If they can do this to them whats to say they dont call you or me an enemy combatant?

As a citizen of the United States, I have the right to due process. Remember John Walker Lindh? A POS once-American citizen caught fighting for the Taliban. He still got a trial and sentence, and unfortunately that sentence was not death.

Enemy soldiers have certain rights under the Geneva Conventions, including being exchanged with our captured soldiers. We can't exchange our soldiers for ragheads cowering in caves who represent no nation. IMAO this enemy forfeited their rights to humane treatment long ago.

Half of these guys are probably innocent, the ones that are not are in the high sec part of the prison.

Unlikely.

Come out with it then, do you think that its ok to kill more innocent people with cruise missiles in the name of a holy war or money?

If our goal was to kill noncombatants, we could level Iraq almost overnight. The truth of the matter is the Iraqi people are grateful we got rid of Saddam and are grateful we're there, despite the presence of insurgents (now minus 20,000 of them) and their intrepid mainstream media propaganda wing in the USA.

Without the support of the Iraqi people, we couldn't stay there to complete the mission.

The FBI gets more useful information out of suspects by coercive interrogation and not torturing them. Torture and imprisonment only brings you bad intel and gets more soldiers killed.

I've heard of both methods tried...I'm happy with whatever works. I tend to agree torture is generally a waste of time for intel, but if there are cases when it's worked, here are the jumper cables.

Furthermore, remember WWII and the internment camps? This is no different.

The Japanese-Americans? Imprisoned illegally by a DEMOCRAT president, however I don't think it's fair to judge a rightfully xenophobic America in the midst of a war for its survival. Though in poor living conditions, the Japanese-American prisoners were not tortured or killed. And, as they were citizens, they eventually got their day in court and were paid reparations.

You and I and possibly event the government can prove that they are enemy combatants, with out manufacture of evidence.

At least some of these combatants were directly caught on the battlefield, attacking US troops and Iraqi civilians. I suspect there'll be plenty of evidence.

"Through fighting terrorism we have in ourselves become terrorists."

Sorry, I disagree. And freedom is not free.

The civilian deaths are not directly caused by US troops. They are "a result of the US invasion". That means that any deaths that can be linked to the destabilized government, lack of police, firefighters, emergency health care, etc. Worse is the rise of local mobs doing neighborhood ethnic or religious cleansing, with little or no deterrents.

The thing that is frightening is that mercenaries are on a 1:1 ratio to actual combat troops right now in Iraq.

The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government’s capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.

More than 180,000 civilians - including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis - are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq. The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq - a mission criticized as being undermanned.

- Private Contractors Outnumber US Troops in Iraq

>> ^charliem:
This is fucking horrible.
12 US Soldiers dead due to corporate neglegance....someone needs to go to prison.

The one sergeant is dead, but I think the remainder got shocked yet survived. AFAIK, electrocution ≠ death by electricity.

It's not my intention, however, to downplay this egregious state of affairs. My deployment was to a safe part of the Gulf and our base was as comfy as they come, but after five months even we started to get a little stir-crazy and began snapping at each other. When I imagine going to war and then having to worry about getting shocked (to death, no less) in my own shower -- the mind boggles.

Ahh, the brilliant right wing attack "You're saying something bad about the troops" "You hate US troops" "Look everyone, he hates your sons and daughters"

Gah, they really are the most despicable people around, those who KNOW they're lying, KNOW they are twisting words, KNOW that they are misrepresenting, but don't give two shits, because it helps them silence those that speak the TRUTH that happens to go against what their little war mongering, other culture hating little brains want to believe.

It all comes down to fear with the majority of right wing voters. They're afraid of anyone/anything of another culture, they don't understand it, it makes them uneasy, they like things the way they are, and when they see people of another culture apparently being given a fair go, they freak out. They start fearing that their precious way of life will be changed and pushed aside for these 'newcomers'.

I do feel sorry for them, they are scared, not very bright, generally working class people who are hard done by by the very governments they vote in.

