I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
offtopic: bush is coming to the philadelphia area monday.
"These people are asking us to provide security and then they are killing us."
"The US military refused to discuss the incident..."
Can anyone tell me how this is NOT another Vietnam?
Can anyone tell me how this is NOT another Vietnam?
There's very little jungle in Iraq, and our troops probably smoke WAY less weed these days.
This incident illustrates how we have the wrong people in Iraq now. Instead of combat troops it should be MP's and civilian adsvisors. Combat troops are trigger happy by training. MP's are not. You just know that the shooters were just some 20 sometings, who are scared and just want to go home. Now they have to live with their fuck-up for the rest of their lives. Thanks Whistle Ass.
"...our troops probably smoke WAY less weed these days."
Maybe they should smoke more...worked for me in '69
Very bad.
It's going to be rough for any regular policing force to win over the Iraqis after the US Army gets through.
As if we weren't already in trouble there, this had to happen. BBC:
Local police fired shots in the air as angry Iraqis chanted "America is the enemy of God", "The blood of our martyrs will not go in vain" and "Falluja will keep its jihad".
[...]
Survivors say that despite repeatedly shouting to the Americans "We are police!" the US soldiers kept on firing.
Bad. Bad. Bad.
The local imam, Fawzi Shafi, urged mourners to "save your bullets for the chests of the enemy".
"Let the Americans get their hands off the city," he said through loudspeakers.
OT: Let the Record Show is celebrating the 2 year anniversary of Bush's famous vow that "getting bin Laden is our most important priority."
Come celebrate with us and leave a comment. Click on my homepage to go to the post!
Whole thing is taking on that "Deer Hunter" quality, isn't it?
This same basic scenario played out around a month ago, too:
http://tinyurl.com/n9du
Perhaps not "weed," but I wouldn't rule out drug use though, that's what happened with the "friendly" fire incident in Afghanistan with Canadian troops.
Nameless, good point. Also, do we consider those amphetimines provided by the U.S. Armed Forces to pilots and soldiers drugs?
Every Iraqi we kill is 10 times as bad as any the "former Ba'athists, foreign fighters and cowardly terrorists" kill. Iraqis might complain about our inability to provide stability and security, but any time we are the ones doing the killing it only hardens the population against us all the more. Thus far we have done nothing to give the Iraqis a reason to support us instead of the ever-growing resistance. It's clear Bush wanted perpetual war. Mission accomplished.
There just aren't enough troops to do the job properly. The denier-in-chief, along with the Rum/witz duo, refuse to admit that they fumbled on the one-yard line.
W should ship his entire war-planning group to the "Rancho de Tontos" in Crawford, where great ideas are hatched. He should join them in permanent exile, but then he wouldn't be on hand to try for a second stolen election.
next will come some truly dumfuck rules of engagement that go too far the other way. Then more US casualties.
And meddeling by rummy and finally, some pissed off GIs will shoot one of their officers.
Then the circle will be complete.
Rancho de Tontos - multi-lingual insults to our Fuckup in Chief! Bravo.
NTodd , anyway you interpret this Misadministration's goals in Iraq, it's real scary.
1. He wanted a quick victory, in which case his staff was really stupid enough to believe that after the war was "over" millions of Iraqis would rush into the street, create dot-com startups, and found the Iraqi Repugnican Party.
2. He really did want a perpetual war, in which case Chimpie and his stoolies are too stupid to realize that a second Vietnam will sound the death knell for his corrupt neofascist regime.
In either case the amount of stupidity involved is literally nauseating.
This isn't a question of the "wrong troops" or "screwups", but basic strategy. This slaughter, like many of the other similar things, occured at night, because the US army wants to fight with every advantage, specifically their night-vision goggles. This minimizes the chances of their own casualties, but MAXIMIZES the chances of occurances such as the "not-so-friendly-fire" incident in Fallujah. Of course, this is coupled with the value placed on Iraqi lives (
(
I'm trying to see how life is getting better for Iraqis with Saddam gone, but I'm having some trouble here. And if you say, oh, but it will, I ask when. I see no light at the end of the tunnel, and either do the Iraqis, I bet.
