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Proof of Abuse by our troops in Iraq!!

  • Thread starter rattler
  • Start date
  • #21
Joe,

My comments are pointed at those who have never been shot at, who are quick to place blame, who know all the answers..

personally, I do not believe this war was just, but that is besides the point now... now we are knee deep in s@#t and it is going to be one hellva long road out

and please do not make assumptions about me, you do not know what I have seen, what I have done or where I have been

Av
 
  • #22
nor do you know about seedjars, wich makes the accusation of armchair quarterbacking equally unfair
 
  • #23
Like I said, I'm sorry to come off harsh - I had a 50/50 kind of feeling about what you were getting at with your last post. Not try to question your position; I'm just also not keen on letting people do the same to me. In context, your point is well taken. I'm sure you can understand that if your reply had genuinely been a criticism of my opinion, what you were saying might've made less sense from my position; to throw out a personal letter about the war and a bunch of statistics, both detailing how awful and gory it is, would seem to be a poor choice of justifications for further engagement.
~Joe
 
  • #24
My apologies as well Joe, it is an emotional subject and one that is close to the hearts of many... god I wish there was a simple answer
 
  • #25
I have a simple answer, but it involves a time machine and Grigori Rasputin, so it'll be expensive.
Seriously, I think the problem is less finding an answer as it is implementing one. A big part of that is the increasing rigormortis of the American political process; we've taken the lead in this entire endeavor and done very little with it. Stay in or get out - they're both solid plans that probably can be executed if we really get behind them, but the problem is that the parties have too many economic and personal interests to agree on a single course of action. So, we get a shoddy compromise that's as inefficient as possible as the President and House majority both take a break to throw tantrums. I'm leaning on the get out side myself, as I think that ending the occupation and turning to international powers stands a better chance of reducing both Coalition and sectarian casualties. The saddest part is that the lion's share of the people who agree with the stay in position are in it for the same reason that I support my opinion; reduced loss of life. But I fear that's not a high priority to the politicians.
~Joe
 
  • #26
We try to play the "limited" warfare game which rarely works... firstly IMHO we should have followed the Powell Doctrine, but alas... that was tossed to the side... now Im afraid we will pay the price for many years to come

the first Bush had it right, leave Saddam in a box, but dont remove him..

the enemy of my enemy... tactics 101
 
  • #27
That limited warfare game is big money for the military-industrial complex that profits mightily from the war. While many broken people return to live in poverty. It's from more than a century ago, but it never hurts to refer back to http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_brigade.htm in this situation.
 
  • #28
Iraqis don't love or appreciate our soldiers.

i have to call BS on this Bruce i know of one family for sre that appreciates the troops so damn much she offered her eldest daughter to my cousin for him to take her back to the states to be his wife................alot of the suicide bombers and idiots we are dealing with now are not Iraqi's........Mod Edit..........we are fighting Irainians, Saudi's, Syrian's............any idiot in the whole region willing to die for their "religion"........................we are not fighting a ppl or country, we are fighting an idea, and better there than here on US soil...................Europe is quickly loosing to the radical muslim culture.......look at the riots in France last year..........i hate Bush as much as you Bruce, if not more but this war in the Middle East was a long time coming and its not going to go away if we pick up and leave, the fight will just move more into Europe and other western nations..........the radical muslims hate our culture and everything we stand for and this is not going away.....................

my cousin has been to Iraq twice...................he could likely go again and when he goes hes generally in the thick of it.............he's got 20 years in the Guards and could retire this year but hes staying in for atleast another 5 years even with the good chance of being thrown back in the sandbox.......

Watch it Rattler. There's things that are OK to say, and things that are not. I'm not keeping you from expressing your opion, but mind what you say, and how you say it.
 
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  • #29
rattler, I understand what you mean about the escalation of radical Islam, but I wonder if your example is really one of appreciation. Everyone realizes that things have hit the fan in Iraq, and the Iraqis themselves know it better than anyone else. That woman wanted to get her daughter out of there; given the opportunity, she'd probably try to find her kids a way to Yemen, Brazil, the Phillipines, or anyplace else where they could escape the violence. Does she appreciate the American soldiers? Maybe. I don't want to be contrary because I think your heart is defintely in the right place, but I think that woman, in all likelihood, had a more urgent motivation in mind at the time.
Can we fight an idea with an army? I share in your desperation and agree that we're in a position where some sort of act of force is still necessary, but I'm skeptical that we'll make any headway against the mounting anti-Western movement through the Iraq front other than establishing an artificial and temporary republic there. ...Sadly, at this point I think we need to regroup and focus on ending the war before we tackle everything else. America's resources would certainly be of use in diffusing the international situation, but they're not really available; it's not ideal, but given the situation I think we can afford to fall back on the UN and other international forces to hold things together while we pick ourselves up. Ultimately, it's the radicals and terrorism groups that are the bigger problem, but there's too much of a loss of life and resources in the war to effectively continue concurrently on all fronts.
~Joe
 
