Blue Mass Group

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US Soldiers Executing Iraqis: Who Are the Terrorists Now?

By

So many questions. Sadly, many of these questions have obvious answers making them rhetorical.

First, what is the most accurate way to categorize such incidents: War crime? Terrorism? Genocide? I don’t buy any “fog of war” or “we’re fighting a new kind of war” arguments.

Second: Is this not a form of psychological warfare inflicted on our own soldiers? What are the motivations behind military commanders forcing young soldiers to kill Iraqis that are innocent? How does this help America at home or in Iraq? What kind of psychological damage are these soldiers going to be burdened with at home?

Third:  why is it that only the enlisted people get stuck with the punitive burdens? We all know Lynndie Englund wasn’t the Abu Ghraib master-mind. When is the responsibility going to be felt up the chain of command?

Even if you can’t feel one ounce of empathy for any Iraqi citizens, you have to consider sick stuff like this is beyond the scope of duty. Consider what policies that require soldiers to brutally and coldly execute or torture innocent people do to those Americans, their families and their communities. It’s psychological torture.

Anyone not sickened by this war is either delusional or sub-human.

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  1. do you have anything to back up this ridiculous, moronic statement:

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    “Fact is, however, this is United States policy, not a couple of nutty soldiers in isolated incidents.”

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    To suggest that it is American policy to shoot unarmed men, execution style and laugh about if fucking stupid.  The information you are quoting is from a story on the court martial of the idiot how did that.

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    Grow up you idiot.  Some of the questions you have are legitimate, thoughtful questions but you come off like an ass clown when you say stupid stuff like this.

        • …just rhetorical attack on a fact that makes you uncomfortable. I have no reason to engage a commenter whose only motivation is to assail the messenger and not engage the substance of the post. Besides, calling me ass wipe pretty much ensures that this part of the thread will be deleted, so it’s not worth my effort to respond when the text won’t be here latter.

              • You made the assertion, prove it correct.

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                Second, as I already pointed out, the article proves you wrong because this moron is being court martialed for engaging in this hideous act.

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                And what history books might you offer that says it is American policy to kill unarmed men?

                • Blackwater has nothing to do with this thread.

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                  The discussion is about weather or not it is US Military policy to kill unarmed men.

                • do with the statement in tblade’s made in context of American Soldiers that reads as follows:

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                  “Fact is, however, this is United States policy, not a couple of nutty soldiers in isolated incidents.”

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                  I have asked him to provide any proof that, as he stated, killing unarmed men execution style is US Military policy.

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                  You have attempted to change this to an easier to defend statement by brining in Blackwater.  Blackwater are not US Military Soldiers, they are a private contractor.  The good or ill of using private contractors and how to treat private contractors that break the law is a different argument then above.  Thus, straw man.

                • United States policy and US Military policy are two different things.  Blackwater is in Iraq according to United States Policy.  Otherwise, they would not be there at all.

                  This should be obvious.

                  I also believe I have read reports of Blackwater troops killing unarmed civilians.

                   

                  Finally, (and I don't mean to snark but I cannot help it) a strawman arguement is where I try to put words in your mouth.  I think you wanted to accuse me of introducing a red herring, which means a distraction or a change of subject.

                • and red herring would be a little more appropriate.

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                  I have continue the discussion on tblade’s post down the page.

        • …in which commenters are called “ass wipe” “idiot” and “ass clown” and has no respect for the rules of the road. Sometimes I wonder why he bothers showing up over here.

          • because over at rmg, EaBo puts the “asswipe” types in their place.  over here, he supports them.  don’t know what to make of it all…

          • ..response to someone whose posts and comments are frequently laced with flamebait and emotional appeals.

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            I generally avoid engaging you and a couple others here for that reason.

            • It looks like you missed the Fox News-style question mark at the end of the sentence. Actually, it’s a legitimate question. Watch The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (full movie linked below).

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              ter*ror*ism: the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

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              Even if I did call our military terrorists, I posted more then enough evidence to show that from an Iraqi’s perspective, US soldiers could be seen as people who commit acts of terrorism. Also, acts of terrorism were a big part of the US plan in WWII and Vietnam – what reason should anyone not be skeptical of any civilian death given the US’s history and the below evidence?

            • It’s useful to think in more than just soundbites. “You called our military terrorists” does not constitute analysis, refutation, or even rebuttal. It just constitutes boiling stuff down to the level of insults. That’s generally the least informative level. Why, for example, aren’t you wondering about the treatment of Iraqi civilians? What do you make of these many stories? Can you event think about this?