It's just a pity there are so many of them they drag down the rest of the country with them

There is plenty of evidence of the weapons being used by insurgents as originating from Iran.

Cenk is missing the point here, its not that they ARE made in iran, its wether or not the iranian state is giving these weapons to the insurgents with an intent to be used in iraq on US troops.

Seen an interview with a EOD trooper in iraq (from the UK army) saying that they constantly find UXO RPG shells, 105mm mortars / arty shells, all with trademark iranian signatures from iranian weapons manufacturers.

Great comment. Thank you.

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
The creation of an enemy is one of the topics covered in Loss of Innocence, a documentary about the seductive appeal of War to man.

The basic argument is that the creation of an enemy is necessary for successful psychological push to convince a population that a war is beyond all means necessary. The historical record with regards to this idea is filled with evidence, consider World War 2.

Prior to Pearl Harbor, the US population did not want to engage with any war with either the 3rd Reich or Imperialist Japan. However the attack on Pearl Harbor solidified the case for war instantly, nearly a million Americans signed up, internment camps were created. Propaganda posters from the time show the Japanese as beastly beings, with slit eyes, yellow skin, fangs and claws. The enemy is dehumanized and generalized, even though in reality hegemony is never achieved, however there is a need to inherently dissolve their individuality to make them our enemies. The word 'Jap' became a derogatory term, in fact vocabulary is key in dehumanization of an enemy.

Vietnam followed the same path, with the Gulf Of Tonkin incident that made it seem like the NVA attacked US ships even though this was proven false. Vietnamese were portrayed as red communists, part of a larger threat embodied by Red China and the USSR based around the Domino theory. The words from that time - 'Gook', 'Victor Charlie', 'VC' and so on.

Iraq, Gulf War 1, the main drive for war publicly was the false testimony of Kuwait Embassy, the daughter of the ambassador was couched by a PR firm to relate a story of Iraqi troops pulling infant babies out of incubators. The public support increased instantly for going to War. The words - 'Sand nigger', 'Towel head', 'Hajji' most repeated now in the current war.

What is fascinating to me is that the enemy creation is necessary for violent acts of war, the same time it's seductive, its easy to psychologically develop an us vs them stand point, its simple. They are all guilty, they are all the enemy, so they must all perish so we can develop a better life for ourselves. But how do you tell a terrorist from a civilian? How do you not lash out at civilians who support the insurgents? Just like US troops lashed out at civilians in Vietnam because they knew or believed they helped the VC and NVA? When getting shot on a day to day basis by an unseen enemy, how does one not give into the urge to lash out against the civilians who you see everyday, there is a man there is his early 20s, he looks fiercely at your OP, his hands formed into tight fists, eyes like bullets. He bends down to pick something up, is it a stick? is it an RPG? Do I aim and pull the trigger?

To end evil we must commit great evil in kind, but we risking becoming evil ourselves for when we stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at us.

The creation of an enemy is one of the topics covered in Loss of Innocence, a documentary about the seductive appeal of War to man.

The basic argument is that the creation of an enemy is necessary for successful psychological push to convince a population that a war is beyond all means necessary. The historical record with regards to this idea is filled with evidence, consider World War 2.

Prior to Pearl Harbor, the US population did not want to engage with any war with either the 3rd Reich or Imperialist Japan. However the attack on Pearl Harbor solidified the case for war instantly, nearly a million Americans signed up, internment camps were created. Propaganda posters from the time show the Japanese as beastly beings, with slit eyes, yellow skin, fangs and claws. The enemy is dehumanized and generalized, even though in reality hegemony is never achieved, however there is a need to inherently dissolve their individuality to make them our enemies. The word 'Jap' became a derogatory term, in fact vocabulary is key in dehumanization of an enemy.

