A military investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis last November is expected to find that a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians, Congressional, military and Pentagon officials said Thursday.
Two lawyers involved in discussions about individual marines’ defenses said they thought the investigation could result in charges of murder, a capital offense. That possibility and the emerging details of the killings have raised fears that the incident could be the gravest case involving misconduct by American ground forces in Iraq.
Officials briefed on preliminary results of the inquiry said the civilians killed at Haditha, a lawless, insurgent-plagued city deep in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, did not die from a makeshift bomb, as the military first reported, or in cross-fire between marines and attackers, as was later announced. A separate inquiry has begun to find whether the events were deliberately covered up.
I note you did not title your lead-in “Possible War Crimes in Iraq.
The military will never, ever receive fair treatment at the hands of so-called progressives.
I would like to see the Marines definiton of “unprovoked” versus the leftist NY Times’.
Dugger
Dugger would have joined the majority of Americans who approved of Lt. Calley and My Lai when it came out.
“I would like to see the Marines definiton of unprovoked versus the leftist NY Times .”
Jesus Christ Dugger did you not even read the first paragraph of the story:
“A military investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis last November is expected to find that a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians, Congressional, military and Pentagon officials said Thursday.”
The MILITARY found that the attack was unprovoked. The MILITARY. The NY Times only reported the MILITARY’S FINDINGS. You should have written, “”I would like to see the Marines definiton of unprovoked versus the leftist military’s.” Total fucking idiot.
The military will never, ever receive fair treatment at the hands of so-called progressives
Except for us agitating to keep them out of bullsh-t wars, of course.
I would like to see the Marines definiton of unprovoked versus the leftist NY Times .
If a child cries within weapons range, or if his mother cowers in her home while you’re shooting at it, do these actions constitute provocation?
Look, a–wipe: Murtha tries to cut these guys some slack by suggesting that Bush’s illegal war/occupation, poorly handled as it is, has created an environment where the Marines are placed under such tremendous pressure that they should be expected to snap eventually. But that’s not good enough for you imperial sycophants.
You want it both ways; you want to praise Dear Leader for his massive cockup in Iraq, and you want to lay off the trained killers who are committing war crimes. What happened to the conservative value of accountability? I guess you’ll want to blame the dead civilians on those of us who aren’t clapping loudly enough for Dear Leader’s war.
“Evidence indicates that the civilians were killed during a sustained sweep by a small group of marines that lasted three to five hours and included shootings of five men standing near a taxi at a checkpoint, and killings inside at least two homes that included women and children, officials said.”
Emphasis mine.
People like you, Dugger, will always excuse the most inexcusable behavior… as a long as a con is in charge.
The article says two things that Dugger seems to have ignored in his push to tar all progressives as anti-military:
(a) It says this was a military investigation. Are we to assume that now the military is opposed to the troops?
(b) It says that this was a small number of Marines.
Regardless, the “few bad apples” excuse only goes so far, and it goes even less further with the Iraqi street. Between this and Abu Ghraib, it becomes increasingly difficult to advance the notion that these are isolated incidents, instead of endemic to the way our troops are trained.
We’ve started recruiting gang members to go to Iraq. Vice Lord tags are showing up in freaking Baghdad. It seems we are slowly losing our grip on the principle of “a few good men.”
BD I am waiting for the military’s report before piling on these Marines. If they did what is alleged, there is NO excuse, period.
Unfortunately the “progressive” continued bullshit flows though. The idea that an episode like this and abu ghraib suggests that we are training our troops to be war criminals is offensive.
We liberated a country of thirty million people. It these two incidents are the worst war crimes to come from that, I say we have the best trained, and most disciplined army forces in the history of the world.
Why do you guys hate the military so much?
Could we at least find out what qualifies as “a small number of marines” and what “extensive” means?
I think we can agree that if the killings were actually “unprovoked”, then there are some people in real trouble.
