Marines Killed Iraq`s " In cold blood"

[cemertyone]

" this is not a grey area. It is not a combat situation confused by the fog of war. THIS WAS A MASSACRE.......
John swift of the US based human rights watch......

 

[TomUS]

According to this fine journalistic source, it's all part of the leftist press attack on our military.

Rush to Judgment Against Haditha Marines

The press is already salivating over the prospect of the next Abu Ghraib-like public relations disaster for the U.S. in the war on terror - ballyhooing as yet unproven allegations that a group of U.S. Marines launched an "unprovoked" attack that killed 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha on November 19, 2005.

Plainly, not all the residents of this terrorist hotbed were as innocent as Marine media critics are now claiming.

It's also worth remembering that the press has so far reported only one side of the story.

All the witness accounts seem to come from residents of Haditha [that hotbed of insurgent activity] - who paint the Marines as modern day incarnations of Nazi storm troopers.

The California Republican has pledged to conclude his own investigation in June. In the meantime he worries about the press using Haditha to further their campaign against the military.

"I don't want the actions of one squad in one city on one morning to be used to symbolize or characterize or tar the actions of our great troops," Hunter told a Washington news conference last week.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/27/124438.shtml

 

[newharper]

Well Tom Turnipseed, quotes

The NY Times also reported that Republican U.S. Rep. John Kline, of Minnesota, said "this was not an accident. This was direct fire by marines at civilians. This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity." Kline is a retired Marine colonel.

and

The killings were said to be “methodical in nature”.

Which gives a nice bipartisan view of the story.

The U.S. Media is such a strange beast that no one knows what is going to 'take wings', but this just might.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0529-20.htm

 

[snorbury]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5030960.stm

it's on the bbc site too

 

[X-77]

A sudden utterly uncontrollable rage siezed me while watching American Idol

was it the bit where Paula Abdul said to one contestant: "every little girl watching this show will aspire to be just like you" ?

Yes, I feel a similar rage on stumbling upon that show in the knowledge of what that country's govt is responsible for

 

[nino_savatte]

According to this fine journalistic source, it's all part of the leftist press attack on our military.


http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/27/124438.shtml

Well what do you expect from Newsmax? It's a vile Mellon-Scaife propaganda organ.

 

[ZAMB]

Well what do you expect from Newsmax? It's a vile Mellon-Scaife propaganda organ.

To counter it, here is a video clip of the ITV news story where they talk to one of the survivors about what happened in Haditha.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/36962

 

[ZAMB]

Unfortunately, if you listen to soldiers who have been in Iraq, the Haditha incident is far from being an isolated 'mistake' as some US media have claimed.

"We was going along the Euphrates River," says Joshua Key, a 27-year-old former U.S. soldier from Oklahoma, detailing a recurring nightmare -- a scene he stumbled on shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. "It's a road right in the city of Ramadi. We turned a real sharp right and all I seen was decapitated bodies. The heads laying over here and the bodies over here and U.S. troops in between them. I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, what in the hell happened here? What's caused this? Why in the hell did this happen?' We get out and somebody was screaming, 'We fucking lost it here!' I'm thinking, 'Oh, yes, somebody definitely lost it here.'"

Joshua says he was ordered to look around for evidence of a firefight, for something to rationalize the beheaded Iraqis. "I look around just for a few seconds and I don't see anything." But then he noticed the sight that now triggers his nightmares. "I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like a soccer ball. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and it was like, I can't be no part of this. This is crazy. I came here to fight and be prepared for war but this is outrageous. Why did it happen? That's just my question: Why did that happen?"

He's convinced there was no firefight that led to the beheading orgy -- there were no spent shells to indicate a battle. "A lot of my friends stayed on the ground, looking to see if there was any shells. There was never no shells, except for what we shot. I'm thinking, Okay, so they just did that because they wanted to do it. They got trigger happy and they did it. That's what made me mad in Iraq. You can take human lives at a fast rate and all you have to say is, say, 'Oh, I thought they threw a grenade. I thought I seen this, I thought I seen that.' You could mow down 20 people each time and nobody's going to ask you, 'Are you sure?' They're going to give you a high five and tell you that you was doing a good job."

