One thing that will make it much worse is miltary action against Iran.

I would like to think that at some future point foreign troops will lead and some vaquely democratic and legitimate government will emerge, but at the moment that seems a long way off.

Keep in mind when you read it that when incidents as the ones he talks about occur, the ones to blame are the ones who deliberately fight and hide among innocent civilians- they bring the battlefield and all it’s horror to them.

The Guardian I think the idea that Iraqi’s are not so perturbed about the incident
in Iraq the incident has caused little controversy - US troops there are already routinely viewed as trigger happy and indifferent to Iraqi casualties.
is particularly depressing.

Arab sources maintain that the true figure was closer to one million. Even former Israeli Foreign Ministry Director General Rafael Eytan reported that “the real number was close to 800,000.” The figures expose the fallaciousness of Ben-Gurion’s claim, unless the nearly two-thirds of Palestine’s total population who were driven out of their homes and not allowed to return all were “fighters.” Similar fallacies are refuted concerning the additional 323,000 Palestinians driven from their homes in 1967, of whom 113,000 were second-time refugees, having lost their original homes inside Israel’s “Green Line” in 1948 before being driven out again in 1967 after Israeli forces occupied the remaining areas of Palestine.

Summarized Sen. Malcolm Wallop (F WY): “The world is marching away from socialism, yet we’re propping up a basically socialist country, Israel, which is n( willing to change. It has very little free enterprise and huge, distorting subsidies wandering through its economy. In man ways, our aid supports that. “

Israeli law sanctions torture, and prisoners can be convicted and sentenced solely on the basis of confessions obtained by, in Israeli terminology, “mild physical coercion. ” Apologists for Israel explain, however, that torture is never used against Jewish suspects, only against Christians and Muslims.

The families say they cooperated fully with the NCIS, but drew the line at exhumation; investigators’ requests for the bodies to be dug up for forensic examination were flatly turned down by the families. Islam doesn’t permit bodies to be disturbed after burial.

These propagandists gives me a bad grimace. And the United States is too sensitive to being called a bully to stomp on the obstructions to get at the truth in order to obtain justice for our men. They need to throw those requests out the window, come into the night with commandos and dig up the remains, extract the bullets and examine the wounds, then put them back before the night is gone. The bullets should be able to determine whether it was fired from an Ak -47 or a M-16. And the size and shape of the wound will tell us the energy the bullet hit with and at what angle. Bullet holes in the buildings? I could easily fake that if I had access to US arms. Sanitization squads can easily extract bullets and casings.

For the most part, the residents of al-Subhani welcome the kinder, gentler face of the Marines. But they say the damage done by Terazzas’s company on that November morning cannot be undone. “I was an admirer of America,” says Khaliq, the morgue doctor. “When those bodies were brought here, it turned upside down my image of that country and its people.” Of the Marine with whom he shared bread, Thabet says: “He spoke to me politely, and I respect him for that.” But reciprocating the friendly gestures would be asking too much. “As long as they come as bearing guns, we will be reminded of what their colleagues did to our friends and family,” says Thabet. “We will not forgive.”

Do not engage in behavior that brings out the rage for if the Sunnis give no forgiveness they shall be given none by US proxies, who are neither as compassionate nor as restricted as the US Marines.

America will be reminded forever of the Sunni atrocites in Fallujah, and this is why America will never cooperate with Sunnis or return any friendly gestures or give any reconstruction aid. Ah, but we all know that isn’t true, and that is what propaganda does. It makes what is not true, real. And it makes what is real, not true.

In portraying it as they do, they push the memories of Fallujah and the Sunni insurgency into the past. This enrages me to a point where it sublimates into ice, for if they had a shred of wisdom they would not engage in vendetta. Yet they do engage in vendetta, they do contribute to the Times propaganda. They do so, whether knowingly or unknowingly whether manipulated by the Times or of their own free will, without consideration of the consequences.

And that, is for the Marines to forgive, so tell it to the Marines.

Consider all possiblities, including that Marines violated the law and murdered innocent civilians, but wait for the facts before reaching conclusions.

Are you suggesting that we live by the rule of law, douglass? I don’t think the Democrats believe we live by the rule of law. They say they do believe, but as we can see, their actions betray them.

Keep in mind the citizens of Haditha are frightened, not of US Marines, but insurgents…

I already keep in mind the psychological and propaganda aspects of this situation. Considering the competence of military lawyers, Presidents, and commanding officers in combating insurgent propaganda, I’ve already given up most of my hope that anything anyone can do would mitigate the propaganda victory of the insurgents. Too many factors are against the truth.

