The massacre and the Marines, Took mobile phone pics of massacre...

US troops could face death penalty for what is seen as potentially the worst war crime since Iraqi invasion

'US Marines could face the death penalty after one of their number took horrific photographs of a massacre in Iraq on his mobile phone, The Independent on Sunday has learned.

The photographs, seized by the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), show many victims shot at close range in the head and chest, execution-style, according to sources who have seen them. One image shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer. Both have been shot dead.' http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article620720.ece

posted these pix anywhere before the NCIS seized them. What a fugging disgraceful slaughter of innocents. To the Hague Bush - to the Hague.

was to REMOVE the US from the world court agreement. he did this because he did not want our soldiers to be held accountable for the horrors that would surely happen in the wars he was planning..

War DEHUMANIZES everyone involved.. The "enemy" has to be made "subhuman", in order for the soldiers to be able to kill someone he does not even know, and who has done him, personally, no harm.

People "like" the enemy, BECOME enemies, purely by "accident of birth"...they were born in and live in the country our soldiers are sent to..

EVERY was has atrocities.. I know we all think that OUR son/daughter/husband/brother/mother/father could NEVER do such a thing, but war psychosis does terrible things to people forced to live with death every day...day in and day out..

concluded, that they fully intended to be performing all manner atrocity, all manner of what they knew was going to be lawless behaviors...they just didn't want to be tagged for it and have to do time. and i do hear you on the 'psychosis thing', we are glorius...we can build houses; we can destroy them after The Hague. and that does not demonstrate random psychosis, that speaks to premeditated animal cunning

but insofar as the cheney/nixon's ghost/bush/rove/matalin/bfee admin goes they have displayed a marked sense of premeditation; they wanted chaos! that's their greatest bang for the buck. they thought that if they wrapped their shit sammich up in america's loftiest of powered wig poetries, the america people would eat it FOREVER!! that will be their greater foible however, till then...

it is all war profits and it must be brought to a stop imo

He wants to compare himself to Harry Truman? Well, I have news for him: morally the buck stops on his desk. He is responsible. The fish rots from the head down. His policies and attitudes are responsible for all the torture and all the massacres. He must be held accountable, even though he is habitually AWOL when it comes time to take a stand.

could have been misconstrued? Nevermind all those nasty dead, injured, etc. He even mentioned Abu Ghraib, but has never taken responsibility for shit.

profiteering, Bush comes from a family OF war profiteers; it is a disgustingly ill display for that low brow, to pull a 'dan quayle', neither is he a Harry Truman, so as to say

Bush to the Hague

Covers the whole crew.

at the top. If a true criminal prosecution could be used in this case, Bush could be shown to be the leader who has promoted this behavior based on his arrogant & cavalier attitude. If there was justice in this world, Bush would be treated to the same punishment that he loves so much - execution for the incitation of war crimes.

begun to think of BFEE and al Quaida as symbiotically linked, like two scorpions circling one another in a moral desert. * did exactly what Osama wanted, invaded and occupied Muslim holy land. It's not too much of a stretch, then, to say that perhaps Osama has returned the favor with 9/11, giving * exactly what he wanted, a pretext to expand the American empire and engineer regime change among uncooperative clients (Afghanistan and Iraq).

When the US "lost" its relationship with the Soviet Union, it needed to find another enemy to justify the corporate/military extravagance. So, yes, the line between the two becomes blurred.

As Walt Kelly said, We have met the enemy and he is us.



Tansy Gold

is on top of this story too. NOT! I guess mentioning this means you hate America.:mad: :argh:

:crazy:

It's appalling. It's mortifying. But the overwhelming likelihood is that Bush will never be punished, chastized, or even remotely inconvenienced for all the needless death and destruction he's wrought. He sure as hell won't ever be bothered by it.

begun to take a much harder line vis-a-vis impeachment. After the Downing Stree memo came out, I thought judicial remedy should stop with impeachment and removal from office. But lately I've begun to think of that merely as a necessary precursor to a tribunal on war crimes and crimes against humanity. In order for that to occur, Bush would need to be stripped of 'sovereign immunity' and brought before a competent world body. So the real question to ask is what condition or set of conditions would lead to Bush losing his sovereign immunity?