Vietnam followed the same path, with the Gulf Of Tonkin incident that made it seem like the NVA attacked US ships even though this was proven false. Vietnamese were portrayed as red communists, part of a larger threat embodied by Red China and the USSR based around the Domino theory. The words from that time - 'Gook', 'Victor Charlie', 'VC' and so on.

Iraq, Gulf War 1, the main drive for war publicly was the false testimony of Kuwait Embassy, the daughter of the ambassador was couched by a PR firm to relate a story of Iraqi troops pulling infant babies out of incubators. The public support increased instantly for going to War. The words - 'Sand nigger', 'Towel head', 'Hajji' most repeated now in the current war.

What is fascinating to me is that the enemy creation is necessary for violent acts of war, the same time it's seductive, its easy to psychologically develop an us vs them stand point, its simple. They are all guilty, they are all the enemy, so they must all perish so we can develop a better life for ourselves. But how do you tell a terrorist from a civilian? How do you not lash out at civilians who support the insurgents? Just like US troops lashed out at civilians in Vietnam because they knew or believed they helped the VC and NVA? When getting shot on a day to day basis by an unseen enemy, how does one not give into the urge to lash out against the civilians who you see everyday, there is a man there... in his early 20s combat age, he looks fiercely at your OP, his hands formed into tight fists, eyes like bullets. He bends down to pick something up, is it a stick? is it an RPG? Do I aim and pull the trigger?

To end evil we must commit great evil in kind, but we risking becoming evil ourselves for when we stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at us.

Yes, I've read Naomi Wolf. Cheney took advantage of 911 like Hitler took advantage of the Reichstag fire, but Clinton/Obama seem different. During the previous Clinton administration not one American claimed we resembled post-WWI Germany, though 9/11 itself was blowback from Clinton and pre-Clinton policy. I never supported nuclear proliferation, nor threats designed to prevent it. Nukes are safe in India's hands, but not with Pakistan or Turkey. I never supported "pumping Iraq full of money and weapons". You are putting words into my mouth. Somebody has to stop the sectarian death squads in Iraq. Replacing US troops with UN peacekeepers is good because it would calm some of the jihadists. Total immediate withdrawal would probably lead to a 3-way civil war between the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites and an eventual 3-state schism, and Iraqi Kurd independence would lead Iran and Turkey into the fray, and I can't say for certain that the total death toll of that would be higher than UN peacekeeping over festering wounds of sectarian violence, but it probably would. I wish the Iraqi Kurds could get a free state without Turkey&Iran making a fuss about the precedent that sets. Kurdistan is the most peaceful and least fundamentalist part of Iraq. I'm sufficiently uncertain about the difference in eventual effect between gradual withdrawal & UN peacekeeping vs. total immediate withdrawal that it's not really the most important difference between the candidates. The biggest problem in Iraq is the damn fundamentalist religion. They prefer to just blow each other up over an argument that started with who should succeed the ancient impostor Muhammad. Most Iraqis oppose total freedom of religion, even the ones who are afraid of being oppressed by a majority of the opposite sect. It's madness. Some days I wish someone would translate the complete works of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Richard Dawkins into Arabic and air-drop 100 million copies.

So then you open the door to deconstruct any other freedoms because the document is "just old." First you avoided the idea of guaranteed freedoms and talked about feelings of safety without guns, or in essence needing overwatch in specific areas of life. Now you say that because the constitution is old, it's contents no longer have merit. This is just plain wrong. The US Supreme Court has defined the 2nd amendment as protecting "from infringement by the federal and state governments the right of the individual to keep and to bear a weapon which is part of the ordinary military equipment or which use could contribute to the common defense."

