Iraq Issues

[erjin999]

Aahh, that explains the problem I had with another link that had the word shure in it, it would get changed back to sure and the link failed. Can you remove that one too please, O Great Gob?

[ordos45]

*bows before the Great Gob*  Thank you Gob.  I was starting to get paranoid there.

[Andrew]

Department of Defense sends 190,000 weapons to insurgents for years

Once again the American government has armed the enemy.

The Defense Department has no clue about what happened to at least 190,000 guns - 110,000 AK47s and 80,000 pistols - that it gave Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a GAO report released Monday. And U.S. officials now concede that at least some of the missing weapons are now being used to kill American troops.

I bet the weapon manufacturer is getting rich though.

[Tatar Khan]

Well the practice of pretending to work for for your enemy in order to get the weapons to fight them is known to have occurred before in history so it is not surprising that it is happening right now.

[Andrew]

Video of Cheney in 1994 saying that invading Iraq would turn out to be a quagmire

I didn't know he could predict the future. I guess after Saddam flew some planes in to the WTC that changed everything and made it ok to invade Iraq. Even though they were already trying to occupy another country which they have failed in doing.

Watch this 1 minute video to see how big of a criminal he is. All the reasons he listed for not invading Iraq actually did happen after they did invade it.

[Andrew]

US snipers 'bait' Iraqis: report

At the urging of Pentagon experts in special operations, US military snipers operating in Iraq are "baiting" Iraqis by scattering items like detonation cord, plastic explosives and ammunition and then ambushing and killing those who pick them up, The Washington Post reported Monday.

So if an Iraqi is walking around and sees something interesting on ground and pick it up to see what it is, they get shot. No way to know if they are a terrorist or not. Maybe they would have reported it to authorities.

Hopefully the Iraqis will send out children to pick the stuff up, then we can see if Americans will kill children.

[Andrew]

U.S. Troops are Being Force-Fed Christianity

Religion of persecution strikes again. A modern day crusade in Iraq.

[Andrew]

Blackwater won't allow arrests

A defiant Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince said yesterday he will not allow Iraqi authorities to arrest his contractors and try them in Iraq's faulty justice system.

So basically, the US went to Iraq eventually to free Iraqis so they could have their own democracy. But for some reason when private foreign citizens go around killing civilians, they are not responsible and will not be charged under Iraqi law.

The Iraqi government wants blackwater out, but are powerless to do so.

Food companies in Iraq war supply probe: report

The investigations by the Department of Justice and the Defense Department are examining whether the companies charged excessively high prices to the Army's primary food contractor in the war zone, a Kuwaiti firm called Public Warehousing Co., the paper said.

[Andrew]

Turkey approves Iraq incursion

The Turkish parliament has voted to allow its military to make an incursion into Iraq and chase down Kurdish rebels staging cross-border attacks.

So will Iraq prove its independence and attack Turkey? Will the USA attack turkey for invading Iraq?

What would happen if any other nearby country decided that there were terrorists hiding in Iraq, would this give them a mandate to send their military into Iraq?

EDIT:

I'd also like to point out that it is the USA that is arming the terrorists that are attacking Turkey. Go USA!

wiki article.

[Andrew]

$1.2 billion contract to train Iraqi police ends up with no paper trail

More of US tax dollars going to war profiting companies that are doing no work (or none recorded).

Yesterday Bush asked Congress for $200 billion to fund the war from October 1 2007-October 1 2008.  They've already spent $600 billion...

Maybe the plan is to devalue the USD so much that they can not afford to import anything and will be competitive at exporting vs China?

[Andrew]

Americans Murdering Iraqis is now Legal

Remember when those Blackwater troops killed civilians? Well they now have diplomatic immunity.

The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security chief Richard Griffin last week announced his resignation, effective Thursday. Anyone notice something fishy? These people screw up and then resign and go someplace else still getting paid big bucks by the government. No one in the government is being held accountable for anything.

[Sneakgab]

The contractors are getting full diplomatic immunity now? The world was pretty much owned by corporates to begin with, but Iraq is starting to look like something out of a sci-fi (you know, the one where corporations have become the new official rulers)

Is there a reason the American goverment can't directly do anything to help Iraq (other than their corruption at the hands of the contractors and companies) themselves instead of relying completely on contractors.

[Kokiri-Mentat]

Americans Murdering Iraqis is now Legal

Remember when those Blackwater troops killed civilians?

I think your link is dead.  I was intrigued, so I found this BBC article covering the same incident.  Interesting how the shooting occurred in September of 2007, yet the diplomatic immunity was derived from an agreement formed in 2003.  I'm curious as to what the exact nature of the agreement was/is.

*edit*

here's a more informative article on the issue.

