Marines cover up massacre in Iraq
 

I know this is yet another "Iraq"-topic and while these are generally frowned upon in Political Palace, I think issues such as these absolutely need to be discussed:

Source: reuters.com

Another related article

There's absolutely no denying that things like these are happening in wars. The question arises, however, as to how much more the US government, military and public can take of this. There seems to be a high probability that this incident will turn out to be larger in scale than even Abu Ghureib. It's already put a damper on relations between the newly elected Iraqi government and the US.

So what do you make of this?

Rush to judgement on Haditha
 

As usual the left wing press has rushed to judgement against the U.S. military over the alleged "Haditha Massacre". The press and the left have already tried and convicted the Marines invovled, portraying them as nothing short of SS stormtroopers. They've been described as cold blooded killers of innocent children. All this of course before all the facts have been brought to light. Do these brilliant leftists have access to all the ballistic evidence? Do they know what happened prior to and during this incident. Have they accounted for the fact that insurgents comminly use civilians as shields? No, of course not...it Mai Lai all over agian, and they're salivating over the chance to drag the military through the mud again. Oh, they'll say, but we have the accounts of witnesses...well lets look at the veracity of those witnesses.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...553969,00.html

Hmmm, seems like this town is a shithole of terrorist activity. No reason anyone from Haditha would lie about what happened. I'm not saying that The Marines are innocent, I'm just saying that we don't know yet, and that it's pathetic how the left wing press seems almost eager to convict them.

I understand the ROE is unshakable and MUST be obliged to. But when a roadside bomb explodes next to you, the first thing one wants is the find the one responsible. I can easily see how civilians could have looked like the first people responsible... I have sympathy for the Marines, but they are bound by their vow to duty. They should pay for their transgressions.

Yeah, this is all about bipartisan politics, and has nothing to do with the photographic and ballistic evidence that has already been brought to light. Wait, what?

Seriously, if you want to say "We don't know yet," then don't turn around and blame some kind of obfuscated liberalist agenda-pushing as the sole cause of the investigation.

I personally don't find this surprising. It's a war, people die. Sometimes, innocent people die. I don't think it's right, but I think it's inevitable.

Agreed. War is terrible. Collateral damage is an unfortunate but necessary price we pay for waging war. However, I believe this incident could have been better handled by the Marines, you know?

And Devo, don't make me shove my cock down your slutty mouth. Christ, leave me the fuck alone. You're as annoying a piggybacking a dead fucking polar bear.

Devo's right.. These attacks were planned.. well not planned, but taken in account when producing the plan.. They're not "Unfortunate Mishaps" , they're "Acceptable losses"..

Which are only acceptable cuz its not on their side..

No, no, not collateral damage or saturation bombing. Freedom Power. Third-degree freedoms necessitate some hospital time; what?

Wish it were just Hospital times they "necessitate"..

Acceptable losses is when you achieve something like take an objective in battle with enough losses to make things look rational. It was done for the greater good, they gave in to the cause.

Unfortunate mishaps are unplanned and they shouldn't have happened. This is one of them. Nothing was gained here except civilian losses. If you think this was "planned," you need your god damn head examined. An IED went off near troops, one got killed, some of the other soldiers jumped the gun and went on a rampage of sorts.

That's all there is to it. There is no underlying plan. Something unfortunate happened. The marines involves should be prosecuted/punished.

Of course, the media in general will take this unfortunate happening as a chance to mudsling at the military along with all its members, past and present. That's what bothers me about this. I figured there'd be something like this eventually.

I never denied this. They went on a rampage. My guess is that their buddy being killed was enough for them to think they should go gun down folks in hopes that one of them set up the bomb.

It's to be expected. After all, the enemy in this situation doesn't wear a uniform.

The only folks who should be blamed were the ones on-site who caused this situation. By higher ups, did TIME mean stuff like Generals and stuff like that? I hope to god not. Just punish the dumb bastards that screwed up. I seriously doubt the higher ups would want them to do this. Slaughtering civilians is counter-productive to the whole "stomping out terrorism" goal ((if that is even realistic)).

