As USA Today concludes in this op-ed, it is incumbent upon us to have a full and exhaustive investigation into what happened into Haditha and a swift and severe punishment on any who may have committed crimes. Too often, as I believe happened with Abu Ghraib, we act as if these things can be papered over and exist solely as a PR blip that can quickly be counted upon to be forgotten. In fact, these troubles illustrate to our nation and the world: what sort of country is America? I expect one of the defenses bubbling up among the conservative movement is the well-worn trope that “we’re not as bad as Saddam”. If being not as bad as a muderous dictator is the model for American conduct, we are surely doomed.
We are better than that. Time to start acting like it.
Riiiight! Just what we need. Get those grandstanding yahoos involved in a criminal investigation, so we can have the “DC sound bite of the day”, and “trial by leak.”
USA Today shows its nothing but a Faux News clone. An investigation indeed! These are GIs and they are guilty per Democrat Congressman Murtha. What. Do we needs an investigation for the sentencing phase?
Dugger, Announce the verdict, hold the trial
I suppose it would be better for you all if we just kept our mouths shut about the Haditha massacre lest we “prejudge” the “innocent.” Oh, and OJ was innocent too, right? I mean, no jury ever found him guilty.
No elrod, it wouldn’t. It would be better if we let the military justice system investigate Haditha though.
And OJ WAS found guilty by a jury, moron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson
“briffy” please send me a reference to something demonstrating that the “jury returned with a verdict of ‘liable’….
thanks cupcake….
you’re the moron pedro. oj was found liable, which is not the same thing as being found guilty.
“These are GIs and they are guilty per Democrat Congressman Murtha.”
And per Republican Congressman John Kline: “This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them,” said Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and former Marine who was briefed two weeks ago by Marine Corps officials. “This is going to be an ugly story.”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1198892,00.html
Pedro, can you even be bothered to read your own links?
On February 4, 1997 a civil jury in Santa Monica, California found Simpson liable for the wrongful death of Ronald Goldman, battery against Ronald Goldman, and battery against Nicole Brown.
“Guilty” and “not guilty” are not options for a jury in a civil trial.
Elrod,
The difference is that Murtha is a powerful, public government figure. He has created pressure for conviction and punishment rather than justice.
Dugger
Dugger, if you had the brains of an overdone broccoli floret, you’d understand that the mere fact of the massacre (I don’t see you denying that it happened, at least) undermines our supposed “noble cause” in invading Iraq in the first damn place.
Now our guys are stuck in a country far the hell away from home. Surrounded by people they don’t understand. Shot at by people who look just like the people they’re surrounded by. Trying to accomplish an ill-defined, poorly understood “mission.” Trying to survive their second, third or fourth deployment.
You want to drone on and on about letting the criminal justice process move forward, and ignore the military fundamentals: this is a strong indicator of a breakdown in military discipline. Discipline and only discipline keeps honorable soldiers from turning into enraged murderers.
We’ve heard about Haditha. What haven’t we heard about?
Oh, and by the way Dugger, you dumb SOB– Jack Murtha is an effin’ Marine. 29 years wearing the uniform and carrying out the missions.
Unlike your yellow-elephant heroes.
F B: Assuming that I don’t have the brains of an overdone broccoli floret, but rather the brains of an overage conservative, you might explain to me how “the mere fact of the massacre … undermines our supposed noble cause in invading Iraq in the first damn place.” I’m sure that if a broccoli floret can understand it, then I can, too. Please enlighten me.
” …This is a strong indicator of a breakdown in military discipline.” Discipline and only discipline keeps honorable soldiers from turning into enraged murderers.
Would it shock you to discover that neither point is true?
We ve heard about Haditha. What haven t we heard about?
Why is there something we must not have heard about? Perhaps that broccoli you’re smelling is your brain.
jeez.
You guys posit loyalty as though Soprano family members. Break ranks
and you’re scum. Stonewall the legal issues and your in the inner circle
of trust. Gotta admire that credo.
ask most Marines bastard, I think you will find he is one of the few, the proud….
Ex-Marine
I am continually disgusted by the smug inferences of liberals that John Murtha is some kind of a hero because he supposedly blew open a super-secret military cover-up of the “truth” about Haditha.
It is possible that there may have been lying among Marines in order to protect their buddies (as happened among Army soldiers after the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman) but there is absolutely no evidence that the Department of Defense ordered any kind of “coverup.” TIME reports in an online exclusive:
So get it through your heads, folks: THERE IS NO COVER-UP.
Keeping the facts about a criminal investigation secret IS NOT A COVER-UP.
And …
Smearing Marines by declaring them guilty of murder before they have been tried and before the evidence against them has been presented in the Navy courts IS NOT PATRIOTISM.
If the Marines committed war crimes at Haditha, I have every confidence that the Navy courts will find them guilty and punish them appropriately.