The military justice system is usually very efficient. It becomes unhinged when the media get in on the pie though, as we often see in rape prosecutions here in the US. There is more than an even chance someone will be suffocated by a mountain of books, regardless of guilt or innocence. I keep being reminded of the incident with the 101st (or was it 82nd) Airborne Division here in the states during Clinton’s term. Someone murdered another fellow soldier while that soldier was sleeping, using a baseball bat to the head. The man that goaded and manipulated the baseball wielder and had planned this attack all along, was let off with a plea bargain. Given that things are not easier because it is in war time, given that it happened in Iraq, in insurgency controlled territory (otherwise the US wouldn’t be there, doing patrols), and given that Murtha initiated a propaganda wave attack, I know that we should expect the worse. That’s what I know.

And I was with them in Haditha, a month before the alleged killings last November of some 24 Iraqi civilians.

Get the rest here

Curiously, Time has this, which seems contra to the CNN reporters experience…

Since TIME’s story and the investigations that followed, residents say the Marines have become more restrained in their behavior. “Before, when they heard a gunshot, they would start firing in all directions,” says Raseef. “Now, they rarely fire at all.”

Point being we know nothing.
Wait for the facts.
Weigh the reliablility of different voices.
Consider all possiblities, including that Marines violated the law and murdered innocent civilians, but wait for the facts before reaching conclusions.
Keep in mind the citizens of Haditha are frightened, not of US Marines, but insurgents…

For perspective, what the insurgents are all about:
The Guardian

Omer Mahdi in Haditha and Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Monday August 22, 2005
The Guardian

With so many alleged American agents dying here Haqlania bridge was renamed Agents’ bridge. Then a local wag dubbed it Agents’ fridge, evoking a mortuary, and that name has stuck.

I predict the following will emerge as comments…

You left this out-
Let’s wait and see what the investigations reveal before we convict anyone. We know next to nothing about what happened yet.

But of course, judging by the fact that you already think you know what we will say, there’s not much point in actually trying to engage you, is there?

Enough Troll food for today.

http://www.arabhra.org/publications/shortreports/shortreports000621.htm

An Israeli friend of mine assures me that this article is truthful and that liberal Jewish organizations in Israel fighting against these obscenities are regularly abused and subjected to hate campaigns by the Likudists and other nationalists.

More food for thought.

If ever they are offered it, they may well accept it, but I dare say it has gone way too far now for there ever to be a just solution for the Palestinians.

Our western collective guilt over the Nazi business has caused us to be craven and cowardly in our treatment of the middle east and we will pay for it.

I don’t frequent left wing websites much at all because they as full of s… as you are.

You are denying the reality because you favour one religion over another. A word beginning with B springs to mind.

The self defence argument is pure bs.
Who created the refugee crisis in the first place by ethnically cleansing Palestine?
Who has all the guns, helicopters, nuclear weapons etc?
Who has invaded each of its neighbours?
Who is ignoring UN resolutions to return to it’s borders?
Who has refused to allow peacekeepers on the occupied territories?
Your man of peace has advocated genocide as a solution.
Israeli politicians regularly refer to arabs as lice and cockroaches.
The arab population inside Israel is subject to brutal discrimination. Having a vote doesn’t mean much if you don’t have a home.

As I said, read about it.

I don’t unconditionally support the actions of Palestinians. On the other hand you (and the US generally) unconditionally supports Israeli action right or wrong. That is not a moral, just or even adult position.

Leftist inventions and simpleton, reductive logic — I disagree with righteous, smug “you”. I defeat your arguments at every point, so now I’m a racist, and flip flop, you win the debate. You should just answer every debate by stating the opponent is a racist, so, therefore you can always be right. Well I gave this troll “one chance” — I’m done.

This is really twisted logic.

The notion of an arab nation is a chimera used by islamic extremists and dictators in the mire and now by you and your zionist ilk.

You are really showing your true racist colours when you start denying the existence of Palestinians as a people. They may well be of many ethnicities but they still lived there in 1948.

The fact that they are living in ghettos is a testament to Israeli brutality and suppression. The living conditions for arab muslims and christians inside Israel isn’t much better. Do some research.

Why can’t the Israelis abide by UN resolutions and return to their borders?

