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TechnoratiScapegoating Blackwater
US Soldiers Commit War Crimes at One-Ninth the Price
Private security companies in Iraq have come under political attack after mercenaries for Blackwater USA fired upon unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square, killing 17 and wounding 24. Angry Iraqis, including collaborationist officials of the U.S.-backed occupation regime, have complained that swaggering rent-a-soldiers operate with callous disregard for the safety of Iraqis. A 27-year-old ex-paratrooper for Blackwater even stands accused of--but faces no possibility of prison time for-shooting, while in a drunken frenzy, a man who was guarding Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi.
A media pile-on has ensued.
Condi Rice, whose State Department is a major Blackwater client, ordered cameras mounted on vehicles in the company's convoys. The House of Representatives, normally so divided it can't agree that torture is bad or that sick kids need doctors, came together as one--389 to 30--to pass a bill that would subject mercenaries to criminal prosecution when they blow away foreigners in a war zone. Now the presidential contenders are weighing in.
"We cannot win a fight for hearts and minds when we outsource critical missions to unaccountable contractors," said Barack Obama. "To add insult to injury, these contractors are charging taxpayers up to nine times more to do the same jobs as soldiers, a disparity that damages troop morale."
Obama may be onto something. Why pay for employed by private corporations, when you can get the same cowboy antics at one-ninth the price?
Pundits and politicians are scapegoating Blackwater and other private security firms to help sell the continuation of the Iraq War. Some mercenaries shoot at anything that moves. They endanger locals with crazy practices like speeding down jammed highways on the wrong side. (Memo to Secy. Gates: Ban screenings of "Ronin.") Rein in these Rambo wannabes or fire them, the argument goes, and Iraqi commuters will warm to their friendly public-sector replacements in the United States Armed Forces. A thousand roses will bloom. Soon we'll be awash in that staple of postwar gratitude, Iraqi war brides.
But it isn't just Blackwater. Official U.S. soldiers are no less stupid or vicious or trigger-happy than their private counterparts.
In 2003 U.S. troops manning a checkpoint in Karbala repeatedly fired a 25-millimeter cannon at a Toyota containing 13 people trying to flee the fighting. At least seven people, including five children age five or under, were killed. "You just f---ing killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough," a captain radioed to his platoon leader moments later. Checkpoint shootings of innocent civilians became a daily occurrence, due to rules of engagement that placed more value upon the lives of American troops than those of the Iraqis they were supposedly there to liberate.
Often the "checkpoints" were invisible to Iraqi motorists. American soldiers would hide in buildings near an intersection and fire "warning shots" at the engine blocks of approaching vehicles. Assuming that they were being ambushed by bandits, Iraqi drivers would floor the accelerator. Soldiers then treated them as potential suicide bombers, turning them into Swiss cheese. "Many U.S. officials describe...the military's standard practice of firing at onrushing cars from their checkpoints in Iraq," reports The Washington Post.
"We fired warning shots at everyone," said one soldier. "They would speed up to come at us, and we would shoot them. You couldn't tell who was in the car from where we were. We found that out later. We would just look in and see they were dead and could see there were women inside."
That's what happened to Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari. After obtaining the release of a journalist from insurgents who had held her hostage for one month, Calipari accompanied her to a checkpoint near the Baghdad airport. U.S. soldiers opened fire. The warning shot missed the engine block. Calipari died; the reporter was wounded. Though their Iraqi driver insists that he was driving their Toyota Corolla (memo to travelers to Iraq: consider a Honda) under 25 miles per hour, the Pentagon said he was "speeding."
A lot of professional U.S. soldiers have screamed their contempt for Iraqis since the beginning of the war. "For almost a year," reported the East Bay Express in 2005, "American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to [a pornographic website]. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography."
If you've just eaten, stop reading now.
The Express describes the photos: "A man in a leather coat who apparently tried to run a military checkpoint lies slumped in the driver's seat of a car, his head obliterated by gunfire, the flaps of skin from his neck blooming open like rose petals. Six men in beige fatigues, identified as U.S. Marines, laugh and smile for the camera while pointing at a burned, charcoal-black corpse lying at their feet."
There's more.