I HOPE his screwups mean the end of the neoNazi regime. But it seems as if the Germans supported their boy right up to the bitter end.
"Can anyone tell me how this is NOT another Vietnam?
There's very little jungle in Iraq, and our troops probably smoke WAY less weed these days.
Monkey | 09.13.03 - 4:02 pm |"
Oh. Okay. Thanks.
Way down in the AP story in the NYTimes today:
"Shell casings left behind and examined by an AP reporter suggested the Iraqis did not fire a shot. None of the AK-47 shell casings used by Iraqi police forces were on the ground. All the casings were those of weapons used by U.S. forces."
Put that together with the fact that US forces continued firing for 45 minutes to an hour. Nice, huh?
In either case the amount of stupidity involved is literally nauseating.
Erik G - alas, you are probably right.
I'm trying to see how life is getting better for Iraqis with Saddam gone, but I'm having some trouble here.
Pie - Zogby says that most Iraqis think their lives will be better...in 5 years. Right now, they still suffer from a lack of electricity, water, and security. I guess that's why they think we're the enemy of God.
So if Rumsfeld gets his way and has more Iraqis policing the country, can we expect even more of these incidents? How can our troops tell the good ones from the bad ones? Can we expect retaliations?
5 years? Hey, when Bush is defeated in November, I think their situation will improve much sooner!
Okay, one more time.
The problem lies in the LEADERSHIP.
As in, the officers.
If that pisses off any former officers, so be it. Tell me how it isn't so.
As long as the troops know that any thing that causes them worry can be unloaded on without consequenceses, they will do it. In the end, wouldn't you? There is no fire discipline. If it causes you worry, kill it.
As for prior comments, the Army M.P.s enshrined this doctrine in Europe throughout the 80 and 90's. I don't think they are any kind of a solution.
There is probably more hash available than these people have ever seen in their entire lives. Constant drug testing makes it unlikely they are used to smoking, though that may change.
The greatest problem lies in what somewhat in what Bing Crosby said. We are going to have a lot of people who have lost sight of what is truely right or wrong who are going to come home and try to re-adjust to the "old" rules. Many may never be able to. See Vietnam.
The military needs to re-evaulate what is most important. Officer's personal CYA or the overall moral condition of the force.
And yes, it would in the end mean more casualities, but an overall much better mentally equipted force.
Electricity and water as well as security in five years? Wow!
This is closer to the French/Algerian war than Viet Nam....but both models work.
The only solution is elections...actual real elections...not Bremer appointments....and it would have been better had they occured earlier. But even having them now...when clerics may get elected...is the only "out" strategy I can see. These incidents will continue...
Does it occur to anyone that the Bushies don't think they'll be out of office after 2004 because they know they control the electronic voting machines?
>The only solution is elections...actual real elections...not Bremer appointments....
But the Bush Junta won't stand for that. That means giving up control to Allah-knows-who.
That's something I've never been able to figure out about this invasion... Bush clearly cannot tolerate a real democracy in Iraq. So then, what form of government are they going to get?
Can anyone tell me how this is NOT another Vietnam?
Also, George W. Bush's whereabouts are known.
from the linked story --
The suspect car, a dark BMW believed to be carrying several gunmen, disappeared untouched by the shooting.
here's a random, crazy idea straight outta tinfoil hat territory - the whole point of this disaster was to make sure that car escaped. any thoughts?
sorry, forgot to turn off italics.
The media has now started to include the tally of American dead (but rarely wounded called "injured") in articles about the ongoing war. There has been from the beginning any reference to Iraqi dead and "injured" other than in specific incidents like this.
Is there a certain amount of racism in this -- I would think. But it's just that the US media accepts the regime's stated position that they don't do "body counts," ergo the Iraqi dead/wounded don't exist -- Big Lie redux.