Marines have a de-centralized view of leadership. A leader is anyone with initiative to lead at that moment. Therefore, the higher-ups should not be held responsible. However, they're still taking flak because officers are taught that their men are a reflection of themselves.

Really, though, what is there to talk about? The sociopolitical ramifications this incident will have on our Arab allies?

BORING.

If anything this'll just increase ticket sales for Valley of the Wolves.

IED goes off, kills a marine, his buddies go apeshit because they have no targets to retaliate against and killed a bunch of innocent people. End of story.

What'll be really damaging is how much effort is revealed to have been made by the military or the government in covering the massacre up.

And all of you are also rushing to judgement..based on what. Rumors? Press reports? Accounts from "unbiased" civilians? The investigation isn't over, all the facta aren't out yet you're all so damn sure these guys went on a bloodthirsty rampage.

Dozens of innocent people that weren't killed by roadside bombs.

WHO COULD IT BE!?

Colonel Mustard with the candlestick. In the dining room.

Wesker --
Dude. Forensics have inspected it and debunked the stories the marines gave (see top article). It'd be hard for this NOT to be what it appears as. All signs point to troops going on a rampage. I'm all for glory in the military and what-not. But you have some folks who do the wrong stuff without thinking it through often.

All signs point to: They did it. If they are found to be innocent, then you are right to assume that they didn't. If it turns out that they did murder a bunch of civilians, then the rest of us were right to consider it 'bad'.

Why is it that it is considered inappropriate for such 'negative' news to be spread and commented on? Everyone knows damn well that nothing is proven yet, but that doesn't mean that it should not be looked at based on the evidence available at the moment and tentative conclusions drawn.

How many people assumed that Islamic terrorists were to blame for 9/11 before there was any confirmation? Oh, oops, that was one you wanted to believe.

Everyone jumps to conclusions. The only trick is to reserve !final! judgement until everything is on that table. There is nothing in this thread to suggest that this is not the case.

There is a difference between unintentional collateral damage and deliberate murder of innocent, unarmed civilians =/

I think they should start counting deliberate murder of innocent, unarmed civilians into collateral damage as well. Nerves go blank and such in wars.

I do not say that nerves cannot "go blank and such" in wars, but this proves that soldiers should not be trained to kill people, but to kill the right people.

Also, those victims didn't have anything to do with the death of that marine (?)

I am pretty sure they've had plenty ethics lessons before taking up the gun.

Yet, the most disturbing thing about that incident was the whole cover-up.

Note that the killings took place in November 2005. I'd say everyone involved did a tremendous job at hiding this from the public eye.

That's what every nation on the planet already does. It's called "following orders."

American troops do receive ethics training, though not nearly enough. That said, no amount of ethics training could have prevented this situation from happening considering the amount of stress that our troops are placed under every single day. There has to be a breaking point at some point, and losing a pal is just the thing to bring the red mist.

Since so many of you have made up your mind already heres a somewhat different opinion

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060531/...s_iraq_terraza

or this from a Seattle TV interview with the marine who was next to the Marine who was cut in half by the IED

Crossan: We used to go out on patrols and have the little kids count the patrols and all that stuff and we couldn’t really do anything except grab them and throw them inside their houses…
KING 5 TV interviewer: Why would you do that? Because you were afraid that the kids were scouting for the insurgents or you thought they were in danger?

Crossan: There are little kids that scout for ‘em. ‘Cuz later that day we, along the main road there, we cut behind a few buildings and the next patrol that went out got hit. And that little kid that was just there and there was people all around. But the day that I got hit they were planning a major attack and it got spoiled, so, and there was like 20 some people, insurgents, that were gonna attack the cop that day.