"[A] person who posted a picture of a corpse lying in a pool of his own brains and entrails wrote, 'What every Iraqi should look like.' One person posted three photographs of corpses lying in the street and titled his collection 'DIE HAJI [a racist slur for Iraqis used by U.S. soldiers] DIE.'"
Google the Express story. It gets even uglier.
Blackwater's hired goons are exempt from prosecution. So, apparently, are real soldiers. Atrocity after atrocity goes unpunished or rewarded with a slap on the wrist.
Specialist Jorge Sandoval, 22, was acquitted of murdering two Iraqis, one on April 27, the other on May 11 near Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad. However, a military court-martial found him guilty of planting detonation wire on the first victim to make him look like an insurgent. If he was innocent, why did he try to cover up the shooting?
Specialist James Barker, 23, of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, based in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, admitted that he held down a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in 2005 while another soldier raped her, then shot her several times in her Mahmudiya home. He dowsed her with kerosene and set her on fire. According to CNN, "he was not sure if he penetrated the girl, because he was having trouble getting an erection." He and five fellow soldiers also murdered her parents and her 7-year-old sister. Thanks to a plea bargain, said The New York Times, "he could be released on parole in 20 years."
The same crime committed in the U.S. would earn life in prison, or the death penalty.
A Marine Staff Sergeant charged in the massacre of 24 people in Haditha, The New York Times reports, will not face murder charges because investigating civilian deaths isn't a military priority. "Prosecuting the Haditha case has posed special challenges because the killings were not comprehensively investigated when they first occurred," says the Times. "Months later, when details came to light, there were no bodies to examine and no Iraqi witnesses to test."
The 2005 Express piece contains this tragicomic gem: "[Disrespect for Iraqi deaths] could become an international public-relations catastrophe." Internationally, the "war porn" scandal was merely one of a string of stories that confirmed our reputation as brutal neocolonialists. Here in the United States, however, "supporting the troops" means turning a blind eye to their actions--or blaming them on private contractors.
Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
Copyright 2007 Ted Rall
32 Comments so far
Show All""Prosecuting the Haditha case has posed special challenges because the killings were not comprehensively investigated when they first occurred," says the Times. "Months later, when details came to light, there were no bodies to examine and no Iraqi witnesses to test."
This same sort of difficult situation, unfortunately, now also would apply to some big crimes in places like New York that happened some six yrs. ago if by some miracle a serious investigation was launched.
There were mass murders that day, but for some reason there have been no trials or indictments. Another strange, yet true fact is that not a single subpoena has been issued to investigate those crimes, despite over 3,000 people being killed that day . . .
I think there was at least a show trial in Germany after the Reichstag Fire, which, now, 74 years later we realize was a false flag operation. Of course, nothing like that could ever happen here . . .
Except maybe if it was pulled off by trusted mercenaries . . .
I took it as Rall pointing out that US soldiers behave just as badly, but we have to call them "heroes" and chant the mantra "support our troops". It is a thought crime to say otherwise.
Blackwater, which is made up of ex-troops, both of the USA and other fascist countries, is allowed to terrorize Iraqis because that is what the US ruling class wants them to do. And that's what they want the troops to do.
Terrorized people are easier to control, witness the US populations, which fears serial killers, child molestors and terrorists. Different decades, different emphasis, but fear has been used to control us long before the Cheney cabal took power.
Children no longer play outside, because their parents are terrified of molestors. People happily show their ID to anyone in a uniform, pee into cups and submit to fingerprinting to obtain jobs. And then they announce that others "hate our freedom". And kill them to protect it.
IOW, I think Rall is trying to emphasize the hypocritical double-standards in the U.S. news, ... media; for they made little fuss about the U.S. soldiers (and their superior) officers criminally let off the hook for their crimes, while now going in to a frenzy over the massacre committed by Blackwater, private contracting mercenaries.
If that's what he means to say, then he should be clearer about it, for it's being left to readers to interpret, to try to figure out what he's really meaning to say. I think the above media double-standards is the case, but could be mistaken.
Meanwhile, the rest of what I said in my prior post stays as far as my opinion goes. All of the crimes and the guilty criminals should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible and nothing less.
QUOTE:
PJD October 10th, 2007 12:38 pm
Of course, even this article still states a huge unspoken assumption - the US solders are only doing wrong when they shoot at unarmed "civilians".
