"The Mai Lai Massacre (Colin Powell helped cover up) was only one of many."

'Vietnam was a My Lai every week, every other day,' as a vet in my college told me back in the early '80s.

'President Truman ended racial discremination in the military and America was stepping onto the road towards being a true Democracy.'

He also introduced loyalty oaths and started the Cold War. Ending discrimination in the military was (a) a way of providing the military with more easily expendable troops and (b) showing that we were better the the Russkies.

I remember the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. The Rush Limbaughs of the world were if full-blown "it must be the Arabs" mode. They were definitely trying to drum up support for a war within hours of that bombing. They only stopped when it was a white, ex-military, rightwinger that got arrested for the crime.

read your reply "cee". I'm running out the door right now. thanks

When the "rules" permit a president to get away with lying in order to justify an invasion and occupation, when the same rules permit him to drop hundreds of thousands of bombs on a densely populated city of 5.7 million (Bhagdad), and then they allow him to kill through his military over 500,000 people (including tens of thousands of little children) and to cripple at least that many more, then the rules become meaningless - and a travesty of justice.

Our so called civilization, and the 1% who own and control ~90% of it, is rotten to the core.

It's time for revolution -that will lead to government by and for the people. It's time for truth, justice and peace.

It's time for Dennis Kucinich!

Yea, but they told the Loonitary Decider all is good and morale is super-duper! And then they cheered!!!

The most highly trained killing force in history had him right at their fingertips... and they fu**king cheered, instead of breaking just one more little rule...

"Brevity is the soul of wit". Shakespeare

Just a suggestion.

I am shocked that people who volunteer to be trained to kill are going around killing!
What is this world coming to?
Next they'll tell me that hunting isnt about killing wildlife for pleasure but really about appreciating and respecting the preciousness of life.

Remember Vietnam? All the same.

So, are we winning yet or what?

I believe that the soldiers believed that they were within their rights to commit atrocities. Remember, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzalez told them so. Yes, all three are liars, but the soldiers probably were telling the truth, even if it was "just this once".

Sad natural consequence of this kind of war. These soldiers aren't saints, but they aren't demons either. They're human and like the rest of us, the environment they're in shapes them. Giving them a job of putting down the population and they will see the population as the enemy. Anyone ever advocating going to war has to consider atrocities as one of the many expected costs - a "known known" as Rumsfeld would say.

An article in Rolling Stone in Apr. 2006 by Jeff Tietz was called "The Killing Factory". It was about basic training in the army. While I won't post a link to bootlegged copies of the article (Rolling Stone did not put up the article on their site) there is enough information above for you to find it.

The thesis of the article is that basic training is designed to break the human aversion to killing other humans. It goes into detail on how this is accomplished.

One statistic that stood out was the percentage of soldiers willing to shoot to kill from the Civil War to Iraq, in the Civil War it was a little more than half, today it's above 95%

As usual the focus is on the Grunts at the coal face....The Higher Ups [Rumsfeld etal] slip away, retire to meretricious respectability and go unpunished....

The fish always rots from the head....

Environment is stronger then the will.

The will to do the humane thing, is overridden by the "mob" mentality of the other troops, and the passion of the moment.

Kids they are, with guns and force and the go ahead to kill the "ragheads".

This is who our military is - this is what bushcon and the christian "right" have foisted upon the middle east.

This will be our karma - and this nation will reap what it has sown.

I posted this article some time ago. Since I feel that it is relevant to the present topic, I am posting it again.

"War Psychiatry And Iraq Atrocities: How Killing Becomes A Reflex"
By Penny Coleman
22 August, 2007
Alternet

