KBR employee brutally raped at Joint Base Balad in Iraq

KBR employee brutally raped at Joint Base Balad in Iraq
December 4, 2009 — Ms Sparky

I just received this email from a reader. I have not verified the authenticity of the original email (my disclaimer) but it appears to be authentic. I have also not been able to verify the date of the rape, but am deducing it occurred on Nov 30, 2009. In an effort to help you understand this email, I have described the acronyms used in parentheses. A Life Support Area (LSA) is a collection of living quarters consisting of buildings, tents, or trailers (CHU’s)Other than that, I have made no changes to the email.

As you read this keep in mind this is not the first brutal rape that has occurred in Iraq.



more:
http://mssparky.com/2009/12/kbr-employee-brutally-raped-at-joint-base-balad-in-iraq/#comments
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/48209

The warrior spirit lives. As in the old days, once a guy got around to killing, maiming and destruction at will, he had no reason not to do it to anybody and everybody he could find.

Frankly, nobody, let alone women, should ever be placed near to such fellows unless they are warriors, too. Such men, once conditioned to commit such atrocities, should be contained.

something you're slinging against the wall like your less than satisfactory opinion????

There would be tens of millions of rapes a year here in the US, if that were the case.

There are millions of rapes every year in the US.

Are you saying history is not full of soldiers raping the conquered? 'Cuz I remember plenty of stories about that happening.

Remember too, that in this story the allegation is that contractors are the perps. They are not contained by the US military creed, they are freelancers who pledge allegiance to no one. The point is that the US military goes to great lengths to contain the extra-curricular activities of it's soldiers.

and what about all those nice uncles and cousins that never served a day that wind up being the perps???

Most child rape is by male relatives and friends of the family, not anyone from "the warrior culture'

Yours is less than a half-truth, which in a lot of respects is worse than an outright bogus posit.

Refresh my memory of what exactly it is you claim to be a 'bogus posit'.

It seems you are getting dangerously close to excusing war-time rapes and rapists. I know you don't but I wonder what it is you are trying to prove. If you are trying to say that military campaigns do not result in more rapes beyond an ordinary populations background, you are so f'n wrong.

And just because I disagree with your specious slander of people in uniform - the "warrior culture" - you imply another slander - that I am dangerously close to excusing rapists.

I am most certainly not.

Your OP DID NOT specify war zones or military campaigns, you only specified.....uh....


"The warrior spirit lives. As in the old days, once a guy got around to killing, maiming and destruction at will, he had no reason not to do it to anybody and everybody he could find."

Which is complete bullshit. the vast majority of soldiers - even those who have seen the worst combat imaginable never commit rape.

"once a guy got around to killing, maiming...." like ...

Monday: Laundry,

Tuesday...gang rape and pilliage....

Wed. Go to motor pool and get lube job on the tank...

:puke:

. Fuck me teh stupid is think here sometimes.

Don't get your panties in a bunch

I never said US soldiers did such things. In fact I praised the US military for containing such actions.

In the middle of war zones such as the one in the OP, bad things multiply. And that is why I do not, in principle, support wars. My idea or agenda, is to make sure people know of all the bad things that happen in war zones so that they too decide not to support wars. And then, maybe, just maybe, there will eventually never be support for any war ever again. Is that bad?

Although about the line

"Panties in a bunch"

It's very telling, I think.

Screw that. Show where I slandered any one.
Go. Ahead. Put up or shut up.

Read this, sport. Came from a link in the OP. Are they slanderous?
Stacy Bannerman says:
December 5, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, and interpersonal violence ALWAYS escalate during a time of war, most particularly during ongoing occupations. And the majority of victims are in the service, married to, or working for the perpetrator. Since the wars began, at least 60% of women veterans have reported sexual harassment to community-based providers, and documented domestic violence rates in Killeen, TX, home to Ft. Hood, have increased by 75% since 2001. Every single military wife I know can name at least one person who has experienced some sort of physical abuse by her veteran. Most of the veterans today are active duty, and most of the wives I talk with weren’t afraid of their husbands prior to deployment(s), so very few reports are being filed – restricted or unrestricted. Combat operations, occupations, and unending tours ruin lives. Period. But let’s consider the genesis: if America wants war – and 76% of you did, and if, now, America doesn’t support the war(s), which the majority don’t; yet few are funding actions or taking to the streets, then we cannot proclaim innocence when the war comes home. Further, in a country that still views sexual assault as wink, wink, nudge, blame the victim, it should come as no surprise that extreme circumstances produce extreme results.