>> In 1948, at the request of the Jews who were living in Palestine, the United Nations voted to partition the remaining quarter of the original Mandate to make a Jewish homeland possible. [Legal Mandate]

>> Incited by the mere presence of Jews, five neighboring Arab states declared war on Israel. But the Jews, many of them recent Holocaust survivors, refused to be defeated. [Islamic Jihad, Genocide – Word of Allah]

>> Territories capture were kept for good reason — no responsible Israeli government could relinquish a territorial buffer while its hostile neighbors preach for its annihilation. [Common Sense]

>> Israel large Arab minority, who live inside the state of Israel, have more rights and privileges than any other Arab population in the entire Middle East. [Democracy and fairness]

>> Israel makes no genocidal threat to Arabs, there is no Palestinian “diaspora” [While Israel makes the desert bloom, relocated 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab states, built a thriving industrial democracy in its allotted sliver, while the Arabs have been busy making sure that their refugees remained in squalid refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, where they remain powerless, right-less, and economically destitute, and falter for suicide bombings]

That must come as a surprise to the 18.5% of the population that is Arabic, who are allowed to vote, who serve in the military, and who are members of parliament.

“Palestine” is an invention. If the surrounding Arab states were in any way hospitable to the “refugees” that comprise “Palestinians”, there would have been no need for the “state” to exist.

You really need to revisit the definition of “genocide.” As an apologist for terrorists, I find you unworthy of further response.

That is one steaming load of bovine faeces. The mandate did NOT include the ethnic cleansing of, and land theft from the indigenous population. Palestine had been a relatively peaceful multiethnic and multireligoius place for centuries.

Israel was borne of terrorism and ethnic cleansing, and exists as a racially segregated state.

Democracy? Some democracy that excludes some 6 million people that belong there from entering, let alone voting. Oh, but the arabs and other minorities left there are treated marvellously I suppose in your little view of the world too. Hahahaha.

Of course you expect Palestinians to be Ghandi in the face of helicopter gunships and hellfire missiles and peacefully protest against extrajudial killings and theft of more land.

It is genocide.

Why can’t the Israelis abide by UN resolutions and return to their borders?

Well those democratic friends of the Carlyle Group the Al Sabbahs certainly valued the help of a democracy or two.

…and then…..

Some kid putting herself in harms way, and her dopey friends watching and encouraging her is a travesty of humanitarian work in the highest degree. The adults that set these kids up are not innocent.

But you then claim that you are interested in only truth. Not even the IDF version of events made the claim that the houses had a tunnel or anything else. “Suspected tunnels in the area” is somewhat different.
Another neocon construct.

A 1400 year Jihad? More like resisting a brutal 58 year suppression and illegal military occupation. I don’t think the Palestinians need to be fighting the wars of history. They have enough on their plate and they know who their enemy is.

A fresh vision isn’t envisioning chaos where chaos has always existed. Don’t see anything fresh in that nor in what else was said.

Anyway this thread is about dead and all the cool kids have left. So, there’s just me, the guidance counselor, left to keep an eye on those with poor impulse control.

yamar; It’s time for you to move up from the tactical to the strategic. Remember, “You can do everything with bayonets, except sit upon them.” Get some fresh vision, guy.

Wake up to the real world and you might help make a difference for peace. There have always been wars. Democracy, though, does have a way of minimizing war. When was the last time two democracies fought a war against one another? When was the last time another social system declared war on a democracy? When was the last time a non-democracy defended a democracy? When was the last time a democracy defended a non-democracy? You should have immediate answers with one question, and pause on the next, and so on … it’s a rhythm.

Without exception “Those who do not pick up swords can still die upon them” – J.R.R. Tolkien [WW1, combat veteran]

as for the execution of civilians, that is more the insurgent modus operandi. I wouldn’t be surprised that they either set the Marines up or the Marines had ulterior motives for saying that these civilians died from a bomb.

For the benefit of the audience, here is a comment conned left at my blog, where I wrote about Future Weapons of the United States.

bet you were wanking away through this programme yermadwanker

eros not thanatos!

Here’s the link if you want to see a partially completed description of future American weapons

sorry but i can’t see the point you are making

But I can see where it is coming from. I can imagine the frame of mind those young marines were in when (well if) they killed civilians. It has happened in every war and, in general, only gets reported when the other lot do it.

As a rule violence leads to more violence. It gets a reaction. So if you are going to use violence you need to be aware of the consequences and have a clear idea how you will get out of the situation.

I don’t blame people trying to cover this up (and given the age of the story they have done well) because how much more violence will this cause? How much encouragement will it give the ‘terrorists’? How many more dead on both sides as a consequence?

But I do get sick of the casual advocacy of violence by amateur strategists who have no feeling for the death of anyone except thos on their own side. Oh yes and then claim to be christians…christ was unarmed and anti violence, ok a bit keen on the whole god nonsense, but definitely anti violence.

