Although I quoted you, the comment wasn't really directed at you. What I am talking about are the MooreOn Democrats who act as though Lynndie England is representative of the entire US military. And they do it with a snicker - i.e. "be all that you can be" in the caption. And, yes, better oversight would have prevented Abu Ghraib. But no army in combat is perfect. Inevitably some soldiers or whole units will do things that they should not do. The problem is that every time it happens on our side we are treated to Gestapo comparisons, while the far more prevalent barbarism of the terrorists yield hardly a yawn from the MooreOns and their press lackeys. Nor do those people give our troops get any credit for the good things they do. The ironic thing is that their histrionics make it more difficult to take seriously more reasonable criticisms.
she is illustrative of some of the catastophes that have occured during a war that we shouldn't have started. now i'm not sure that RMT's post was quite appropriate in the context of this thread but, your creative adjective for the dems shows you hypocritically representing them with one broad, dumb stroke.
i welcome the association. when the democrats wake from their fervid "this is vietnam all over again" wet dream i'll be happy to reasses.
The only thing different about the war in Iraq from the war in Vietnam are the number of soldiers serving and the number of casualties. Everything else is eerily similar...including the lies used to justify the war itself.
Seems like some of your republicans are ahead of ya. ------------------- Republicans call for deadline to pull US troops from Iraq -Most of Americans want withdrawal Washington :A republican congressman called for a deadline to pull US troops from Iraq, while some other members of Bush’s party urged on Sunday that his administration come to grips with a persistent militancy and revamp Iraq policy. Republican Walter Jones, a North Carolina conservative, said on ABC’s ‘This Week’ that he would offer legislation this week setting a timetable for the US withdrawal from Iraq. ‘I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, and I feel that we’ve done about as much as we can do,’ said Jones, who coined the phrase ‘freedom fries’ to lash out at the French for opposing the Iraq invasion. Other Republicans on television talk shows joined Democrats in criticising the administration for playing down the militancy, while overestimating the ability of Iraq’s fledgling forces to fight without US soldiers in the lead and failing to plan for the post-invasion occupation. ‘The militancy is alive and well. We underestimated the viability of the militancy,’ senator, Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on CBS’ Face the Nation. He said the administration has ‘been slow to adjust when it comes to troop strength and supporting our troops.’ Graham said the Army is contending with a serious shortfall in recruiting ‘because this war is going sour in terms of word of mouth from parents and grandparents.’ He said ‘if we don’t adjust, public opinion is going to keep slipping away.’ Jones, a member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said ‘primarily the neoconservatives’ in the administration were to blame for flawed war planning. ‘The reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that’s all been proven that it was never there,’ he said. http://www.bangladesh-web.com/news/...&hidType=RIN&hidRecord=0000000000000000048566
The 'shoot the messenger' syndrome continues. The problem isn't talking about the bad things that happened, it is allowing those things to happen in the first place, or the second place, or the third place. It isn't just Lyndie England. It is an attorney general who writes memos attempting to justify torture. It is an administration that doesn't deal with the problems, but instead tries to trash those who report the problems. Your logic is in this is beyond reason. Most people on welfare don't abuse the system. Therefore it is wrong to mention it when anyone does abuse the system. How dare people criticize those poor unfortunate Americans who need assitence. We should just ignore people who abuse the system, or write justifications for it so we don't upset the majority that do abuse it. Blaming the messenger isn't a solution at all, it is push toward a further lack of accountability, restriction of our constitutions rights.