[Kokiri-Mentat]

Maybe the plan is to devalue the USD so much that they can not afford to import anything and will be competitive at exporting vs China?

While I'm on this board thought I'd comment on that thought....

although you're above statement was in jest, I was listening to Andrew Wilkow's conservative/republican talk show the other day (I am NOT a republican, FYI) on Sirius satellite radio; and as he addressed the issue of the declining USD, one "benefit" he spent a serious amount of time on was china's booming economy and how the U.S. would soon be able to compete with their export prices if the dollar continues to weaken. 

I've lent little pondering to the subject, but I think I'd rather be part of a country who's economy depends on something other than exporting plastic happy-meal toys to all parts of the globe.  It's not a matter of economic stability: I'm just struggling to find even the smallest morsel of pride for anything my own nation has done in the past few years.  There ARE a few unpolished gems to be found out there, but.... perhaps nationalism is just too old-fashioned.  The educated reject it--and perhaps rightly so (just look at our history)--out of paranoia of being controlled. 

Honestly, China could export McEE D's  toys to the US for the next hundred years (at under half the US minimum labor wages) and they would still have roughly four millennium--wait let me repeat that--four millenium of cultural maturity compared to the US' measly two hundred thirty-one years.  They've been faced with several not-so-smoothe changes in the past century.  They were granted capitalism of sorts, and look how it's changed them since that little incident in 1989. 

We live in interesting times: US popularity, as well as economic strength diminishes; while the exact opposite seems to be happening China.  It will be interesting to see how much longer these two nations continue to function as political/economic inverses.

...that was supposed to be a BRIEF comment on how the IRAQ war is devaluing the USD.......ughhh........ :-

[Andrew]

Stole these links from digg.

Nice to see freedom being brought to Iraq.

US Soldier throws puppy off cliff

Soldiers blow up dog, find it funny

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a4b_1198349822

soldiers blow up another dog, find it funny

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1be_1204379225&p=1

Here is a bbc docu. where a soldier kills a dog, a longer version exist, shows the dogs owner coming out visibly upset, nothing he can do, he has a heavily armed invading army in his backyard.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wj32twJXxsY&

Soldiers, tormenting a dog...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fy_BSksdvAM

Soldiers shoot another dog

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=54e_1182844511

Soldiers throw grenade at sheepherder/sheep and find it funny

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ULcj-Epr1rI&

Soldier shoots yet another dog

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0a5ee2d6eb

killing civilians in front of their children

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSTI3Ast45Q

scaring an injured puppy repeatedly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK2BTt9_YJk

blowing up a kitten and cheering

Splashing kids with a hummer

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=727_1204139441

Shooting unarmed civilians then celebrating

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7b6_1204052769

Teasing kids with water

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=11bf57cf1f

Soldier talking about wanting to kill Iraqi children/families, he's out of his mind

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=aea_1200639693

Soldier messing up civilians house for fun

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8be_1204072976

Soldier being a dick to Iraqi police

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e0b_1203423672

Having kids chant "I love pork!"

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=43e_1201330416

Soldier throwing a child off of a bridge

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1bf_1204382002

[Kirby Gotenks absorbed]

Disgusting.

[Sneakgab]

What do the American soldiers have against dogs lol.

Btw, are there any non-American forces assisting in the occupation of Iraq, or was that just an invasion formality to help make things look like some govts supported such a thing (in return for what?, of course some really did support I suppose). If there is then I take note that I rarely hear about their soldiers behaving as such. Of course, that could be for a number of reasons: for smaller amount, attention focuses on American soldiers e.t.c. May be interesting to analyze to see if bad PR of American soldiers is disproportionate despite these factors and that perhaps the difference lies in bad behavior available for coverage therefore incr frequency of these little ''media snippets''.

Anyway, how many of these ''snippets'' (videos of American soldiers behaving badly, lol. Of course calling it bad behavior would be an understatement. A more generally agreeable term would be villainous) have we found? It seems like we see quite a few each month. Considering that not all of these acts are witnessed, and that even the acts that are witnessed are understandably not always recorded (media probably has a hard time in Iraq right now with threatening soldiers), and that even those instances are not all given links here, one must imagine that given the frequency of said links appearing here regardless of these factors that the frequency of such acts being performed in Iraq must be quite high. Sounds like the Iraqis must constantly be bothered with Americans shooting them and their pets up along with other such actions.

[exatreide]

its a dog. who cares.

[Andrew]

its a dog. who cares.

If you've ever had a pet dog, what if it was yours? For all we know they took it from someone. If they are willing to do that to a puppy, I doubt they would think twice about killing civilians (other than paperwork).

EDIT:

Puppy abuse video investigated by Hawaii Marine base

Well I hope they solve this. I doubt the 100,000 iraqi civilian deaths will ever be solved though.