"In 1971, Lt. William Calley was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the massacre of some 500 civilians in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. In response to Calley's conviction, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) convened the "Winter Soldier Investigation." Over a three-day period, more than a hundred veterans testified to atrocities they had witnessed committed by U.S. troops against Vietnamese civilians. Their expressed intention was to demonstrate that My Lai was not unique, that it was instead the inevitable result of U.S. policy. It was a travesty of justice, they claimed, to focus blame on the soldiers when it was the policy makers, McNamara, Bundy, Rostow, Johnson, LeMay, Nixon and the others who were truly responsible for the war crimes that had been committed.
In 2004, the release of the Abu Grahib photographs broke the unforgivable silence in the mainstream press about atrocities committed by American soldiers in Iraq. Haditha followed, then Mahmoudiyah, Ishaqi, and at this writing, countless other instances of savage, homicidal violence directed at civilians have been reported. The July 30 issue of the Nation included an article, "The Other War," by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian, which used interviews with 50 combat veterans to make the case that American soldiers are using indiscriminate and often lethal force in their dealings with Iraqi civilians. These veterans, the authors report, have "returned home deeply disturbed by the disparity between the reality of the war and the way it is portrayed by the U.S. government and American media." I would wager that they are more deeply disturbed by the reality itself than the way the media reports it, but certainly government and media distortions are another layer of betrayal. In a letter protesting that article, Paul Rieckhoff, president of the anti-war organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, made an argument parallel to that of VVAW, namely that "(a)nyone who wants to write a serious piece about the ethical lapses of the U.S. troops should start and end the article by putting blame where it belongs -- on the politicians who sent our troops to war unprepared and without a clear mission" (the Nation, 7/13/07).
I'm not suggesting that American soldiers take no responsibility for their actions. Like Rieckhoff, I would argue that we must balance outrage at criminal and sadistic acts with the insistence that we "guard against blaming this new generation of veterans for the terrible and tragic circumstances" that led to those acts. And I agree that, once again, the architects have been given a free pass and that the soldiers, who are doing exactly what they have been trained to do, are taking the blame. But I want to focus on an aspect of the situation that is never addressed in the mainstream media, and not often enough elsewhere: specifically that American troops are trained to act in criminal and sadistic ways.
Military training has been part of the experience of millions of young American men since the Revolutionary War. Prior to the Vietnam era, however, that training consisted largely of practicing military skills and learning to manage military equipment. It is only in the last half century that training has evolved into an entirely new phenomenon that makes use of the principles of operant conditioning to overcome what studies done over the last century have consistently demonstrated, namely, that healthy human beings have an inherent aversion to killing others of their own species.
Operant conditioning holds that organisms, including human beings, move through their environment rather haphazardly until they encounter a reinforcing stimulus. The experience of that stimulus becomes associated in memory with the behavior that immediately preceded it. In other words, a behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence, reward or punishment, modifies the organism's tendency to repeat the behavior. Today's recruits are intentionally and methodically subjected to a training regimen that is explicitly designed to turn them into reflexive killers. And it is very effective. It is also carefully concealed. The military would prefer to keep their methods out of sight because of the moral and ethical discussions, not to mention the legal restraints, which public scrutiny and constitutional debate might impose. Or so I would like to believe.
War Psychiatry, the army's textbook on combat trauma, notes that "pseudospeciation, the ability of humans and some other primates to classify certain members of their own species as 'other,' can neutralize the threshold of inhibition so they can kill conspecifics." Modern military training has developed carefully sequenced and choreographed elements of what many would call brainwashing to disconnect recruits from their civilian identities. The values, standards and behaviors they have absorbed over a lifetime from their families, schools, religions and communities are scorned and punished. Using cruelty, humiliation, degradation and cognitive disorientation, recruits are reprogrammed with an entirely new set of learned responses. Every aspect of combat behavior is rehearsed until response becomes reflexive. Operant conditioning has vastly improved the efficacy of American soldiers, at least by military standards. It has proven to be a reliable way to turn off the switch that controls a soldier's inherent aversion to killing. American soldiers do kill more often and more efficiently. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Killing, calls this form of training "psychological warfare, [but] psychological warfare conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one's own troops."
The psychological warfare that is being conducted on today's recruits is a truly disturbing indication of the worldview of our leadership, both military and political. The group identity they are drilling into these kids, the "insider" identity, is based on explicit contempt not only for the declared enemy of the week, but for the entire civilian population, with a special emphasis on women and homosexuals. In an army that is now 15 percent female and who knows (don't ask, don't tell) what percentage gay, drill instructors still rely on labels like "girl" or "pussy," "lady" or "fairy" to humiliate, degrade and ultimately exact conformity. Recruits are drilled with marching chants that privilege their relationships with their weapons over their relationships with women ("you used to be my beauty queen, now I love my M-16"), or that overtly conflate sex and violence ("this is my rifle, this is my gun; this is for fighting, this is for fun."). Aside from teaching these kids to quash their innate feelings about killing in general, they are being programmed with a distorted version of not only what it means to be a man, but of what it means to be a citizen. To ascend to the warrior class, one must learn to despise and distrust all that is not military. Chaim Shatan, a psychiatrist who worked with Vietnam-era veterans, described this transformative process as deliberate, as opposed to capricious, sadism, "whose purpose is to inculcate obedience to command."
There are any number of ways that modern training methods both support violence, aggression and obedience and help to disconnect a reflex action from its moral, ethical, spiritual or social implications, but one of the best illustrations of this process is the marching chants, or "jodies," as they are known in the services. "Jody" is the derivative of an African-American work song about Joe de Grinder, a devilish ladies' man who is at home making time with the soldier's girlfriend while the soldier is stuck in the war ("ain't no use in going home; Jody's on your telephone"). According to the military, jodies build morale while distracting attention from monotonous, often strenuous, exertion. The following, originally a product of the Vietnam era, has been resurrected for training purposes in every war since and is an example of the kind of morale building that has been judged appropriate to the formation of an American soldier:
Shell the town and kill the people.
Drop the napalm in the square.
Do it on a Sunday morning
While they're on their way to prayer.
Aim your missiles at the schoolhouse.
See the teacher ring the bell.
See the children's smiling faces
As their schoolhouse burns to hell
Throw some candy to the children.
Wait till they all gather round.
Then you take your M-16 now
And mow the little fuckers down.