waiting here for everyman... http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110006837 -- Terrorism for Everyman Is America losing the will to fight? BY DANIEL HENNINGER Friday, June 17, 2005 As far as I can tell, this is the recent news out of Iraq: Yesterday: "Six U.S. Servicemen Die in Iraq Violence." Wednesday: "Surge of Violence Leaves 52 Dead in Iraq." Monday: "Iraq-Bombing Update: Additional Bombings, Death Toll 10." It is possible to extend this headline exercise of Iraq news to the horizon. As a physical principle no less established than the second law of thermodynamics, U.S. opinion polls in June outputted these headlines and stories: June 12: "A Growing Public Restlessness: The June [Post-ABC News] survey found that 58% of its 1,002 respondents now disapprove of the way Bush is handling both the economy and the situation in Iraq. June 11, AP: "Only 41% said they support Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, also a low-water mark." The "war," of course extends no further than these bombing reports. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the maestro of the Iraqi civilian slaughterhouse, has produced a steady shower of human blood, and as often happens, blood has been a public-opinion downer. Perhaps in his next life al-Zarqawi can come back as an American marketing consultant. Having established there is a U.S. market for American-associated death in Iraq, such as the front page of the Yahoo! news portal, al-Zarqawi is supplying it with daily product. The up-or-down polls he reads are his profit-and- loss statement. The June ABC-Washington Post poll asked: "All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?" 58% said No. Precisely what conclusion is one expected to arrive at from any of this? If George Bush had never invaded Iraq, none of this would be happening? Or, if we removed our troops from Iraq, these bombings would stop? Or perhaps they will still be bombed, but we in the U.S. will not likely experience anything very bad? If we removed our troops from Iraq, the terror would not stop. But the U.S. news of innocent civilians blown up in Iraq would move to the unread round-up columns. Then, in a way, the phenomenon of terror would indeed shrink--to this: December 2004: A powerful explosion ripped through a market packed with Christmas shoppers in the southern Philippines yesterday, killing at least 15 people and injuring 58. According to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (established after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing), there have been about 8,300 terrorist bombings in the world the past 10 years. They have killed more than 10,000 human beings and injured--often appallingly, one assumes--some 43,000 people. (There are separate tallies for arson, kidnapping, hijacking, etc. September 11 is listed as an "unconventional attack.") May 3, 2002: A bomb attack on a church in western Colombia has left at least 60 civilians dead and about 100 others injured. Officials are blaming FARC guerrillas for the bombing. Before September 11 happened in the United States, and ever since, factions with grievances have been blowing up unprotected people going about the act of daily life--shopping, praying, taking their children to school, laughing with friends, burying the dead--all over the world. Places where the sudden cloudbursts of blood don't always merit our front pages include Spain, Colombia, Israel, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Russia, Afghanistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt and elsewhere. July 7, 2004: At least five people were killed and 11 wounded when a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up inside a police station in the Sri Lankan capital. Living in the U.S., one could make the cold-blooded calculation that 21,000 dead and 55,000 injured from all terrorist acts over 10 years is a drop in the bucket and that the war in Iraq has mainly increased the rate of death. This may be true. But if as many suicide bombs went off in Manhattan as have gone off in Israel, Manhattanites would have demanded martial law and the summary execution of suspects on street corners. Their greatest goal in life would not be, as it is now, the closing of interrogation rooms on Guantanamo but instead the erasure of terrorists hiding across the East River. Feb. 9, 2005: A car bomb exploded near Madrid's main convention center, injuring 43 people, hours before Spanish and Mexican leaders were due there and after a warning from the Basque separatist group ETA. It was the worst blast in the Spanish capital since last year's March 11 al Qaeda train bombings. No matter how fat the diet of stories about Iraq suicide bombings or Gitmo shoved down our throats and no matter how many distraught opinion-poll results come back up, no serious person can allow post-9/11 American security to be reduced to that. The death march of homicidal zombies in Iraq is trying to push us toward accepting the idea that acts of unrestrained violence against other human beings is now a normal part of politics. It is not normal. Any civilized person should want to resist the normalization of civilian killing as a political act--whether in Iraq, Spain, Indonesia or Kashmir. These matters have been at the heart of John Bolton's marooned nomination to the U.N. Mr. Bolton's adversaries criticize his impatience with large bureaucracies tasked to the war on terror, such as the State Department, and worry he won't respect the U.N. "system." The U.N. itself has never been able to even agree on a definition of terror. A high-level U.N. panel bluntly concluded last year: "Lack of agreement on a clear and well-known definition undermines the normative and moral stance against terrorism and has stained the United Nations' image." Little wonder, then, that our own news coverage of these repeated slaughters of civilians in Iraq also lacks any normative or moral context unfavorable to the perpetrators. And little wonder that in such a world the only "side" many people in the U.S. feel comfortable with is heading for the exits. Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
Good, I haven't seen enough people calling for the press to stop printing the truth of what happens. I think what we need is for the armed forces to stage another glorious photo op like the one where they staged the pulling down of Saddam's statue and made it like a spontaneous outpouring of the people. Then the media could report the phot-op without the explanation that it was staged of course, and those terrorists would really be on the run then. We all saw how much good it did when leading up to the war people didn't really investigate the causes and printed primarily administration friendly stories.