Then we got hit by an IED and the cops sent out a squad of Marines, and the insurgents just started attacking then, just right off the bat and we just foiled it. We were just driving back from the cop. I remember taking a left and then a right, and then remember waking up from the ground for a split second. And then waking up in the helicopter and then finally knew what happened in the hospital.

KING 5: So after you were injured, also tell me, you lost one of your guys. What can you tell me about him?

Crossan: We lost Lance Col. Miguel Terrazas. He was a good guy. He was from El Paso, Texas. And he was my point man. He was pretty much the guy I went to if I needed anything.

KING 5: Was he driving the Humvee at the time?

Crossan: Yes he was.

KING 5. And so you were sitting next to me?

Crossan: Yes, I was in the passenger side. I know in my heart if I was there, I possibly could have stopped what happened, so. ‘Cuz I know that the other team leaders and even staff sergeants…they both, they all kinda, listened to me and I just gave ‘em ideas and all that stuff. Things just went smoother. But I just don’t know.

KING 5: How do you feel about the villagers involved? Um, you know, do you have emotion as you think about them or not really?

Crossan: No. Because half of them were bad guys. You just never know, so. It really didn’t cross my mind.

KING 5: There are reports of, you know, little children being killed and women being killed.

Crossan: Little kids I can see being bad and even some of the women, but just over there, you just can’t tell who the bad guy was..."

or this from an imbedded CNN reporter

It actually took me a while to put all the pieces together -- that I know these guys, the U.S. Marines at the heart of the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha.

I don't know why it didn't register with me until now. It was only after scrolling through the tapes that we shot in Haditha last fall, and I found footage of some of the officers that had been relieved of their command, that it hit me.

I know the Marines that were operating in western al Anbar, from Husayba all the way to Haditha. I went on countless operations in 2005 up and down the Euphrates River Valley. I was pinned on rooftops with them in Ubeydi for hours taking incoming fire, and I've seen them not fire a shot back because they did not have positive identification on a target. (Watch a Marine's anguish over deaths -- 2:12)

I saw their horror when they thought that they finally had identified their target, fired a tank round that went through a wall and into a house filled with civilians. They then rushed to help the wounded -- remarkably no one was killed.

I was with them in Husayba as they went house to house in an area where insurgents would booby-trap doors, or lie in wait behind closed doors with an AK-47, basically on suicide missions, just waiting for the Marines to come through and open fire. There were civilians in the city as well, and the Marines were always keenly aware of that fact. How they didn't fire at shadows, not knowing what was waiting in each house, I don't know. But they didn't.

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

So, all you Monday morning quaterbacks who have never faced a life or death situation except while playing a video game, perhaps you can manage to reserve judgement on these guys until we have all the facts.

Does anyone remember LT. Pantano..accused of murdering iraqis, crucified in the press..and found NOT GUILTY.

Dude, what a freakin' surprise; I would not have guessed...

I'm glad to finally see a different side of it.

That seems like an extremely plausible reasoning behind the incident. It saddens me that insurgents would use their own people as meat shields.

"My son is no murderer!"

O rlly?

All of your posturing and justifications still don't change the fact that this case basically amounts to murder. These soldiers went berserk and took their aggressions out on whatever they could find. When they realized they killed a bunch of innocent people, they tried to cover it up.

We have the facts, and unless the Marines dispute them (which they haven't) you can piss in the wind and bury your head in the sand all you like. Call this a leftist agenda, whatever helps you sleep at night.

I'm starting to wonder why we even let you keep posting in the Palace. We haven't tolerated blind opposition to reason before, and there's no cause not to do so again.

If you're saying that we should wait to draw conclusions when the marines have completed their investigation, then that's fine, but when ballistics evidence isn't sought until after the bodies are in the ground, eyebrows get fucking raised.

Thats what i am saying. The press and certain political figures have been calling these marines butchers for a long, time, long before any conclusions were reached. the bodies were in the ground long before any investigation was started so thats irrelevant.

As to the so called cover up. If the Marines engaged in a firefight and the insurgents used human shields etc, given the currwent climate, perhaps the commnders thought it best not to say these people were collateral damage, they'd get skewered then too wouldn't they.