"US Marines could face the death penalty after one of their number took horrific photographs of a massacre in Iraq on his mobile phone, The Independent on Sunday has learned. " What will the charge be, murder or leaking photos?

showed photos. And for the Leaking of Photos I am sure they are "Outraged by the Outrage"

Somehow, I was hoping that one of them had the honor to get the evidence on his cel phone camera and present the authorities with it as an act of conscience.

Here is Time Magazine's conjecture:

So why did some men in Kilo Company apparently snap? Perhaps because of the stress of fighting a violent and unpopular war—or because their commanders failed them. Military psychiatrists who have studied what makes a soldier's moral compass go haywire in battle look first for a weak chain of command. That was a factor in the March 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when U.S. soldiers, including members of an Army platoon led by Lieut. William Calley, killed some 500 Vietnamese. Says a retired Army Green Beret colonel who fought in Vietnam: "Somebody has failed to say, 'No, that's not right.'" No one, apparently, was delivering that message last November in Haditha.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1198862,00.html




Cher

rear with the gear' down roads they know, or likely highly suspect are mined by a shape-shifting, faceless force that melts back into the scenery, after a time it has to play with your head; you're standing there in the open field with a rifle, and up to your eyeballs in shit being taken out by an IED covered by a shovel full of dirt = SNAP!

i'm not saying it's right i'm just saying

you've seen what happened to the prison guards,why would you do that?Stupid stupid stupid.

And depending on how long he's been there, he might not know about the prison guards.

Most wars aren't. All wars contain moments of irrationality. But this one has been sheer chaos from the start and seems to pump out a never-ending dose of shame for our country.

:crazy:

of time. A kind of sense of invulnerability is born. It's called playing it to the bust.

There is no way that this type of incident is isolated.

These are sick individuals anyone that would
pull the trigger on children is one sick mf in my book.

They executed these civilians because they wanted to.

And knew no one would believe his word.

I'm hoping, anyway.

Why is Bush not in the dock????????????????????

ETA: Just read the post below. O.M.G. BUSH KNEW. FROM THE START. He was going to become a mass murderer, and knew it.

TOTALLY PSYCHOPATHIC, CRIMINALLY INSANE. This is not hyperbole.

Covering his own ass probably. "This picture shows what the room looked like when I got here." Not ironclad proof, but better than nothing. Plus the guy that slips the CD of photos under the door usually doesn't end up going to jail.

Please research the little known bill that passed a few years ago. It authorizes military force against the Hague if ANY US "elected, appointed official" or "member of the military" is held there for war crimes. No one was apparently paying attention, but me, when that gem passed. It basically immunizes anyone involved in Bush's wars (including Bush), from being prosecuted for war crimes. Ain't gonna happen. If it happens within our military, yes.. they will face some type of criminal trial, but if you're hoping for war crimes trials.. forget it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague_Invasion_Act Read it and weep.

I don't believe it.

and wanted to cover all their bases, doesn't it? :eyes:

I do believe it....I believe this fascist administration full of crooks not only started an illegal war to profit its big corporate masters and drive the war machine, but that they have literally made sure that everything that they do, regardless of what treaty or convention it violates, that they are immune from any prosecution or responsibility.....

It's all so awful, I can barely stand it anymore....

is there anyway for this to be overturned? just a question, I am not a lawyer just asking.

We can call it the "Hague Invasion Act" but that doesn't mean that's what it is. It authorizes the President to use "any means" to free US personnel "improperly" handed over to the world court (little definition is given to the term "improperly", IIRC). While "any means" would certainly include ivasion, there would be other legal hurdles like, oh, our 60-year mutual-defense pact with the Netherlands and its neighbors known as NATO.

My point is that if the President were inclined to violate NATO and invade the Netherlands,
A) A US law wouldn't encourage him
B) A lack of a US law wouldn't stop him
C) He certainly wouldn't do it over a couple of soldiers who were on trial there

Wolfowitz, etc.
THAT'S who have been pre-emptively saved.

of this started was to get american armed forces AND officials out from under all war crimes consideration; knowing Rumsfeld to be the 'word chopper' that he is, he has sought to re-define the concept OF a war crime ala "torture? what torture?", "eavesdropping? what eavesdropping?" "black intel budget? what black intel budget?" etc. it has all been party of their plan from the Gitmo = expunge all cronies and their evil deeds

but if they can re-fry pinto beans, they can take Rumsfeld ot the Hague, it will just take a new way of thinking

Goddamn it to f8cking hell. Why Why Why???

Try worst U.S. war crime since My Lai.