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/36899/

 

[nopassaran]

Unfortunately, if you listen to soldiers who have been in Iraq, the Haditha incident is far from being an isolated 'mistake' as some US media have claimed.

But it's not just the US media who claim these are isolated incidents that are due to a 'mistake' or the actions of a few 'bad apples'. The UK media and state adopted an identical position when reporting on the human rights violations at Camp Breadbasket and Amara.

We really need to stop and think about the whole issue of militarism. After all why should we be so surprised about the incidence of war crimes, when the whole purpose of the military is to cause death and destruction. The whole process leads to military personnel becoming desensitised to the value of human life, but more especially to that of the enemy who become dehumanised. This is clearly shown by the use of derogatory terms such as 'raghead' which has an identical use to that of 'gook' during the vietnam conflict.

Nothing changes My Lai - Haditha and now Ishaqi.

 

[ZAMB]

According to this fine journalistic source, it's all part of the leftist press attack on our military.

When I read this at first, I thought that people could not possibly be that naive.
I was watching C-Span's 'Washington Journal' yesterday, and one of the callers even topped the 'lefty media conspiracy' theory.
She insisted that the soldiers at Haditha were 'Iranians' dressed up as American troops to make the US look bad. Her reasoning was partly that American soldiers would NEVER shoot a child in cold blood. I guess she slept through the Vietnam war - or just kept her fingers in her ears during news broadcasts.

 

[audiotech]

The marine unit involved in the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November had suffered a "total breakdown" in discipline and had drug and alcohol problems, according to the wife of one of the battalion's staff sergeants.

The wife of the unnamed staff sergeant claimed there had been a "total breakdown" in the unit's discipline after it was pulled out of Falluja in early 2005.

"There were problems in Kilo company with drugs, alcohol, hazing [violent initiation games], you name it," she said. "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha."

The Newsweek account described a gung-ho battalion that had staged a chariot race, complete with captured horses, togas and heavy metal music, before the battle for Falluja in late 2004. The marines were given loose rules of engagement in the vicious urban warfare that followed.

"If you see someone with a cellphone," said one of the commanders was quoted as saying, half-jokingly, "put a bullet in their fucking head".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1790499,00.html

 

[nopassaran]

At the end of the day it's a nonsense to think that you can send an army into a conflictual situation and not expect human rights violations - so all this talk of training in ethics and rules of engagement which the US state are banging on about detracts attention away from the fact that all armies throughout the history of warfare have committed atrocities.

 

[audiotech]

At the end of the day it's a nonsense to think that you can send an army into a conflictual situation and not expect human rights violations - so all this talk of training in ethics and rules of engagement which the US state are banging on about detracts attention away from the fact that all armies throughout the history of warfare have committed atrocities.

Let's not forget in this instance those who have allegedly committed these atrocities are "professional" soldiers and not conscripts. Also culpable are those at the highest level in the Pentagon who have turned a blindeye to these actions and have consistently denied they ever happened despite having knowledge to the contrary. US forces surrounded Haditha for a number of weeks to try and cover their tracks and arrested anyone who spoke out.

 

[angry bob]

The Yanks were simply replicating what happens in McDonalds and High Schools all over their homeland, idiots rush in and kill everyone
Sadly its hard for anyone in the states to get their hands on the real kind o shit thay need to waste every single one of those mother fucking disease ridden bags of shite- if EVERY YANKEE DIED I WOULD NOT SHED A TEAR
!!!!
However, I realise this reaction is over the top
NO
I only want EVERYONE who thought TWAT was good to die, not shot, but first watch their family get run over by some in bred retard driving an Abrhams over tem, no count on hoew amny Iraqis died that way
Fuck it, that admitted murderer Calli after Mai Lai got out in JUST OVER A YEAR
Yanks MURDER
Yanks MAIM
Burn Humvee Burn
More Yankee dead, the fuckin better
You cunts paid for the IRA to kill us
Suck that you fucking pieces of shit

Fuck you you fucking idiot

cant believe you can get away with this murderous, xenophobic shit

you're more extreme and even stupider than the worst of my countrymen.

