Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Troops Murder b/c BushCo Condones It

I read this from CNN, and I am outraged: Investigators have concluded an unarmed man, identified by Knight Ridder as Hashim Ibrahim Awad, was dragged from his house and shot by US Marines, who then placed a shovel and AK-47 next to his body to make it appear he was an insurgent. If true, this is absolutely premeditated murder. Please watch the BBC News clip I provided yesterday. A returned Iraq vet says that he was told to do exactly that if he killed someone unarmed! So, I put my rage aside, and I come across this op/ed about Rep Murtha. It raises some great pts about our troops w/o being an apologist: "Some of these boys turned men in a hurry are on their 2nd or 3rd tour of duty. They have no illusions about their own mortality. Sanctity of human life may sound good, but it can be a little difficult to apply when death is a constant companion. When the Air Force mistakenly bombs a wedding party or a missile fired from a cruiser destroys an apt building in Iraq and everyone in it, we dismiss it w/ a few sympathetic lines about collateral damage and move on. But when the killing is up close and personal, that's another matter. There is a difference. 1 is accidental. 1 is deliberate, but the pilots lead antiseptic lives compared to their bros in arms on the ground." Interesting, no? But then this comes along... And yet we even have to ask ourselves how did Haditha happen? (via LATimes): "The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to internatl human rights standards. Exclusion of the Geneva provisions makes it more difficult for the Bush admin to portray incidents like Abu Ghraib and Haditha as aberrations, and it undercuts contentions that US forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars." Really? You need only look at how parents raise their kids: If you tell your kids to "just say no to drugs" and then proceed to light up a big bowl of crack, chances are the kids might decide right then and there that you are full of crap and will ask you if they can hit that, or can ya at least give them your dealer's number.
Posted by Tina :: 12:49 AM :: 4 Comments:

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