Presumubly then, the USA is entitled to invade any country it feel like for whtever reason it wishes, and killing people who take up guns to defend their country is perfectly OK and moral ...
...
END QUOTE.
Now, I think to have read enough articles by Ted Rall to be able to know that PJD's comment does NOT fit at all with Rall.
Ted Rall is not addressing whether or not the war is legal, morally acceptable; he's addressing only that the contracted mercenaries committing insane massacres of innocent and unarmed Iraqi civilians is NOT worse than what official U.S. soldiers have done many, many times, and have gotten away with; while, now, everyone, the media anyway, wants the Blackwater mercenaries of private contracting firms to be nailed for their insane massacres, but this wasn't the case with the criminal soldiers let off the hook and in criminal ways.
I have a little bit of a problem with the article, but not in the way that PJD claims is a gross implication. I don't see Rall at all saying what PJD claims the article supposedly infers; what I see is that the Blackwater mercenaries who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity MUST BE TREATED ACCORDING TO LAW and that Cheney-Bush should be prosecuted for much else, but also their law dictating that the privately contracted mercenaries are beyond the rule of law, can't be legally prosecuted for their war crimes.
That "total freedom to do as you want guys" law does not apply to the official U.S. military in Iraq or in any other war; it's only for the privately contracted mercenaries. The U.S. military is answerable to the laws of the U.S. Constitution, and Intl laws and conventions pertaining to war, and those pertaining to human rights; all Intl laws and conventions, it should be.
The problem is two-fold:
1) The U.S. soldiers committing war crimes and crimes against human rights are criminally whitewashed, let off the hook, have their crimes covered up, are not prosecuted according to a just application of the laws that apply to them; and given that they are subordinates following orders, their superior officers are also guilty and let off the hook. This is an extreme crime. Legally, and ethically, these soldiers, and superior officers, that have been criminally let of the hook should be RE-PROSECUTABLE; once we get truly sane people in the positions of the justice system from where new prosecutions can be required. The U.S. should be prosecutable for having criminally maniganced letting these soldiers and their superior officers off the hook; all the way up to the top of the chain of command, all these BASTARDS prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced for the rest of their earthly lives, NO LESS.
2) The contracted mercenaries have no laws applying to them in the war zone; and we have read about this disgusting reality of extreme crime many, many times already. This is a major crime of war and against human rights that the c-in-c and the U.S. v. p. should both be prosecutable for, for they have NO ETHICAL or legal right to establish laws of war that dictate that the private mercenary firms that are contracted in are not answerable to the laws established for all military. The U.S. Constitution, and Intl laws and conventions pertaining to war and the protection of human rights CANNOT legally be overridden like the Cheney-Bush administration, Congress, Senate, and so on, have been trying to enforce. Just because they dictated that this would be the way does not make it legal; it is a complete and extreme crime and prosecutable under Intl laws and conventions, while it should also be prosecutable under U.S. laws.
Ted Rall is right to remind that MANY U.S. soldiers have been let off the hook, and because of the U.S. govt, the White House, the Congress, the Senate, the Pentagon, the U.S. Dpt of Justice, the State Dept., ETC. And we can and should add ALL Americans who support their govt doing this, committing all of these extreme crimes against the U.S. Constitution, and Intl Laws and Conventions governing war and protecting human rights.
It is all TREASON, and against Intl laws and conventions; and totally INSANE, psychopathically so.
All of these crimes should be thoroughly and honestly prosecuted to the fullest extent that is applicable; and if we did that, then the fullest extent is either life imprisonment without any chance for parole, EVER, or death penalty. Nothing less!
The laws surely exist to be able to do that, the above; but the private contractor mercenaries have, so far, total freedom, the liberty to do as they hellbent or -bound wish, whenever they wish, NO laws applying to them; so says G.W. Bush, D. Cheney, the WhOLE presidential administration, Congress, Senate, State Dept, Justice Dept, and many Americans.
Ted Rall does sound as if he's saying that Americans should not be calling for the Blackwater psychopathic serial killing mercenaries to be prosecuted, but if he is saying or trying to infer this, then he is DEAD WRONG and perhaps going insane.
