goes over well in the White House to take low scoring

guys, after all, it would be quite the embarrassment if all the people in the service were far more honed than the pResident.

[Heidi]

8. Locking.

Duplicate: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2460353

Thank you!