Thankfully, the brainwashing has not yet been developed that will override the humanity of most American soldiers. According to the troops interviewed in the Nation, the kind of psychotic brutality described in the marching cadence above is indulged by only a minority. Still, they described atrocities committed against civilians as "common" -- and almost never punished. As multiple deployments become the norm, however, and as more scrambled psyches are sent back into combat instead of into treatment, it is frightening to consider that the brainwashing may yet prevail. Given the training to which these soldiers have been subjected and the chaotic conditions in which they find themselves, it is inevitable that more will succumb to fear and rage and frustration. They will inevitably be overwhelmed by cumulative doses of horror, and they will lose control of their judgment and their compassion. Thirty-six years ago, American veterans tried to cut through the smoke and mirrors of the official response to civilian atrocities, the version that scapegoated soldiers and ignored those who gave the orders. As then Lt. John Kerry put it, "We could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel (that it is) not reds, and not redcoats (that threaten this country), but the crimes which we are committing." The soldiers who, following orders, have run over children in the road rather than slow down their convoy will never be the same again, regardless of whether government and the media tell the truth. Nor will the soldiers manning checkpoints who shoot, as ordered, and kill entire families who failed to stop, only to learn later that no one had bothered to share with them that the American signal to stop -- a hand held up, palm towards the oncoming vehicle -- to an Iraqi means, "Hello, come here." I have heard a number of the men cited in the Nation article speak about their combat experiences, and they are tormented by what they saw and did. They want to tell their stories, not because they are looking for absolution, but because they want to believe that Americans want to know. But neither are they willing to take the blame.
They have already carried home the psychic wounds and the dangerous reflexive habits of violence that will always diminish their lives and their relationships. In return, they are hoping we will listen to them this time when they ask us to look a little harder, dig a little deeper, use a little more discernment. Or have we already arrived at a point in our collective moral development when, as Shatan predicted, "Like Eichmann, we … consider evil to be banal and routine?"

Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006.

You go to war with the secretary of defense you have, not the secretary of defense you'd like to have.

If members of the Occupier's military did this on a regular basis to my people, I certainly would know who the Enemy was and what they thought of my people. US citizens presume along in their Innocence and Exceptionalism. They don't really know who is murdering/killing in their name. You can be sure news of incidents like these spreads quickly in Iraqi communities. The son will remember, the grandson and the granddaughter will remember. Their hearts and minds will remember. How many memories are there already? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Do not be surprised what Enemy Formation will bring. Theirs and ours. And now, let's all look away from Iran and what our Leaders have in mind for us there.

All the above excellent comments. Any chance anybody in congress or any generals agree? I've given up on the Bush cabinet.

Dennis for president!

Many of these troops were trained in violence before they were out of fifth grade. Violence is supreme in our video games, comic books, movies, television shows, ultra boxing etc. Even in our sporting contests, from little league to the professional ranks, violence is a daily occurance, who in the years of the 1950s and before, would have ever thought pro baseball or basketball players would be involved in mass brawling? How sad it is, to witness little leagers giving a fist filled uppercut when they hit a home run or win a foot race. ___ Violence begets violence.

When killing another human becomes routine, ___ it will destroy the mind and the soul. It should be unimaginable, that school children would mass murder their classmates and teachers, many times we have seen that disaster occur over the past few years, and or hear it was luckily avioded at the last minute.

