There are now so many charges against US Servicemen in Iraq

[cali]

that I'm having trouble keeping up with them all, despite the fact that I read the NYT daily, and they've been covering all these crimes extensively. The number of investigations and prosecutions is all the more troubling in light of the fact that you know these are only the ones we know about. If anything is a clear sign that we have to get out now, it's these horrendous crimes, which appear more and more to be systemic.

[Breeze54]

1. When do the warmongers get charged for war crimes?

:shrug: When? Bush et all? :grr:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. There has been a huge breakdown...

in the discipline in the ranks. There is no other way to look at it. You can bet it goes all the way up, too.

Rummy is in charge. You can bet that he considers this sorry shit beneath his attention. Because of his indifference, he is the most culpable. It is his watch. He could end this.

[Breeze54]

8. "Rummy is in charge. He could end this."

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/02/AR2006080201201.html

Snip-->
RUMSFELD:

While our side puts its men and women at great risk by taking care to obey the laws of warfare, :wtf:

the other side deliberately targets civilians and uses them as human shields,
and then orchestrates a public outcry when a response to their violence
accidentally kills civilians in their midst.

While our side is measured by exacting standards,
the other side is measured by no standard at all and is never held to account. <--Snip

Snip-->
QUESTION: And the question, Mr. Secretary, after your most recent visit and this spike
in violence, do you believe that Iraq is closer than ever to the brink of civil war?

RUMSFELD: "Closer than ever."

Clearly, there's sectarian violence. People are being killed.
Sunnis are killing Shia; Shia are killing Sunnis. Kurds seem not to be involved.

It's unfortunate. And they need a reconciliation process.
The prime minister is pushing for a reconciliation process.

There are a couple of other things that are -- oh, how would you characterize it? --
things you wish weren't happening.
There's some movement of Shia out of Sunni areas and Sunnis out of Shia areas, to some extent.
There undoubtedly are some people who are leaving the country and going to safer places
because of the violence.

Does that constitute a civil war? I guess you can decide for your yourself.
And we can all go to the dictionary and decide what you want to call something.

But it seems to me that it is not a classic civil war at this stage.

RUMSFELD:
It certainly isn't like our Civil War.
It isn't like the civil war in a number of other countries.

Source: CQ Transcriptions © 2006, Congressional Quarterly Inc. <--Snip

[madokie]

3. when led by criminals many crimes will be commited

I don't remember anything like this in numbers during the Vietnam occupation

[benddem]

7. read the article

out today...don't have a link...that many atrocities in Vietnam not investigated by the military..hence not covered.

[jobycom]

4. The thing about all these crimes, for me

is that this ALWAYS happens in war. It's not a case of a few bad apples, as the Repubs like to say. It's the case of unleashing total lawlessness on a land. Every war, every military, from time immemorial, has resulted in these types of atrocities from "a few bad apples." To give the US credit where it deserves it, we are probably better than most militaries of the past at not making rape, murder, and pillage a part of our military strategy (although we clearly have at times in Iraq and Afghanistan, it clearly isn't our normal operating procedure). For our military, it is a sideline, usually. But it is always what happens in war.

And it's another reason you don't go to war unless you have to. The troops who have committed these atrocities need to be punished, but we should never lose sight of the fact that the real blame should go to the people who arbitrarily decided to unleash Hell on an innocent, already victimized people.

[cali]

5. Although I largely agree with you

there's plenty of "real blame" for those who commit such heinous crimes as raping and killing a young girl, faking escapes and then gunning down prisoners, rage killings such as Haditha, or dragging a man from his bed and slaying him, arranging the scene to look as if he were in the process of planting an IED.

[jobycom]

6. I didn't mean to imply otherwise

As I said, punish them, as severely as possible. Just don't let people sidetrack us into the "few isolated incidents" argument.

Our military has refused to convict troops in several cases of clear murder already. Which means that they have implicitly condoned such actions. Which is something else we shouldn't forget.

[gratuitous]

9. Dangerous thinking

Pretty soon, you're going to come to the conclusion that all war is sin, and that more violence doesn't redeem past violence, and that it's insane for the most powerful nation ever seen to continue spending more than a billion dollars a day on defense. And then where will those poor defense contractors and their pet generals and admirals be?

[jobycom]

10. If by "pretty soon" you mean

By my 18th birthday (which was 23 years ago) I fear you are right. :)

[Jade Fox]

11. When the civilian population opposes our presence....

when we invade a country uninvited, is where the seeds of this are sown, I'm thinking. The same thing happened in Viet Nam.

But when we invaded Europe to free them from the Nazis, US soldiers were greeted as heroes and behaved accordingly, as far as I know.

[cali]

12. You would be wrong about the behavior

of GIs in WWII in Europe. There was plenty of criminal behavior, including rapes.