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              Listening to Giuliani, I fear thinking in soundbites has become a conservative habit. Refusing to think about uncomfortable facts will make any ideology stale and lose its moorings from reality. Why don’t you chew on tblade’s challenge? Conservatism is looking awfully stale these days. Even McConnell’s favorables are dropping with people in Kentucky leaning against this soundbite-induced war.

    • PFCs should be forbidden from determining the legality of an order before carrying it out.

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      Interesting.

        • DaveS has been visiting us silently. He’s in favor of using the term “asswipe” and doesn’t think JK owes anyone an apology either. Perhaps we’ll receive more dashes and dots soon as he telegraphs us his opinion.

  3. One could spend a fair amount of time speculating about whether higher ups or not were involved based upon the available evidence, and — in our frequent experience with the Bush Administration — the available stonewalling. Not only does this Administration consistently prove the critics right; it even occasionally proves the paranoids right, too.

    Such speculations aside, something is salient here by its absence. Why do we hear no ringing proclamations about the value of Iraqi lives from the Bush Administration?

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    An Administration that didn’t just pretend to liberate Iraqis, pretend to bring them democracy, pretend to care about them would be so appalled at this story that it would want to head it off. It would proclaim loud and clear, “This is not us!”

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    The Bush Administration doesn’t. It doesn’t care.

    • We do here the Bush Administration saying ringing things about the Iraqi people, but that is just hyperbole.  But those are just words.  The actions of the administration and the congress for that matter don’t back up those words.

      • A ringing proclamation is just the beginning.

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        This is part of the same mistake this Administration has made in not shutting down Abu Ghraib immediately. There should have been no question about whether higher-ups were involved in that fiasco — and there are. Everyone involved, not just the privates, should have been prosecuted. The end result should have helped give Iraqis closure.

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        Here and with Blackwater, we have the same thing. An extremely cavalier treatment of Iraqis with no acknowledgment. What is it with conservatives that makes it so difficult for them to apologize when they are obviously wrong?

  4. So you can stop using that excuse.

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    You stated:

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    “Fact is, however, this is United States policy, not a couple of nutty soldiers in isolated incidents.”

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    Prove it!!

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    As I have already pointed out at least twice, the fact that this idiot is being court martialed for killing unarmed Iraqis is proof that it is not.  Or else he wouldn’t have done anything to be court martialed for.

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    Being sickened by these acts is normal.  But to take them to the black helicopter loony land that it is US Policy to do so is moronic, immature and blatantly false.

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    So again, you made the statement, back it up or admit you are talking out of your ass bum.

      • Sorry if using that language offends you or if calling someone names who says something stupid bothers you.  But what tblade wrote offended and bothered me, and that’s how I responded.  I feel no regret and don’t offer meaningless Senator Craig like apologies or excuses.

        • It doesn’t matter how it makes you “feel”. You have to take personal responsibility for your “feelings”. If someone says or asserts something you don’t like, that doesn’t make that person an “asswipe”. Jeez, this is kindergarten stuff. It doesn’t make them a doodyhead either. Such behavior is the ticket to a very short marriage.

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          If you poison the well with discourse like that, expect to be called on it.

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          You know we liberals really do believe in personal responsibility. We understand social causation, too, but it doesn’t mean we don’t believe in personal responsibility.

          • it’s the same language I would have used if he said those same things in person. 

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            Personally, I think you and tblade are harping on the language too much and perhaps using it to divert attention from the fact that he won’t answer the substance of my posts.

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            And the “kindergarten stuff”, come on.

              • He did answer it. The original reference answered it. If you’re looking for a declaration from the Sec. of Defense, keep waiting. BannedByTheSentinel’s point on what constitutes policy is correct. The alarming thing was the origin of this practice and not so much who implemented it.
              • I’m sorry to hear you don’t have a problem with your language. And, yes, this is the type of common courtesy that I would expect from you. There are very few social contexts in which “asswipe” is an appropriate form of address and I participate in none of them. Minimally, such usage would seem to violate the Rules of the Road. It is certainly poisonous to any type of debate other than an exchange of sound-bites. I thought you said you left some of the conservative boards for exactly that reason.

    • As I have already pointed out at least twice, the fact that this idiot is being court martialed for killing unarmed Iraqis is proof that it is not.

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      …you could have put it that way in your original comment, and saved everyone the who-knows-how-many column inches in the comment thread here from reacting to your epithet.

