Because, before the invasion, Iraq, for all its faults, at least was a society that worked. Electricity, clean water, health care, and gainful employment were generally available (life was harder in the sanctions period following the Gulf War, but it wasn’t completely impossible). If you just kept your mouth shut about politics (and, if an attractive woman, escaped the notice of Saddam’s sons), you could probably have a safe and comfortable and decent life. No more. Everything’s fucking broken. Nothing fucking works. More than 2 million refugees abroad, more than 2 million displaced persons/internal refugees at home. As for the insurgents and the faction fights and the ethnic cleansing – they’re all our fault, too; we should have known, we had no excuse not to know, what would come flying out when we opened the box.
Are you certain on this? While the police might not believe you, I think you are wrong here. I would be very surprised indeed to find that possession was a strict liability offense. If I take it to the police station, and hand it in, can I then be arrested for having possessed it on the way over? What if I thought it was a couple of punds of talcum powder and intended to put it into the trash, and indeed was in the process of doing that when arrested? (Assuming such a belief is reasonable…)
I’m not saying you are necessarily wrong here, just I would be surprised. Then again, there is a reason I haven’t done any criminal law in a LONG time.
Even if this wasn’t complete and total horseshit, so what? You are trying to lay the entire blame for this invasion squarely on the US’s plate. That’s bullshit. Oh, the US certainly has its share of the blame in all this…maybe even the lions share…but Saddam and the Iraqi’s most certainly played their part as well.
Additionally, after the invasion the insurgents have played a major role in your theoretical poor desparate mans plight. And they have played their role in the refugee situation as well. The root cause of all Iraq’s woes was not the invasion of Iraq by the US…they already had plenty of woes before that. The US invasion was simply part of a chain of events…but you can’t isolate that chain and say that only this one part counts. Thats…bullshit.
YMMV and I don’t want to hijack this thread any more than it has been already. I know you think that the US is the root of all evil…certainly the root of all evil in Iraq. I think thats view that only holds up if one doesn’t look at the history of the place…and of course if one is predisposed to blame everything on the US.
-XT
Assuming that this plan does get put into place and a few insurgents do get what they have coming, how long before they start sending children to pick up the bait?
Could a solider legally be ordered to shoot children?
There ARE no authorities in Iraq. And no, we don’t qualify, nor does the “government” we are propping up.
Given that we are enemies and known liars, what makes you think anyone reads those leaflets and flyers, much less believes a single word on them ? At best, they’ll be used as toilet paper.
Of course not. Like most Americans, apparently one of your major goals in life is to kill non-Americans, whatever the excuse.
Why ? The only reason to doubt we’d do such a thing is that we are generally too stupid or indifferent to plant evidence. I’m still amazed that the Bushies didn’t even go to the trouble of planting some WMDs.
Because the only reason that the insurgents even exist is the US.
Oh, I’m sure after we tortured them and their families they’d all “admit” to being insurgents or Iranians.
Garbage. We had zero need to invade and we knew it. Anyone who wasn’t an ignorant moron knew it. The invasion is ALL our fault.
What makes you think that random children aren’t picking them up right now ? And that we aren’t shooting them, because they might be working for those “insurgents” ? And since when have we cared what the law says, much less morality ?
And that lets them out of their share of responsibility…why exactly? The only reason the US is there is because of Saddam and the Ba’athist regime. And the only reason it was even on our radar is because of Saddam’s actions in the first Gulf War and his attempted anexation of Kuait. Going further the only reason the region is such a mess stems out of the European colonial period and the parsing of the territory into artificial ‘countries’ with rulers chosen by European’s based on the goodies they would get out of those rulers.
And the only reason the entire region is important at all is that there are butt loads of oil there. Which ultimately was the fault of all those plankton dieing there, the slimy bastards!
You (and BG) are attempting to take a complex problem and knock off all of the complexity, to simply wave it all away in your attempt to paint the US as the one and only source of problems in Iraq.
Horseshit (right back atcha). Anyone who isn’t an deluded idiot knows that there were two sides to this thing and that while the US has its share of the fault Saddam and the Iraqi’s weren’t exactly blameless.
