Arianna Huffington: What Haditha Means to Our Safety

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Huffington Post
Dated Tuesday June 6

What Haditha Means to Our Safety -- and the 2006 Election
By Arianna Huffington

On Friday, when Haditha was brought up on "Left, Right, and Center," the public radio show I do every week, Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley immediately went into spin mode, bringing up atrocities committed by U.S. troops in WWII and claiming that "compared with any other previous war, any other army, ours is behaving with almost immaculate propriety."

It's clear that Tony and I have a very different definition of "almost immaculate propriety" -- assuming, that is, we both read the same jaw-dropping accounts of drugged up, hallucinating, and stressed out U.S. troops, "killing the wrong people all the time..."

But even Tony, like others on the right, was willing to admit that "the propaganda effect" of Haditha "is going to be very substantial."

"Propaganda effect" is a very squishy term, one that, like the ink released by a squid under attack, clouds the real meaning. So let me help clarify what it means:

It means the killings in Haditha -- like Abu Ghraib, like Bagram, like Guantanamo, like all the everyday, unheralded horrors perpetrated on innocent Iraqi civilians -- have made America less safe.

Read more.

[Maraya1969]

1. You are absolutely correct in saying the killings make the US less

safe. And for these spin idiots to say anything else just makes us even LESS safe. If they were to cry out about it being an atrocity maybe they would gain a sliver of empathy. As it is they are acting just like the guilty serial killers who showed "no remorse" at his sentencing. For the ones who believe in the death penalty this only encourages the cheers of the electric chair.

They do not understand the powerful positive effects of humility and contrition.

[DinahMoeHum]

2. After Abu Ghraib, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. . .

Haditha is the other shoe that dropped.

:nuke:

[Jack Rabbit]

3. The monster must have more than two feet

I thought Fallujah was another shoe dropping, too.

[peacetalksforall]

7. Haditha - guns. Fallujah - guns and napalm? nt

[Jack Rabbit]

8. . . . and bombs

But the priniciple victims were not armed.

[Bobbieo]

4. Haditha is the tip of the iceberg!

Wait until these PTS ridden troops come home and somethng triggers them off. What has George W. Bush done to the world???

[Jack Rabbit]

5. That's a bridge we'll have to cross when we get to it

For now, can we prevent more Hadithas? How many Hadithas have there been?

Haditha, like My Lai, is symptomatic of an imperial army fighting an enemy that blends into the people.

[Bobbieo]

6. Cross the bridges now and we may prevent more Hadithas