    • Yet again you show that you can’t engage the meat of my post without using the word ass.  You honestly don’t want people to take you seriously, do you?

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      You’ve already played your hand – you’re not interested in engaging the post or the criticism, your only interested in dismissive name calling against a person delivering a message you don’t like.  Even if I am an asswipe, even asswipes are correct sometimes.

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      Perhaps if people like you turned their “outrage” at the government perpetrating what could be at best categorized human rights violations and at worst could be considered war crimes or genocide instead of the person delivering fact and analysis.  Hey, I could be wrong, but you’ve done nothing to disabuse me of this notion. In light of the number of Iraqi civilians (and civilians from other theaters in the “War on terrorism”) killed, raped and tortured by the US and in light of the documented fact that the US intentionally murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in wars throughout the 20th century, there is no reason I should give the policy makers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the intentional murder of civilians. Unless, of course, JK can provide a good reason.

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      I don’t know how JK thinks that I didn’t back up my assertion. Here’s one source that was linked:

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      A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of “bait,” such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents…

      “Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”

      • First off:

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        Yet again you show that you can’t engage the meat of my post without using the word ass.  You honestly don’t want people to take you seriously, do you?

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        Are you F’ing kidding me?  That was a joke!

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        Second, you have delivered NO FACTS on US policy towards killing unarmed men.  One last time and as simple as I can make it.  You asserted that it is US Policy to kill unarmed men.  In fact, this is not the policy.  This is demonstrated by the fact that Spc.  Jorge G. Sandoval is being court martialed for killing unarmed men.  If this was US Policy there would be no court martialable offense.  So I have thus proven that your statement is wrong!!!

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        You could have said something like “unofficial practice of the Bush Administration” and that I likely would not have taken offense to.  But you didn’t, stated it was a “fact” and was “US Policy”. 

        • It's my turn to accuse you of introducing a red herring.  Stated US military policy may not condone execution of civilians, but it is heppening at the behest of a pentagon group as per tblades documented evidence.  Ipso facto, it has become US policy.

  5. …because as I said in my post, all these instances of Americans killing Iraqis will be dismissed using the “few bad apples defense”.

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    First: People should read about Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority and Adolf Eichmann and second they schold watch HBOs The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib to see how military leaders can give unofficial orders to commit unauthorized acts and atrocities (a simple example might be the “Code Red” from A Few Good Men)

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    Second: I offer this selection from the book with a familliar title, Shock and Awe.  This book was commissioned by the US Department of Defense and written by written by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade at the National Defense University:

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    There is also the option of applying massive destruction against purely civilian or “counter-value” targets such as the firebombing of Tokyo in World War II when unconditionality marks the terms of surrender. It is the cumulative impact of destruction on the endurance and capacity of the adversary that ultimately affects the will to resist that is the central foundation of this example. The shortcoming with this example is clear, and rests in the question of political feasibility and acceptability, and what circumstances would be necessary to dictate and permit use of massive bombardment. Outright invasion and aggression such as Iraq’s attack against Kuwait could clearly qualify as reasons to justify using this level of Shock and Awe.

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    Third I spent just 10 minutes on google and found these articles: 

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    Salon article describing a comment from The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib:

    Davis, in particular, offers a dire tale of how difficult it was to behave ethically in Iraq. He expresses shock that, when he asked for the Rules of Engagement on the first day of the invasion, no one could tell him. When another soldier instructed him simply to shoot at “the enemy,” Davis told the guy that he’d never left the U.S. before, so everyone looked like the enemy to him.

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    MSNBC:

    Accused troops: We were under orders to kill: “The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on Objective Murray,” Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard told investigators, referring to the target by its code name.

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    The Guardian:

    Haditha marine ‘watched superior kill surrendering civilians’: A US marine told a court yesterday that he had “pissed” on the head of one of 24 dead Iraqi civilians killed by his unit and watched a superior officer kill five Iraqis as they tried to surrender.

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    The Telegraph:

    They appear to have taken revenge on the occupants of a white taxi which arrived on the scene shortly afterwards. The report describes how, after telling them to get out of the vehicle, the Marines’ squad leader, Staff Sgt Frank D Wuterich, opened fire on the Iraqis with his M16 rifle from a distance of no more than 10ft, despite the fact that some of them had their hands up. The men, standing in a line, dropped to the ground as an Iraqi soldier attached to the marines unit looked on in horror.

