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Fallujah in pictures


willstrickland

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"Sites reported a Marine in the same unit had been killed just a day earlier when he tended to the booby-trapped dead body of an insurgent."

 

From the same article... Dude, don't blame these guys too hard .They have seconds to make life and death choices and most are 19 and doing their best under extreme situations. I'd rather have our guys popping scum like that then getting themselves killed trying to be nice to people who were trying to kill them minutes before. It's important to see the context of this situation.

Edited by griz
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It seems that in this case, the wounded were disarmed, treated and left in the Mosque by one group of Marines on Friday. A second group approached the mosque on Saturday and reported taking small arms fire from the mosque. They enter the mosque and see wounded men laying on the floor. It is possible that one of these wounded had a weapon cached somewhere. He pops off some shots, hides his gun and goes back to lay down and play dead.

 

If these guys are going to play the total war game, then they should expect the same treatment.

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If these guys are going to play the total war game, then they should expect the same treatment.

 

"Total War" would mandate that no buildings were left standing for them to hide in in the first place. We are not engaging in this type of war.

 

Our troops already expect bad treatment from the insurgents. People who videotape beheadings of live *civilians* will certainly have no qualms about shooting our men in the back, or killing wounded. And it goes without saying that Iraqi insurgents don't arrest each other when they kill Americans - no matter what the circumstances.

 

We should not be killing unarmed Iraqis. But we are doing a lot better job of following the conventions of war than the other side is.

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Regardless of what really went down, when it becomes known to the insurgents that surrendering may just get them tortured and/or killed, fighting to the death is going to be a much more likely option. That has a good chance of making it much harder for the average coalition soldier involved in a firefight.

 

It seems quite possible that what the US soldier did was justified. But if it wasn't, then worrying about whether the dead Iraqi guy deserved it or not, is not the only problem caused by that act. In the end it will likely end up producing more US casualties.

 

Those kids are going through hell over there right now, and I'll be the last to place blame on any of them. It's merely another unavoidable horror of war. I'm just trying to make the point that that act did not help our side, no matter how much you hate terrorists and think they deserve to die.

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Regardless of what really went down, when it becomes known to the insurgents that surrendering may just get them tortured and/or killed, fighting to the death is going to be a much more likely option. That has a good chance of making it much harder for the coalition forces.

 

They are already brainwashed with propaganda about what we will supposedly do to them. We've been down this path before in other wars...

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the problem is not particular events, but the strategy. not enough troops to secure coutry after the invasion. you have to realize, that these people were fucked for years. then the invasion comes and they loose whatever they had left. poverty breeds desperation. not enough uinterpreters, not enough humanitarian aid after the fighting was over. and not enough inteligence. you can't win a partisan warfare with a regular army.

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I'm not sure I understand your question, but I also want to explain that my comment above was added with some hesitation; I didn't want you to think I was disregarding your anger and disbelief. I had a similar reaction when I heard about it (but then I remembered the horrors committed by the US side, and again came back to the inevitability of such horrors during war).

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I'm not sure I understand your question, but I also want to explain that my comment above was added with some hesitation; I didn't want you to think I was disregarding your anger and disbelief. I had a similar reaction when I heard about it (but then I remembered the horrors committed by the US side, and again came back to the inevitability of such horrors during war).

 

Two wrongs don't make a right my friend. Both instances are fucked, but when you abduct a civilian woman the ante is a lil higher.

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It really wasn't a question. They killed the head of an Iraqi aid organization. They killed a fellow muslim. They killed a helpless women. And for what reason? To send a message.

 

The torturing of Iraqi prisons is more than just unfortunate, and hopefully those officers that were supposed to be in charge of that prison get a fair trial that reflects their true guilt in the whole thing. Let's just remember that these people were imprisoned, and while 60 minutes or Nightline or whatever can do a story about how so and so was innocent and tortured at that prison, it's just one person out of a sea of guilty people. Does that justify them being tortured? No. But they also choose to be there which she did not.

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It's not about wrong or right, it's about self-righteous anger; it's about anger directed at the "enemy", when there's a friggin' redwood sticking out of your eye (not Jon, but tribalism in general).

 

And as far as civilians go, abducting them is less palatable than bombing them with a surface-to-air missile? This is the mind-set I was commenting on in my above post.

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And as far as civilians go, abducting them is less palatable than bombing them with a surface-to-air missile? This is the mind-set I was commenting on in my above post.

Of course it is! The before and after pictures are fare less shocking; we don't have anytime to prep the life stories.

 

This whole thing is starting to stink worse.

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Both events are horrible.

 

I'm a little taken back by your implication that the people the US has put in prison are somehow less innocent than the British/Iraqi woman. Didn't you read the reports that 70% of the imprisoned were believed to be innocent by the US?

 

Their side is doing horrible things. Our side is doing horrible things. That's what happens in a war.

 

The main war criminal here is Bush who pushed us into this war. He started it, and he compounded the damage by being stupid about it.

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