As th whether or not you want to let me continue to post thats your decision. i haven't name called, trolled or attacked anybody. if you want to ban me for my opinions then so be it. Tolerance i see seems to only be a one way street. You call it a blind opposition to reason, i see it as taking a more cautious approach and listening to all sides involved.

Of course the administration would NEVER sacrifice a few marines in order to keep their agenda intact and molify their critics.

"Why won't people let me voice my unreasonably insane opinions? DISCRIMINATION!"

Sure thing, Billy. Tons of dead civilians and maybe, maybe one dead combatant, and no investigation takes place. That's totally irrelevant. Yup. Just because the Marines waited to try and investigate the bodies when it basically amounts to desecrating the corpses for their loved ones doesn't mean anything at all.

But they weren't involved in a firefight. Ballistics evidence taken from the houses indicate that no shots were fired from the houses. This isn't a liberal media hype, it's a matter of public fucking record.

You're denying truth because of its inconvenience, not out of any objective reasoning.

Where is your evidence? Site your sources. The investigation is not over, the Marines haven't been able to give their side or speak in their defense, yet its too difficult for you to give them the benefit of the doubt.

My name is Mark, not Billy, unless you're trying to make some insulting reference.

Here's another alledged massacre, complete with similar pictures and accusations, that has been proved false....but my assertions that the Marines just might be innocent is insane.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...2032795&page=1

I wouldn't doubt that children and women were being used to watch us. It happened in Vietnam and it happens here. Counter-insurgency warfare, y'know.

But still. It's no reason to kill the people. They should have called it in and blocked off whatever roads they could have and had investigation pass through and what-not for the civvies involved. The ROE say only fire if fired upon. Killing women and children for helping out their husbands because they don't know any better isn't sound logic.

This article highlights by opinions quite well

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/co...538&catcode=13

Yes, all the soldiers in our armed forces recieve ethics training. That is part of the soldiers creed, something that every soldier is required to memorize. Giving soldiers more "training" in ethics will do nothing against situations like this. If you want to help these people, give them counceling on how to deal with this sort of stuff. They need to know what to expect from themselves and others when they are exposed to this sort of violence and stress.

Wesker, chances are these Marines have orders not to give their side of the story. I'm not sure you will hear the full story of what they have to say until after they are released from the military or if they are found innocent. If they are found guilty... that could be a long time while they sit in prison.

Personally speaking from what I have see, Marines hold themselves to some rather high standards. The murdering of civilians just don't sound like the well trained and harded soldiers in the Marine Corps. I'm not saying that what happened was impossible, I am however wary of what the media has to say on this as there has been a great deal of negative coverage on our military and no coverage on what is really going on over there 99% of the time. I'll wait to hear what the military investigation comes up with.

"The facts we do have tell that a carbomb hit a Marine convoy, a firefight ensued, and fifteen civilians were killed along with eight or nine terrorists."

These aren't facts. Your mouthpiece is pretty much wrong.

Quoted more directly from Murtha's statements:

"
MURTHA: Well, what I worry about, Wolf, is that this happened six months ago.

And nothing -- you heard nothing about it. As a matter of fact, the original story was that an IED killed these 15 people. It became very confusing to the public. "TIME" magazine came out with an article, and they still tried to cover it up.

Now, there were payments made to victims, which aren't made unless we kill them, one way or the other. And, secondly, they knew about it the day afterwards. So, there's no excuse for not having this be more open and know exactly what -- and the longer it goes, the worse it is for us, because it looks like it's the policy of our troops to do something like this."

Murtha is referring to the military's tendency to cover up their massacres, not execute civilians.

Admittedly, my only source on this matter is Murtha himself. Though, Murtha claims that his conclusions are based on what he's seen of the evidence, and nobody is disputing what he's saying.

Your recent example seems to be more an indication of an incident the military was fully aware of wasn't their fault, which led to an expedient investigation.

