We owe Hedges a great debt for courageously, intelligently, and eloquently revealing the sould-destroying nature of war, and particularly of foreign wars against insurgents like that in Iraq. It seems the veneer of morality and civilization is easily peeled off by violence -- suffred and perpetrted.

...and sad.

Very, very sad.

"But after the horrible attack by the Arabs on Americans on Sept 11, we said enough. Now we start killing. And if it turns out that we kill a thousand for every one that they killed of our people, too bad." - Simonetta

America has killed 600,000 to 1.2 million people in Iraq. 3000 times 1000 = 3,000,000.

Your job of blood thirsty revenge is only half done. Why do they hate America? It's because of moral monsters like you.

You probably think you are a Christian.

Your post is probably on an Al Qaida site right now. What a wonderful recruiting tool you are.

Who are your people anyway Simonetta, and what dank pit of hell do they live in?

What a beautiful Italian name.

What an awful, hateful soul.

"Arabs" means nothing. It is as if you bombed and invaded Argentina because you don't like Canada. They are all Americans, after all.

...drip blood...and it ain't His blood.

And simonetta's Jesus stabs the crown of thorns into Arabs' eyes, which means all eyes that aren't blue.

Again, simonetta should worship Mars, the God of War. How can you worship the Prince of Peace and vote for war? How can you worship the Prince of Peace and refuse to turn the other cheek? How can you worship the Prince of Peace and refuse to say, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they did."?

But yet the fundies manage to attend "Christian" churches because they hate gays. It's so simple, so sweet a deal.

We would not be in Iraq killing Arab mothers fathers and children if the Arabs didn't first come here and kill OUR mothers fathers and children.

I hear your pain. Your brain is completely incapable of forming a logical sequence of thoughts, and that makes you angry. I get that, and it must feel terrible.

They're living proof of Rick Shenkman's book "Just How Stupid Are We?", reviewed elsewhere in Salon. They flaunt their invincible ignorance, they're proud of their complete lack of empathy & compassion, and they gloss over monstrous destruction & cruelty & suffering with a blustering, blowhard parody of patriotism. These are the pathetic excuses for grown human beings who put GWB & his cronies into office, saying, "Just give us someone to hate & blame, give us countries & enemies blowed up real good, wave the flag a lot, talk Jesus, and let us go on existing in our cocoon of self-satisfied stupidity."

tgreer08- listen to you, lecturing Chris Hedges:

"Friend- tell us something we dont know. You want to talk about brutality, look at 9/11. Watch the Nick Berg tape. Look at pictures of the countless attacks that took place both prior and during the post 9/11- ON US. Look at the countless pictures and read the stories of the brutality of the Hussein regime. Or maybe you dont have the stomach to do that."

tgreer, have a glimpse an Chris Hedges' resume:

"...I began covering the insurgencies in El Salvador where I spent five years. Then I went to Guatemala and Nicaragua and Colombia, through the first intifada in the West Bank in Gaza, the civil war in the Sudan and Yemen, the uprisings in Algeria and the Punjab, the fall of the Romanian dictator Nikolai Ceausescu, the Gulf War, the Kurdish rebellion in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, the war in Bosnia and finally to Kosovo.

I have been in ambushes on desolate stretches of Central American roads, shot at in the marshes of southern Iraq, imprisoned in the Sudan, beaten by Saudi military police, deported from Libya and Iran, captured and held prisoner for a week by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite rebellion following the Gulf War, strafed by MIG-21s in Bosnia, fired upon by Serb snipers and shelled for days on end in Sarajevo with deafening rounds of heavy artillery that threw out thousands of deadly bits of iron fragments..."

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/events/honors/morris/HEDGES-Morris.html

[URL link at my sig]

Go on, tgreer. Give him your hard-nose briefing on the realities of warfare.

And Simonetta, waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 to exhort Americans to "kill a thousand for every one that they killed of our people", in the course of delivering your illiterate crank-lab political analysis- you sound like some overfed plutocrat in a VIP box at the Roman Coliseum, cheering on your favorite team of gladiators. You sicken me.

Both of you have more to answer for than the combat troops on the ground, who you helped to throw into that quagmire.

"But to hold the foot soldier accountable for the tragedy he or she is caught up in is not only disingenuous, it's a bad tactic."

You can't just pass the buck on war crimes that way.

In particular, how can we forgive people for their crimes until they repent? And if we forgive them for free, what incentive is there not to do it again?

If they admit what they have done and seek forgiveness, that's one thing. If they continue to commit murder and are not held accountable, that's quite another.

No forgiveness without repentance; no absolution without an admission of guilt.

---

And SHAME SHAME SHAME on you ignorant, ignorant people who can't tell one "Arab" from another. Do you have any idea how stupid you look? It's like believing there were Eskimos at the Alamo.

You disgust me. I'm starting to believe that Iraq was destroyed by the United States simply because the US were too stupid to tell one foreign country from another. A million deaths because of your proud, willful ignorance; it's sickening, you're such awful people.

I'd just like to respond briefly to those who think we should return to the 60's practice of blaming the troops for the war. Yes, it is absolutely true that without willing soldiers there would not be war. But to hold the foot soldier accountable for the tragedy he or she is caught up in is not only disengenuous, it's a bad tactic. Others here with direct experience have already commented about the insidiousness of the "us or them" mentality that permits--or requires--atrocities to happen.

You can't blame teenagers for wanting to have sex--it's a biological imperative. You can only teach them why their urges are so powerful, and let them know that big head CAN keep little head from getting them into a situation with lifelong consequences. (Please forgive the gender specific analogy: girls are certainly subject to the same forces.)

You can't blame soldiers for wanting to stay alive and for reacting with rage when they see comrades die. It would take exceptional strength of mind for a young person who enlisted in the army because it was the best option open to them, went through intensive training designed to make them into soldiers, were put into a confusing situation where they are in constant peril and can only depend on each other...to see the nature of the machine they are caught up in and to step away. They are victims of the war, as well as perpetrators. The blame should be assigned to the cowardly congress who voted to give The Current Occupant the power to initiate this atroctity, the journalists who mindlessly cheered it on, and all of us who did not go into the streets to protest it.

If we were permitted to see images on television from this war...if every wounded soldier's anguish, every dead Iraqi child, every screaming widow was on national tv night after night, then the "rah rah" mentality would die a natural death. The way to end war in a democracy, or republic, or whatever the hell we have in this country (corporatocracy?) is to rub everybody's nose in the brutality of it.