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On a personal note, it's absolutley insulting as a veteran who has actually served in a TofO that you demean the same people who protect the freedoms that you refuse to fight for. [/rant]. Carry on
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Who again is presently securing the freedoms I refuse to fight for? Not a single grunt killing in iraq is or ever was responsible for protecting this mythical “freedom” that seems to be exclusive to the states, and nor will they ever be as my life doesn’t lay in their hands. It’s the same “freedom” rhetoric that’s brought up anytime negativity towards military personnel arises, and as usual it holds little water. We are all human beings given the right of choice, be it whatever consequences, and we were all put on the same planet, same dirt as one another, and the day I accept my life as privilege given to me by someone who can pick up a gun and murder his fellow man, is the day I no longer want to live. The planet is a huge place with plenty of areas to reside, and if a situation arises in which my life is in jeopardy due to unavoidable circumstances in terms of war, then I will simply leave and let the failures kill each other for some false ideals. If a time comes when the whole planet is a war zone, then I will only fight to protect myself and loved ones, not a country or piece of cloth.
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Horseshit, Charlatan and you know it. Our military goes thorough great lengths to not kill innocents. However, it is war and sometimes innocents get killed. It sucks, but to infer that our (Amercian that is...Canadians have long lost their will to fight) troops are intentionally killing is outrageous
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Goes out of their way to not kill innocents? Good one. I bet you think all of them are not capable of war crimes either. There are more than enough troops intentionally killing civilians. Don’t think because the media doesn’t report something, or the crime is not leaked into mainstream media, that it doesn’t happen often. Not all soldiers are as inept as the soldiers in Abu ghraib to pick up a camera and tape their atrocities. You don’t know a thing unless you’ve discussed the situation with Iraqis living it. Nothing. Once you’ve been fed so much patriotic propaganda, you no longer have ability for independent thought, and it is at that point where you are willing to go to any lengths to protect your imaginary ideals, whether you have to kill civilians or not.
There is no such thing as “accidentally” killing civilians. Was it a accident when the signed up with the armed forces knowing that a circumstance could arise in which they would be sent into battle and possibly kill civilians? No, therefore it’s not a accident. And even if it were, it wouldn’t make them any less inhumane. They are and were always prepared for such events to occur, and gladly continued their mission regardless to fight whatever propagandist cause they were fed.
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Yes the military takes great care to not kill innocents. BUT, they do kill innocents. AND you have to remember that this war gets spun in a different way on the ground in Iraq. To many there (and here) the coalition forces are engaged in an unjust invasion of their nation.
To many Iraqis who have lost loved ones or seen their nation torn apart by war (yet again) can you blame them for seeing the coalition troops in a negative light? Can you blame them if they were to take up arms against an invader?
Right or wrong, I am sure that many of the insurgents *believe* they are doing the right thing just as fervently as you believe your troops are doing the right thing. Ideology is a bitch.
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This is the key charlatan. In a situation of war, both perspectives are never viewed and in turn, this leads to delusional racism and unwarranted labels to the supposed “enemy”. Although the brave Iraqi resistance is doing the right thing, and doing what any nation wrongfully invaded would do given the situation. They were a simple people residing under great oppression to begin with, and to be invaded and have loved ones killed is all the fuel they need to fight back, be it in Iraq or otherwise, and I don’t blame them in the least. Although you do see some of their actions as terrorism, I do not, nor will I ever. If one puts aside the politics and views the very basic situation, you will understand the resistance. I commend each and every one of them for their bravery and courage to face the “greatest” military force on the planet, with what little they have to work with. If all they have are IED’s and small arms, then more power to them, it has worked greatly thus far. To take on the American force with so little is truly heroic and deserves a great deal of respect. The Americans on the other hand are cowardly fighters, useless without their countless arms and protection. Perhaps soldiers of past, distant past, had some honor and courage, and abided by the rules of war, but today’s soldiers are an embarrassment to humanity, a disgrace to all things good.