"Frankly, nobody, let alone women, should ever be placed near to such fellows unless they are warriors, too. Such men, once conditioned to commit such atrocities, should be contained."

What you are saying is:

'Lock up all the warriors, they will pillage and rape.' Patently untrue.

Your opinion here is not validated by the facts, as horrific as they are, and for you to use that bit of research to make your grand pronouncement about who should be allowed to roam around free and kept segregated out of the 'warrior culture" is nothing more than thinly veiled slander for your own edification.....and it is as transparent as it is weak.

But you go ahead and make your pronouncements anywhere you want to - I'd suggest against it in a place where a group of soldiers are drinking, however, your theories and blabber might not be taken with the same good humor that they are here.

War is fucked up, and war creates a ripple of victims as deep and as wide as this whole society for thirty or forty years after the conflict. It is multigenerational in it's damage.

There is little need for grandiose half baked 'experts' with 'solutions' in reaction to the very real and tragic cost to those like the people listed in that study, particularly when the 'solutions' are no more than uneducated, half thought out guesses and posing.

:hi:

Claiming words and phrases that I never made as if they were mine. F that.

I said contain the warriors. That is precisely what the armed services do. Hell, they don't let them carry live weapons around. Violation of the 2nd amendment!!

Contained. They must be contained. They are, rightfully, contained. Warriors who have seen the blood and death and destruction should be contained and kept from acting out on innocents.

Just because one puts on a uniform does not make one a saint.

First, combat, then BeFree's prison.

Nice!!

Little one, you need to grow up and keep your bullshit in order.....

Gawd, you are some big tough guy huh?

I'm shaking.

Dude, read the note I posted elsewhere here, even once to you. Read it again, apparently for the first time. A person very close to real life, not some imaginary world where soldiers = saints, describes nearly exactly what I say about warriors who have been freshly involved in battle.

a very interesting phenomenon:



Male Fantasies is a book I wish many, many people would read. The writing is long-winded, the author's ideas are sometimes (in Volume II) flaky, but the content of the book is too good for this to matter. Theweleit studies the art and literature of a particular group of men--the Freikorps--who were essentially disaffected former soldiers in Germany after the First World War. These men developed their own groups and their own culture, and became the firsts-in-line to man Hitler's new army in the '30s (the Brown Shirts and Black Shirts). What is so fascinating about this book is that it approaches the study of this group by looking at the images of women in their writings. Initially, the author goes in great detail over letters these men wrote; then he looks at their magazines and novels. It turns out that through their images of women, a whole vision of human personal and political reality can be decoded. A particular vision of women (a complex typology of types of women: the mother, the sister, the white nurse, the red nurse, etc.) turns out to be intimately interwoven with a fascist approach to human life--AND this vision turns out to be the core of a great deal of our own imagery and political self-perception. The first 225 pages of Book I are the crucial part to read, and then you can skip around through the rest of Volumes I and II as you see fit. The discussion of Freud and Medusa in this section and the discussion of the notions of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the work of Deleuze and Guattar are specially valuable segments. This book is also a good introduction to some important Weimar-era history, especially regarding Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacists. I recommend this book to anyone in the humanities and to any generally intellectually minded adult. If you take the time to get into it, it will change your perception of some important things.