We Americans have always cerished our freedoms, our right of free speech and of what is appropriate, and or legal to project in our visual and reading materials. __ Did we perhaps go too far? And those like Doctor Spock,___ never spank a child.

What we are now a witness to with many of our troops in Iraq, is an eye-opener reflection of our society. History repeats,___ remember the Roman Empire.

US soldiers are continued to be portrayed as "saints", and "liberators" not only by the US and western media but also the general public, even after their barbaric and demonic crimes came to light. These are the ones who went to Iraq to "liberate" Iraq and bring "democracy" to the Iraqis. Why the public in the US and the west not able to accept the REALITY is because of their delution about their superior values. This reminds me of the words of Jules Harmand, the French advocate of colonialism: "It is necessary, then, to accept in principle and point of departure the fact that there is hierarchy of races and civilizations, and that we belong to the superior race and civilization, still recognising that, while superiority confers rights, it imposes strict obligations in return. The basic legitimation of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of our superiority, not merely our mechanical, economic, and military superiority, but our MORAL SUPERIORITY. Our dignity rests on that quality, and it underlies our right to direct the rest of humanity. Material power is nothing but a means to that end." It is this mindset in the US and the west that is falsifying and distorting the evidence of crimes and genocidal activities of the US soldiers, and the ravaged lives of Iraqi innocent victims. Without an iota of shame or remorse, still majority of the American public and the media think that the US is a SOLUTION to the IRAQI PROBLEM. Why? Because from childhood they are BRAINWASHED about their superior values!!!!!!!! So they continue to live in that delution, believing American myths about themselves, their soldiers, their political leaders, and their country in general.

Let me present you this story that appeared in www.rawstory.com

"A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court heard Thursday.
The testimony came in the opening of a preliminary hearing for Marine Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who faces 17 counts of murder over the Haditha killings, the most serious war crimes allegations faced by US troops in Iraq .
Wuterich, dressed in desert khakis, spoke confidently to confirm his name as the hearing to decide if he faces a court martial began at the Marines' Camp Pendleton base in southern California.
The 27-year-old listened intently as Lance Corporal Humberto Mendoza recounted how Marines had responded after a roadside bomb attack on their convoy in Haditha on November 19, 2005 left one comrade dead.
Mendoza said Marines under Wuterich's command began clearing nearby houses suspected of containing insurgents responsible for the bombing.
At one house Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Mendoza.
"He said 'Just wait till they open the door, then shoot,'" Mendoza said.
Mendoza then said he shot and killed an adult male who appeared in a doorway.
During a subsequent search of the house, Mendoza said he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.
"When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed ... two more were behind the bed," Mendoza said.
"I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat ... they looked scared."
After leaving the room Mendoza told Tatum what he had found.
"I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said 'Well, shoot them,'" Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan.
"And what did you say to him?" Sullivan asked.
"I said 'But they're just women and children.' He didn't say nothing."
Mendoza said he returned to a position at the front of the house and heard a door open behind him followed by a loud noise. Returning later that afternoon to conduct body retrieval, Mendoza said he found a room full of corpses.
In cross-examination, however, Major Haytham Faraj suggested a girl who survived the shootings had identified Mendoza as the gunman, sparking an angry reaction from prosecutors.
"The girl in question already identified another Marine," Sullivan stormed. "This is completely unethical, inappropriate and has no basis in fact."
Mendoza had given similar testimony during a preliminary hearing against Tatum earlier this year.
Investigating officer Lieutenant Colonel Paul Ware, who is presiding in Wuterich's hearing, last week recommended dropping murder charges against Tatum, describing Mendoza's evidence as "too weak".
Prosecutors allege Marines went on a killing spree in Haditha retaliation for the death of their colleague in the bomb attack.
Defense lawyers will argue that Wuterich followed established combat zone rules of engagement.
A total of eight Marines were initially charged in connection with the Haditha deaths.
Four were charged with murder while four senior officers were accused of failing to properly investigate the killings.
Of the four Marines charged with murder, two have since had charges withdrawn, while allegations against Tatum are also expected to be dismissed."

I do not believe the article was refering to the type of firefight you describe Walter. Intentional murder and or torture, and a close at hand combat firefight are two seperate issues.

let god sort it out, you can't trust the military hierachy. they are as crooked as bush, cheney and their thugs and are skimming and stealing lots of loot from this so-called war. so the pentagon and bush administration doesn't care in the least unless the money stops flowing. To the pentagon and bush, the soldiers are merely expendable assets, just as the innocent civilians. In war, our military can get away with murder. but remember,that's what they're trained for: to kill.