What happened at Haditha seems to be more an example of the military attempting to silence news of the massacre with hush money while they would attempt to investigate the incident in secret, if at all.

I'm not arguing that there wasn't some kind of cover up, but that can have occurred for various reasons. It seems more likely to me that after the IED went off there was gunfire directed at the Marines, as this is standard operating procedure for the insurgents. The Marines probably returned fire, perhaps with less discrimination than usual, at the houses and other areas from which, even 1 or 2 gunmen, could keep the squad pinned down. After the action, the Marines may have checked these houses and had an "oh shit" moment when they saw the collateral damage. That scenario is far more believable than insane bloodthirsty Marines bursting into houses and indiscriminatley killing 1 year olds. But again, I prefer to give these guys the benefit of the doubt and refrain from calling this a massacre or a rampage.

Oh yeah, is there a reason why my signature has been removed?

The cover up could have happened for various reasons, true. All of the reasons I can come up with boil down to "I (or We) were just involved in something bad. And we don't want to get caught." This right there, is an indication of someone being a bad person.

If it was an accident, and all those people were shot while the marines were trying to shoot the lone gunman behind them, then that'd be bad. If they deliberately shot those people, even worse. Trying to cover up the truth is wrong in and of itself, there is no reason for this, even if one can rationalize it to themselves.

Current climate would excuse neglecting one's duty to report on issues such as this? How so? If things were going well, or you were at least following SOP, you'd have nothing to fear from being open about it. Unless you are openly proposing that bad news, even if it is true, should not be spread because it would hurt 'the cause' or some such thing.

No, you prefer to invent situations and apologise for them without any evidence for or against your arguments. That's not at all the same thing as the benefit of a doubt.

Why did you put it back? Mods hate when you do that.

I didn't..it just reappeared.

I'm not inventing scenarios, there is just as much or little evidence to support what I've said as there is to support the rampaging killer marine idea. The whole point is is that all the evidence isn't out there, but that doesn't stop papers like the LA times from running inflammatory articles such as this one.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...ines-frontpage

Uncorraborated witness terstimony obtained by an Iraqi reporter from a hotbed of insurgency is apparently is treated as a true and verified account.

Yeah... not inventing situations...

So unless you were there... and part of that unit... STFU...
You are trying to defend something that you know nothing except what Scarborough Country has spewed at your skull. And guess what? You drank it up without even questioning anything. Congrats... Jerry Falwell welcomes you to the fold.

Now... I've been following thing story since it broke and have not taken a stance one way or another. I still believe in "innocent until proven guilty"...
But sadly... for the miltary to cover up this information for nearly six months is self-destructive. Why bother hiding something for that long unless you seriously fucked up somewhere?

Oh, that's right... they didn't fuck up... the liberal media and Michael Moore lied. WTFever...
Tell that to the media that isn't based within the US... someone fucked up... and it wasn't the media this time... as shocking as that may seem.

And care to keep just posting up online news articles without any supporting evidence? You'll probably refute this post with something from another online media outlet. But that means nothing in here unless you are coming in here with an honest opinion on the subject matter and are trying to defend yourself with something else than a "but they said this" kind of defense.


EDIT: I did want to state this: unless you yourself have been in a situation like that... don't even begin to think that you know what is going through their minds.
I was in the Gulf War... I was stationed a few miles outside of the Iraqi border... and I'll tell you now.... the thought process was "shoot first, ask questions later"... not "hey, let's check this out" and die...

Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember Scarborough spewing anything about Haditha. Perhaps you meant to say O'Reilly.

perhaps/probably... I tend to avoid most of the news programs that are based within the US. I'm preferental to non-US based news programs... with the exception of Jon Sewart for his humour...

But they talk about politics!

What the hell are you talking about?? I'm just offering a possible alternative. I'm not defending the actions of the marines, I'm saying we do not yet know what those actions were and to call them rampaging bloodthirsty killers before we have all the facts is a reckless rush to judgement. And what the fuck does that idiot Jerry Falwell have to do with any of this?

