Iraq: free people are free to commit crimes
If that comment doesn't come back to haunt Dick Cheney, it should.
Via BBC News: The monthly death toll in Baghdad in 2006 is over a thousand and rising.
The bodies of 6,000 people, most of whom died violently, have been received by Baghdad's main mortuary so far this year, health ministry figures show.
The number has risen every month, to 1,400 in May. The majority are believed to be victims of sectarian killings.
Half these bodies go unidentified and unclaimed, and are buried in unmarked graves.
In case you missed it, yesterday gunmen kidnappped over 50 people in broad daylight in Baghdad. And Iraqis aren't all that concerned over the civilian massacres by U.S. troops.
There are a number of possible reasons for this. One is that many Iraqis already believe that civilians are targeted on a daily basis by coalition forces - whether accidentally or deliberately.
Another is that people have become used to images of alleged massacres and attacks - sometimes these are even made available on DVDs in markets or used by militant groups to recruit new fighters.
But perhaps the main reason is that people actually have more pressing concerns.
More than a thousand people are being killed every month in the country. The sectarian divide in places like Baghdad is growing daily.
There is little fresh drinking water, electricity supplies are sporadic, petrol is scarce and jobs are in short supply.
How pathetic is it that children being massacred by occupying forces is the least of Iraqis' problems? BBC's In Depth Conflict with Iraq page updates daily with more stories of the new liberated Iraq.
There's a new book out dealing with troops who feel it is their moral duty to refuse to be sent back.
"I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like a soccer ball. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and it was like, I can't be no part of this. This is crazy. I came here to fight and be prepared for war but this is outrageous. Why did it happen? That's just my question: Why did that happen?"
He's convinced there was no firefight that led to the beheading orgy -- there were no spent shells to indicate a battle. "A lot of my friends stayed on the ground, looking to see if there was any shells. There was never no shells, except for what we shot. I'm thinking, Okay, so they just did that because they wanted to do it. They got trigger happy and they did it. That's what made me mad in Iraq. You can take human lives at a fast rate and all you have to say is, say, 'Oh, I thought they threw a grenade. I thought I seen this, I thought I seen that.' You could mow down 20 people each time and nobody's going to ask you, 'Are you sure?' They're going to give you a high five and tell you that you was doing a good job."
The Guardian (UK) agrees: The source of the U.S. military massacres of civilians lies in the military culture.
Some American veterans have expressed little surprise at the latest revelations. 'I don't doubt for one moment that these things happened. They are widespread. This is the norm. These are not the exceptions,' said Camilo Mejia, a US infantry veteran who served briefly in the Haditha area in 2003....
At the heart of the issue is a culture of violence against Iraqi civilians that has been present in large measure since the moment US forces crossed the border into Iraq - an inability and unwillingness to distinguish between civilians and combatants that as three years have passed has been transformed, for some, into something more deliberate....
It is a lack of discipline that has been commented on with horror by British officers - representing an army that itself has seen its own soldiers seriously mistreat Iraqi civilians.
The Times Online (UK) points out that some of this is just the outcome of what the military is: a fighting force. They're soldiers, not police or peace-keepers.
The slaughter seems to have had its origins in the desperate and frightening conditions of a counter-insurgency operation in Iraq for which most American servicemen have not been well prepared. Although there has been much outrage expressed in the US this week, there has also been much sympathy for the conditions in which American soldiers find themselves. There is a gathering sense that the outrages of al-Haditha and elsewhere are not isolated examples of bad behaviour but also the almost inevitable consequence of deploying the US military to a task for which it is ill equipped and poorly trained - policing and pacifying an alien people.
This scepticism about using the military as a tool to remake nations and civilise a hostile world was put best by an article in the periodical Foreign Affairs in 2000. The author attacked the misuse of the US military in nation-building projects in the Clinton years.
“The president must remember that the military is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society.”
It was a succinct indictment about the dangers of using the military as anything other than a fighting force. Its author was Condoleezza Rice, then principal foreign policy adviser to the man who was soon to be President Bush.
Mind you, they were slamming Clinton for involvements in places like the former Yugoslavia and Somalia. (Btw, U.S. deployment in Somalia began in 1992, i.e., on Bush Sr.'s watch.) You can find all kinds of "principled" objections to Clinton's use of military troops from Republicans of all stripes, who bitched and bleated about sending American troops into harm's way in foreign countries and not having exit plans. But they've tried to paint anyone who opposed invading Iraq as a traitor.
Republicans: Our principles only apply to other people.
ETA: A DKos diarist tells how and why one military professor teaching in Iraq took his own life in the face of the dishonor he felt serving there.