Puppy: 1

Iraqi civilians: 0

[exatreide]

What? theres huge packs of Ferrel dogs and other pets over in Iraq, The one video I watched stated that there was no way they could stop the timed IED detonation. if mowing every ferrel dog down saved 1 American, Brit or coalition life, then do it.

I sure as hell don't want to be slapping tourniquets on people because someone didn't shoot a dog, or a dog gave a position away because it barked at some Americans. To say that an American soldier can't tell the difference between a dog and a Iraqi civilian is down right insulting.

[nemafakei]

"if mowing every ferrel dog down saved 1 American, Brit or coalition life, then do it."

That's not the question (if it were, there would be no fuss). The question is one of if torturing a dog is funny, do you do it?

[Andrew]

USF study finds childhood animal cruelty is indicator for violent offenders

There is correlation between animal cruelty and violent offenders.

I don't want to know about stuff that does not get recorded and released. They do a good job at covering up the larger atrocities.

EDIT:

Lase guided bomb on a crowd of 30 people. Pilot sees a crowd of people, and 30 seconds later they are all dead.

http://www.bushcommission.org/Video/Fallujah_bomb.wmv

Raped and Silenced in the Barracks

Woman claims that a superior officer raped her. In one month she would have given birth. Woman disappears.

Other woman that claim rape are expelled and lose benefits.

The best advice they get is to "shut up and stay alive".

[exatreide]

Yea, thats childhood.

it's not being mortared every day

it's not taking sniper and small arms fire]. Your trying to compare demented children with soldiers suffering battle fatigue? Is that what your trying to get at?

Did you even watch the whole video? The strike was a CAS strike, which means it was directed by a observer on the ground, that was a hostile crowd that was presenting a direct threat to a US ground unit? Were there women and children in there? Possibly, should they have been running with armed insurgents towards a US position? Nope, Should we have bombed them? Yup, it saved American lives.

They push EO seriously hard core in the Army, isolated events happen and those people will be punished, and have been.

Heres animal cruelty for you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog 

Soviets trained dogs to run under German tanks, and explode

[Andrew]

British soldiers accused of executing civilians

[Edric O]

Btw, are there any non-American forces assisting in the occupation of Iraq, or was that just an invasion formality to help make things look like some govts supported such a thing (in return for what?, of course some really did support I suppose).

The overwhelming majority of foreign soldiers in Iraq were and are Americans. The British also made a significant contribution and controlled parts of southern Iraq for some time, though that's over now. A bunch of other countries also participated, but for the most part they only sent tiny token forces to show their support for the US - they do some fighting but don't have any influence over the administration of Iraq. As for why those countries sent troops, well, it's either because they were longstanding American allies with right-wing governments (Britain, Australia, Japan), or because they had corrupt and spineless leaders with some vague hope of getting some kind of benefit by kissing the asses of their American masters (Poland, Romania).

If there is then I take note that I rarely hear about their soldiers behaving as such. Of course, that could be for a number of reasons: for smaller amount, attention focuses on American soldiers e.t.c. May be interesting to analyze to see if bad PR of American soldiers is disproportionate despite these factors and that perhaps the difference lies in bad behavior available for coverage therefore incr frequency of these little ''media snippets''.

The Americans just have many more soldiers in Iraq than everyone else combined, so of course most of the stuff that happens (good or bad) involves American soldiers.

Anyway, how many of these ''snippets'' (videos of American soldiers behaving badly, lol. Of course calling it bad behavior would be an understatement. A more generally agreeable term would be villainous) have we found? It seems like we see quite a few each month. Considering that not all of these acts are witnessed, and that even the acts that are witnessed are understandably not always recorded (media probably has a hard time in Iraq right now with threatening soldiers), and that even those instances are not all given links here, one must imagine that given the frequency of said links appearing here regardless of these factors that the frequency of such acts being performed in Iraq must be quite high. Sounds like the Iraqis must constantly be bothered with Americans shooting them and their pets up along with other such actions.

Sadly enough, that's probably true. I don't think American soldiers are in any way worse than the average person, but even a few rotten apples can do a lot of damage if they patrol the streets with guns, and of course the extremely stressful situation in Iraq doesn't exactly help a soldier's mental stability.

Yup, it saved American lives.

See, that's exactly the kind of thinking that causes such wars in the first place - considering the lives of some people to be worth more than the lives of other people just because of their nationality.

Killing people is indeed justified if it saves a great number of human lives, but the key word there is human lives, not American lives.

Heres animal cruelty for you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog 

Soviets trained dogs to run under German tanks, and explode

And it was perfectly justified in the context of the titanic struggle for life and death that was the WW2 Eastern Front. It would be justified to use that tactic against modern terrorists too, if they had any tanks...