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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (85279)	3/23/2003 6:48:55 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>> I hope they can keep their cool.<< I doubt that they are watching Al Jazeera, or can log onto Drudge, so they are probably not getting the full effect, but I expect that this will piss them off, and make it personal.

To: carranza2 who wrote (85279)	3/24/2003 2:34:49 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi carranza2; Re: "One of Saddam's core beliefs--it may be shared by a lot of Arabs residing in the ME hotspots--is that the US cannot face the loss of its own soldiers, and that we will turn tail and run at the first sight of our blood. Hence, the glaring and lurid publicity given to these deaths." Let's continue with your analysis, shall we? What's your comment when the US gives out video showing the killing of enemy combatants with smart weapons? Is it that the US has a core belief that the Afghans (or whoever) cannot face the loss of its own soldiers, and that it will turn tail and run at the first sight of their own blood? I hate to see you get all worked up over seeing pictures of dead American soldiers. What did you think the Iraqis were going to do with them, give them lethal injections???? The hell do you guys think war is about? *Any military man on the planet will tell you that at least 50% of soldiers attempting to surrender during small unit actions are killed.* This statistic applies to all armies in all conflicts. It applies to soldiers who surrender to American forces, if they attempt surrender at a time when lead is flying. The general rule in combat is to shoot everything owned by the enemy that either (a) moves or even quivers, (b) appears to have not yet been shot enough times or (c) as needed to adjust your aim. After the battle, (and US truckers are armed with M-16s, I believe, so there was probably a battle), the winners are so hyped up on adrenalin and fear that they frequently shoot the surviving losers despite the omnipresent military orders to not execute prisoners. (Note that Saddam's price for prisoners is twice that of his price for dead allied soldiers.) And that's only the half of it. Our forces have enveloped the Iraqis. Those Iraqis were in US held territory, in little hamlets that were bypassed. They were no longer fully regular soldiers (under the chain of command), but were transforming into guerillas. It is a fact of history that guerilla forces only rarely take prisoners. The reason is obvious, no logistical support for getting them safely back behind their own lines to a PoW camp. The same damn thing happened over and over in Vietnam, and you know what? 25 years after the war US veterans go back and reminisce with the f'ing ex Vietcong who were responsible for those same attrocities. So get over it. It's war. Get used to it. This is a bottomless pit, so eventually you'll get inured to it and it won't bother you anymore. The news won't even show the pictures, just that another couple dozen of our guys got wasted in the moron's war. -- Carl P.S. "The next morning, very early in the morning of February 26th, my unit was just over on the far side of the highway, approaching the river. There was a large logistics base or something for the Iraqis. I didn't really have a good feel for it; it was night, we were in our tanks and all I had was a picture of maybe 100 meters to our front. We were there waiting for fuel trucks and ammunition to catch up with us so that we could refuel and move on. I woke up--we took turns sleeping because we had been up two or three days at that point--I woke up hearing cries on the radio that there were trucks coming to our position. My platoon sergeant and I climbed up on top of our tank and we saw these two trucks. One of the tanks fired and hit one of the trucks and it was a fuel truck. It splashed burning diesel fuel all over the other truck. The other truck was a troop truck. Men ran out on fire; I don't know how many of them. We did what we were trained to do. We shot them all and killed them. "The human thing to do when you see someone on fire isn't to shoot them. It's to help them out, to take a blanket and put out the fire. For me that was a real watershed moment because it changed the nature of the way you look at war in a very, very personal way. It took me years to be able to discuss that or to talk about what happened--or to really learn to live with myself. hawaii.indymedia.org