Of people who think

Destabilization is not a bug. It’s a feature. such casual disdain for the daily misery of others while they live safe in dull suburbs smug in the certainty of their own opinions and dreaming of a more exciting life of violence.

You should have seen the kind of damage a .50 caliber sniper rifle will do to steel, concrete, and human flesh targets. It is totally amazing and aweinspiring

guess which little mad child wrote that?

So yes I condemn the violence. And i can see several sides to the situation. But we need something different from ‘more of the same to sort it out’. More marines in Iraq, Afghanistan etc will mean, among many other things, more dead civilians.

It’s the home page for the Kurdish Regional Government. Don’t miss the Photo Gallery. Does it look like these folks need Iraq, an artificial divvy of the spoils of WW I by the Great Powers, to prosper?

Want a model to solve any number of seemingly intractable problems in the ME? These folks won’t be setting up any Worker’s and Peasant’s Soviets anytime soon.

And, therein is the problem that the Left has had with this model of development. Peasant society is not only a leveling culture, it is a profoundly conservative culture, as the Soviets found out with the kulaks. The traditional culture resisted collectivization so strongly, that Stalin eventually exterminated them.

Just like the eviill neo con tools the Cro-Magnon’s pushed the peace loving, communal Neanderthals out of their niche, setting the stage for Halliburton.

The boundary landscape of the entire ME is an artificial construct. The whole edifice of faux nation states was imposed upon a crazy-quilt of ethnicities.

I’ve got news. People don’t need inherently unstable entities jerking them around when they have workable alternatives, q.v. the Kurds in Northern Iraq. There are about 30 million Kurds watching their brothers in the northern provinces take control of their destinies. And, other ethnic groups are not unaware of the Kurdish renaissance.

Destabilization is not a bug. It’s a feature.

From today’s NY Times:

“A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq.
Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the marines’ story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, the official said. …

When Colonel Watt described the findings to Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the senior ground commander in Iraq, on March 9, they raised enough questions about the marines’ veracity that General Chiarelli referred the matter to the senior Marine commander in Iraq, who ordered a criminal investigation that officials say could result in murder charges being brought against members of the unit.

Colonel Watt’s findings also prompted General Chiarelli to order a parallel investigation into whether senior Marine officers and enlisted personnel had attempted to cover up what happened.”

A reprehensible tragedy. But we’re dealing with it. And yes, this kind of disgusting thing happens in war…sort of like using car bombs to blow up civilians. Where’s your outrage about that? Where’s the condemnation of the, you know, terrorists?

Oh, right. Freedom fighters. Defeating the hated baby-killing occupiers. Right. Let’s hop in our Zil and go down to the GUM store and wait in line for bread, shall we?

Some kid putting herself in harms way, and her dopey friends watching and encouraging her is a travesty of humanitarian work in the highest degree. The adults that set these kids up are not innocent. It’s like adults saying, “Hey kids wait till the sun goes down then go play on the rail road tracks.” … No, don’t, stupid. The reason for originally posting this was to show how the leaders [of riots, demonstrations, movements, revolutions] consume their followers, beware of what you get yourself into. I’m not apologizing for stating the truth. I would have told Rachel to go home, that she has no business doing this. What were her idiotic parents thinking? Do work with the Peace Corp if you must, but don’t get mixed up in aiding International Terrorist – they will swallow you and you will be a martyr for a 1,400 year old Jihad, not human freedom. It was a waste, and a waste should not be celebrated. “…well in theory it was a good idea, still it’s good for stats and analysis, and worthy of further study” …BS!

Apologies for soiling the name “Rachel Corries” by inventing a story which had no basis in fact.

Nyomythus.

Murtha, a patriot, who stood by his county’s core beliefs….

Compared to a Palestinian boy so frustrated and sickened by constant killing of his friends and family….

I predict the following will emerge as comments

1. It is all the fault of leftist defeatists - that is a definite.

2. It is the fault of the UN/international community.

3. It is Iran’s fault

4. It is the fault of Saddam

5. You make omlettes without breaking eggs - that will be yrmdwnkr and the other fans of adolf

6. They killed themselves to make the usa look bad - i think this is more likely than you think, examine the comments about rachel corrie.

7. It is the fault of the MSM reporting all this stuff when other far worse acts are taking place - another definite

8. Completely ignore the whole thing and rattle on about more pressing matters like imaginary new weapons that can be used by the 101 fighting chickenhawks to destroy other people’s neighbourhoods live from the safety of their own little suburb.