I agree with you that there was no ‘need’ to invade at the time and how we did it…but its complete bullshit that the US has sole fault for what happened in Iraq.
-XT
Garbage. We wanted control of the oil, and bases. And we wanted to kill some foreigners, no matter who they were. Saddam and the Ba’athists could have fled or commited mass suicide or fled and we still would have invaded.
And of course we, the Soviet Union and others propping up dictators and fomenting revolutions, coups and terrorism has nothing to do with it. :rolleyes:
They were irrelevant. We attacked Iraq because we wanted it under our domination, and were in the mood for killing, not because of Saddam or anyone there.
There really aren’t enough :rolleyes: for most of your, um, post…however, you did touch on something interesting in the rant.
I actually did forget to touch on this aspect. You are quite right…add them to the fucked up mix that is the Middle East. I know you like to boil everything down to a comic book level of Bush/US bad and Saddam/Iraq good (or whoever), but it really was a complex and complicated series of historical events that lead to the US invasion. It wasn’t simply an oil grab. I realize that you aren’t going to believe that, as you aren’t going to attempt to wrap your mind around the fact that because the US/Bush were wrong to invade that didn’t make Saddam/Iraq right…or make them the good guys. Real life isn’t a comic book, and trying to simplify this thing down to one reason (its all about the OIL!!) or to good guys and bad guys is…well, childish.
YMMV. I think we’ve hijacked the thread enough at this point.
-XT
Such a thing already happens. Children have been sent out to retrieve items like RPGs from fallen insurgents during firefights. Children are not exempt, unfortunately. Not when they’re holding a weapon that can penetrate light armor and lay waste to lightskinned vehicles and its occupants. Who is it that really killed the child? The person who pulled the trigger, or the father who commissioned his child into battle?
It’s not a rock-solid analogy. Nothing else is quite like war, except war. I’m just trying to put it in context. Sure, you would definitely be arrested if you were found with the cocaine. Could you possibly be found not guilty later in court? Sure. But there is no benefit or luxary of jury or reasonable doubt in combat.
If someone is hauling ass toward your convoy and doesn’t stop, despite the signs and the warnings, there could possibly be an explanation that would come to light if there was time for questioning, presentation of witnesses and alibis, recess, deliberation… etc. Maybe the guy dropped a cigarette and it was burning him, and he was distracted and didn’t see the convoy he was about to plow into. Maybe. Or maybe he’s a suicidal VBIED pilot. You’ve got less than 3 seconds to figure it out. I hope you make the right call… for your sake and the sake of the other dozen guys in your vehicle. There’s often room for some doubt. How much one condsiders “reasonable” is the burden a soldier bares.
You’re hijacking your own thread. If you think that killing any insurgent or combatant in Iraq is not justified because the invasion was not justified and we are personally causing all the violence, and that said violence is a justified reaction for our invasion… then the specifics of this bait and shoot are irrelevant. You will think the bait and shoot is unjustified because ANY shooting of any person in Iraq is unjustified.
If that’s the case, then why bother even starting a new thread? Why not add to the hundreds of other threads with that theme? If that was your point from the begining, I would have stayed out of this thread. I can accept that point of view, but I disagree with it. Though I disagree with it, I don’t feel like debating it. Which is why I stay out of those threads.
However, if you want to discuss whether the scenario in your OP is uniquely unjustified because the person was only going to sell the explosives, or was only holding it or something. Then I’m game.
So you can either believe that all shootings over there are unjustified, in which case I’ll just agree to disagree. Or you can believe that regular firefight/combat shootings are justified but this scenario is not, then I am here to offer another perspective and I’m interested in reading oppossing views on the matter.
Nice. Call the coalition forces whatever you want, that’s fine. The point is that there is some known organization out there to which the free citizens of Iraq should report found munitions. Namely the US Military or Iraqi Police.