That is not very ambiguous. Ordinary military equipment does not include weapons of mass destruction by the way. Yes, grenade launchers are legal in the US. Yes, an AR-15 which is quite close to the weapons issued to US troops is legal. Civilian versions are no different than any other semi-automatic rifle. One round for each pull of the trigger. What does that matter? Your argument basically follows that since the constitution is old, and guns kill, it's perfectly acceptable to forcibly disarm the population of an entire country without even having actual data to backup claims that it will reduce crime. I just can't agree with that. Look for reports on the results of gun bans and see if you can find a conclusive scientific study that proves a notable increase or decrease in public saftey. What you end up with is spikes in burglaries, assaults, and home invasions. This can't positively be linked to gun bans either since crime was usually on the rise before the bans and no one can seem to agree on the how of it. Crime in the UK doubled in the years following the 1997 ban and is now only in recent years beginning to decrease. Crime continued to rise independent of the gun ban. Your own country saw a drastic rise in home invasions and assaults following the final removal of all guns. Was it related? It's very difficult to tell with many outside factors involved.

Having a decrease in shooting deaths, but an increase in stabbing deaths solves nothing. You take away a gun? No problem, get a knife. Take away knives? No problem... plenty of big rocks and sticks laying around. The idea that passing legislation to ban a weapon will make an area safer is not taking human nature into account. Someone determined to commit a crime will do so with or without the help of a gun. If there was notable scientific data to prove that gun bans created a safer society with actually less violent crime, then that might at least make it appear more justified for a country like Australia that didn't have a guaranteed right to bear arms in the first place. That data just doesn't exist. In fact, in 1996, John Lott from the University of Chicago Law School published 15 years of FBI analysis on over 3,000 countries to find a correlation, if any, between violent crime and the prevalence of concealed weapons on law-abiding citizens. The results showed a major decrease in countries where citizens were more likely to be armed.

The point I've been trying to make over and over again is that none of that even matters anyway. Removing something with good intentions doesn't make it the right decision. This goes beyond just rights to firearms. When you make it acceptable for the government to alter your fundamental rights, for whatever reason, that is like opening Pandora's box. What prevents the same logic that bans a previously guaranteed right from applying to anything else that is deemed a threat? Dramatizing everything by calling people gun nuts, or thinking in terms of extremes, like having shootouts over a fender bender with depleted uranium rounds, is just trivializing an important issue.

In regards to your example of the 3rd amendment, it still has merit today. There are still scenerios where National Guard troops could be deployed within the borders of the United States (although this is increasingly rare). Disaster relief comes to mind as a recent example. This amendment prevents the government from tossing you to the curb to use your home or forcing you to shelter a soldier. Is it likely to be used anytime soon? Probably not, but every citizen is still constitutionally guaranteed the freedom to have a say in soldiers using their property. You seem to view this issue as something almost inconsequential. As if it's just common sense that all guns should be banned regardless of prior laws and in total disregard to individual freedoms because it would secure you peace of mind. I personally consider this to be ignorant of the future consequences involved with allowing the government that kind of control. There is no possible way to enact a complete ban of all personally owned firearms in this country without violating the law.

Clown-cinich is willing to meet with any tyrant whose boots he can lick, but not US troops overseas, because "he doesn't believe in the war".

'Corporate-controlled media' didn't make this guy a hippie fool, that's all on him.

When did anyone say it was all better over there? What's that? Never?
We only said that US troops aren't monsters like some would claim. ::COUGH::fade::COUGH::

Oh, and let's not forget that your statistic is always cited to make it seem like we killed them. Collateral damage is almost nil for all of our attacks. Most of those casualties were inflicted by the suicide bombers.

Call me an idiot, but I highly doubt the Kremlin OR Putin would find her work SO THREATENING that they had to send government assassins to take her down. Especially after watching the Orange revolution unfold from the same exact way in Ukraine. Are the Russian government so stupid to do such a thing??? This is downright fantasy level conspiracy theory. You wanna see what you WANNA see, that being me and you both.

Just because she was against the Russian government, the culprit automatically becomes that of her enemies in life. Russia has had a lot of fishy underhanded activities before and it's justified that they should be the prime suspects. But in this case it just doesn't make sense.