That, of course, is not gonna happen, as Powell got too many countries to sign off on it. For the job he had to do, Powell did surprisingly well, for such a complete failure.

I'll admit to a Marine Corps parochialism here, but if these accusations are true then this is more huge than a non-Marine could understand.

Marines don't (well, didn't) do My Lais or Abu Ghraibs. It is (well, was) a point of pride. We get in, hit the right target fast, and get out. We're professional and disciplined (or at least we used to be). In SOI (similar to what the Army I think calls AIT) we had stress decision training that involved hitting the right target from 250 yards with very little food, water and sleep, while being screamed at and having ticks and, in one case, a dead badger dropped on you. (Yes, the badger thing really happened.) That's not equivalent to the stress of combat but it's probably as close as you can get without actually killing people in training.

Every account I've seen said "the Marines just snapped". Marines aren't supposed to "snap". If Marines are "snapping", then the breakdown in discipline and morale is worse than I had thought possible.

Rumsfeld and Cheney have never liked the Marines. No super-expensive weapons systems to pad contractors pockets with. Sure, they made Pace the first Marine chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but then the whole point of that was to get his head out of the Corps and put the more pliant Hagee in as Commandant (this, incidentally, causes some protocol problems since technically Hagee commands all Marines, which would include Pace, and even Jones as SACEUR (that's even more problematic from a protocol standpoint, but I digress...) But anyways, the point is they "retired up" Pace and have taken every opportunity to screw over the Corps they could. If they had been looking for a way to break the Corps, I don't think they could have found a better way than the badly-planned, unsupported multiple deployments with no strategic concept (at least none articulated), and units being sent piecemeal hither and yon with no regard to unit integrity or command. And if that was their goal, it looks like they've succeeded.

think i hear you on the dismantling of the corps. but why would they do that to a hallow 'from the halls of montezuma to the shores of tripoli' force in lieu of an overpaid, crony force unless i just answered my own question

best (paraphrasing) that Marines have historically been the "tip of the spear" and not well suited to being part of an occupying force. Remember that the occupation of Iraq has been going on now for 3+ years and Marines are still engaging in frequent combat patrols.

This incident does not sound like Marines just up and "snapped." Instead, it sounded like the patrol was looking for a little "payback" after one its members was killed by an IED. But the time period during which the "payback" occurred belies the use of the word "snapped," IMHO. What happened at Haditha seems more pre-meditated and thus more horrifying.

On edit: oops, I meant the third sentence of your second paragraph

Agent Mike might be reading this. But here's a hint:

It involves the death penalty and the real perpetrator of these crimes. The head honcho, if you will.

Oops, gotta go...someone's knocking at my door.

In my 40 years I've still yet to have my appendix burst and spend a week up to my nostrils in a cesspool. Once I check those two things off my list I'll be able to say I've either seen, heard or personally experienced everything the joy of being alive on planet Earth has to offer.


somebody hogtie this demonic administration. Please? As a personal favor to me?

:toast:

Let the lawyers gather the facts and try their cases.

tell the dead kids to wait, oh that's right, they can't wait, they're dead.

An investigation has already established that.



What has to be determined now is which individuals did the murders. There's no doubt that the Marines massacred them. Sorry.

That's a little strong. All I've seen are media reports. From the evidence I have seen it is very likely that the Marines killed them, but to say there is 0 doubt, that there is no way somebody else could have killed these people, is a little strong. Otherwise we wouldn't need any investigation at all. And frankly I don't trust the media even when it is telling me stuff I'm inclined to believe.

It sounds very much like the Marines did it, but then again I've also seen mujuhadeen shoot fleeing children in the back so that we would get blamed for it. As the evidence stands I haven't even heard ballistics about what kind of rounds killed these civilians; that would do a lot to end what doubt is left.

were killed by the Marines. Yes, it's possible the media are lying about what the investigation said. It's possible there's no such place as Haditha - I hadn't heard of it outside these reports. OK, there's no reasonable doubt the Marines murdered the women and children. We still need an investigation because we don't know which marines did it, and whether any officers not present had knowledge of it, and either OKed it, or covered it up after.

The wheels of justice turn slowly . . .

were they crazy all along or did combat make them nuts?
omg, those poor kids and families.

bush is a devil.

scapegoat of the soldiers and not the officials who gave them the orders, and why was it not being investigated back in November when it happened. Another scandal and cover up.

has been covering up key pieces of info since the beginning