Classified U.S. Military video depicting slaying of Iraqis

[hazeleyed honey]

Je Ne Sais Quoi wrote:

There is no script for how one is supposed to react to systematically killing another person. Many laugh, many make macabre jokes during and after the fact and, in general, line troops revel in the death an destruction of their enemy. It's how they deal with the enormity of what they're doing. And if you or any of your readers assume for even a moment that things like that mean that they or the other hundreds of thousands of Soldiers who embrace dark humor and excess to cope with what they're doing are somehow depraved, then you need to be re-introduced to the reality.


Their reaction is about more than that. Their targets are just targets. Their mindset is shriveled to see this through the lens as if it is a videogame. It is because being put in that environment and atmosphere can send you into a rage in which humankind is stripped of all its values and morals and the darkest side of human nature takes over. But, it is deeper than that. Their targets are seen as meaningless. They devalue them as humans, they devalue them as living beings. They are not humans anymore to them but just targets. That is why it is easier to pull that trigger and blow someone's brains out, even a target to them that is a child.

  

 

[sundoobie]

There is no evidence that supports the apache's action, and most definitely no evidence that supports that second attack. Not to mention how they were laughing in satisfaction after those people were killed. Savages, nothing but savages. The terrorists are savages too, but at least they're not hypocrites. They don't claim to be spreading democracy and human values. The U.S. army is such a hypocritical murderous organization, plenty of those people who are in the army get an erection whenever they can slaughter people and get to live out their fantasies of killing people, which they don't do in the streets of U.S. because it's illegal and they would go to prison or death row, but here it's legal and they can laugh about it.


So you post a clip of Full Metal Jacket as an illustration of  this 'hypocritical murderous organization'? 

Here find yourself a VA hospital and familiar yourself with the people you speak so negatively of.  Why don't you volunteer and spend a good chunk of time with them and come back to this thread and give us a real breakdown of these 'savages'. OK?

http://www.volunteer.va.gov/

http://www2.va.gov/direct...guide/home.asp?isFlash=1

 

[hazeleyed honey]

Originally Posted by TacC4


For everyone who wants to attack the government, our military and the media, please take a moment to think about the fact that we could blow Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, China, Venezuela and Somalia off the map in one day. If "we" genuinely did not care about these countries that we are occupying (yes, we are occupying land that does not belong to us) we would not be taking the sort of collateral damage that we are; we would rain down nuclear weapons on these countries and wipe the slate clean. If its really all about oil, why didn't Bush or Obama just kill everyone in Iraq? Who cares what other countries think about us?They hate us now, we might as well get a nice chuck of the remaining crude oil reserves while we're collecting all of this hate. No reason to leave any Iraqis alive, they just add to the paperwork and overhead costs. If you want to claim we are there for oil/money/resources/control, wouldn't a nuclear attack make more sense than risking our soldiers lives in urban combat? How are we gonna take over Iran and China if all of our soldiers die in Iraq? 

No, we should not be in Iraq, and we never should have been (aside from Desert Storm) but it bothers me that so many of you feel comfortable judging everyone in our military on the basis of one video that has not been put in its proper context, and probably cannot be put in context by anyone who has not been to Iraq since the war began. The veterans who are speaking about the video make some very sound arguments as to why the soldiers acted the way they did and they almost unanimously defend their actions. That is enough for me. If I'm burying my head in the sand, so be it. But I find it to be completely rational to trust the explanations that I have read here and on other sites, as well as those from veterans of the Iraq War.

P.S. Please don't quote all of this and don't try to convince me that Bush is Bin Laden's cousin.

Can you please tell me how this Iraq war was NOT about oil? There is a great amount of substantial evidence that this war has a lot more to do than just for national security, and more about ensuring control of the region for geo-political reasons (i.e. protecting Israel) and of course there is the motive for oil which would reciprocate profit, resources, and material wealth. Why do you think they intervened during the first Gulf War? Saddam Hussein threatened the oil supply distribution to the West.

The U.S. government even stated back in 2001 that "Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East" and that this creates an unacceptable risk to the U.S. and thus military intervention is necessary. Even Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, confessed in his memoir, "Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Even Paul Wolfowitz, who was Donald Rumsfeld's deputy told the press that war was the U.S. government's only strategic choice. He said,"We had virtually no economic options with Iraq...because the country floats on a sea of oil." It is all about getting into those untapped oil reserves in the region. Saddam nationalized Iraq's oil reserves back in the early 70s. The Iraqi parliament passed a new hydrocarbon law which was pushed by the U.S. and British governments that would redraw the Iraqi oil industry and open these oil reserves for Western oil companies. Iraq is the perfect place to get unto this untapped oil reserves. Not even Saudi Arabia and Iran (the world's largest producers of oil) have given access to foreign companies to this extent and they have theirs locked tight. It also needs to be taken into consideration that the cost-per-barrel of extracting oil in Iraq is among the lowest in the world because the reserves are relatively close to the surface, and many fields have already been discovered but not developed due to years of war and economic sanctions. Most of Iraq’s giant oil fields have already been mapped anyways. Moreover,  the discovery of new oil deposits elsewhere in the world have drastically slowed and existing reserves have declined. There has been a substantial increase in demand for oil, particularly from rapidly developing countries such as China and India, and this is why control of Middle East oil, and control of the Iraq’s vast reserves in particular, became a vital geo-strategic goal for American imperialism and conquest.

How is this not about oil?

You truly really naively believe that if Saddam Hussein had been head of state of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands, the U.S. government's response would be this?

 

[vintage sole 737]

Originally Posted by DuBsTyLeDj

it's better to be proactive than reactive....how could you say the mlitary is for the poor and weakminded? that's not true...just an ignorant statement....
it all depends on your chain of command and sop(standard operating procedures) we cleared houses one time in a village out here in afghanistan...you know how we did it? we had to have a terp with us and ask the people if we could enter their home....some people do get carried away with what they do i'm not denying that but most of the infantry folllows the roe(rules of engagement) to the T....especially if you're in a good high speed unit that take spride in what we do....

back to my better to be proactive than reactive remark....for a few weeks straight they would attack passing convoys from the same general area...by the time we would fire back they would be long gone...so when we knew convoys were en route we would pre fire on the target area...so if we smoked civilians one time would we be wrong for protecting our own? sure it would not be good to kill non combatants...but then you have to think about it....why would they be in that area? most of these people her ein afghanistan have seen war their whole lives...alot of the times when we are in contact they don't even move...they just continue doing thei normal everyday activities....

those are some great insights you just pointed out.  just as you said... they are desensitized to war at an extreme and graphic level, why leave?  it's all they know.