From M*A*S*H:

Hawkeye: War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.

Mulcahy: Why do you say that, Hawkeye?

Hawkeye: Simple, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?

Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.

Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is full of them.

The orders come from the top in the military everyone knows that. If you want to believe the wars crimes Hussein committed do you think he was the one that actually killed/gassed the people? No just like in Germany the leaders are the ones responsible, however, in the case of the German Nazis as opposed to the Bush Nazis; Hitler was a decorated war hero, not a gutless reservist dodger, but then that is the typical MO for the staunch bush lovers, they were too gutless to go to war themselves however now that trillions can be made from this war they are for some reason changed their minds about war.

A "Let the Bodies Hit The Floor" mentaility is what is instilled in them. Add to that there is the unbelievable psychological strain that most people are not capable of handling.And there you have it, a cold and emotionless killing machine that has no remorse for their actions.

They are also convinced that they are 'killing for jesus'

I was wondering if there were any commenters out there that had some first hand knowledge of similar war "mob mentality"? Do soldiers really lose a sense of right and wrong in that environment. Does military training really brainwash you into not caring about killing people? And what goes on in a newly recruited person's head? Don't they know what to expect?

We were the country who invented the type of war using civilians as cover. Remember our minutemen heroes firing heroically from behind trees, fences etc. killing the Redcoats as they retreated into their 'green zone' (Boston). Then they melted away to their civilian homes and took shelter among the anonymity of a civilian populace who supported their efforts to toss the occupiers.

The Brish Army and their mercenaries committed torture and 'search and seizures' reminiscent of our Iraq tactics. Of course the heroes and their allies were known to scalp the Brits.

Nothing about warfare changes - only the point of view.

""Wars are messy by their very nature. These are dangerous circumstances, and the fog of war is out there," said Pheneger, who served in Vietnam. "But it's perfectly obvious that there is no rule of engagement that would authorize someone to kill someone in custody."

I remember seeing precisely that in a cheesey SF tv show that aired a couple of years ago. The macho "hero", a Major, shot the captured enemy through the bars of his cell. In the next episode, nothing was said about it. Nothing at all. He was promoted to Lt Col.

This is how the heroes of stories, whom
adolescents regard as role models, behave.

Add to that something else - much angst here about the gun cult in teenage gangs in the UK. And as I heard a news story about it, I drove past the poster for a movie, The Shooter, which featured a big, black hand gun.

The whole of our society is rotten with these violent, vindictive, vengeful fetishes.

Gandhi
I agree with everything you said. However, the reason the bush administration declared the war on the innocent Iraqi people was not to bring them freedom; we have no freedom in America. It was money and greed. The money that can be made by the defense contractors (the bush cronies) and the money that can be made by the oil companies (more bush cronies). There are mysterious complex situations we must deal with, however; this is a very simply one, with simply reasons, and simple motives.

JJPETER: I agree about the karmic rebound.
KEM: Good points regarding how violence permeates our culture beginning to inculcate tender minds in such insidious ways.
GANDHI: A lot to think about. I appreciate your informed postings.

There is a problem here. These cases are barely the tip of the iceberg as far as the number or civilians killed by occupation forces. Though difficult, we must not only try and concieve what that means but admit it must be true from all the evidence.

Right now in Afghanistan and Iraq the majority of casualties are those hit from the air (largely unreported). There has been a 600% increase in air attacks through the surge with the busiest airport in th4 world just North of the iraqi capital. Neither country has any air force. The Taliban are killed in Afghanistan by NATO and under the UN mandate the coalition of the willing are killing insurgents in Iraq so we don't have to fight them on our shores.

'Don't you see? Can't you people see? These people hate our values and our freedoms. They are evil and must be defeated. 'Bring em on' cause we are ready for them. "You're either with us or against us". We support the democratically elected governments and support the people's choice. We have no wish to remain or to steal their resources. We are a peace loving peoples of the international community who support the security forces of the respective governments in their fight against international terrorists. In short we love the people being free at last and we will stay the course. Believe you me this war against terrorism will go on forever if necessary, but we will not shirk our responsibilities. Just remember what happened when we left Vietnam before the job was done and words like "re-education camps" "boat people" and "the killing fields" were introduced to our vocabulary. Well not on my watch as Commander in Chief, War President and The Decider. No not on my watch by golly!.' GBA

I got an email from ROBERT JENSEN who has just published an important book that explores pornography in its relationship to male violence. Sounds fascinating. (I'll retrieve and post the title later...)

