"You got your damn war " My Lai Redux...

This may already have been posted, but I couldn't find it in a search, so...

"A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. "The Americans came into the room where my father was praying," she said, "and shot him."

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right."

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/36417/



We can't pussy-foot around this issue any longer. Any politician who supports this on-going crime in Iraq - in any way - gets no support from me, in any way. Democrat or not, I will not vote for any politician who is not for ending this murder NOW.

I'll be voting anti-war in '06 and beyond. I've already notified my senator (Cantwell) that she lost my vote when she voted for the war.

Politica as usual just won't sell this time around.

for politics, then how are we better than any Nazi who crawls out of the dark? This just can't be justified on any level, not by me, not any more.

was already too damned far. Every day since should be an additional indictment of the Bush administration and their congressional enablers.

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Once again we have put our soldiers in a war zone without a clear goal & realistic rules of engagement. To judge these soldiers actions without considering the reality they live in is unfair. They don't know who the enemy is and one of their duties is to kick in civilan doors in the middle of the night. They are also sent out as bait to draw insurgent fire so the artillary knows were to target. They whole war plan is doomed to fail and will put soldiers in impossible situations that we can't even comprehend. So how do we know how we would react.


AValdoux

with you on this. There is never any excuse for killing innocent people. If it happens by accident, the vet will carry that pain and remorse and guilt to his grave. Going into a house and killing every man, woman, and child can never, never be excused - ask any vet. I agree with you that Bush and all of his enablers (Dems and Repubs, alike) share in this crime - but then every American shares in it...

WTF is that??? One of their duties is to kick in civilians doors in the night? Jesusfuckingchrist! Why do people defend this shit?

There comes a disconnect, a reality dissonance, that makes it hard to see a thing clearly. I don't think that they are trying to justify the murder, I think that they just can't come to terms with what it actually means - the murders are us...

And it's even more difficult when we have a mental image of ourselves that doesn't match the reflection.

We still, even some of us here on DU, mourn the destruction the bushnazis have rained upon America's reputation. We still think of "America" as the image created by schoolbook history -- the land of freedom and opportunity, the shelterer of desperate immigrants, the propounder of democracy for all. What we're getting now is a different image and it's hard to look at.

But it is, after all, our own true reflection.


Tansy Gold

Harry "Breaker" Morant

I had hoped these things hadn't happened, but was less and less hopeful as more information came out. It is the doom of man that he forget his past transgressions and forces ever generation to experience the destruction of mind, body and soul. Because make no mistake this is not a few bad apples, but to quote Breaker Morant again. "The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men in abnormal situations." - Major J.F. Thomas, defence attorney for The Scapegoats of the Empire.

So, is it a wonder men who have been under stress for months, have had years of INDOCTRINATION to desensitize you to the idea of killing another Human Being,maybe are a little trigger happy, maybe a little bit jittery from getting mortared daily, maybe have an ulcer from having your gut tightly clenched for hours on end during your HMMMWV patrol, have been berated as a coward or threatened with discipline if you refuse to go out on patrol finally break. But, hey America supports you! America cares about you! And that is why you're on your 3rd fucking tour in Iraq, your marriage is in a shambles, you missed your child's birth, Americans pay more attention to American Idol or Paris Hilton's new sexual partner. No no no Americans would have you languish overseas if it wasn't somehow important.

The ultimate tragedy is so many will not learn and this cycle will be repeated in another 25 years with a new generation. * and his enablers will not grasp the problem either. To them war should go like a game of RISK, you move your faceless, nondescript, interchangeable pieces onto a section of the world you wish to conquer and remove the faceless, soulless, nondescript pieces which had previously been there. To them this will be just another facet of war and if it ultimately ends with America suffering another Vietnam Syndrome, they won't blame themselves, they will work hard to blame you.

"These men sometimes speak approvingly to each other of the massacre at My Lai. Hey, they were all Cong. If they weren’t, they knew who the Cong were and didn’t tell us. Calley did the right thing, taught them a lesson. There is an admiration of Calley for having avoided bureaucratic rules of engagement probably dreamed up by civilians. War is war. You kill people. Deal with it."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/reed/reed3.html