Below I have provided links to various incidents and situations in Iraq including videos, pictures and stories.
http://www.infovlad.net/?page_id=161 (numerous footage shot from the resistance destroying the enemy)
http://www.jihadunspun.net/home.php
http://www.dawah.tv/broadcast/iraqfree/iraqfree2.ram (video I posted in one of my threads several weeks back depicting American war crimes and general harassment, murder and abuse to innocent men, women and children.)
death toll up to 35,000-100,000, and these are older links, the present number could be significantly greater.
http://baltimorechronicle.com/oct03_DC
http://mindprod.com/politics/iraqatrocities.html (imagery, may contain gore)
www.iraqibodycount.com
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Every day, US military forces in Iraq are attacking civilian populations in a calculated effort to drown a growing popular insurgency in blood. But one would hardly know the dimensions or brutality of the atrocities being carried out in the name of the American people from the sparse and sanitized coverage provided by the major press and broadcast outlets that purport to disseminate “the news.”
The US media—owned and controlled by a handful of huge corporate conglomerates—play an indispensable role in the mass murder of Iraqi men, women and children. Together with the Bush administration and the two major parties of US imperialism—the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate John Kerry, no less than their Republican rivals—the media are complicit in a crime against humanity of immense proportions, one that dwarfs any crimes committed by the various political leaders who have been targeted for destruction by the American ruling elite in recent years: from Panama’s Noriega, to Serbia’s Milosevic, to Saddam Hussein himself.
One can stare at the 24-hour cable news networks from sunup to sundown and get no sense of the carnage in towns and cities from Baghdad, to Fallujah, to Ramadi, to Hilla in the south and Tal Afar in the north that is left in the wake of US rockets, bombs, tank shells and sniper rounds. The evening news reports of the major networks provide at most a fleeting image of the death and destruction, inevitably hedged with absurd avowals from the US military that “precision” attacks were carried out against “terrorist” and “anti-Iraqi” targets.
As for the press, one day’s front-page report of US helicopter attacks on unarmed civilians or air strikes against urban centers is eclipsed the next day by the latest hurricane threat or new poll numbers on the upcoming election—an election in which no discussion of the legitimacy of the US subjugation of Iraq or the real war aims behind the bogus ones used to promote the war is permitted.
No country’s media is more cowardly, or more artful in churning out the official line and excluding any serious criticism or analysis, than that of the USA. It would be absurd to hold up the British media as a model of conscientious and objective reporting, but even there, articles occasionally appear that provide some insight into the reality of the situation in Iraq.
The Guardian newspaper, for example, on Tuesday carried an eyewitness account on its front page of the American helicopter attack on unarmed Iraqis that occurred Sunday in central Baghdad. Thirteen Iraqis were killed and dozens were wounded when US copters repeatedly fired rockets into a crowd that had gathered around a disabled American armored vehicle on Haifa Street, near the Green Zone that houses the US and British embassies and the offices of Washington’s puppet government.
For the benefit of our readers around the world, and especially in the US, we give here some excerpts from the chilling and tragic account provided by Guardian columnist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who was himself wounded while covering the US assault.
Abdul-Ahad describes at least four separate rocket strikes by American helicopters against the unarmed Iraqis—documenting that the helicopters returned several times to fire on those seeking to remove the dead and wounded from the first missile strike.
“When I was 50 m away I heard a couple of explosions and another cloud of dust rose across the street from where the first column of smoke was still climbing,” he writes. “People started running towards me in waves. A man wearing an orange overall was sweeping the street while others were running. A couple of helicopters in the sky overhead turned away.”
He runs for cover, and then: “A few seconds later, I heard people screaming and shouting—something must have happened—and I headed towards the sounds, still crouching behind a wall. Two newswire photographers were running in the opposite direction and we exchanged eye contact.
“About 20 m ahead of me, I could see the American Bradley armoured vehicle, a huge monster with fire rising from within. It stood alone, its doors open, burning. I stopped, took a couple of photos and crossed the street towards a bunch of people. Some were lying in the street, others stood around them. The helicopters were still buzzing, but further off now.”