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    The New York Times:

    On the other hand, some scholars said the spate of [murder case] dismissals has left them wondering what to think of the young enlisted marines who, illegally or not, clearly killed unarmed people in a combat zone.

    “It certainly erodes that sense that what they did was wrong,” Elizabeth L. Hillman, a legal historian who teaches military law at Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, said of the outcomes so far. “When the story broke, it seemed like we understood what happened; there didn’t seem to be much doubt. But we didn’t know.

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    The Sacramento Bee:

    ‘I killed innocent people for our government’…Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: “Are you OK?” I said: “No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians.” He goes: “No, today was a good day.” And when he said that, I said “Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?”

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    Apparently, it is illegal for a car to swerve in Iraq:

    Like Jimmy Massey, Darrell Anderson is fighting the dark ghosts of atrocity. A 22-year-old GI from Lexington, Kentucky, who won a purple heart after he was wounded, Anderson was stationed at a checkpoint near a police station in Baghdad, when a speeding car swerved in his direction. Darrell said he received orders to shoot. There was a family — two children, a man and his wife — in the car. Darrell’s buddies screamed: “Shoot! Why don’t you shoot? Why don’t you shoot?”…”My superior came over and said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Look, there’s children in the back. It’s a family. I did the right thing. It’s wrong to fire in this situation.’ My superior told me: ‘No, you did the wrong thing. You will fire, next time, or you will be punished. That’s our orders.'”

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    Editor & Publisher:

    U.S. military investigators believe the killing of an Iraqi civilian on April 26 was planned by a small group of Marines who shot the man and then planted a shovel and an AK-47 rifle at the scene, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday.

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    The Washington Post:

    Investigators believe American soldiers spent nearly a week plotting an attack in which they raped an Iraqi woman, then killed her and her family in an insurgent-ridden area south of Baghdad, a U.S. military official said Saturday.

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    The Guardian:

    American air strikes have killed more than 70 people in western Iraq, including dozens of women and children, witnesses said yesterday.
    Staff at a hospital in Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Baghdad, said they treated numerous civilians injured in Sunday’s bombing of two nearby villages. Television pictures showed women and children among bandaged patients. The US military confirmed that warplanes and helicopters had fired missiles and killed more than 70 people but said the dead were insurgents engaged in operations.

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    Australian Broadcasting:

    US troops who opened fire after being targeted by a roadside bomb have killed two Iraqi policemen and two civilians south of Baghdad on Saturday, an Interior Ministry spokesman said on Sunday…The US military said on Sunday it was investigating a separate incident in which one of its warplanes bombed the wrong house in northern Iraq, killing civilians.

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    Confessions of a Torturer:

    Lagouranis says he once interrogated four brothers who’d been arrested during a general search because soldiers had found a pole in their house that they’d argued could be used for sighting targets for mortars. The brothers, interrogated separately by Lagouranis, contended they used it to measure the depth of water in a canal, and there was nothing incriminating in the house. Though he was convinced they were telling the truth, his superiors would not release the men. A man arrested because he had a cell phone and a shovel met a similar fate. The army contended the shovel could be used to plant an IED and the cell phone could be used to help set it off, and though Lagouranis bought his explanation, nothing he said shook that belief. The army wanted to be able to boast about the number of terrorists apprehended, and the four brothers with the striped stick, the two who ran the aid station at the potato factory, and the man with the shovel were close enough.

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    Blackwater, again from The Telegraph:

    Blackwater security guards kill Iraqi civilians: US officials are investigating a shootout in Baghdad involving the US security firm Blackwater in which eight people were killed and at least 13 wounded, the state department has said.

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    Although not exhaustive or comprehensive, these articles are representative of the evidence I’ve used to form the view that there the US military culture in Iraq encourages the murder of civilians. Given this culture, the direct evidence from Shock and Awe, the fact that it has been America’s policy to murder civilians in previous wars (200,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan; Dresden, Germany; Vietnam), and given that so many military and civilian higher ups have made exhaustive attempts to cover up and excuse these types of behaviors from war to war, thus giving tacit if no explicit permission to kill civilians, it is impossible for a rational person not to be skeptical of any civilian casualty in Iraq. At minimum, there is no reason to give the military the benefit of the doubt. To me the evidence is clear: the US military condones the killing of civilians making it ipso facto policy.

    • I think this comment is must reading.

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      It is all just so horribly sad and awful.

      There is a difference between this and the fire-bombing of Tokyo or the destruction of Dresden. In both cases, there was a clearly defined enemy who could surrender and thereby end hostilities. Iraq lacks that. So civilian casualties can’t be a military goal the way the civilian deaths in Hiroshima were.