Uhh okay? Since you seem to be an expert of "what is going through their minds", maybe you can tell me how a couple of well-trained and well-equipped marines could possibly be killed by a couple of elderly women and young children.

"If you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners corrupted from birth, and then punish them for the crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded than that you first make thieves, and then punish them?"

Here's a big surprise. A marine experiences one too many IEDs and goes Terminator. Everyone screams murderer. But this government made them go to Iraq to do the dirty work. When they snap and go on a rampage, the public (who elected this government) throws the marines to the wolves. We're asking them to do super-human things, to live outside their own minds, to be in complete control all the time and this IS NOT POSSIBLE IN A PLACE LIKE IRAQ. Yes, they're going to fuck up. They are human. They are in a place they don't want to be, watching their friends die everyday. You can blather on about rigorous training all you want, but most of these kids are as green as Oscar the Grouch. They aren't ready, they don't realise what they signed up for, and they're fucking up hand over fist. I don't blame their superiors for trying to cover uip for them; I would too. Americans can shake their fingers at these guys all they want, but you put them there, so you share the blame.

It's true, you are. So perhaps you should stop it.

So what, you're saying that we should absolve them of any wrongdoing?

I'm all for the President getting the shaft over this, but the fact of the matter is that these troops still committed voluntary manslaughter.

You are not doing this right.

Time to sound off with an opinion nobody here will like. Least of all me.

I don't think for a second that this was an instance where the Marines lost discipline. If it was, it was easily within the Marine's power to wipe a significant portion of the town off the map. (or the whole thing) This looks like selective targeting of people whom they thought were collaborators. My guess is the collaborators are not entirely willing and the insurgency has a gun to their heads figuratively speaking. But it hardly matters. It doesn't even matter if the collaborators were unarmed. They chose a side, supported that side, and then found themselves at the mercy of the opposition. A particularly pissed off opposition whom their actions shared some responsibility for the death of one of their buddies/comrades. Kinda too late to make amends! Does anybody here think that the insurgents care about killing collaborators on the American side? They do it all the time. Whether they be police officers or civilians. It's okay for them, but not for us?

Due process of the law in a war-zone is reduced to "You want to stop me? Try it.". Iraq certainly qualifies as a war-zone. Fighting a insurgency is particularly brutal for all parties involved. Invasions spark insurgencies. So incidents such as these should not come as a surprise to anybody. I can't muster that much outrage over it, not because I don't find this repulsing but because it was only a matter of time that revalations such as these would start to come out in the press.

It looks like nobody here absorbed any lessons from Vietnam though. So I'll stop and let everybody wallow in their collective ignorance and watch the politicians and military feign their surprise and shame over this alleged incident. Remember, it's just a few bad apples!

That's the very nature of warfare. Kill more people on the other side, so the other side gives up. Maybe if more people truly understood this there would be less wars. I somehow doubt it though.

I'm not entirely sure about that. Even assuming that these people had not lost discipline, it seems to me that in order to destroy most of the town, they would have had to call in outside aid. Indeed, I feel that if they HAD kept discipline, then the destruction could have been even greater. Granted, if they had kept discipline, then it's very likely that it wouldn't have happened in the first place. Interesting paradox, no?

Care to provide any reasoning on why you feel this way?

No, it's not okay for us. First off is that we are not in a conventional war. The enemy wears no uniform, and has no government. How can we expect to defeat them when we lower ourselves to their standards, especially when doing so just accelerates recruitment for the opposition? In a case like this (Hell, with pretty much any action that requires the military acting as a police force), I feel that Theodore Roosevelt's words are the best advice: "Speak softly, and carry a big stick."

I'm not outraged at this either, truth be told. I KNOW that shit like this is inevitable, and I can understand why they did it. However, understanding does not require forgiveness.

Which completely excuses them from being punished.