What apsolute madness,we send our yung men to camps to learn how best to kill people. Then we try them for not doing it the right way,as if bombs pick and choose who lives and who dies.Iraq had a better country with Saddam as thier leader than with the BUSH CRIME FAMILY leading the way killing thousands in oder to save them.

Just remember the bush administration is run by simple but extremely evil and vile people that support war, killing, and torture at home and abroad. These are the vilest, foulest rulers to ever have usurped power.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. - Aristotle

It is quite clear that most journalists and commentators do not understand that rules of engagement (ROE) are not the law but guidance on how to put the law in practice. That ignorance is evident whenever journalists start babbling about rules of engagement - as thye generally do whenh speaking to military people about recent purported atrocities. And I have even seen people who should know better showing the same complete ignorance when they described the Geneva Conventions as rules of engagement.

ROE, in their true and non-perverted state, limit what a soldier may do even though the law may allow him/her to do more. The law limits what a soldier may do by prescribing what he/she may lawfully do. The ROE then impose further limits within what may lawfully be done. ROE cannot, in a society which stands for the rule of law, authorize people to perform illegal acts. The Nazi Commissar Order and Commando Order equate to ROE which purported to authorized soldiers to act illegally - but they were promulgated by a regime that did not stand for the rule of law.

And for lawyers to say the "rules of engagement are clear .... in favor of soldiers" demonstrates what appears to be a complete lack of comprehension of what ROE are meant to be or do. And if the lawyers do not understand the nuances of what they are dealing with there is little hope for a trial which deals with the real issues. Their uninformed statements also create sufficient confusion of the real issues to allow those up the command chain to remain unaccountable.

Further, if perception of hostility (alone) merits deadly action (against civilians and those out of combat) under the ROE (as the lawyer(s) is/are reported as saying) then the ROE are illegal. Alternatively, if that is what the soldiers perceive them to mean that, then the soldiers' training is abysmal and the trainers/commanders are culpable for that lack of training.

It is just as well the US did not sign up to the 1977 Protocols - had it done so the US military would have had an additional treaty based obligation to train its soldiers in the law that applied to their trade. As it is, as part of the bargain made when soldiers take the oath, commanders have an obligation to arm their soldiers with all those things that will reduce the soldiers' exposure to harm. One of the harms to which a soldier is subject is the risk of prosecution if he breaks the law in the performance of his duty. Commanders are therefore obliged to provide soldiers with legal skills to ensure that they act legally and are therefore not exposed to risk of criminal prosecution (putting aside completely the fact that soldiers who are poorly trained in this area are likely to go out and kill/maim/rape/rob people who are supposed to be protected - people who should not be touched as they are not part of the fight - that the decency and rule of law we say we are defending mandates that we should not harm - and the soldiers are doing it in our name)

By way of explanation, when soldiers take their oath it is a bargain. They will give that obedience to orders that is necessary if armed forces are to be effective in combat in return for which their commanders (in the US case all the way up to the President) will not betray them by sending them into illegal war or exposing them to any greater risk that is necessary in the national interest. Illegal orders are another matter - a personal matter. Going off to fight in an illegal war is not something for which soldiers are culpable - that is something for commanders. In order to have a viable military you cannot have soldiers questioning legality or desirability of any particular conflict in which they are to be involved and that is why there is that bargain attached to the oath.

If the US is not going to train its soldiers properly in relation to the issues outlined in the article then perhaps, as Pheneger implies, publicity is the answer. Publicity of heavy penalties may (as Voltaire said about the 1757 shooting execution of Admiral Byng on the Monarque in Portsmouth harbour following his court martial for, essentially, losing a battle)be of value "pour encourager les autres".

... and how many times did I hear from various pulpits throughout my former lives before I woke up about MAN [sic] being God's crowning creation? ... and all the nonsense because we are conscious beings we are superior to the "animals"? ... and MAN [sic] gets to steward,oversee, RULE everything and anything that moves or grows? ... and as the interpretations go to harness and tame NATURE?!
[Fat chance on that last. Katrinas to the 7th powers and tsunamis may be comin' globally one of these days because of our stupidity.]