9. Make some long tendentious post that plays games with philosophy and morality and miss the central point. When you let the military loose civilians get killed and there has been more of this going on than we realise as there always is in a war zone - they are intrinsicly dangerous places.

10. Call me, and others, trolls and run away from the debate. Well that is definitely neo’s strategy

…any guesses on the comments we won’t see?

You’ve completely lost it now. By your broad definition of Socialisim, don’t parts of the US count?

Ah … you are yanking our chain now, you’re doing a cunning but extreme parody of yourself. All right you got me, you can stop now … funny:-)

2:32 AM, May 31, 2006

What about the non-Socialist enclaves? Samosa’s Nicaragua, Chile under your puppet, non Jews in Israel or in the occupied territories?

I wonder if those marines knew the story of Al-Haditha in Palestine.

What a sick sick world.

Oh right, like in New Orleans. Got it.

Like in Afganistan … pity about how that thinking trashed the country, and left a problem for future generations to clean up.

That seems to be neo con thinking though … reacte then ponder. Or maybe just reacte.

Why not leave the reasoning to the big boys. Oh wait, on second thoughts, it could hardly be worse than the diseased thinking that got the US into Iraq.

Perhaps you should be talking to your best friend GWB, God knows he needs all the advice he can get.

No, he was championing the destablisation of an entire region, and looking forward to watching the carnage unfold as a kind of reality TV. What a sicko barely covers it.

You don’t see a problem with that? Silly question. This site does seem to have attracted people with a free floating moral compass, who will support any outrage, and pitch foreign people into whatever abyss to justify the actions of Bush.

It’s more like 3 problems. State Dep, the PKK, and Turkey. Then there is the IED brigade in Baghdad. If we can get them all fighting each other, they should solve at least one of the problems listed.

Dysentry as a lifestyle is when the water is so bad you’d better carry a lot of bottled water or a lot of purification tablets, or a osmosis water bag.

Reemergence of islamic militants for a start. That can’t be good, but what they hey?

Legitimisation of Israeli occupation of the Golan maybe? What’s a little ethnic cleansing when they’re our allies eh?

It flushes these kinds of personalities into the open, and renders their ravings “acceptable”.

Whoa! I believe wasp was talking about the Kurds and Azeris championing democracy in the area, and how it would spread to neighboring states, like, oh, say Syria?
Making things a little rough for Bashar?

And this would be a bad thing, how? ‘Cause he’s such a nice guy and all. But since you’re a citizen of the world, “ask not for whom the bell tolls”, eh?

This is exactly the kind of cold, brutal and inhuman commentary that further illustrates why war is such a bad idea.

It flushes these kinds of personalities into the open, and renders their ravings “acceptable”.

When “they” start killing “us”, anything goes. It doesn’t even particularly matter anymore who “they” are, as long as we are sticking it to “them”.

I mentioned in my previous post the fact that the Kurds are so pro US that it is almost embarrassing at times. There is a common belief among many of them, as reported by several bloggers, Michael Totten for one, and a friend of mine, that they will eventually become the 52nd state in the Union.

My friend ran into a Kurdish businessman in Frankfurt, purchasing appliances by the container load for a family store in Northern Iraq who not only believes that statehood is possible , he lives for the day when they get their first NFL franchise. He is it seems a rabid Chargers fan who left San Diego to “go home” and build a future for his extended family. But, he still loves his American style football.

I don’t quite think that this was the kind of thing that Victor David Hanson had in mind

10:07 PM, May 30, 2006

Complicated ain’t it? The Turks won’t wear a Kurdish State and the Armenians would probably arm themselves to the teeth at the thought too.

Problems problems problems. Who’d have thought?

Actually, I have a request as well. To everyone who engages with trolls, I ask that they cease and desist.

I may write a post about this some time, or I may not. But I thought this might be a good time to reiterate the fact that I think it’s a very bad idea to interact with trolls or to engage them.

This thread is a good example. I certainly haven’t counted, but I would guess that well over half the comments here are a back-and-forth with people who are out to hijack the thread, change the subject, and turn it into an exchange of insults.

As I’ve said before, I have no problem with substantive arguments that disagree with me. I don’t mount the “troll” accusation lightly, but I think over time trolls show their true trollish colors.

I value substantive discussions in the comments section. As “al fin” wrote at 8:54 AM today:

If the threads get hijacked by combative and redundant people with ulterior motives, the reason for a lot of people to come here disappears.

At this point, answering trolls is, IMHO, an almost complete waste of time. But it’s actually worse th