This is getting dangerously close to the line of thinking which pervaded World War II, which (not counting the Jewish casualties) had body counts in the millions. Compare that to the casualty amounts in wars since then. It's rare to see casualties go over the 100,000 mark. While this is in part due to better equipment and training for the soldiers, it's also a result of abandoning this line of thinking, which led to both sides (Axis Powers and Allied) attacking civilian installations to weaken the enemy.

Everybody else: " The marines ransacked homes, went on a rampage, killed in cold blood.

Me: Wait we don't have all the facts, maybe it happened a different way

Everybody else: True, we don't have all the facts, but you should keep your insane ideas to yourself because they don't fit with the way we think things happened, the marines went on a rampage, yadda yadda yadda

Nice to see you're all so open minded, I'm glad you are all so well informed as to know exactly what happened. God forbid we give these guys the benefit of the doubt.

Mind you, if it weren't for the videotape and an eye witness, we would all think this incident never happened. Talk about being "well-informed". Can't you see that this is what all the controversy is about?

There have been massacres like this and civilian casualties before, but the whole cover-up is what makes it all so scandalous.

Don't you think it's a little odd that you have to defend them after over half a year has passed since the event?

Even when the troops are cleared by an official investigation, there are still all kinds of allegations of cover ups and what not.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1002613009

Haditha may turn out to be just what everyone thinks and if so the marines should be punished, but putting alot of faith in reports from Iraqi sources isn't the best source to put your faith in. I for one do not think our marines go about shooting babies on purpose.

In this alleged incident I believe it was purported that the Marines called in an airstrike to cover their actions? I could be wrong on this, but they do have outside support in the form of such airstrikes.

Easily done. If this was a murderous rampage or massacre My Lai style the bodycount would be higher. Two dozen is not a massacre. A couple hundred is more like a massacre.

As for the issue about collaborators being co-opted into assisting the insurgents, I believe that one of the articles posted referenced the fact that the insurgents routinely execute supposed American allies/collaborators. Sounds like intimidation to follow along with the insurgents commands.

Last part, if you or I were accessory to a pre-meditated murder in a warzone it wouldn't matter about the outcome for you nor I either. That's war.


You think recruitment isn't a problem when the insurgency is going out of it's way to kill our allies? Those that choose not to utilize violence are at an extremely disadvantaged position when faced with a group that is more then willing to use violence to further their own ends. Especially in a war; conventional or not. So -- how many troops and allies would you like to see in an early grave to justify your noble philosophy/theory about war against a insurgency before defeat will be conceded?

Furthermore, our troops are better then the insurgents. We are not summarily executing civilians to intimidate them to our side. (yet?) This is still due process of the law at work in some form.


Understanding does require some amount of empathy though. Which has largely been absent from this discussion.

I have no idea what they should be punished for? Fighting the insurgency? Again, I don't think this was some murderous rampage given the bodycount.

This is exactly what I'm talking about when I referenced Vietnam and how people have not absorbed any lessons from it. Yes, American casulties were under 100,000 at somewhere between 60,000 - 70,000 deaths. Vietnamese military casulties were somewhere over one million. Civilian deaths are largely unknown but generally assumed to be over two million. Robert McNamara put the total number of casulties at over three million. Which largely agrees with historical accounts. Not bad for a small asian country like Vietnam eh?

In all honesty, I'd rather be ignorant to situations like these though.

Dude, we can read your posts just fine. That is not what happened, you are being intellecutally dishonest and rumor-mongering as much as anyone else. Furthermore your mouth is full of marine cock. I don't know why, in this case, as it casts them in a very poor light and any marine would be ashamed of men who kill children and wheelbound elderly.

Maybe you just like cock.

No need to get insulting. I'm done with this thread for now. We'll see what happens when all is said and done. If its a rampaging massacre of bloodlust, as you're all inclined to believe, then I'm sure the marines will be punished, but if its something less, such as a collateral damage incident, I hope there isn't a call to sacrifice these guys on some political altar.