You should be thankful for the protection that the law gives you, because I strongly suspect that the only reason you have survived as long as you have, is because it's illegal to put you out of your misery.
Backed out, or too ashamed to show your face?So resorting to personal attacks now? I'm glad I backed out of this thread.
Backed out, or too ashamed to show your face?
You see, where I come from, we have no time for armed adults who senselessly murder women and children in cold blood, and even less respect for those who try to cover up for them.
You might take a page out of our book,...
Excuse me? Christ Almighty what happened to "civilized" debate? For a man of your age, I expected some more maturity. I'm done here. :bang:
You sit here on your high horse behind a computer screen and insult our troops when you have NO idea what they've been through nor any idea what urban warfare is like. Walk even a meter in their boots THEN come back here and insult me.
That is an OIF Veteran telling the truth about how it is for veterans because of people like YOU.
So you feel that the Geneva conventions only apply to others? That explains everything,
Yep,... you get get all miffed, and stamp your little foot,... but you still haven't shown a single reason why anything that I've said is not 100% correct.
If it happened in the USA you'd be baying for blood, anyone's blood, but someone else? Pffft, our murderers are different. Next you'll be whining about why the rest of the world has no respect for US armed forces. It's not so much what's been done, as idiots like you who try to excuse it for whatever reason.
Hah!, you blubber about maturity,.... Maturity is taking your licks, and moving on to see that it doesn't happen again. Not making excuses.
I think that most of us on this site have volunteered to fight for our countries. But nowhere in my sign up paperwork was there a clause that stated it was OK to deliberately murder civilians in cold blood.I have offered the same reason over and over. I support the men and women who volunteer to BLEED, FIGHT, and DIE for us.
They didn't have to go to war. They didn't have to get shot at, They didn't have to kill, They didn't have to watch their best friends die in front of them, They didn't have to come home with PTSD, They didn't have to deal with people like you, but they VOLUNTEERED to do it, because they are BETTER than the likes of you, even if they committed a crime.
Politicians send them to die, It isn't their fault, then they come back to s***bags like you who condemn them because they don't fit into your delusions of grandeur about war. You know absolutely nothing about war. People like brinktk, 42RM, and Der Alte shouldn't have to sit here and listen to you blubber about something you have never truly experienced.
You don't have to agree with me, but why don't you learn to accept the fact that others have a different P.O.V. and NOT personally attack them for it. :bang:
If you can't understand that, then this is as much a waste of my time as it is arguing with some flamboyant marijuana addicted hippie in the streets of San Francisco.
I think that most of us on this site have volunteered to fight for our countries. But nowhere in my sign up paperwork was there a clause that stated it was OK to deliberately murder civilians in cold blood.
If you sign up you do as you are told that is a given, but you don't have the right to take the law into your own hands, and if you want to start calling people sh!tbags for obeying and upholding the International conventions on warfare. You want to take a long look in the mirror.
The persons responsible for this don't deserve respect like the remaining 99%+ of troops who can do their jobs and not resort to murder of innocent women and children. It's the 99% who need the support.
You talk about supporting your service personel, well,... it people like you who destroy their credibility. This was not a single man who snapped, it was a cold blooded deliberate atrocity
As I said earlier if it were excusable there wouldn't be Laws against it. And you still haven't shown where I'm wrong.
They are our allies, so of course we support them, but that does not mean we should support those among them who break every rule in the book and who bring enormous discredit upon all service personel, not to mention the great contribution they have made to the Al Quaeda recruiting drive.i wonder if you think the Germans that killed innocent non combatant Jews should have been tried and convicted?
I appreciate the horrors young men and woman go into and that when they see their friends killed ones actions may not be normal but where does one draw the line and did these guys cross that line in killing this family ? I believe they did given what I know !
After saying that I will also state I am "very Pro USA forces " and if there is a side to be on I am on there side!!!
Their words don't overule the Geneva Conventions nor common human decency. So in fact in this debate they carry no more weight than any one else.You are indeed correct I have not shown you where you are wrong. The people who experienced war already have. Why don't you scroll back and look at what brinktk and 42RM have said? Their words carry more weight then mine seeing as they have seen it.
I think that most of us on this site have volunteered to fight for our countries. But nowhere in my sign up paperwork was there a clause that stated it was OK to deliberately murder civilians in cold blood.
If you sign up you do as you are told that is a given, but you don't have the right to take the law into your own hands, and if you want to start calling people sh!tbags for obeying and upholding the International conventions on warfare. You want to take a long look in the mirror.
The persons responsible for this don't deserve respect like the remaining 99%+ of troops who can do their jobs and not resort to murder of innocent women and children. It's the 99% who need the support.