 

[Rentonite]

Fuck you you fucking idiot

cant believe you can get away with this murderous, xenophobic shit

you're more extreme and even stupider than the worst of my countrymen.

I have to Agree.

back on topic....
As far as the killings in the town, Well, maybe, they should have just leveled the whole place.
No one over there is going to take this seriously untill we start fighting the "people"
We must Conquer them, those that choose to not accept it, shall be eliminated.

Human Warfare is the same now as allways.
nothing has changed, we will eventually have to kill most of the people in that region.
After that we will have to "administrate" those that are left over.
It is Not rocket science.
We still have our people in Germany and Japan.


We must Crush them, have them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women......

anything less is rubbish.

 

[Yossarian]

You're so shit-scared of foreigners you want to just kill them all? And this from a man who's never had an Islamic terrorist attack happen within a thousand miles of him!

 

[nino_savatte]

To Rentboyshite

To the tune of Bless 'em All

Kill 'em all
Kill 'em all
The long and the short and the tall
Kill all the women and their fucking babes
Kill all the kiddies and dance on their graves
Cos we're dropping our bombs on them all
As off to the reaper they crawl
You'll get your promotion, your side of the ocean
So come on my lads, kill 'em all.

 

[Yossarian]

anything less is rubbish.

Let's Roll!

 

[angry bob]

I have to Agree.

back on topic....
As far as the killings in the town, Well, maybe, they should have just leveled the whole place.
No one over there is going to take this seriously untill we start fighting the "people"
We must Conquer them, those that choose to not accept it, shall be eliminated.

Human Warfare is the same now as allways.
nothing has changed, we will eventually have to kill most of the people in that region.
After that we will have to "administrate" those that are left over.
It is Not rocket science.
We still have our people in Germany and Japan.


We must Crush them, have them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women......

anything less is rubbish.

damn ... you're a fucking idiot too

this war was supposedly to liberate a people ... not kill them ... especially not unarmed women and children. Execution of unarmed civilians has never been acceptable ... not in Germany, Japan or Iraq.

I hope the marines responsible for these murders are executed. They've done morre damage to america than the worst of the 'insurgents'

it's people like you who provoke these extreme, xenophobic reactions to america. You are hurting us. Why dont you just shut the fuck up?

 

[audiotech]

Let's Roll 2!

Ironic that Rumsfeld's in Vietnam this week.

 

[nopassaran]

Let's not forget in this instance those who have allegedly committed these atrocities are "professional" soldiers and not conscripts. Also culpable are those at the highest level in the Pentagon who have turned a blindeye to these actions and have consistently denied they ever happened despite having knowledge to the contrary. US forces surrounded Haditha for a number of weeks to try and cover their tracks and arrested anyone who spoke out.

Can't understand why them being 'professional soldiers' and not conscripts makes any difference? It's the whole culture within the military that's at fault and it goes without saying that the state will cover up such incidents and generally turn a blind eye and even condone unethical practices.