The rational explanation would be that a former Russian soldier who served in Chechnya hated her biased journalism so much that he took the matter into his own hands. You guys do realize that she has an extremely leftist liberal outlook, and was never liked by the Russian troops. War is brutal, for both parties. Yet she always sided with the Chechnyans, and that pissed off a lot of Russian patriots who always thought her works were unfair and biased and always downplayed the brutality of Chechnya rebels and only focusing on the retaliation acts of Russian soldiers.

Part of being a journalist is having tolerable rapport and non-biased views of the situation, and report the situation as is, without one's own analysis. Imagine how our troops feel if you went to Iraq as a journalist and constantly complained and criticized US troops for bombarding Afghans and starving Iraqi children, yet report how awful the Americans are because they're terrorizing the neighborhood with random raids and patrols but getting anything done, and that they're useless, and blame all the collateral damage on them. And the reporter is here to interview you about how futile the US efforts are in Middle east, while you lay in bed with a charred leg from an roadside IED, and just got back from a friend's funeral.

Your feelings to strangle the reporter is justified at that point. Well at least American journalists are trained to be unbiased and fair, which is very hard to do and often a forgotten art nowadays.

Anna Politkovskaya, on the other hand, never tried to understand Russians' side of the aspect, like many many other ultra liberal crazies. Yes we should mourn for her death, but don't justify her loss by saying 'she was right about everything'. Because she was a very biased journalist who provoked and enraged the Russian soldiers.


My god, the more I read about you guys posts, more I realize how sickened I am by ultra liberal craziness. I think you guys are starting to turn me into a hard ass conservative Republican!! 0_o What have you done to me?!?!!? (although Republicans hate Russians just as much as any other. A common trait throughout American history. Shared hatred against enemy FTW! Reunite the nation by focusing on hating Russia!!!)

I don't know what an Iraqi expert is, but what I do know that I've gotten more smiles than middle fingers.
That being said, MINK:

They really didn't appear to be goofing off too much, but what would you rather them do? crouch down behind the armor? If the Iraqi people, whenever they us US troops, just saw mean and cold-looking people, they might believe the propaganda that Marines do in fact eat babies. (Which I have to say is the most bad-ass stereotype I've ever been labeled with )

Lurch, i would refer to bases in germany, uk, lithuania and literally scores of other countries as a form of occupation, it's a kind of quiet empire. The presence of those bases gives the USA considerable political leverage.
"state sponsored killing" referred to collateral damage, not bases. i would definitely call the US Army blowing up Iraqi civilians "state sponsored killing". Hope that explains it.

As for the whole "there will be bloodshed if we withdraw"... damn, as if there isn't bloodshed now, and as if the bloodshed will stop quicker with an occupying christian army on their soil. Comparisons to Vietnam are interesting... last time I checked Vietnam was not a communist stronghold bathing in blood.

What you are saying, by extension, is "there should be US troops in every country where there's bloodshed" and that is totally impossible. What is so different about Iraq? Why not go prevent the bloodshed in Sudan or Burma or China or Russia? No war proponent has ever explained this to me.

About those bases you say aren't permanent:

We're talking about a U.S. embassy compound under construction these last years that's meant to hold 1,000 diplomats, spies, and military types (as well as untold numbers of private security guards, service workers, and heaven knows who else). It will operate in the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified Green Zone as if it were our first lunar colony. According to William Langewiesche, writing in Vanity Fair, it will contain "its own power generators, water wells, drinking-water treatment plant, sewage plant, fire station, irrigation system, Internet uplink, secure intranet, telephone center (Virginia area code), cell-phone network (New York area code), mail service, fuel depot, food and supply warehouses, vehicle-repair garage, and workshops."
...
When it comes to American construction projects in Iraq, the sky's really the limit. Just recently, National Public Radio's Defense Correspondent Guy Raz spent some time at Balad Air Base about 70 kilometers north of Baghdad. As Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post reported, back in 2006, Balad is essentially an "American small town," so big that it has neighborhoods and bus routes -- and its air traffic rivals Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174858/baseless_considerations