I wish that liberals could show at least some anger over the thousands of atrocities committed by Al Qaeda against Iraqi civilians during the same time. If there can be any reason given for ever Marines firing at civilians, it would be because Al Qaeda deliberately operates among civilians. And they do this SPECIFICALLY so that they can cause as many civilian casualties as possible.
That is the real war atrocity in Iraq.
I have asked Marines, Pedro my boy, and they helped shape my opinion. The guys who did this bring dishonor on the Corps; and that is one thing MARINES WILL NOT TOLERATE.
Shooting innocents in the confusion of a firefight? A tragedy, but endemic to hot war.
Shooting children in the arms of their mothers in their own homes? Murder.
So, how’s it feel to be objectively pro-child murder?
ask a different question bastard.
Ask them how they feel about a politician pre-judging what Marines did under fire before any evidence was let out, and before any courts martial.
If those Marines did what is alleged, you are correct, there will be a line of Marines waiting to help string them up.
Murtha: An Ex Marine
“There’s no doubt that the Marines allegedly involved in doing this–they lied about it,” They certainly tried to cover it up.”
Pretty strong words from Murtha. Oh yea, that’s actually Republican Congressman Kline. Where’s the outrage from the cons? They wouldn’t be hypocrites, would they?
I call bullshit, Pedro. Jack Murtha has one fat hell of a lot more credibility when it comes to men and women in uniform. How many days have you spent at Walter Reed or at Bethesda? Who are your relatives in uniform? Where are your risks, keyboard commando?
You miss the single most important point in this entire debacle– the breakdown in discipline. Having no knowledge of military history, especially that of the immediate post Vietnam period, you just don’t get it.
This is symptomatic of a breakdown in discipline. This is symptomatic of an army (and Corps) that no longer has a clear mission to accomplish. Soldiers are trained and led to spend their lives for the accomplishment of the mission. That’s what they do. Sure, they do their damndest to follow Patton’s dictum to make the other poor bastard die for his country, but each of them will give his life to accomplish the mission.
When there’s no clear mission, no clear endpoint, never any way off the mad, blood spattered carousel that is warfare- when their friends, their comrades, their brothers-in-arms are killed, one at a time, day after day after day after day…
That’s plenty to drive a man mad.
And every– EVERY– goddamned drop of blood spilled in this godsforsaken misadventure is on the hands of George W. Bush and the fools (listen closely, now, Dugger, Pedro– I’m talking about you) — who persist in this folly.
“The moral is to the material as three is to one.” With every step in this lunacy, YOU have undermined the morality of American arms. YOU have called for and supported the invasion of a nation with whom we had no casus belli.
YOU, Pedro. YOU, Dugger. There’s a stain on your hands that no amount of Oxy-Clean will ever remove.
Pedro, no matter how you spin this story, the world isn’t going to be as strung out on Murtha as you are. They’re going to see this incident as another chapter in America’s declining role as a moral leader. That’s something you should be upset about. But, no, you’d rather take this opportunity to demean another Democrat.
You are a true Republican.
We are not ballyhooing Kline as some sort of expert like you guys are Murtha. I’ll say it again: I trust no one until a formal report is out. Speculating by anyone as to the their guilt and lying etc. hurts and is unfair to Marines.
What happened to all of that BS during the elction about how prohgressives support the troops. Why not support their right ot fair hearing now?
Dugger, Murtha is a leftist publicity hungry jerk
“Speculating by anyone as to the their guilt and lying etc. hurts and is unfair to Marines.”
Who the hell is speculating Dugger? Murtha and Kline were briefed by the military on the current state of the investigation and what it was expected to conclude.
Dugger, whose life would improve immeasurably if he had more than three neurons to rub together.
The one the only, the objecively pro-child-murder Dugger.
Here’s your sign.
FB
It would be better if we let the military justice system investigate Haditha though.
The problem is that they did. And they lied. And it took six months for the truth to become unavoidable.
Why do you have faith in something that has already failed you? Why would you trust people whom you have already caught lying?
Again.
Bastard I spent 10 years in military hospitals, while a surgeon in the US Navy. To hell with my relatives, I was in the service.
Battlefield atrocities occurr in every single war. One episode, (or two or even perhaps a dozen) does not demonstrate a breakdown in mission, except at the squad level perhaps.
This is the real problem with letting the leftists get involved with these things, they really WANT them to demostrate how “right” they are about things war-like, when in fact it demonstrates nothing more than a few bad apples who are likely to spend a lot of time at Ft Leavenworth.
Pedro- then you’re a brainless, witless fool with an MD.
I didn’t say a breakdown in mission, because, you mindless elephellator, there is no clear mission.