 

[TAE]

The difference is that one group WANTED to join the army and the other group was FORCED to join the army. Mostly.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

The Yanks were simply replicating what happens in McDonalds and High Schools all over their homeland, idiots rush in and kill everyone
Sadly its hard for anyone in the states to get their hands on the real kind o shit thay need to waste every single one of those mother fucking disease ridden bags of shite- if EVERY YANKEE DIED I WOULD NOT SHED A TEAR
!!!!
However, I realise this reaction is over the top
NO
I only want EVERYONE who thought TWAT was good to die, not shot, but first watch their family get run over by some in bred retard driving an Abrhams over tem, no count on hoew amny Iraqis died that way
Fuck it, that admitted murderer Calli after Mai Lai got out in JUST OVER A YEAR
Yanks MURDER
Yanks MAIM
Burn Humvee Burn
More Yankee dead, the fuckin better
You cunts paid for the IRA to kill us
Suck that you fucking pieces of shit

Oh, do grow up, child.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I have to Agree.

back on topic....
As far as the killings in the town, Well, maybe, they should have just leveled the whole place.
No one over there is going to take this seriously untill we start fighting the "people"
We must Conquer them, those that choose to not accept it, shall be eliminated.

Human Warfare is the same now as allways.
nothing has changed, we will eventually have to kill most of the people in that region.
After that we will have to "administrate" those that are left over.
It is Not rocket science.
We still have our people in Germany and Japan.


We must Crush them, have them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women......

anything less is rubbish.

You as well.

 

[nopassaran]

The difference is that one group WANTED to join the army and the other group was FORCED to join the army. Mostly.

DOH!!!...knew that but you still ain't accounted for why one would would be more prone to carrying out war crimes than the other - which is what you seemed to be implying!

 

[angry bob]

and it goes without saying that the state will cover up such incidents and generally turn a blind eye and even condone unethical practices.

The state hasnt covered this up though has it?

 

[nopassaran]

The state hasnt covered this up though has it?

So are you trying to tell me they didn't try? The point I was trying to make is that we don't get to hear the half of what goes on over there.

 

[angry bob]

So are you trying to tell me they didn't try? The point I was trying to make is that we don't get to hear the half of what goes on over there.

I'm of the opinion that the state as a whole did not try to cover this up. Perhaps there were certain elements that did ... but if the US govt had really wanted to cover this up then we wouldnt be sat here talking about it.

You are probably correct in that US solidiers (and UK soldiers for that matter) have done some bad things that we dont get to here about. I'm sure this happens in all wars. IME this is a result of cover ups at a low level, i.e. by the soldiers themselves.

But most americans, and that includes those in govt, are appaled when they here about incidents like this and what happened in Abu Gharib

 

[nopassaran]

I'm of the opinion that the state as a whole did not try to cover this up. Perhaps there were certain elements that did ... but if the US govt had really wanted to cover this up then we wouldnt be sat here talking about it.

Not necessarily, the state can be put into a situation as a result of investigative reporting, whistleblowers etc whereby it is backed into a corner and therefore forced to come clean about atrocities. The issue is how they manage this once things are brought into the open.

You are probably correct in that US solidiers (and UK soldiers for that matter) have done some bad things that we dont get to here about. I'm sure this happens in all wars. IME this is a result of cover ups at a low level, i.e. by the soldiers themselves.

So if we go along with this line of argument this supposes that the powers that be are ignorant of the brutalising affect that wars have on the soldiers involved and how this directly results in the kind of incidents we are discussing here - I don't believe this for a moment, because as you rightly imply war crimes are commonplace in all armed conflicts.

I don't for a moment deny there are members of the government who find such incidents abhorrent, however, to think for a moment that they would not be aware that these sort of incidents would occur is a nonsense.

One is also forced to consider how the whole raison d'etre of the military is to engage in armed combat and this is what recruits are trained to for - and to do this effectively requires a process of desensitisation so that the enemy ceases to be regarded as a human entity. You should also be aware that there are many soldiers who actually enjoy killing.

But most americans, and that includes those in govt, are appaled when they here about incidents like this and what happened in Abu Gharib

Yeah some of them maybe - but most ummmm...I'm really not sure about that - you see you'll also find your fair share of apologists who will justify such behaviour, not to mention those who refuse to believe that 'our lads' (US or UK) could be capable of doing anything like that.

War crimes, genocide, human rights violations are part and parcel of any military engagement, and any government who deploys its forces for this reason is well aware of it.