I didn’t say it would. Merely that pretending Iraq is a historically horrible war is a crock of sh*t. You would be hard pressed to find any president who hasn’t in one way or another, sent people to die. I doubt a single one of them liked it, but all felt it was necessary. It will be the same with Obama or HRC.Thats why perspective is important. Otherwise I expect progressives to be insisting that all candidate pass a litmus test promising never to send anyone in harms way for anything. That gonna happen?

And anyway, I fail to see how “Perspective!” is going to stop people in Iraq, both US citizen and not, from getting killed.

It’s the height of idiocy to suggest that we should continue on with this massive failure until “perspective” can no longer be trotted out as a rational for overlooking the bloodshed.

Despicable, hmm? Indeed. Certainly I am not refuted. I know history and evidently the knowledge of history on this site geos back about four years at most. And no doubt in your judgement of my insistence on percpective, you are employing the same scintillating logic that you used to conclude Bush and OBL are in cahoots.

W00T!11!!

dugger, you’re despicable.

It certainly is a war. And we did fight against Army Corps etc. Remember? Our armed forces ‘mission-accomplished’ the major ground war and are now embroiled in the clean-up campaign – which we may or may not sustain. Your point (“violence and lethal danger at all times”!!!), which zipped over Wilbur’s head, was about how really bad Iraq is. Well it is war and as a war, its not nearly as bad as our other wars. You greatly and wrongly exagerate Iraq to score political points . It failed here. Perspective. Get some!

Dugger at the Louvre: “My god! Mona Lisa’s nostril is bigger than that tree in the background. She must have spent a fortune in kleenex!”

Name me ONE BATTLE in the “War in Iraq” that compares to the Marne, to the Bulge, to Tarawa? You can’t.

We are not fighting in Iraq against an army corps, a division, or even a brigade. We are defending against buried IED’s, long-distance snipers, hit-and-run artists, a rabble of irregulars who drop anonymous lethal mortar rounds daily on soldiers watching TV at the rec center or on green-zone civilians on the way to work.

This is not a WAR, you idiot. It’s the illegal occupation of a 25-million strong civilian population by a military force less than 0.8% as large.

And we are not dehumanizing the soldiers of the opposing Army like we did to Jerry or Boche or Nip, we are dehumanizing the civilian populations we are supposedly trying to protect, as we did in Vietnam with disastrous consequences.

Just as in Saigon, where Charlie could be washing your Jeep that morning and be out in the jungles launching perimeter attacks at night, we have Haji parking cars in the Green Zone in the morning, and swearing fealty to Muqtada and death to America in some anonymous mosque the same night.

And in both cases, in My Lai and in Haditha, you have GI’s who are not supposed to be conducting policing and political suppression reacting and overreacting to a dehumanized “enemy” force made up of civilians.

You, Dugger, and wingnuts like you, will never learn from history, but are condemned to keep repeating the same mistakes.

BTW, there have nbeen battlefield perjoratives in every war – well before Vietnam. And Charlie was one of the less strong perjoratives of Vietnam. Jerry, ‘boche’, Ivan etc. How ’bout “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips”?

There are literally hundreds of incidents like this each day that should merit the same attention this incident has, but because of the incredible politicization of this effort, most media are afraid to expose them, and the Government is militant in allowing anyone, internal or ecternal, to report or investigate.

Haditha was stonewalled for months, Abu Ghraib the same, Fallujah the same, how many more?

I do know this:

Our troops in Iraq seem to be under the greatest continuing stress of any US military deployment since Vietnam, with many of the same features: Non-western peoples, complete language and cultural isolation, terrific violence and lethal danger at all times, heat, hardship, hard work and no bloody end in sight.

American soldiers in daily contact with Iraqis call them “Hajis”, much like our Vietam Vets called the Vietnamese “Charlie”: depersonalizing and dehumanizing the Iraqis the same way, to deal with the fact that any one of them could be an insurgent militia, a suicide bomber, a guerrila by night, a terrorist at any time.

I am actually surprised we have not heard about dozens, hundreds of other criminal acts against Iraqi civilians; but in perspective, we know many people, especially the current US commanders like Bergner and Lynch have been told by the White House to desperately try and sanitize this war for the American media at any cost.

But we can see it’s getting harder and harder to suppress the news, as the media begin to lose their fear of being shut out of the action.

I take that as a sign of hope.

What you think I said is not what I meant to say. I am a crappy writer and I admit it.

I was just trying to bring up the “slippery slope” thing. You’re a smart guy and I hope you know what I’m talking about.

There is nothing new here. This crap has been going on forever. The weapons just get deadlier.

During the Nuremberg Trials many of the German officers said they were “only following orders”.

Sound familiar?

War is not a video game.

There is nothing new here. This crap has been going on forever. The weapons just get deadlier.

During the Nuremberg Trials many of the German officers said they were “only following orders”.

Sound familiar?

War is not a video game.