He is right that official U.S. soldiers have been let off the hook for their extreme crimes many times, and seems to infer that this is wrong. If he infers that meaning, then he is right; else he is again dead wrong.
But he's not addressing whether the war has ever been justified, or not, and he's written against it many enough times; if I am remembering correctly, which I think I am.
I don't think he's siding with either the war ever having been launched or continued, and U.S. soldiers killing Iraqis. I sure hope he sides with either of these two aspects. If he does, then he needs to check into a psychiatric clinic and one that has only sane and honest psychiatrists and/or psychologists, which might possibly be a little difficult to find in the USA.
chunga..good calls..
Perhaps you have a point there Chuck Cliff. For some reason Ted Rall always seems to rub me the wrong way. When I read the article I saw him diverting attention from the very serious issue of private mercenary armies. From my view I do not care if Blackwater is being scapegoated as long as it brings attention to the problem of private mercenary armies, the issues of war crimes by regular troops is another issue all together in my mind.
Jeeze, get off of Ted's case and cut him slack -- he deserves better than this, are youse guys trolls?
Then, like Little Brother and a couple of others, turn on your brains and try to understand what he wrote before you get on your ego-tripping hobby horses!
Rall's point is very well taken -- the Blackwater scandal which has always been there suddenly can't be kept out of the public mind space. Therefore the shock and horror of Rice et al is damage control pure and simple -- just like they did Abu Ghrib -- and Ted Rall is the first I have seen to take note of it in a public forum
"Aggression-enhancing drugs?" Nice to know that this debate is a rational one.
the killing in iraq will be paid back in full - soon, don't worry.
the saps in the us are just beginning to uncover bush's nwo plan of selling out the united states to the globalization corporations.
north american union with the amero as the money - corporations trumping us laws.
a new country where it will be illegal to fly the american flag.
what a bunch of saps!
fema prisons for all of you.
What does everyone expect? We have a President and Vice President who have thumbed their noses at the law for over 7 years now. Who have broken every law on the books. Who have ridiculed the Constitution, torn it up and flushed it down the nearest john. Bush himself has indulged in these Rambo/Cowboy antic's numerous times during the last 7 years. Does anyone believe for a second these 'hired guns' and US soldiers both don't watch the news and see a President who swaggers like he owns the f...... world and threatens anyone who gets in his way? He has been sending them a terrible message for years now. Bush/Cheney have let it be known by their actions that these people (Iraqi's) do not deserve anything better than a bullet between the eyes. If we are going to cure the sickness in Iraq we need to first cure the sickness in our own government! And it is sick beyond belief!
Gee, thanks for helping me start my day with a big puke!
The entire Blackwater mess is symptomatic of our need for a REAL news media in this country. What Americans have had, since 9-11, is a fawning, obsequious, childish, laughable excuse for a Press that runs interference for those in power, and hides inconvenient facts from the public.
The reason the US is curtailing Blackwater is because ordinary Americans are beginning to hear of these mercenaries for the first time. Some info on what's really happening leaked out to the masses--probably mostly through Internet sources and bloggers.
Both mercenaries and troops are fulfilling the aims of the US (as measured by results, not by the mendacity of mediocre politicians). The aim is determined by the design of the instruments. All the instruments of US power are means of death. Any positive aid is conditional on grovelling subservience. The army and profiteers are killers because that is the way they were setup. The Iraqi people are irrelevant to US aims. The USI celebrates their deaths, and celebrates the scattering of the peoples they hate to oblivion, and the turning of Iraq into an unliveable depleted Uranium, radioactive wasteland. If its harmless, lets see congress eat it for breakfest with their cornflakes. There is no such thing as a purely defensive US institution or weapon. Even missile defence sites are covert means of setting up large numbers of offensive weapons close to future targets, for world war three, as should be obvious from their total lack of utility for missile interception. Accuracy and speed are primarily offensive attributes, interception is the least concern. I would not be surprised to find that missile defence technology is nuclear capable. The intercept capability would seem to be a thin public cover, in order to develop the strike capability.
As usual Ted Rall has nothing of value to say. He has completely missed the point of the danger private mercenary armies like Blackwater present to society. Just wait 'till they privatize the National Guard Police.
I really hope, wish, and pray that there is karma.
