| I have no doubt that our soldiers have, point blank, killed Iraqi civilians without cause and without consequences. If you are a young man 20 years old, not even old enough to drink a beer, who is afraid for his life, in a foreign and hostile land where he does not understand the culture or speak the language, does not trust anybody and fears for his life, and if you give him an array of firepower at his disposal, he can and will sometimes operate in a mode of "shoot first and ask questions later, or better yet forget the questions". Because military recruitment also includes many who enlist because they like the violence of it all, you will also have people who are simply ready and willing to kill, whatever the situation. These mistakes, as well as intentional acts of unprovoked violence, are murder, and they are more likely than not to go unpunished within the military. We don;t even bother to count dead Iraqi civilians much less care about how their rights were violated. |
