Letters to the Editor

Letters posted here are associated with the following article:
Killing by the numbers In 2007 elite U.S. snipers executed an unarmed Iraqi prisoner in cold blood. Have the insidious tactics that led to atrocities in Vietnam reemerged in Iraq?
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  • Re: The USA needs a military draft

    Don't loose sight of the fact you are drafting men to kill or be killed. Those drafted will be young men with still malleable minds The military's first job will still be to drive out "common decency and common sense" draftees may have, the be replaced with what will keep them alive. All we can do is hope/ pray that saves more soldiers lives, than it kills innocent civilians.

  • Dear Chaumont

    ...And you are also a dimwit.

    In your mind, America and especially white American males are always wrong. We`ve heard it all ad nauseum. Whatever the subject, you will turn it to how white American males have screwed it up and if only we could be lead by females, preferably black/Asian/hispanic/muslim persons of doubtful gender.

    Facts are we won WWII by kicking butt and killing people. That`s called war. If we hadn`t done it the other guys would. If we were not nice, they were abominable. Get over it and have a nice day.

    By the way, I`m a man.

  • Let's support the troops by making ecuses for their wrongdoing because the brass aren't also prosecuted --

    ". . . . Instead, commanders find themselves relying on numbers, which is how body counts began to creep into the Iraq war, despite their explicit disavowal by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 ("We don't do body counts")."

    Wasn't that answer Rumsfeld's response to a question about how many innocent Iraqis had been "liberated" from life by the Bushit criminal enterprise's illegal invasion and occupation of backward non-threatening Iraq?

    If so, then in that instance he was sort of telling the truth in a twisted way:

    "First, we label every dead Iraqi, men, women, and children -- without ddiscrimination, because we believe in equal treatment, after all -- a 'terrorist,' THEN we count their bodies."

    By that same means I think the US managed to kill more Viet Cong than had ever existed.

    Rumsfeld clearly learned from Vietnam. Problem is he learned only the wrong lessons.

  • The "insurgents" are Iraqis fighting to liberate themselves from illegal occupation

    by the US --

    "...what about the regular, planned, daily savagery involved in the insurgents' planting of roadside bombs and supply of suicide bombs for places like pet markets, banks and police stations?

    Couldn't Salon spare just one writer the time to do a body count on the thousands of Iraqi civillians killed by jihadis?

    "-- Elephantman"

    According to the US military's own statistics, over 90 per cent of the "insurgents" are Iraqios. And they are properly defending their country, and working to liberate it from, illegal occupation by the US.

    What you do is blame the victim, in effort to sustain the lie that the US is perfect, therefore is incapable of being wrong; or that telling the truth is unpatriotic, whereas to be a liar and war criminal is patriotic.

    If you are so for this war, ENLIST, and demand to be sent to Iraq so you can show us all how to win it singlehandedly.

    Otherwise, shut the f*ck up, chest-thumping chickenhawk.

  • You mean like Abu Ghraib? --

    "So when do you write your article about the IRAQI TORTURE HOUSES????"

    You mean like Abu Ghraib under the administration of the Bushit criminal enterprise? Under George "Toturer-in-Cheif" Bushit? Under the National Security Council's "Principals" Committee, chaired by Condi "We Don't Torture" Rice? And with as member the fake hero Colin Powell, who greatly assisted in lying the US into illegally invading and occupying a non-threatening soverign nation -- thus knowingly threw the lives of his toops away for nothing?

    "You have no problem going on and on about the atrocities committed by a very small minority of US soldiers, . . . ."

    To which "small minority of soldiers" do you refer? The US troops at Abu Ghraib who obeyed the orders to commit the war crime of torture? (You couldn't be referring to 99.99 per cent of the Bushit criminal enterprise, who are chickenhawks who have never been near, let alone in, a uniform.)

    That reported about in the article?

    The US troops who coimmitted the "Haditha Massacre," which included the gang rape, murder, and burning of the body of a 14-year-old girl?

    Or those not yet discovered and reported?

    ". . . but when do you talk about the 100 times worse things that some of the insurgents are doing?"

    The military itself reports that over 90 per cent of the "insurgents" are Iraqis fighting for the liberation of their country from its illegal occupation by the US. The Foundewrs/Framers of the US were "insurgents" who behaved in exactly the ame way.

    "When do you ever speak out about the videotaped beheadings?"

    When do you ever look at the timelines and learn that such beheadings began to occur AFTER the Abu Ghraib tortures became known.

    It isn't complicated -- so even dumbass Bushit dead-enders such as you can "get it": When the US tortures others, those others are all the more likely to engage in torture. And when that happens, the US has no grounds on which to stand and complain about torture.

    ". . . . How about BLOWING UP CHILDREN ON PURPOSE???"

    See "Haditha Massacre". See "My Lai Massacre". Both committed by the US. One in Iraq, one in Vietnam.

    "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."

    Both sides do wrong. But the Iraqi insurgents have the right to be in their country, and to fight for its liberation from illegal occupation by the US.

    The US has no such rights in Iraq.

    And: two wrongs don't make a right, despite your view that: torture is wrong, therefore we will torture ALLEGED torturers in order to reduce the amount of torture that is occurring.

    "You rail FoxNews about being "Fair and Balanced", but you're a hypocrite when you don't even attempt to be yourselves."

    The article is FACT, and balanced, ass. Fox's FAKE "news" is not FACT -- it is confabulated, made-up extremist right-wing Republican propaganda. LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FACT AND LIE, TRUTH AND LIE. AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NEWS, ON ONE HAND, AND POLITICAL PROPAGANDA, ON THE OTHER.

    "-- kufir77 Friday, May 9, 2008 08:25 AM"

    This much is absolutely clear about Bushit criminal enterprise dead-enders: if they like what they hear, it is propaganda, but they call it "news". When it is fact, and truthful, and they don't like it, they call it "liberal" "bias".

    They are, in a word, intellectually dishonest. LIARS who put party before country and rule of law, lie before truth. All that matters to them is getting their way, and they have no moral, ethical or legal concern about how they get their way and get what they want.

    And most of them are too funtionally illiterate to understand even those basic facts.

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