  • #30
That woman wanted to get her daughter out of there; given the opportunity, she'd probably try to find her kids a way to Yemen, Brazil, the Phillipines, or anyplace else where they could escape the violence.

not quite..................my cousin built her a house full of furniature in his spare time and she didnt have a clue about what was going on till they showed up and unloaded the truck :grin: the locally stationed US troops were keeping this family safe as she was one of the only Shite families in a Sunni town(or was it the other way around?) anyways it was some town bout 40 klicks from Bagdad
 
  • #31
Well then, I'm glad that I carefully qualified that conjecture. That would be something to be grateful for. Is your cousin in the engineering corps or something? Where do you get the parts for building a house in your spare time in Iraq? No wonder all that contract money just disappeared. A nice gesture for sure, but I wonder if that wasn't a part of the pro-Sunni policies that the US has enacted. (Or, if they were indeed Shiite, perhaps some sort of response to criticism.)
~Joe
 
  • #32
IMHO the best way to prevent this from ever happening again is to require that the draft be reinstated before any war/police action can be declared..

as long as only the few feel the sting of battle, its poison will be too easy to swallow

30yrs ago I would have never believed I would make such a statement

Av
 
  • #33
lol sorry i worded that wierd.......didnt build the house, just alot of furniature for it.....mainly out of plywood and 2x4's..........the family had no cupbords or closet space or even a kitchen table so he built them all..............my cousin is trained as a mechanic for the Bradley fighting vehicle and as a result has to stay fairly close to the front lines to repare them on the fly.........he CO found out that he is also a hell of a carpenter and put him to work making their base more hospitible and home like............putting up walls in quancets to divide up the space, building shelves and the like.........anyways in his spare time under the direction of his CO they built this family alot of furniature, took him bout 6 months working at it an hour here, 2 hours there ontop of everything else he had to do........they found a nice formica type top for the kitchen table that they salvaged from somewhere............he also made some plaques containing their batalion coins, one of which is hanging in the Iraqi presidents office..........
 
  • #34
IMHO the best way to prevent this from ever happening again is to require that the draft be reinstated before any war/police action can be declared..

as long as only the few feel the sting of battle, its poison will be too easy to swallow

30yrs ago I would have never believed I would make such a statement

Av

Not no but HELL no! The SS is already sexist as it is and I've got to sign up in like 8 months. It pisses the hell out of me. You know when you're just so pissed you can't formulate words to express your hatred? That's how I feel about that.

If they were to do it, they better damn well draft 50% men and 50% women.

Whoo, I'm not mad at you, I'm just... grrr I hate some of the stuff the government does.
 
  • #35
If they were to do it, they better damn well draft 50% men and 50% women.

fine by me..................send the guys out for most of the month.................and for that one week send out the women.....................no war will last longer than 28 days :grin:
 
  • #36
Including women in the draft won't get you out of it any easier Clint... there are too many fat people. ;P Fit guy like you is a prime candidate. Got flat feet? No? Bad eyesight? Go stare at the sun for a little while, problem solved. :D
~Joe
 
  • #37
They won't draft a queer like me, not as long as the republicans are in control :)

Besides I've got asthma and I'm my dad's only son so I've got 3 cards :)

It's a principal thing. I don't think women should be treated differently if there is a draft. If the feminist groups don't complain about women not being drafted, I say they aren't really for equal rights after all and are full of it.

Why am I getting so worked up over a hypothetical situation? lmao
 
  • #38
Clint, that is exactly the passion and uproar that would have prevented this mess, hence my comment... imagine the difference it would have made in the decision to go to war against Iraq

Av
 
  • #39
Yep, Av8or got ya there, JLAP. The deployment of the National Guard looks like a bit of a "backdoor draft" in some ways, but think of how many folks would come out against re-instating the draft... then, if it gets put to law anyways, imagine how much more interested in foreign policy many folks would likely become. I could imagine a REALLY bad scenario unfolding in that case- civil war style even, maybe, and I would have no problems understanding it (and at this point I'll just quit- my thoughts on the stinking rotten military industrial complex don't seem to popular on this site :))
 
  • #40
the enemy of my enemy... tactics 101

Indeed. Also, the devil I know of is better than the devil I don't know of. I'd take my chances with the devil I know any day.

Clint, there is no way our elected representation would send their children to a conflict if there was a draft. It just wouldn't happen. They have to worry about reelection. Isn't it interesting that our politics is more important than international issues?

xvart.
 
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