At this point, I'll take my dog, the 'possums, the hawks, the elephants, the wolves, the ants, bees and butterflies and skunks over the "noble huMAN," with the exception of particular early and currently extant indigenous peoples who understood and still understand that everything is interdependent; everything that is created is part of the whole, the Oneness of things, and humans are just part of the process, but because humans do have a particular kind of consciousness, they can consciously honor all of CREATION and THAT which has been CREATED.

GWB has often talked about US of the West as "civilized," and those others? ...well, we have to teach them democracy and about freedom and how to be civilized. Every time he talked about our being civilized, I pictured him as a kid enjoying the bloody explosions after he stuffed firecrackers in the mouths of frogs. NOW he has his new-style HYDROGEN BUNKER-BUSTING NUKES which he chortled over not too long ago. I'm sure he gets off on the thought of those bombs entering MOTHER EARTH and the explosions that will take out not just nu-klar hardware and laboratories in Iran, but the Islamic religious leaders, that nasty Iranian president, the whole Iran militia and the workers and their families and children. SHOCK AND AWE ... THE BLITZKREIG ... THE LIGHTNING STRIKE ... DE JA VU ... ALL OVER AGAIN! and Israel then gets to finish off the Palestinians, and Syria and Lebanon ... just enough to bring the last two heel ... [and you Saudis might want to watch your butts too] and then the Middle East will be LIBERATED ... and control of ALL THE OIL IS OURS! REALLY BIG celebration at the Bohemian Grove next summer in California and just before that the august attendees of the BILDERBERG GROUP will likely toast each other with the finest champagne.

Someone said it above. The most vile collection of psychopaths are in charge. Absent any decency, normal human feelings, without compassion or empathy, shallow and ignorant of history and culture through the ages, they crave power and wealth and dominating and that, obviously, is what turns them on. Maybe there should be random "stings" in the White House and Congressional bathrooms just after arguments and votes to continue THE SURGE!

Of course, these alien beings [and it is Darth Vader time, folks] want the armed services to produce killing machines. They could care less about these soldiers and their victims. The soldiers are but to use; the victims are in the way. That's all. Of course, none of them of the White House Gang have been to war. As Cheney said, when asked why he was deferred so many times and did not serve in Vietnam, ... "Well, I had better things to do."

What goes around comes around, and it does seem we are coming down to the wire. Many marvelous human beings out there; some right on this message board ...

For those of us who see clearly, and sometimes around corners, we just have to keep on keepin' on with whatever we are doing to stop the madness and turn the page to a new and really different chapter for all humankind and all the living things and the Mother herself.

We need a major revolution.... the world can't wait much longer.

What ever happened to the wining of hearts and minds.

LOL, you know I hate the re-hashed lunacy raves of the "new agers", and I try to disenfranchise them from maybe the saner of us. But Cee Miracles, WOW, you really went off the deep end tonight. You got to do some MAN bashing, you made a weird reference to Noah's ark; possums, the hawks, the elephants, the wolves, the ants, bees and butterflies and skunks, you brought up some psychopathic animal murdering about frogs. You didn't forget about MOTHER EARTH, which hehe, more resembles Father Earth i.e. scientific earth. But how did your man hating pseudo rational mind also include a "star wars" reference? KUDOS! My mission is half way complete.

It's o'possum in my dictionary, but understand possum maybe used by the undereducated oafs and highly educated "new agers".

A soldier's oath is to obey all lawful orders. That means that a soldier has to know the law---i.e., take responsibility for him/herself even though in a uniform. That's what makes a democracy's army different from the others...the only thing. And Vietnam tried to say: This can only happen if you take part, if you personally consent to do it. So once again, out of lack of teaching, out of deliberate forgetting, young men who want to serve end up doing the dirty work of empire

Morals and humanity are not usually lost all at once. Slowly, the military, society, leaders act in such ways to chip away at the morals. Later upon reflection many of these people who have acted outside their own moral standards suffer.

My father was in WW2. Years after the war he didn't talk about the glory but about how they went into the homes abandoned by the people trying to run from the war. He was appalled that they burned the furniture for fuel and ripped off the doors to use as covers for the fox holes. He always felt bad that they destroyed things that the retreating German army had not destroyed. He was trained and reinforced in his belief that American soldiers held themselves to a higher standard.

From what I see of this professional army and mercenaries they have set their standards very low and are pushing lower all the time under the leadership now in command.

saywhat said: "Remember Vietnam? All the same.

How very true. The Mai Lai Massacre (Colin Powell helped cover up) was only one of many. VC captives were questioned in helicopters and then thrown out. A village suspected of helping the VC (they had little choice) could be bombed or napalmed and troops would then come in an kill anything that was still moving. Similar things happened in Laos and Cambodia via the Nixon/Kissinger secret bombing campaigns. They were never charged with war crimes. ETC.