The reporter continues: “I felt uneasy and exposed in the middle of the street, but lots of civilians were around me. A dozen men formed a circle around five injured people, all of whom were screaming and wailing.”
Abdul-Ahad’s belief that the presence of so many unarmed civilians afforded protection from a further US strike was shattered in short order. “I had been standing there taking pictures for two or three minutes when we heard the helicopters coming back. Everyone started running, and I didn’t look back to see what was happening to the injured men. We were all rushing towards the same place: a fence, a block of buildings and a prefab concrete cube used as a cigarette stall.
“I had just reached the corner of the cube when I heard two explosions. I felt hot air blast my face and something burning on my head. I crawled to the cube and hid behind it. Six of us were squeezed into a space less than two metres wide. Blood started dripping on my camera but all that I could think about was how to keep the lens clean. A man in his 40s next to me was crying. He wasn’t injured, he was just crying.
“I was so scared I just wanted to squeeze myself against the wall. The helicopters wheeled overhead, and I realised that they were firing directly at us.”
The helicopters moved away, and the reporter went back onto the street to record the carnage and help the wounded and dying. Then: “More kids ventured into the street, looking with curiosity at the dead and injured. Then someone shouted ‘Helicopters!’ and we ran. I turned and saw two small helicopters, black and evil. Frightened, I ran back to my shelter where I heard two more big explosions.... I reached a building entrance when someone grabbed my arm and took me inside. ‘There’s an injured man. Take pictures—show the world the American democracy,’ he said.”
It is hardly necessary to point out that no major US media outlet has taken note of the Guardian’s damning account of Sunday’s bloodletting in the center of Baghdad. Most US newspapers on Tuesday relegated to their inside pages news reports of yet another round of US air and artillery attacks on Fallujah, carried out Monday.
The Iraqi Health Ministry said 20 were killed and 39 wounded in the strikes. Aljazeera reported that those killed included the driver of an ambulance and six passengers, whose vehicle was struck by a jet-fired missile near the northern gate of the city. “Every time we send out an ambulance, it gets targeted,” the director of the Fallujah hospital told the Arab newspaper.
Aljazeera also reported that US missiles destroyed three homes in the city’s al-Shurta neighborhood, American shells hit a market place, and US tanks fired on homes in the al-Jughaivi neighborhood near the city’s northern gate.
The Washington Post, in a page-19 article, noted the attacks on Fallujah neighborhoods and the ambulance fatalities, but reported without comment the official US line that the attacks were directed against a “suspected hideout” of associates of Abu Musab Zarqawi. It printed the Goebbels-like handout from the US military: “Based on the analysis of these [intelligence] reports, Iraqi Security Forces and multi-national forces effectively and accurately targeted these terrorists while protecting the lives of innocent civilians.”
The New York Times ran a front-page commentary focused not on the death and suffering being inflicted on the Iraqi people, but rather on the danger that the US military’s bloodletting against insurgent towns could backfire. It warned of the “classic dilemma faced by governments battling guerrilla movements: ease up, and the insurgency may grow; crack down, and risk losing the support of the population.”
This description is itself a cynical deception, as the Times well knows. The very fact that the US feels obliged to step up the slaughter and target civilian populations testifies to the fact that Washington and its stooge government are hated and despised by the Iraqi masses. Talk of a risk of “losing the support of the population” is an attempt to maintain the myth that the anti-US resistance is the work of a small minority of Baathist “hard-liners” and foreign terrorists, and the equally absurd claim that the US is in Iraq to establish “democracy.”
In reality, the US media’s disinformation operation is among the most striking and significant expressions of the collapse of American democracy.
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See Also:
A daily toll of US atrocities in Iraq
[14 September 2004]
US military launches bloody attacks on rebel strongholds in Iraq
[11 September 2004]
The US sinks deeper into the Iraqi quagmire
[7 September 2004]
New York Times and Washington Post remain silent on murder allegations against Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi
[19 August 2004]