Of course, some of you are thinking that this “proves” that going into Iraq was a bad idea, and will begin screaming for immediate withdrawal, because “our boys”, about whom you were oh – so concerned that you called them either greedy or stupid for being in the Armed Forces, are being turned into bloodthirsty killers.
It has, of course, escaped your notice that the same training was provided to millions of American men and women, who have managed to overcome the temptation to shoot innocent civilians.
“This was not an accident. This was direct fire by marines at civilians,” Rep. John Kline, a Republican from Minnesota and retired Marine colonel, said of the allegations. “This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity.”
I expect to see Kline getting the Murtha treatment (”TRAITOR! DISGRACE!”) within the next 24 hours. Place your bets.
Pedro, I’m not saying we train our soldiers to be war criminals. I’m saying that this is the propaganda line that is going to be dangled into the Iraqi street and the Muslim world, and it becomes increasingly hard to argue for our side when this shit happens. It’s not just frustrating; it comes with potentially deadly consequences for the rest of our troops and for us here stateside.
Frankly, one war crime is too many, and most honest soldiers would agree with me. So don’t ask me why I think so little of the military, when you’re willing to accept a few massacres and gulags from their ranks.
You have a guerilla force that does not wear uniforms. It operates by appearing suddenly out of the civilian population, killing our uniformed soldiers, and then melting back into the crowd.
In these conditions it is not surprising — not acceptable, but not surprising — that on rare occasions the GI’s will go too far and kill innocent civilians in reprisal.
So what’s the progressive alternative? Allow people like Saddam, or Pol Pot, or Kim Il Jung to operate gangster states with impunity? Put sanctions on offending regimes that hurt the already tortured people of those countries? Lock our guys up in fortresses so the guerillas can freely terrorize their fellow countrymen?
Elrod’s comment “Dugger would have joined the majority of Americans who approved of Lt. Calley and My Lai when it came out.”
Elrod is correct in one regard — My Lai & this incident in Iraq (should it prove to be true) do have something in common — the left doesn’t give a damn about the innocents killed, they only care about ‘war crimes’ committed by our side insofar as they can be used as political tool to attack American policies that they hold in contempt. Don’t believe me? Please then, show me where Tom Haydn, Jane Fonda, etc, have condemned the North Vietnamese for the summary executions and ‘re-education camps’ that followed their triumph in 1975?
As usual with the lib’s, it’s all about the moral vanity.
“It these two incidents are the worst war crimes to come from that, I say we have the best trained, and most disciplined army forces in the history of the world.”
Amen.
And note that when our troops engage in misconduct, they are relieved of duty, the charges are thoroughly investigated, courts marshall proceedings are conducted if merited by the investigation — AND — the troops are punished as criminals if they are convicted.
Think the Cubans or the Sudanese or the North Koreans or Saddam’s regime handled war atrocities that way? No – they encouraged them as a form of terrorism against their own people. They rewarded the soldiers who snitched on civilians and carried out civilian raids and ran the torture camps.
That’s what makes us so vastly different from them. And if you are too ignorant to understand the difference, you have my pity.
Pedrolito misses the point. What’s new?
actually I get his point exactly.
He is critical because bad things happen in war. Somehow, BD believes this negates any good being done. BD believes that THIS is what is causing our guys to be blown up by IEDs.
This is simply another in a long line of leftist “you made us do it!” arguments. Because we humiliated some prisoners, we are blown up. Because (allegedly) women and children were murdered, we are blown up. If it weren’t for these war crimes, shoot, we’d all be picking daisies and waving american flags.
Of course one crime of any sort is too many. The question is, what do you do when the crime is committed? Pull up all stakes and run away screaming “we’re not worthy, we’re not worthy”?
It would be a lot less of a propaganda line if our own citzens and leaders didn’t immediately start issuing mea culpa’s and screaming about Mai Lai and war criminals thats for sure.
The U.S. soldiers who get blown up by IEDs are blown up because they are there. They are an occupying force, not a liberating force. If you would at least pretend to know squat about the political and economic mess the Bush administration has created in Iraq, then you might begin to understand why so many Iraqis have taken up arms against their illegal occupiers.