We are not enemies of the citizens of Iraq. As for the rest of your statement, do you really believe someone would read a flyer that says they may be mistaken for a combatant and shot by the US Military if they are carrying bomb-making equipment, detonators or munitions and then not take it seriously?
Given that we are a military force and known killers, what makes you think anyone would not beleive what it says?
I don’t ask to see passports. If an American goes to Iraq for the purpose of violently repelling the US Military and preventing them from accomplishing their mission, I’ll kill him too. I don’t really care where they’re from or what their religion or culture is. But you’re already convinced that I hate Muslims and I just want to kill people who aren’t white Christian Americans, because the Army brainwashed me and my country is evil and is the cause for everything wrong in the world included Tsunamis and earthquakes… So there’s probably no convincing you otherwise.
I said that it was “so obviously wrong”, not “so obviously false”.
WRONG! As in, “Not the right thing to do. Bad. Dishonorable. Disgusting. WRONG”
I didn’t try to say that it didn’t happen. I was saying that the planting of ‘evidence’ after the fact was something that is wrong and unjustifiable. I wanted to make it clear that by “defending” the bait and shoot operation, I was not trying to defend the actions of soldiers who were allegedly just shooting random people and then planting items with the bodies. That was not the conception behind the bait and shoot, just an unfortunate and unforeseen outcome. I’m sure whoever in the AWG came up with the idea did not have such a thing in mind.
Can’t disagree with that.
Is that really the point of this thread? To simply restate what you guys have said from day 1? Or was there something unique about this particular operation? Is there nothing else to debate here except whether or not we should be in Iraq in the first place?
That’s not always the end all of every Iraq debate. There’s other things to discuss, like this concept of baiting insurgents, or the idea of children being sent to retrieve weapons or being sent out to drop mortars into buried tubes aimed at US FOBs. There’s other stuff to share points of view on besides the initial invasion.
I thought this thread was going to be one of them.
Did you know that US Soldiers are not allowed to put sandbags over the heads of captured personnel? It was deemed to degrading for them, so we switched to blind folds. But then guess what–that too was deemed too harsh of treatment for captured people.
So now the Army is only allowed to put opaque goggles over their eys. Oh, and zip ties cause too much harm to their wrists, so the Army now binds their hands with cravats. The US Military cares more about laws and morality than you give them credit. You either don’t care to learn otherwise or simply refuse to believe the contrary.
Why do you even bother posting in Great Debates? It’s not a debate if you’re not willing to hear the opposing view point. If you chalk up everything contrary to your demented illussion of reality as simply “false”, then what’s the point?
You should have your own forumn called Great Broken Records.
This makes me very sad. I can’t believe these snipers have been given the power to be judge, jury, and executioner on these people who pick up things that they planted. How do they know why the guy is picking it up? They don’t even attempt to find out. Shoot first, ask questions later.
I can’t believe how far from human we treat the Iraqis. What even sadder is the fact that so many people are here defending this. Try to imagine police doing that in this country- substitute cocaine as the bait and imagine police sniping at people who pick it up. You can’t imagine it, can you? Of course not, because it would NEVER happen! Nobody would even consider it. If a cop proposed it he would probably be fired, because it’s totally absurd! But do it to some brown people, and nobody bats an eye. People will even defend it, and make excuses for it.
Just a question. What percentage of the blame for the woes of occupied France do you place at the feet of the Resistance?
Yes, we are. Why do you think most of them support killing American troops ?
We invaded them, slaughtered them, and ruined their country. That makes us their enemies.
IF they bothered to read it, they’d think that we are shooting people and claiming they were carrying such things. Or will arrest and torture them if they tell us where the stuff is, like you say they are supposed to.
Why ? It’s the sort of thing I’d expect from Americans.
The injustice of the initial attack underlies everything we do.
Oh, I’m sure we do. :rolleyes: And we torture them with kindness as well.
You want my guess? I would guess something like 10-20%. The French Resistance wasn’t as impressive as whats going on in Iraq, but it certainly had a non-zero negative effect on the general population. They blew up logistics, and even assassinated sympathizers and of course occupation troops.