You talk about supporting your service personel, well,... it people like you who destroy their credibility. This was not a single man who snapped, it was a cold blooded deliberate atrocity. I"ll bet the Fort Hood murderer will get more than 3 months. Short memories eh?
I dunno what sevice you were in, from your answers here I'd hazard a guess at, The Salvation Army? In most countries other than where you signed up, you sign up to "Serve" that means you do what your country expects of you, and if you are sent to a war zone, the enemy are often found to be quite grumpy about it all and are often somewhat antisocial in their behaviour towards you. It goes with the Job description. If you expected the enemy to throw cream cakes at you, you were in the wrong job.In your sign up paperwork there's also nowhere a clause that says you'll be an IED target.
I'll believe you if you can provide a credible source that shows they were ordered to execute innocent women and children. Until then, No! they did not do as they were told. I think that you might find their own UCMJ has something to say about this behaviour.They did what they were told. Clear the houses because there was incoming fire from there. Others cared for the wounded.
It never is, but the fact remains these murderers executed innocent women and children in cold blood. And there is not a single mitigating circumstance in the information found, in fact it is virtually all condemnatory right down to the facts that the info itself was supposed to have been destroyed, and never seen the light of day, the atrocity was lied about (caused by grenades) and the admission the the command structure has become far too off hand regarding civilian casualties.. It's not all black and white you know.
Not at all, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Perhaps it was not premeditated in this case, we'll never really know, but that does not make it manslaughter, it was deliberate murder, and the perpetrators knew that it was a crime against the UCMJ and Geneva Conventions,... they just didn't think that they'd be caught.Haditha was manslaughter.
Fort Hood was murder.
Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq. It's not all black and white you know.
People, this is a very emotive subject that is being discussed here.
Everyone obviously has an opinion, but lets not let it deteriorate into personal insults and nastiness.
Please keep it civil.
There is a vast range of experience here from people who have "been there" to those who haven't.
If a subject like this is being discussed, it will cause extremes of views and opinions but keep it calm, please.
You and he are both old enough to know better, but I guess age doesn't necessarily bring acceptable moral values.The majority of us kept it civil until Seno here decided to personally attack VDKMS and I. :???:
The majority of us kept it civil until Seno here decided to personally attack VDKMS and I. :???:
I think what he is trying to point out is that the example you provided and the situation these Marines were in are not that same thing. It's not a matter of being "stressed out". It's a matter of exhaustion, misery, danger, frequent adrenaline dumps and fight or flight responses, anger, fear, and lack of supervision. All this added up over time and these guys are a prime example of what happens when things like this go unsupervised or an intervention is not made to give these men time to decompress.
Soldiers deal with stress all the time. One thing you DO learn in combat is that everyone has their limit. Once that limit is reached they can become a danger to themselves and others. A leader reaching this point can contaminate the rest of his men if left in that environment. I believe this is what happened. A leader in the military exerts much more influence over the lives and actions of his subordinates than does that of his peer in the civilian sector. So simply using your office example is seemingly undermining and minimizing the risks we take on a regular basis while we are deployed.
Don't contort this into a justification for the incident. I want to clarify that it is not. I understand it though. I know what it is to feel hate and anger toward people that I know are complicit in trying to kill me or my soldiers and then not be able to do a thing about it. It's very tempting to take matters into your own hands and administer "justice". The fact is, in 99% of cases this urge is resisted and we move out and continue our mission. These guys messed up and should be spending a long time in jail at the least. It IS a shame that this case was bungled to the point where these guys got what amounted to a slap on the wrist. Just please don't pretend to understand where we are coming from when we say that we can see how this happens.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/...ick-out-of-kill-2010-04-23"The singular lack of enthusiasm for killing one's fellow man has existed throughout military history," Grossman asserts.
The reluctance of ordinary men to kill can be overcome by intensified training, direct commands from officers, long-range weapons and propaganda that glorifies the soldier's cause and dehumanises the enemy. "With the proper conditioning and the proper circumstances, it appears that almost anyone can and will kill," Grossman writes.
Many soldiers who kill enemies in battle are initially exhilarated, Grossman says, but later they often feel profound revulsion and remorse, which may transmute into post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments. Indeed, Grossman believes that the troubles experienced by many combat veterans are evidence of a "powerful, innate human resistance toward killing one's own species."
In other words, the Schrumpf effect is usually a product less of nature than of nurture—although "nurture" is an odd term for training that turns ordinary young men into enthusiastic killers.
Not sure that link is helping your argument as it makes it look like a cover up on top of mass murder.