Where is the world outrage at how U.S. POWs are treated?

When you serve in the military, 'fighting for your country' pretty much equates to following orders, especially during war time, irrespective of legitimacy of same. I am not insinuating that the soldiers are there in silent protest, or something, but it is the nature of the organism for soldiers to inherently believe in the governemnt that sends them to war, otherwise it makes any kind of war situation unworkable, and historically speaking protesting the or 'wrongness' of any military action, especially early on, while serving is not even a real option...you would be a pariah, a coward,and possibly a criminal for doing so.

If you look back at VietNam, you will see that the over-there significant protest didn't really get going until the war had been stagnating for quite some time...Initially, despite having the same reasoning/lack of reasoning for war that soldiers later protested quite a bit, the soldiers believed that they were there defending Democracy and the American Way...

My point was that, aside from taking part in clearly inhuman activities like mowing down civilians on purpose, any soldier in any war is pretty much there under the belief that he , as you say, wants to be there and is fighting for his country in the beginning...including both sides in WWII...So the rightness of a nation's cause has little to do with the soldier's support once was has begun. Want an illustrated example, watch Kubrick's Paths of Glory...excellent film, adn deals with the leeway given to the common soldier in interpretation of military practices, or lack thereof. And I don't blame the soldiers or the military for this reality; military simply can't work if every order, every action, and every strategy is subject to justification within the armed forced themselve, so to breed a " Yes Sir! kind of mentality is not only understandable, it is necessary.

Will look forward to evidence re: executions, as weird and inaccurate as that phrase sounds.

 

The morning after her rescue, most of the news shows that I watched reported that she had been shot. This includes Today, Good Morning America, Good Day Live.

 

Then can you answer why many foreigners are rooting for saddam to 'win', including many French?

 

Yeah, she only had broken legs (the Iraqi's almost amputated), broken arm, back problems (couldn't feel her feet).

BTW. are you aware that the Iraqi informant thought she had been shot? Guess not. Imagine that.

 

Wasn't that a large factor in the decision to withdraw from Vietnam?

 

Macbeth:

Here are the threads that have links to the execution evidence (one of those threads was yours and you were very active posting in both of them ......not sure how you overlooked it ):

http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54169&perpage=30&pagenumber=2

http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54208&perpage=30&pagenumber=2

There are links in these threads to very graphic videos and photos that show the evidence.

 

I'd add to the preceding contributions, this: the forum of protest doesn't allow for a lot of subtleties in your message. You have to be able to say what you mean in something less than about 15 syllables. You lose some nuance like that. It would unduly confuse their message if they were to protest everything worth protesting. Onlookers and participants would wonder what it is you really object to. It's probably best for clarity to keep it simple and not garble your message.

 

I think not...Does it not occur to you that the people that actually do this are in the minority...It's a small sample of the population...

Protesters have the right to protest...They have a strong belief and are willing to show it...I can respect that...

But to say that type of action would alter the decision making process is a little utopian...

Saddam has had plenty of time to disarm and comply with not only our requests, but of Britain and our ally's...He's an evil b*stard that has to be removed, and to wait for the UN to agree would have been idiotic....

 

Codell...Gotta run, will read later...but if you are refring to the threads I think you are refering to, the 'evidence' was based on the fact that some of the American soldiers had been killed by headshots...incured either during or subsequesnt to a bloody firefight. I see that as supposition or contention, and might even, were there enough examples, be persuaded to think of it as a likely explanation...but hardly evidence.

 

Where did I ever say that the protesters weren't the minority? I was merely posting a hypothetical, hence the word <B>if</B>. The hypothetical may be a Utopian view, but I see nothing wrong with that.

Cohen, unfortunately, I can't explain that. I foolishly got involved in this thread reading "anti-war" instead of "war". My bad.

 

Macbeth,

For someone that seems very intelligent in arguments and tenor, sometimes you are so stubbornly behind your views that you fail to see the truth.

What is the saying..."Can't see the forest through the trees?"

I like reading your posts, but when you ignore evidence like this, and most experts agree that it looks like they were executed, it just undermines your credibility to the nth degree.

DD

 

I think part of the issue is that it's not much of a fight with 50 or 100 or 200 to 1 kill ratios of combatants. The arrogant way we initially proposed this war and pushed it through in the end, also does not lend itself to a sympathetic viewpoint. Not to minimalize the individual suffering on the US side, but our casualties are a pittance compared to what we suffered in Vietnam or WW2. Folks around the world see 50 or 100 civilians killed by HARM missile or what they believe is US bombs or artillery fire, and we get wall to wall coverage over one POW. This would tend to influence one's thinking, in both cases. Also, the rest of the world sees more pictures typical of what we all saw in the Vietnam war, rather than the sanitized stuff CNN/Fox/MSNBC show now a days.
http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=warimages

 

There were several photos on the BBC web site a few days ago of British soldiers with multiple impacts on their helmets after a firefight. Did the Iraqis attempt to execute them but only hit them on their helmets?

Wait for the autopsy. If they didn't wash the bodies there will be powder burns on them if they shot them at close range. We also have witnesses that have yet to tell their story. Let them tell their story. Part of the reason for the low US casualty rate is our body armor kevlar/ceramic plate combo is so effective for stopping torso shots. So most rifle shot kills will be through creases in body armor, through the shoulder, above the neck shots, arterial shots in the legs.

 

treeman posted an excellent summary of the evidence that they had been executed a few days back. One of the prime reasons to believe so was that none of the soldiers killed were wearing helmets, or their battle gear.

 

What is happening to the POWs is terrible, but it’s not unexpected and therefore not really news. Protesting the fact that the sun rises in the east is a little pointless. Nobody, save a few on the lunatic fringe, supports Saddam. The protestors are by and large saying that they believe that this war stands a good chance of making the overall situation worse, not better. They are not saying that the situation as it now exists is good.

 

DD...think about what you're saying here...I said that we don't know yet, if all it is based on is the location of the bullet wounds. I have seen enough casualty shots in my life to tell you that headshots in a mechanized or automatic firefight are hardly rare...and I even said that if there are a lot of them, it might even be the most likely explanation to suggest that there were excecutions, but I haven't seen enough yet. ( nor explanations for why some would be excecuted while others wouldn't...and would receive medical attention)...But if I did that if I did suppose it looked like excecutions that would still be my opinion. Not evidence, opinion...I didn't say it didn't happen...I didn't say I didn't think it happened...I didn't even say it was unlikely...I said we don't know for sure, as the supposition based on location of wounds by itself is not evidence...and I'm the one being stubborn!?!?