Via BBC News: The monthly death toll in Baghdad in 2006 is over a thousand and rising.
The bodies of 6,000 people, most of whom died violently, have been received by Baghdad's main mortuary so far this year, health ministry figures show.
The number has risen every month, to 1,400 in May. The majority are believed to be victims of sectarian killings.
Half these bodies go unidentified and unclaimed, and are buried in unmarked graves.
In case you missed it, yesterday gunmen kidnappped over 50 people in broad daylight in Baghdad. And Iraqis aren't all that concerned over the civilian massacres by U.S. troops.
There are a number of possible reasons for this. One is that many Iraqis already believe that civilians are targeted on a daily basis by coalition forces - whether accidentally or deliberately.
Another is that people have become used to images of alleged massacres and attacks - sometimes these are even made available on DVDs in markets or used by militant groups to recruit new fighters.
But perhaps the main reason is that people actually have more pressing concerns.
More than a thousand people are being killed every month in the country. The sectarian divide in places like Baghdad is growing daily.
There is little fresh drinking water, electricity supplies are sporadic, petrol is scarce and jobs are in short supply.
How pathetic is it that children being massacred by occupying forces is the least of Iraqis' problems? BBC's In Depth Conflict with Iraq page updates daily with more stories of the new liberated Iraq.
There's a new book out dealing with troops who feel it is their moral duty to refuse to be sent back.
"I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like a soccer ball. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and it was like, I can't be no part of this. This is crazy. I came here to fight and be prepared for war but this is outrageous. Why did it happen? That's just my question: Why did that happen?"
He's convinced there was no firefight that led to the beheading orgy -- there were no spent shells to indicate a battle. "A lot of my friends stayed on the ground, looking to see if there was any shells. There was never no shells, except for what we shot. I'm thinking, Okay, so they just did that because they wanted to do it. They got trigger happy and they did it. That's what made me mad in Iraq. You can take human lives at a fast rate and all you have to say is, say, 'Oh, I thought they threw a grenade. I thought I seen this, I thought I seen that.' You could mow down 20 people each time and nobody's going to ask you, 'Are you sure?' They're going to give you a high five and tell you that you was doing a good job."
The Guardian (UK) agrees: The source of the U.S. military massacres of civilians lies in the military culture.
Some American veterans have expressed little surprise at the latest revelations. 'I don't doubt for one moment that these things happened. They are widespread. This is the norm. These are not the exceptions,' said Camilo Mejia, a US infantry veteran who served briefly in the Haditha area in 2003....
At the heart of the issue is a culture of violence against Iraqi civilians that has been present in large measure since the moment US forces crossed the border into Iraq - an inability and unwillingness to distinguish between civilians and combatants that as three years have passed has been transformed, for some, into something more deliberate....
It is a lack of discipline that has been commented on with horror by British officers - representing an army that itself has seen its own soldiers seriously mistreat Iraqi civilians.
The Times Online (UK) points out that some of this is just the outcome of what the military is: a fighting force. They're soldiers, not police or peace-keepers.
The slaughter seems to have had its origins in the desperate and frightening conditions of a counter-insurgency operation in Iraq for which most American servicemen have not been well prepared. Although there has been much outrage expressed in the US this week, there has also been much sympathy for the conditions in which American soldiers find themselves. There is a gathering sense that the outrages of al-Haditha and elsewhere are not isolated examples of bad behaviour but also the almost inevitable consequence of deploying the US military to a task for which it is ill equipped and poorly trained - policing and pacifying an alien people.
This scepticism about using the military as a tool to remake nations and civilise a hostile world was put best by an article in the periodical Foreign Affairs in 2000. The author attacked the misuse of the US military in nation-building projects in the Clinton years.
“The president must remember that the military is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society.”
It was a succinct indictment about the dangers of using the military as anything other than a fighting force. Its author was Condoleezza Rice, then principal foreign policy adviser to the man who was soon to be President Bush.
Mind you, they were slamming Clinton for involvements in places like the former Yugoslavia and Somalia. (Btw, U.S. deployment in Somalia began in 1992, i.e., on Bush Sr.'s watch.) You can find all kinds of "principled" objections to Clinton's use of military troops from Republicans of all stripes, who bitched and bleated about sending American troops into harm's way in foreign countries and not having exit plans. But they've tried to paint anyone who opposed invading Iraq as a traitor.
Republicans: Our principles only apply to other people.
ETA: A DKos diarist tells how and why one military professor teaching in Iraq took his own life in the face of the dishonor he felt serving there.