Letters to the Editor
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Guys screw up
Guys get caught
Guys go on trial
Guys get convicted.
Seems to be how things more or less are supposed to work.
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The USA needs a military draft
We need to get regular Americans into our armed forces, people who are not planning military careers. We need to dilute the murderous "logic" with common decency and common sense.
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Whine Whine Whine
Seems the primary basis of discussion and indeed the article is to find fault and exploit it. I'm against this particular portion of the war, Iraq, Afghanistan asked for what they got. This however does not justify ruining many mens lives and women today, who did nothing more then believe in their countries cause. Great harm and wrongs occur in war. Psychotic and other warped personalities move in, just as cowards filled up the ranks of public service in the sixties. It just happens and whole societies or groups should not have to pay the cost. This type of thinking creates isolation and conflict within the group cited. Society shunned the Vietnam vet returning or at a minimum was apathetic while others within the group seeking approval I suppose, aligned themselves in disgust against their fellow combatants. This was the basis of John Kerry's down fall in his presidential bid. Having perpetrated a wrong he chose to site the entire theater, some how exonerating himself rather then admitting a personal indiscretion or maladjustment. He was just thrown into it and his act was just happenstance was a better way to go but there's no advantage to that is there?
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So when do you write your article about the IRAQI TORTURE HOUSES????
You have no problem going on and on about the atrocities committed by a very small minority of US soldiers, but when do you talk about the 100 times worse things that some of the insurgents are doing? When do you ever speak out about the videotaped beheadings? How about BLOWING UP CHILDREN ON PURPOSE???
It seems like only the US can do wrong. Ignore the absolutely horrible stuff going on by the other side. It's "cool" to hate America.
You rail FoxNews about being "Fair and Balanced", but you're a hypocrite when you don't even attempt to be yourselves.
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The USA should not join in, Kufir
We replaced Iraqi torture houses with American torture houses, and many of the original Iraqi torture houses continue to operate. And now, under us, life for regular Iraqis is worse than it was under Saddam (jobs, schools, water, food, electricity, in addition to violence).
If we cannot improve their situation, we need to leave. Let them run their own society. Do not continue to butcher them and add to their misery.
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Why Are We In Iraq ?
If our mission is to convert more Iraqis into terrorists, drop 2000 pound bombs on civilians, and promote a permanent hatred of America, we are succeeding nicely.
Mission accomplished.
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Vietnam =
So what's new, nu? We've already have had more Mai Lais (sp?).
close to each month, in the last 4 years (adding Afganistan) than our other preventable war in 'nam. And with a shrinking minority of future leaders, parents now being decimated, destroyed body and mind... And then talk about our next generations' future.
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Same old story - why is any one surprised?
"Breaker Morant" was first a play, then a movie, and finally a novel ("Breaker") which told a slightly fictionalized account of the judicial murder of two Australian officers serving under British command during the Boer War. Their offense: murdering numbeous Boer prisoners of war and on one occasion a German missionary they assumed (correctly) was spying on their unit's movements.
Their defense: orders and compliance with existing rules of engagement governing their operations, e.g., "We shot them under rule three oh three [.303 - the caliber of the Enfield rifle the British army then employed] - we caught them, and then we shot them under [Morant's voice rises] UNDER RULE THREE OH THREE"
But practices which brought promotions earlier by then, with peace talks going on, brought a court martial and a firing squad.
The Bristish high command's orders for concentration camps, in which many thousands of women and child died of disease, was hailed as a move of strategic genius.
Does any of this sound familiar? Anyone with the slightest interest in irregular warfare KNEW this was going to happen in Iraq - why does the press treat it as something unusual, when it was as predictable as the sun rising in the east. The scapegoating of the enlisted National Guard personnel at Abu Grahib was proof that it was business as usual - the regular officers get promoted, the CIA officers get promoted, and the enlisted (wo)men who can't get out of the way go to jail.
It will go on until the American people realize it will happen inevitably - the "few bad apples" are the ones at the top who started all this and have since denied responsibility.
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We ARE surprised
We still find it almost impossible to believe that Americans do these things. We have brothers, dads, and grandpas who were in Vietnam, Korea, WW II, WW I, and none of them seem to have done this stuff. We love Sgt. Saunders from "Combat" and Sgt. Rock from the comics.
We hate all the torturing Nazis from the war movies, and the cruel Romans from the Bible. I am starting to believe Americans may be just as bad as other humans, but the vast majority of Americans will not believe. They will blame you for not supporting our troops, and vote for W. and McCain.
Do we have a vast, quiet subculture of tough, vicious soldiers, spies, and cops who torture and murder and watch each others' backs?
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Killing by the numbers!
Sorry, but I always suspect the factuality of Salon printed stories. Knowing how far left leaning and the overall hate of President Bush, and I might add any Republican, the more I question the stories I read. I can see what left wing propaganda has been doing to the Palestine children from birth. I can see left leaning editorialists in left leaning newspapers and major news broadcast networks pump out. I might add liberalism taught to young college students, etc. I think the salon article that left the greatest impression on me was one last winter where a writer was lambasting Democrats for appearing on the Fox News Network. That coming from a group that claims they believe in freedom of speech, took the cake. Put that in your left wing bias and like they say "smoke it!".