The Bush Agenda by Antonia Juhasz
Educate yourself, and stop kissing up to screwups.
” . . . then you might begin to understand why so many Iraqis have taken up arms against their illegal occupiers.”
So many Iraqi’s? What are we talking about here? One in a thousand Iraqi’s? Are we supposed to let 0.1% of a population decide the politics of a nation?
Uhh, ready-fire-aim frame and others, perhaps you missed the part where it was said by the NY Times, that the findings were “expected”. Now unless, you all have got Murthavison wherein you can determine the guilt of US service members by magic, I think it would be better to wait and see the actual findings – as opposed to the military-hating NY Times “expectations”.
And I’ll say it again, to a fat-*ss civilian in his comfy leather chair at the air conditioned NY Times HQ, ‘unprovoked’ might mean one thing, to a young Marine who’s life is in danger in an extended fire fight, another. We well know the enemy is not above intentionally using innocents as cover and for propaganda value.
Prejudge our GIs all you want, I won’t.
Dugger
yes, exactly Nimrod….
oh so you don’t actually believe that we are being blown up because of abu ghraib?
And check out the endorsing blurbs for that book that’s supposed to tell us all we need to know about Iraq.
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Cindy Sheehan, peace mom
Congressman John Conyers, Jr.
Maude Barlow, national chairperson of The Council of Canadians and co-author of Blue Gold
Medea Benjamin, Cofounder, Global Exchange and CODEPINK:Women for Peace
Tony Clarke, director of the Polaris Institute and co-author of Blue Gold.
Antonia Juhasz is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (www.ips-dc.org) and a former Project Director at the International Forum on Globalization (www.ifg.org). She is a Project Censored Award recipient and co-author of Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible, 2 nd Ed. Her articles have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Cambridge University Review of International Relations Journal, and the Johannesburg Star. Her new book is The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (Regan Books of Harper Collins Publishers).
Wait, America’s got the best army in the history of the world because this massacre wasn’t so bad and they’re not happening that often?
Sort of like what your countryman Churchill once said:
Democracy is the most horrible form of government, except when compared to every other form of government.
Everything is relative kids, everything.
Pedro, if you want to have an argument with the imaginary me who says things that I didn’t actually say, knock yourself out. Frees up more time on my end.
No, I believe our soldiers are under attack for multiple reasons, not the least of which is a concerted propaganda effort by Islamic and nationalist zealots to portray American military as brutal Crusaders hellbent on subjugating the people of the Middle East.
So I don’t believe that if Abu Ghraib never happened that we wouldn’t have soldiers under attack right now. I do, however, think that incidents such as Abu Ghraib do not fucking help, and in fact play into aforementioned propaganda effort.
Speaking of things that do not help, apologizing for war crime under the aegis of “at least we’re not as bad as _______’s military” is something that maybe makes you feel good, but does nothing for us as a nation. I grew up believing that what made America great was that it was about something more than being just slightly better than our nearest competitors. I thought America was about overachieving, about attempting to realize something potentially impossible in a society. And that that notion went for all walks of life.
I still believe that. So I have little sympathy for those among us who are willing to settle for lowered expectations of ourselves. I don’t want what you’re selling. Go peddle that shit to somebody’s dictator; I’m sure they’d love to instill a sense of “be happy with what you have” in their populace.
I’m not sure why I put that into words just now. I’m sure you’ll magically reinterpret it as something else and ignore what I said when it’s convenient for you to indulge in the crass schoolyard debate tactics that you seem to mistake for high wit.
I grew up believing that what made America great was that it was about something more than being just slightly better than our nearest competitors.
How very bold and patriotic of you…almost jingoistic, I can hear the soft refrain of the Star Spangled Banner in the backround.
and I agree….
and we are substantially better than our nearest competitor, in fact, we have no competition, we are in a class by ourselves.
speaking of reinterpretation, I have made no attempt to justify lowering expectations, I want them raised. What I don’t want is the leftists in this country to destroy it under the aegis of “raising expectation”.