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      It’s hard to read this stuff. Then, it’s hard to sift through it and make any sense out of it. Here’s what I detect — adjustments welcomed:

      • There are situations where the rules of engagement kill random Iraqis. These frequently have to do with vehicular traffic and checkpoints. Anecdotes about people needlessly killed in cars just seem to pour in. These rules of engagement might be necessary for our troops’ safety but then why do Iraqis need our troops there then? Very lethal help.
      • There seem to be excesses of panic or revenge. Haditha springs to mind — but so should the entire city of Falluja.
      • Premeditated crimes. Tblade listed a number of rapes and executions. These are like the excesses of panic and revenge but where desperation has led to premeditation.
      • A misguided effort to achieve objectives. Since we have precious few Arabic speakers in an Arabic-speaking population, it’s very difficult to detect who is and is not some kind of insurgent or terrorist. So you have people being hauled in on flimsy pretexts — and then kept to keep the numbers up.
      • Air strikes I just do not understand what possible benefit air strikes have in this kind of environment. Air strikes are almost guaranteed to kill innocents.

      • The shortcoming with this example is clear, and rests in the question of political feasibility and acceptability, and what circumstances would be necessary to dictate and permit use of massive bombardment.

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        Notice the clear shortcomings of attacking civilian installations. The shortcomings are not the loss of human life, not the concern for human rights and dignity. The murder of civilians, according to this document, doesn’t boil down to right and wrong, it is simply a question of “political feasibility”.

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        Now, I agree that the wholesale destruction of cities can’t be employed to exert pressure on ruling government in Iraq the way it was used in Japan and Germany. But the culture feed by the command structure that allows and encourages killing civilians can be used as a psychological weapon against the residents of Iraq. Just like the intended targets of 9/11 weren’t the 3,000, dead, just like the targets of US lynching were not the people hung or set on fire, the target of the “shock and awe” violence is the survivors and witnesses. When you see men, women, and children with guts sprayed all over the walls of your home, it sends a message of “you don’t want any of this”.

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        I guess what I am saying is, given the evidence, why would anyone believe that this is the war we finally stop employing tactics of willfully murdering civilians?

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        And what right does anyone have to ask this of our troops? They signed up to kill bad guys and now the face orders from superiors (and emanating either explicitly or implicitly from the top of the chain of command as seen by the WaPo article on baiting) to execute people.

      • I am not sure I agree with the thrust of this thread, but I want to react more specifically to the Dresden/Hiroshima comparison.

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        I have two conflicting reactions. First, part of me says that you are letting the U.S. off the hook too easily for firebombing Dresden and destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, the destruction of all three cities had a military purpose in WWII, but that is not, to me, sufficient justification for such destruction.

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        Second, part of me says that the laws of war simply have not caught up with the technology of war. This seems to be true in two areas: first, as KBusch notes, the use of air power, which so often causes civilian casualties; and second, the permissibility of particular tactics in an asymmetric war. What can the outgunned “insurgents” permissibly do to win the war? Explode IEDs, take hostages, or what? On the other hand, what can the supposedly superior regular military permissibly do to defeat the insurgents? I’m sure there’s been a ton written about this–what do people think?

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        I myself don’t know what conclusion to draw except that war is terrible.

        • (The firebombing of Tokyo was likewise horrendous: “The fires were so hot they would ignite the clothing on individuals as they were fleeing.” The death toll was at least 80,000 people.)

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          I’m not sure how to justify these military actions. There was some sort of moral calculation that forcing an end to WWII resulted in fewer casualties in the long-run. I don’t know for sure whether that is true or not. The point is, there’s an argument for it that is at least plausible and that some morally sensitive people accept.

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          Not so this violence in Iraq against civilians.

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          No one has argued that terrifying civilians will keep them from supporting the Mahdi army, ex-Baathists, the Badr Corp, various tribal groups, the JTJ, or the PKK. Killing some civilians and terrifying others is just a side-effect or it’s just gratuitous or it’s what some marines, soldiers, or contractors somewhere think they have to do.

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          No one has even offered a rationalization. Not even a lame one.

        • You ask excellent questions about asymmetrical warfare. I suspect that you’re right that it is brutal by nature. The only way, perhaps (perhaps!), to keep the brutality down is if the counter-insurgents have a hugely overwhelming numerical superiority.

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          Like TedF, I wonder what others think about this.

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