It’s a breakdown in discipline at the squad/platoon level alright, but that’s evidence of a breakdown of discipline all the way to the top. That is, so long as the top doesn’t work ruthlessly to eliminate that breakdown.
Which brings us to the point of the discussion– the courts-martial that MUST follow this, as opposed to the bland “we support the troops” coverup that dung-eating warmongers like you call for.
FB
not really bastard.
Unit leadership may well be bad, but until I see a hundred incidents like this, there is no evidence of discipline problems across the whole armed forces.
everyone here agrees there should be a courts martial, right and left wingers. I don’t know why you try to paint this as some sort of partisan issue. The partisan issue is that the leftists want to roll over on a bunch of marines who have not had their day in court
Pedro, you pusillanimous pachydermial pud-puller, YOU make it a “partisan issue” with your half-witted and quarter-baked assertions about “leftists,” and with your chicken-hawkish denunciation of Jack Murtha as a Democrat.
Abject lesson in the Queen’s English: One Marine may endure a court martial; many Marines will endure many courts-martial. Got it?
And, in the spirit of returning the favor, villainous keyboard kommandos like YOU insist on conflating “support of the troops” with ignoring or accepting any and everything that individual “troops” do.
You “Support the Troops,” with a damned magnetic sticker on the back of your truck, and you don’t give ONE STINKING SHIT that the poor brave bastards of the Infantry are left hanging out there tour after deployment after tour, with no endgame defined and no end in sight. (and make no mistake, every swingin’ dick and every swingin’ tit in the ‘Raq is an infantryman now, regardless of his or her MOS)
Villains like YOU refuse to hold the command structure accountable, because it would mean holding National Command Authority accountable.
And villains like YOU will never let the buck stop on ANY desk in this despicable misAdministration.
FB
but until I see a hundred incidents like this, there is no evidence of discipline problems across the whole armed forces.
God, this is fucking scary. You’d actually wait until there were a hundred Hadithas before you’d start to think “Hmm. Maybe there’s a problem here.”
So should I presume that you didn’t think there was an actual Iraqi insurgency until after the 100th IED went off?
See FatBastard, DrDoper is Frank Burns. Why waste your time responding to a guy who earlier in the thread idiotically tried to defend his claim that OJ Simpson was convicted?
Are there wide-spread discipline problems in Iraq, or, more importantly is there a widespread belief among Iraqis that there are commonly abuses inflicted upon the Iraqi population by the US military (Abu Ghraib for one)? This ain’t the first one.
As a side note, there is an entire force of American security contractors not subject to military justice or any form of civilian justice, Iraqi or American. Nothing to see there either.
Fabulous rant bastard. Silly, but fabulous.
You’re the only one suggesting that I accept everything they do. I want these allegations investigated and tried.
What I don’t want is leftists who want to get on the current bandwagon of “supporting our troops” for political advantage to try and convict our Marines.
I grow tired of people like you, who never served a day in their lives, suggesting that my support consists of a bumper sticker. I spent ten years supporting our fighting forces and their families, literally all over the world. My understanding of this situation runs deeper than you will ever know. And that is just fine with me.
Midderpidge, you’re right. Given the good doctor’s attitude, I suspect he’s just another lying right-wing son-of-a-bitch– people who’ve been to war and who’ve treated war wounds hate war.
What kills me is that this was almost… inevitable. No clear mission; no end (never mind whether it’s in sight) never ever knowing just who is the enemy and who is some poor schmuck in the wrong place at the wrong time…
Hell, it’s endemic in our popular culture– the cop that knows just who the bad guy is, but can’t prove it… Dirty Harry, anyone?
Some kid with a rifle just had enough. “I know these fuckers are dirty, and I’m gonna teach ‘em to fuck with us!”
Tell me you can’t just see it.
Sigh. It pisses me off and breaks my heart.
As a nation we’ve already commited a war crime, thanks to that lying son-of-a-bitch in the Oval Office. Atrocities like these just reinforce our criminality.
That, and generate new jihadis.
FB
Sorry, Fat Bastard, I didn’t mean to verify that DrDoepr has actually been in the military or is even a doctor. He may be some lonely idiot that strongly identifies with Frank Burns from MASH… probably was tormented daily by smarter, more talented, more popular liberals maybe at a summer camp or something.
Here’s the thing, we can’t save face as a nation among the world or the people of Iraq if we at home don’t have an outcry when the atrocities happen. People like DrDoper just tell the Iraqis and the world, hey, we got the guns, we can do what we want. That is why they support torture, killing civilians, security contractors running amok, etc etc etc. After all, how dare these ignorant bastards live on top of our oil? We’ll show them.
ah-ha…now we have it.
This particular Bastard thinks we,as a nation, comitted a war crime…..
’nuff said…..
Yeah, it stains me too, and I had nothing to do with it. If only it splashed only those responsible and their enablers.