Many of us thought , only a few years ago before 9-11 that our world had finally progressed past constant war and destruction.
Unfortunitly, exactly the wrong group was in total control and took every advantage of the situation. A set of leaders with the best interests of the nation in mind, would have taken action but would also have stopped before plunging millions of people into this catastrophic occupation with no solution. It appears that our world will always have a self-serving maniac waiting in the wings ready to wreak havoc on everyone.
Big oil and their political enablers don't care about death on either side of the guns. They would just as soon pump oil out of a militarized wasteland as out of a functioning nation. This is petro-genocide, and has more parallels to the US Native American genocide of the 1800s than to Nam.
What can you say about an oligarchy that will war over the opportunity to burn the last barrel of a non-renewable resource which pollutes its own ecosphere?
What can you say about the people who let them do it?
Unsuccessful species.
Yes, the volunteer soldiers are also war criminals, are also murderers.
Nothing new in the no-responsibilty clause for Blackwater and U.S. troops.Lyndon Johnson had the Shah of Iran sign a similar agreement called the Security of Forces Agreement (SOFA).This meant that no American could be prosecuted for any illegal act in Iran.The talk about America losing the moral highground is laughable.They never had it to begin with.
Damn-- it's "you can't handle the truth", of course.
Incidentally, it's in issues like this that one can truly appreciate how pernicious is the alliance between the corporate media and the maladministration. The networks and toadying major newspapers aren't going to aggressively report systematic atrocities, and the sporadic reports (like Rall's) are too limited to fire up general public outrage.
Thus, our abominable hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil status quo.
little brother,yes,you have a point....but as for rall,IT WAS A VERY POOR CHOICE OF WORD...
I find Rall pretty clearly denouncing both Blackwater and the US military. The "scapegoating" he describes isn't the simple version, i.e. the sins of many being projected onto an innocent. He's saying that the kind of conspicuous atrocity practiced by Blackwater, and aggressively publicized, ought not to distract people from the grim reality that US forces typically subject Iraqis to the same wantonly brutal and heedless ultra-violence behavior-- with total impunity.
I've been noticing right along that unlike popular Amerikan film and teevee dramas, the present real-life US military authorities have been flagrantly dismissive and lenient with troops busted for atrocities. They look for reasons to diminish, reduce, and discourage vigorous prosecution of even the few "bad apples" who are formally charged. The Haditha atrocity will be blown off because-- whoops!-- by the time the US authorities conceded that it was more than the usual Merry Mixup, there was no more forensic evidence to assemble! Sorry about that! (The truth? You can't stand the truth!)
Maybe Rall should've stayed away from the problematic "scapegoat", and used the familiar "iceberg" metaphor, e.g. "Blackwater is just a pile of seagull shit on top of a malignant iceberg of US military atrocities.
"Our best estimate, which we update regularly, is that over a million Iraqis have been killed violently as a result of the invasion and occupation."
"More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday..."
"About 8 million Iraqis — nearly a third of the population — need immediate emergency aid because of the humanitarian crisis caused by the war..."
"WHO has urged neighbours of Iraq, where cholera has struck more than 3300 people since mid-August..."
"Four years later, in one of the hottest summers on record in a hot capital, the citizens of Baghdad had one or two hours of electricity a day..."
Yup - Blackwater, that's the f**king problem...
I like the term "neocolonialists" in the second to last sentence.
Things will of course get worse as the soldiers and mercenaries stay in Iraq, and maybe even the rest of our 800 bases for that matter. I was in Fayetteville, NC, when the troops got back from Desert Storm. That was one of the scariest time and place I've ever been. They were paid, pumped up and freaked out. It must be many many thousands times worse now. And when they come back, or if, god help them.
I've never had the courage to ask, and I don't know who I would ask, but I wonder if this (the soliders' mental state, anguish, rage, disconnect) is the same or worse than Vietnam, and how.
I'm afraid the USA at present is the evil empire.