From incidents like this that DO make it into the press, one can imagine that this isn't isolated, that we are abit quick to fire (as the Brits noted), but as there's no accountability, no follow-up, it's no big deal. The Iraqi deaths then and now, just didn't happen.
Unfortunately, try to equivocate as we might, this blood is on all our hands as a society. I've taken to emailing the media about this extraordinary blindness on their part and by extension on the part of the American people, among whom it rarely enters the conversation. It seems the only thing one can do.
Does it occur to anyone that the Bushies don't think they'll be out of office after 2004 because they know they control the electronic voting machines?
Does it occur to anyone that the Bushies don't want the troops currently in Iraq to be back in the US during the 2004 election heist?
When planning a coup, make sure you 1. control the media (CHECK!) 2. Keep the army occupied somewhere else...
See the latest entry at Left I on the News (http://lefti.blogspot.com) to read about "Massacre in Fallujah," the headline you won't see in any U.S. media
Benjiboy writes:
>The suspect car, a dark BMW believed to be carrying several gunmen, disappeared untouched by the shooting.
here's a random, crazy idea straight outta tinfoil hat territory - the whole point of this disaster was to make sure that car escaped. any thoughts?
I hate to admit it but I had the same "un-american" thought. Couple of our boys maybe got bored and went a wilding. Too much to drink, things got out of hand, screwed the wrong farmers daughter, stole a car and got chased by the cops. Had to call in reinforcements to avoid getting shot by a bunch of rookie cops.
No, couldn't happened that way.
it seems that more and more Iraqis are getting killed every day - It really would be best if we got the hell out of there. We're killing Iraqis on our own side, now! If we got out of there, the killing that would done would no longer redden our hands as much. Yes, it would still redden them since we started this whole killing spree, but we would not actually have our fingers on the trigger if we were not there.
-- People say that because we have liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, they will have much better lives... I often wonder why people think these people will have better lives when they have that much more DU radiation dust to contend with. They already had a high number of cancer tumors and birth defects after bushI bombed them with DU.
So I am told that the future generations will thank us... ok, how will they thank us if they are born retarded or with horrible birth defects or die young from cancer. What about the now? Why are these people being put through such misery? There are thousands of maimed Iraqis. Thousands of families with their kinfolk killed. They still don't have enough food. They still don't have clean water to drink and are having to worry about water born diseases. They still don't have electricity all the time. A lot of houses have been ruined. They don't have enough gasoline to get where they need to get. The doctors are still being worked overtime. They still don't have enough medicines. What have we really done for them???
but but but , Hitchens said the iraqqis were happy we were there.
i must say, you have to admire Sadaams ability to keep Iraq stable for so long.
"Can anyone tell me how this is NOT another Vietnam?"
This is absolutely nothing like Vietnam...
It's much, much worse.
I was wondering if this wasn't a setup? There would be a certain degree of risk but if the resistance knew where the check point was (and why wouldn't they) then baiting the Iraqi police wouldn't be all that difficult. A few shots fired from behind the hospital (I don't know the terrain, so perhaps this isn't possible) at the right time would ensure the "right response". I don't put this out to justify the behavior of the soldiers (it would only work if you knew that they would totally over react) but it does seem like an elegant way to kill two birds with one stone: get rid of "collaborators" while simultaneously stirring up the population.
I agree with you Sasha. Even though I authored the opposite theory hours ago.
The resistance does seem to be very organized and well trained. The successes they have had so far been very troubling.
Still you see the Vietnam story repeating itself. I know that it has become cliche to compare any US involved conflict to our little Police Action in Indochina but I am afraid we've stepped in it again bigtime.
Once again through arrogance and ignorance regarding the culture and values of our adversaries we have decided that we know what is in their best interest and that they are incapable of distinguishing between shit and shinola themselves.
You cannot invade a country to establish democracy. It don't work that way. Even if you do want their oil! 
I wish the troops would use nonlethals. Perhaps President Dean will set it right..
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