One important consideration is what part RACISM plays in these situations.

Despite their crimes, we did not torture German WWII captives of deliberately kill German civilians or kill thier children by denying them the essentials of life such as clean drinking water. Perhaps we saw them as being like us as white Europeans ?

The racist American history of violence started with crimes against Native Americans and centuries of crimes against blacks which finally slowed down in the 1960's. ETC.

Change is possible. The Germans refused to join us in Iraq and the old Imperial British are pulling out. The French learned their less in Algeria and Vietnam. Time will tell.

George W. Bush and Co. are turning everyone mad.

The POINT

Is that none of this would be necessary if the criminals in charge of this country hadn't gone into Iraq in the first place. Every atrocity, every murder, every act of torture, every car bomb, every starved child all started with the same set of lies and propaganda that brought Hell itself down upon the people of Iraq.

Pointing out how soldiers act under stressful conditions is nothing new. But if the soldiers are to be punished then surely some punishment should go to the people that put them there to begin with. Hitler never shoved anybody into the gas chamber himself you know....

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

damon13 writes"I was wondering if there were any commenters out there that had some first hand knowledge of similar war 'mob mentality'?

Personally no, but I recommend J. Glenn Gray's "The Warriors, Reflections on Men in Battle". Gray was drafted in 1941, the same day he was granted a PhD in Philosophy from Columbia. His book is a personal, and philosophical treatise on his experiences in WW11. As Hannah Arendt writes in the forward it's about..."'inhuman cruelty' and 'superhuman kindness', not as stereotype opposites but as simultaneously present in the same person, (for "war comprises the greatest opposites into the smallest space and the shortest time")...

I have had numerous conversations with people who have fought in WW2, the Korean War, and the Vietnam war, and nearly every one has a horror story of some kind, from watching their buddies hack the heads off dead enemy soldiers and removing their gold teeth, to exhausted fighter pilots strafing civilians just "for the hell of it", to using white phosphorus indiscriminately to burn up anyone and everyone in their way. The horror stories in war are endless.

It still remains to be heard, what stories these people will bring from Iraq. They will not be pretty. The troops will be scared for life. They will be haunted by the nightmares they are now participating in.

I believe in personal responsibility and I don't excuse their behavior but I hold their so called "superiors" (from the commanding officers in the field on up to Mr Bush) primarily responsible. This madness is truly reprehensible, and Mr Bush and his accomplices will have blood on their hands for a very long time.

Look in the mirror Mr Bush. The devil is your enemy and he is you!

The ideo-tainment industry already provided all the indoctrination needed for these young men & women. It didn't begin with "24" -- for years they've seen how "tough" interrogation is the way to go in order to 'save lives'. Every single show, every single film tells them that legal procedures are a fussy waste of time, that the bad guys always ues technicalities to walk, and that the only justice comes when someone grabs a gun from an officer, or a cop decides to disregard the idea of innocent-till-proven-guilty -- they KNOW who did it -- and the same is true whether it's a law show or a film about a brave commando going after "terrorists". This shit has been produced by Hollywood for the last thirty years; "Dirty Harry" provided the prototype.

This is the physical expression, in police & military power, of the de-regulated capitalist state. Taxes & regulations, in this sadistic fapitalist fantasy, are restraints on noble entrepreneurs who only want to be free & happy; a person who wants to rigorously tax wealth is the equivalent to those who want to prevent armies from "doing their jobs" -- a tax regulator, like an international criminal tribunal, can only abet the 'terrorists', the 'criminals', who are trying to harm the good people; and only running roughshod over legal limitations can one be the super-savior, the one who comes to save the day.

Bush will go to heaven, ___ hell wouldn't have him.

I maintain the stance that the US soldiers should all be subjected to an international war-crime trial. I cannot bring myself to see our troops as war heroes, because the war itself is an illegal, criminal war, a war of aggression, against a country that had "nothing" (Bush's word in this context) to do with 9/11 (a false flag attack), an imperialists' war launched by an empire.

In Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote, "We but teach bloody instructions, which being taught return to plague the inventor." In those brief lines, Shakespeare eloquently sums up what bushcon has tries to achieve in six + years of incompetent, clumsy, criminal, arrogant governance.

The "plague" will come visit us America, and it will be indescriminant in the killing.