And as a Scot resident in Australia, I have to accept in sorrow as well as anger that the real 'axis of evil' comprises the USA, Britain and Australia.
clarification of my first post:i hope it was understood that the"our children"i was referring to was our enlisted sons and daughters of u.s.military stationed in the combat zones.it is true,they are being fed aggression enhancing drugs and it is not common knowledge it is being done covertly and the u.s. military is protected under martial laws from having to reveal the enormity of it,first instituted under donald rumsfeld.what happens when they are returned to civilian life ?we are just now beginning to see the tip of an iceberg.drugging soldiers should be against our laws or at least against our decencies.mercenaries are soldiers of FORTUNE..which is just a fancy benign handle for"TERRORISTS' TED RALL,you,sir are dangerously deluded.
Now add legal impunity for mercenaries, three and four tours for troops extended to 15 months, the daily strain of being the hated occupiers after abu ghraib (and the mounting iraqi deaths though they had nothing to do with 9/11) and then add the regular use of stimulants by american forces.
What you get is the obscenity of war and the madness. However Blackwater and the other mercenaries aren't being scapegoated. They have too long escaped being held to the laws of decency and even the laws of war. One cannot legally absolve or excuse the careless and often unwarrented killing of civilians like they have been allowed to do. That was a madness in and of itself which escaped the notice of decent people in this country and which breeds more madness, hate and killing. A licence to kill? Aside from 007 in fiction, the very concept is evil. There is a difference between soldiers under military law and individuals told that whatever they do that they will not be held accountable for. That is not scapegoating them unless you feel Bremer who signed such a nazi like disregard for the life of civilians should be prosecuted. Since when did we become so callous towards the loss of life like the death cultists and suicide bombers who target civilians? Since Bremer told them that it was okay.
Moreover since when did Bremer have such authority to promulgate so patently illegal an order? Yeah this order is akin to what the werhmacht soldiers did. No not the SS, no they aren't exterminators. They don't have to care about the lives they take. Didn't you know, killing is legal for them. The shame is ours that we allowed Bremer's order to stand without challenge. We all knew better.
all that is true,ted rall...but there is scant comparison.it is not common knowledge that the united states government has kept our children hopped up on 'aggression'enhancing drugs,fed to them by mostly covert methods thru drink and food and handed out like vitamins,they have been vicious and trigger happy and completely drugged-up.i am not excusing them,but once again,the bush policies are the true villian.i am certain the mercenaries use these aggression enhancing drugs,as well.but my point is that most of our regular soldiers enlisted for love of country.KILLING FOR PROFIT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CRIME AND SHOULD ALWAYS REMAIN A CRIME.NO,TED RALL,I WOULD NEVER REFER TO MERCENARIES AS SCAPEGOATS..I would call them by their true name'MURDERERS'..fueled not by morals or causes but by..GREED !!
Get the troops out and cut off all government business with Blackwater. That's the way to stop U.S. war crimes. Whether Iraqis continue committing war crimes against each other will be in their hands.
Jack London wrote in IRON HEEL: "Another great institution that had taken form and was working smoothly was the Mercenaries. This body of soldiers had been evolved out of the old regular army and was now a million strong, to say nothing of the colonial forces. The Mercenaries constituted a race apart. They dwelt in cities of their own which were practically self-governed, and they were granted many privileges. By them a large portion of the perplexing surplus was consumed. They were losing all touch and sympathy with the rest of the people, and, in fact, were developing their own class morality and consciousness."
Hoa binh
Where's Rall going with this? No,no. Prison for Blackwater. Unaccountable expensive contracting is business as usual, that's how it is done in this country. Contractors are hugely profitable for a smaller group of people, this is efficiency.
In a mess like Iraq , shooting people, and gun toting men behaving like unimaginable psychopaths is common place. Nothing new there. It's tragic, everyone knew what to expect after the murderous bombings began in 2003, it's a horror that has no place in our future, yet we caved into outlaw authority once again. A lawless King's mandate, dictated by the greed and influence of powerful, unaccountable interests.
Of course, even this article still states a huge unspoken assumption - the US solders are only doing wrong when they shoot at unarmed "civilians".
Presumubly then, the USA is entitled to invade any country it feel like for whtever reason it wishes, and killing people who take up guns to defend their country is perfectly OK and moral - it's only immoral to kill those who aren't defending their country and/or are cooperating with their brutal occupation.
The US soldiers are in the wrong the minute they get the dust of Iraq on their boots. They can only redeem themseelves by getting out - by desertion if necessary.