What? You think it was all beer and skittles? That the French Resistance group (or any OTHER resistance group in history) has a complete positive effect on the native population? Just because their cause is just doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible for their actions…and for the negative impacts they are having.
And perhaps you’ve missed it but the resistance in Iraq is orders of magnitude more vicious…and for (IMHO) less cause. Unless you think Nazi occupation was a barrel of laughs. We aren’t carting off all Sunni’s into concentration camps to gas them, for instance.
-XT
Countercite? About daily life in Iraq, I mean. I recall John McCain, at the 2004 Republican Convention, calling Michael Moore “disingenuous” in apparent reference to the scenes in Fahrenheit 9/11 depicting a happy and idyllic pre-invasion Iraq. McCain is an Ogdamned liar. Nobody, least of all Moore, has any illusions about what kind of ruler Hussein was; we all know about the mass graves, the secret police network, the rape rooms, etc. Nevertheless, there was another side to the story, a side every bit as real, and Moore did a valuable public service in pointing that out when no one else would or dared.
What? It was a War of Choice – our choice, not Iraq’s, not Hussein’s. He did absolutely nothing to threaten the U.S. or to provoke a war.
Bullshit. Pure bullshit. We had the option. They didn’t. We could have let the pre-invasion status quo continue indefinitely, and the Iraqi people would be safer, happier and better off than they are now, and in practical terms, just about as free as they are now. (You’re not “free” if you have to be afraid every time you step out your front door.) There might have been occasional disturbances, the Shi’ite majority would have continued to sullenly resent the domination of the Sunni elite, democracy would have remained a distant dream (as it remains today), but by and large industry and the economy and life in general would have kept ticking along more or less smoothly.
So ? Just because we don’t bother to round up people before killing them as often as they did, and don’t mind letting other Iraqis do much of the killing doesn’t make people less dead. The only real question is how much is due to our malice, and how much due to our incompetence.
For what?
What is the point in continueing this BG? Shall we move to some other animal feces at this point? Goat shit! Hows that. Saddam most certainly DID do quite a bit to provoke us over the years. He was secretive about his WMD…which certainly could have been a threat to US interests in the ME. He most certainly DID have plenty of options available to him…if he hadn’t waited until the last minute when our troops were already at their jump off points to try them. He COULD have come clean about Iraq’s lack of WMD right from the git-go. He COULD have invited in the inspectors with open arms, bent over backwards to accomidate their every whim, shown himself to be completely open and above boards. He CHOSE not to do so…and the Iraqi government CHOSE to follow him down that path.
Certainly it was our choice to go to war and not Iraq’s…that’s pretty much the lot of all smaller nation when dealing with a super power. However, to say Saddam and Iraq were blameless is to ignore history. Which is essentially what you are doing.
-XT
We couldn’t help but invade Iraq. Did you see the way she was dressed? She was all into those short skirts and tube tops while her neighbors wore full length black burkas. Plus she winked at us. How could we not invade that? Didn’t she know how horny we were? Then she has the audacity to complain after it’s over? What the fuck was she thinking? What a tramp. Probably liked it anyway.
I am quite secretive about my magical jellyfish cannon. Fear me.
Any documented evidence that you’ve used this jellyfish cannon in the past on villagers in your area? No? Then its not exactly a perfect analogy, ehe?
-XT
I’d say a bit lower myself - mostly the revenge stuff against others than the enemy, and the Communist - non-Communist in-fighting. I’m quite aware the Resistance weren’t all angels. However, absolutely none of it would have happened without the German invasion. And the insurgency wouldn’t have happened without our invasion, and it wouldn’t have been as bad if we hadn’t mistreated Iraqi civilians so, were incompetent about providing services, and were incompetent about providing security before the insurgency grew.
The attitude of assuming an Iraqi is an enemy unless proven otherwise is exactly why the prisons got so crowded with innocent people. If your brother, who you know was not an insurgent, got shot for picking up a “booby-trapped” item, how would you feel?
We don’t seem to ever learn. Waving away the political component of the surge is functionally equivalent to not having a real Phase IV after the invasion.