ARE THERE NO CONSEQUENCES WHEN THE DECISION MAKER'S DECISIONS ARE CATASTROPHIC? I MEAN CONSEQUENCES FOR THE DECISION-MAKER
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Today I would rather be researching the primary race of Lt. Colonel Jeff Latas (retired, U.S. Airforce), a progressive Democrat who means to turn Arizona's 8th CD (abandoned by Republican Jim Kolbe). But I can't get this damn Iraq story out of my head! A couple weeks ago I was distraught over the brutal and savage deaths of two young American soldiers, Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker and this weekend I was musing about how civilization had taken a wrong turn when we had removed the physical consequences of war from the Decision-Makers.
Is Commander-in-Chief "I'm the Decision-Maker" going to take responsibility for this ghastly stain on the honor of the American Armed Forces? "Fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza was afraid, her mother confided in a neighbor. As pretty as she was young, the girl had attracted the unwelcome attention of U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint that the girl had to pass through almost daily in their village in the south-central city of Mahmudiyah, her mother told the neighbor." The soldiers came in the dead of night "separating Abeer from her mother, father and young sister." They "raped Abeer in another room. Medical officials who handled the bodies also said the girl had been raped... Before leaving, the attackers fatally shot the four family members -- two of Abeer's brothers had been away at school -- and attempted to set Abeer's body on fire."
Can you stand reading that? Do you think it wasn't inevitable, given Bush's policies-- strategic and tactical-- in Iraq? I guarantee you the trial will be about some poor scapegoat and never about any Decision-Maker.
THURSDAY UPDATE: DENIAL IN THE HEARTLAND
Well... maybe I should call this update "Denial in Wingnutia." Paul Craig Roberts opines why the rape and murder of the 15 year old Iraqi girl and the shooting of her family is getting Bush's base pissed off-- at the "liberal media."
SUNDAY UPDATE: IS ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION?
Drip, drip, drip... slowly, agonizingly slowly, the details of this travesty come to light-- for the small number of people who are paying attention. According to today's Washington Post, 5 more soldiers have been charged, 4 more for the rape/murders and one for not reporting it. "The five, from the Army's 502nd Infantry Regiment, are accused of conspiring with former army private Steven D. Green, who was charged with rape and murder in federal court earlier this month. Green was honorably discharged with a 'personality disorder' after the attack was carried out but before it came to light."
What about Rumsfeld's and Cheney's and Bush's far, far worse personality disorders? Will they be discharged after the November elections. That's up to us.
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 10:56 AM
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Payback’s a Bitch, or
The Buck Stops at the Oval Office
First, a word in my own defense. Yes, I will withhold final judgment on the March rape/mass murder of the family of four in Iraq until after the trial. As far as I’m concerned, those who will be tried for murder in that case are innocent until they are proved guilty. In the ’90s, I conscientiously waited until the last day of the OJ trial to venture an opinion that Simpson might actually be guilty. (Shows what I know.)
ON March 12, near Mahmudiya, Iraq, a teenage girl was raped and murdered. Her mother, father, and younger sister were then killed. The perpetrators (four to five suspects are being investigated) poured an accelerant on the rape victim's body and set it on fire, in an attempt to cover their tracks.
CHAOS THEORY IN A TIME OF WAR
I’d like to offer a novel theory here: The two soldiers who were mutilated and murdered in June could well have been killed in retaliation for the rape/mass murder of the Iraqi family in March. (From the information I’ve been able to gather, the suspects are part of the same platoon.) How many other colleagues of these alleged rapists/murderers might be slain in retribution? How many unrelated murders of American soldiers and contractors will spiral out of this incident?
Last year, I heard a new theory of what it meant when Spartan mothers told their sons to “Come home with your shield, or on it.” Supposedly, if the soldier came home dead on his shield, it brought disgrace on the family: It meant that he had allowed his portion of the line of defense to be breached, putting his colleagues at risk. He’d let his comrades down. His acts had dire consequences for his colleagues.
Rogue soldiers who behave like feral animals should be held accountable for any harm they cause to innocent civilians. They should also pay a severe penalty for placing their military buddies in harm’s way. (And, no, a heartfelt letter of apology to a soldier’s mother or wife for getting a son or husband killed in retaliation doesn’t erase the debt.) And who’s to say that the breeze from this butterfly’s wing won’t extend to a 707 being blasted out of the sky by a shoe bomber?
If the suspects are found guilty, they could face the death penalty. At the least, they ought to spend the rest of their lives in prison. (They should count themselves lucky: In times past, they might have been turned over to the victims’ surviving family members for retribution). This rape/mass murder, which apparently was discussed and carefully planned over a week’s time, has nothing to do with PTSD or "snapping" under pressure. It has everything to do with the perpetrators having found an environment that allows them to indulge — and fine-tune — their baser instincts. Believe me, we don't want these people walking down K Street or contributing to the local gene pool. We put rabid animals down or lock them up. (Note: I’m ordinarily pro-peace and anti-war and anti–capital punishment.)
WHAT YOU SEE IS INDEED WHAT YOU GET
I've been concerned for some time that military recruiters are so desperate to meet their quotas that they'll accept questionable candidates, such as gang members (witness the Blood and Crips graffiti that have begun to show up over there), sociopaths, misfits, would-be Timothy McVeighs, and the mentally ill or emotionally unfit.
For example, one of the soldiers tried for abuses at Abu Graib had a history of domestic violence in civilian life. No way should he have been assigned to a penal facility in Iraq. Recently, a female reservist on the West Coast who had put up with sexual harassment in her first tour of Iraq was arrested because she refuses to go back to Iraq for another round of abuse. Do we really want — or need — to put a high-powered rifle in her hands, especially if she’s being harassed by what years ago we used to call “male chauvinist pigs”?
Congress needs to investigate just how badly recruiting standards have been allowed to deteriorate. Surely the recruiting procedure involves subjects taking some kind of mental inventory, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), doesn’t it? What kind of personality inventory test results would you see from men who could coldly spend a week planning to rape and kill members of a family they don't even know? Shouldn’t the test results have set off alarms, klaxons, whistles, and sirens?
THINK ANYONE WILL NOTICE?
By the way, were any of us surprised that news of this atrocity didn't surface until late Friday (otherwise known as “dump day”) before a long weekend?
There is little that is new about this shocking, terrible atrocity at Mahmudiya in Iraq. American servicemen have raped and murdered in previous wars and during the occupation of Japan and Germany/Austria. And of course, this is not unique to our servicemen. I don't buy the theory that this sort of behavior is related to recruiters lowering their standards. I suspect you'll find scores and scores of thousands of of enlisted men are low achievers, poorly educated and susceptible to peer pressure. That's why they become unthinjking fodder for the military machine. Add to that the brutalization of military training and the handing of powerful weapons to immature young men with a license to indulge their macho fantasies. It's no surprize we get Abu Ghraib, families shot to pieces at checkpoints, indiscriminate rocketing of civilians areas. It's all the same picture. Might is right - and of course we are always right. And those gullible young men are trained never to question the universal American assumptions of "God on our side".
It's interesting that Misha refers to the deaths of Americans soldiers in Iraq as "murders". A reflection of how even American liberals see the war in Iraq? Is it not possible that a citizen taking up arms against occupying soldiers from a foreign power might consider himself/herself a patriot? Were our Revolutionary forebears "murderers" when they attacked British occupying troops?
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