Basso, there is no more additional context needed. You can smugly tell yourself that I am proving the point all day long. Not one thing you or anyone else on your side has done shows anything other than you want to attack the messenger. I've posted positive stories about our troops, I've talked about brave soldiers in this very thread. I have also not attacked the messenger as you and others are doing. Reporting the bad stuff isn't the problem. Allowing the bad stuff to happen once, twice, three, and four times is the problem. The problem only gets worse when the administration doesn't deal with it sufficiently, or promotes those that help create it. You have yet to address the fact none of this would be an issue if our side didn't torture, rape, kill, and hold prisoner's indefinitely without any trial access to a lawyer, or chance to defend themselves. In a general sense the whole thing stinks of hypocrisy. When we were attacked on 9/11 a lot of people blamed Muslims and said that if they didn't all hate us how come the moderate ones didn't speak out and do something about the few muslims that gave their religion a bad name. Now there are a few soldiers, commanders, and one attorney general that is giving us a bad name, but when the moderates complain, many of the same ones that outrage against the few by the many where Muslims are concerned, want silence against the few where the U.S. is concerned because they aren't the majority. The solution is simple. If we don't want the terrorists to have effective propaganda to use in their cause, then we need to stop the incidents that provide that propaganda. To stop reporting the truth is never the answer. It could actually work in our favor if when the incidents happened we really held top level officials accountable, and took serious steps to prevent that in the future. Just as you mentioned painting schools etc. as helping our cause, so would cleaning house of torturers, those that condone, it, and those that justify it. Show them that we are sincere in our efforts, instead of denying it, and criticizing those that report it.
more on the kentuckians cited above. the action resulted in the first woman to receive a silver star since WW2. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2005/20050616_1745.html -- Woman Soldier Receives Silver Star for Valor in Iraq By Sgt. Sara Wood, USA American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, June 16, 2005 – For the first time since World War II, a woman soldier was awarded the Silver Star Medal today in Iraq. Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester of the 617th Military Police Company, a National Guard unit out of Richmond, Ky., received the Silver Star, along with two other members of her unit, Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein and Spc. Jason Mike, for their actions during an enemy ambush on their convoy. Other members of the unit also received awards. Hester's squad was shadowing a supply convoy March 20 when anti-Iraqi fighters ambushed the convoy. The squad moved to the side of the road, flanking the insurgents and cutting off their escape route. Hester led her team through the "kill zone" and into a flanking position, where she assaulted a trench line with grenades and M203 grenade-launcher rounds. She and Nein, her squad leader, then cleared two trenches, at which time she killed three insurgents with her rifle. When the fight was over, 27 insurgents were dead, six were wounded, and one was captured. Hester, 23, who was born in Bowling Green, Ky., and later moved to Nashville, Tenn., said she was surprised when she heard she was being considered for the Silver Star. "I'm honored to even be considered, much less awarded, the medal," she said. Being the first woman soldier since World War II to receive the medal is significant to Hester. But, she said, she doesn't dwell on the fact. "It really doesn't have anything to do with being a female," she said. "It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier." Hester, who has been in the National Guard since April 2001, said she didn't have time to be scared when the fight started, and she didn't realize the impact of what had happened until much later. "Your training kicks in and the soldier kicks in," she said. "It's your life or theirs. ... You've got a job to do -- protecting yourself and your fellow comrades." Nein, who is on his second deployment to Iraq, praised Hester and his other soldiers for their actions that day. "It's due to their dedication and their ability to stay there and back me up that we were able to do what we did that day," he said. Hester and her fellow soldiers were awarded their medals at Camp Liberty, Iraq, by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, Multinational Corps Iraq commanding general. In his speech, Vines commended the soldiers for their bravery and their contribution to the international war on terror. "My heroes don't play in the (National Basketball Association) and don't play in the U.S. Open (golf tournament) at Pinehurst," Vines said. "They're standing in front of me today. These are American heroes." Three soldiers of the 617th were wounded in the ambush. Hester said she and the other squad members are thinking about them, and she is very thankful to have made it through unscathed. The firefight, along with the entire deployment, has had a lasting effect on her, Hester said. "I think about it every day, and probably will for the rest of my life," she said.
