Is there a crieterion for determining if a soldier would be tried by the local courts? I’m aware of US soldiers being tried in Turkish courts some time ago for drug charges. It does seem that it may improve, or at least not worsen relations between Iraqis and the US military.
I was afraid of that, but I thought the 
dude indicated a genuine state.
Seconds please!
Note to self: Never start a joke post with a . Instead end it with a :p.
Question: If one ate William Strunk Jr. for breakfast, would that count as stupid food?
But what have you done, besides peck all pissily at your keyboard? Did the Iraqi resisters reject your application?
Better yet, he should join the US millitary and begin a grassroots effort to rebel against the millitary commanders and the President himself.
That way, he’ll be able to make change from within. I think that’s a great idea.
Actually, it is. 
We’re not? Well, shoot, I’m going to have to come up with a new plan for tonight.
Want to come to St. Louis for lunch?
It’s like a bad Seinfeld episode.
You didn’t also accidently cook yourself in a hot tub, did ya? (Or did he freeze himself? I honestly can’t remember).
I have been reading the vitriol and anger directed at **DerTris ** and now the OP for criticizing the US military. I can also understand the reason coming mostly from people who are American.
I do not know whether the OP or DerTris are Apericans. But American dopers, please try to understand and realize that the non-US dopers cannot, and do not, have the same mindset and emotional attachment to the US military as Americans do. Although factually speaking the action of a few cannot be used to generalize, the fact remains that it happens, especially if the cause of rage is extreme. The mind is not always controlled by rational thinking. Go talk to the family of the murdered and raped Iraqi girl. Their thought process will be exactly, in fact even more, like the OP.
It all depends on which side of the fence you are on. If you were an Iraqi in Iraq, surrounded and threatened by foreign forces everyday, and if your loved one was raped and murdered, you too would call the entire American military as scum and wish they all died.
Therefore instead of piling on examples like the OP, it would be better if people realized that it is someone speaking in rage, only wanting to vent and perhaps join him in that expression of the rage. Rather than reacting to only one of the two parts of the OP’s sentiment that the US military is scum, it would better if that part were ignored and reactions were limited to the more important part, that of the outrageous act of rape and murder of innocents. That is what Diogenes did and so should the rest of us.
Peace
Primates for certain!
Why do you hate Aperica?
wisernow, My problems with the OP is not limited to the fact that he painted the entire military with a broad brush.
The incident he is complaining about happened in Oct of '06. There has already been at least one thread about it, and he hasn’t brought anything new to the table.
Two things: First, Der Trihs is, indeed, an American. Second, if someone responded to, say, the video-taped murder of Daniel Berg by starting a thread stating, “All Iraqis are scum,” would you be as understanding?
**Der trihs ** is American and there is usually some logic and truth to his statements. I do not agree, but I try to understand where he is coming from.
The Op is completely misreading the article he linked to. The soldier in question is not being given a reduced sentence in an act of cover-up, but rather the **chance ** of parole after 10 years for providing the testimony to convict the others involved in the gang rape and shootings. So the Op is either willfully ignorant or trolling.
Jim
The military are all humans too – does that mean I’d want every human being dead? :rolleyes:
For the record, I have never expressed any anger or vitriol in the direction of Der Trihs. I don’t agree with a lot of what he has to say with regard to US soldiers - my personal position as regards the situation in Iraq is to root as earnestly as possible for no one at all to die, Iraqi or 'Merican - but he is clearly not stupid, clearly has thought through his positions and applies them fairly consistently, and is in short someone with whom a conversation, however adversarial, may be had.
The problem that I (and others, I think) have with the OP of this particular thread is that it is poorly argued in at least three different ways, so much so that picking it apart is a waste of time and energy. Posts like this OP make it more difficult to have an intelligent conversation among the grownups; people on both sides get exasperated and frustrated dealing with the irrational, the trolls, the freaks, the lunatics, and the over-reaching, and that exasperation and frustration informs their interactions with everyone on the other side of the aisle.
I am against the Iraq War, and thus I am theoretically on the same “side” as the OP. But because of posts like this, people who are for the war are going to automatically take me less seriously, because of my association with viewpoints like his.
When gangs gets to sentence their own they will deserve the same rage.