Someone who was really interested in raising expectation would wait for our justice system to work, would give our servicemen the same “innocent until proven guilty” rights that any citizen has, and then would focus on how you prevent these sort of actions in the future.
But you see, you aren’t interested in raising expectations, you are interested in bashing this country and its leaders, therein lies the dissonance.
Uhh, ready-fire-aim frame and others, perhaps you missed the part where it was said by the NY Times, that the findings were expected .
Well, this has to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever posted here, Dugger.
Yes, pedro, please tell me what I see and believe. Because I never knew before. Thank you.
All your bull about how you don’t want lowered expectations is disingenuous; you’ve already spent much of this thread preparing to pardon the criminals if they are proved guilty. After all, even if they did it, at least they’re not as bad as some dictator’s army. Even if they did it, at least the crime isn’t as bad as any other war crime committed throughout the history of the world.
I have to wonder if you walk around in real life with the same permanent sneer that you seem to wear on every post you make here.
BD you truly are from the short bus of life aren’t you.
I would not pardon convicted war criminals…period.
I also wouldn’t paint the US Marines as the worst thing to hit Asia since Ghengis Khan because of this incident either.
We have the finest military in the history of the world. Iraq remains the most land taken with the least number of casualties in the history of the world.
You want to bad mouth the Marines, thats your business but I certainly am not going to let you get away with the leftist canard of “we support the troops” crap, while at the same time spitting on them.
These Marines, if guilty, should be prosecuted and put away for life.
It’s not a reflection on the entire United States Military, but it certainly doesn’t make us look very good here at home, and around the world, now does it?
And that has always been art of “winning’ a war, after all. You have to win the hearts and minds of the people you claim to be protecting.
It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude that this is not a particularly good development in this war.
Pedro…when you say crap like the above, I want to cyber-bitch-slap you. I come from an extended family of service members who put far more on the line in WWII, and Vietnam, than you will EVER do.
I realize, however, you say that from the safety and comfort of your own home. However, it angers me to no end. If you were a man, you’d apologize. Let’s see what you do, shall we?
Some of you, are just life’s losers. You’re not happy unless you’re convincing yourself that you’re a better person than the next guy.
JK
>>Why do you guys hate the military so much?
Pedro….shut the F up.
You putz.
jk
yea JK you big “cyber” pussy. Give it your best shot.
I notice that your “extended family” served, you however seem to have avoided that particular injustice eh?
I was forward deployed when 9-11 happened. I was forward deployed for Afghanistan and was forward deployed when the Iraq war began (and ended for that matter). I spent over a decade in the service of this countries military, and am proud of it. Shoot me if I can’t stand to see you leftist euroweenies bad-mouth it on every possible opportunity.
As usual, the leftist argue around the points that I make, and are left with a blustering curse as their only response. Yea, you guys are mental giants, no question
“One senior Defense Department official who has been briefed on the initial findings, when asked how many of the 24 dead Iraqis were killed by the improvised bomb as initially reported, paused and said, ‘Zero.’”
But it would be unfair to say anyone lied, right sir?
“Iraq remains the most land taken with the least number of casualties in the history of the world.”
Just wait until we take Antarctica!
I will have to change my statement then paul, but until then, that quote is the absolute truth…and it drives you Bush hating leftists absolutely bonkers….cause there is no good “argument” against it.
“… there is no good argument against it.”
pedro, the vast majority of Iraq is empty desert. Capturing thousands of square miles of empty land is not much of an accomplishment in the terms of modern warfare. You just get in your vehicles and drive. On the other hand, Iraq’s population is highly concentrated in a few areas. Those few areas just happen to be where violence and fear has become a part of daily life. So yippee! We’ve secured the vast tracks of empty land between Baghdad and the Kuwaiti border. Everywhere there are actually people living, well, things aren’t going so hot. Your repetition of your little factoid is only more evidence that you prefer to live in denial of reality.