. . . . .

http://www.amazon.com/Male-Fantasies-Vol-History-Literature/dp/0816614490/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260165281&sr=1-1

:thumbsup:

Stacy Bannerman says:
December 5, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, and interpersonal violence ALWAYS escalate during a time of war, most particularly during ongoing occupations. And the majority of victims are in the service, married to, or working for the perpetrator. Since the wars began, at least 60% of women veterans have reported sexual harassment to community-based providers, and documented domestic violence rates in Killeen, TX, home to Ft. Hood, have increased by 75% since 2001. Every single military wife I know can name at least one person who has experienced some sort of physical abuse by her veteran. Most of the veterans today are active duty, and most of the wives I talk with weren’t afraid of their husbands prior to deployment(s), so very few reports are being filed – restricted or unrestricted. Combat operations, occupations, and unending tours ruin lives. Period. But let’s consider the genesis: if America wants war – and 76% of you did, and if, now, America doesn’t support the war(s), which the majority don’t; yet few are funding actions or taking to the streets, then we cannot proclaim innocence when the war comes home. Further, in a country that still views sexual assault as wink, wink, nudge, blame the victim, it should come as no surprise that extreme circumstances produce extreme results.

Most are acquaintance rape cases that are never reported.

1 out of 4 women in the US will be raped in their lifetime.

a code of honor. A thug has neither.

Stacy Bannerman says:
December 5, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, and interpersonal violence ALWAYS escalate during a time of war, most particularly during ongoing occupations. And the majority of victims are in the service, married to, or working for the perpetrator. Since the wars began, at least 60% of women veterans have reported sexual harassment to community-based providers, and documented domestic violence rates in Killeen, TX, home to Ft. Hood, have increased by 75% since 2001. Every single military wife I know can name at least one person who has experienced some sort of physical abuse by her veteran. Most of the veterans today are active duty, and most of the wives I talk with weren’t afraid of their husbands prior to deployment(s), so very few reports are being filed – restricted or unrestricted. Combat operations, occupations, and unending tours ruin lives. Period. But let’s consider the genesis: if America wants war – and 76% of you did, and if, now, America doesn’t support the war(s), which the majority don’t; yet few are funding actions or taking to the streets, then we cannot proclaim innocence when the war comes home. Further, in a country that still views sexual assault as wink, wink, nudge, blame the victim, it should come as no surprise that extreme circumstances produce extreme results.

The actors of the actions as cited in that post are thugs?

I suffer from PTSD. As bad as my pain and fear, it's never acceptable to act out against others.

You are assuming that they are all doing military duties, when the vast number of 'military contractors' are in the building trades, transportation, food service, and materiel support.

They are not even allowed to have weapons, even in a war zone.

KBR has a website, and you can see what positions for which they are hiring.

http://www.kbr.com/careers/job_search/index.aspx

Many here on DU make the exact same mistake; 'military contractor' = mercenary. The truth is that without the contracted-out support, the U.S. military grinds to a screeching halt, not only overseas, but in this country, too.

And to be fair and give full disclosure, I have done sub-contracted work for the DoD.

:nuke:

This is, in fact, a PERFECT example of the complete and utter powerlessness of The American Subject Populace in the face of Corporate Neofeudalism.

We could have the rapists dead to rights and even caught on video tape and STILL (like the rapists of KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones) they would laughingly walk away free as birds.

Oh yes, can there BE a more perfect example of where the Inverted Totalitarian Nation of America stands today?

I think not.

Only one Senator has tried to do something.

Qualified to say only one Senator speaks for what appears to be a small team backing him.

KBR - a Cheney compnay in reality - the company of the $45 embroidered towel used in Iraq.

I just want to point out one thing from my three tours in Iraq. Most of the KBR maintenance workers are TCN's Third Country Nationals (South Africans, Indians, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Bosnians) It doesn't change anything it just highlights that KBR hires scum from all over the world.

I'm sure one of 30 Republican Senators will be on hand to explain why this is a necessary though unfortunate (sort of) by-product to support the troops, proclaim our fealty to free markets, and make sure that defense contractors can continue to carry out their vital mission to defend our freedom and why do you hate the troops, you America-hating traitor?

He'll actually care.