youre an idiot. and so is anyone else who likes to think democraps are beter than repugs. theyre all the ing same, they dont care about us. all they want is their job and the ing perks. the fact that people think any politician actually cares about its constiuents blows my mind.
I served for the right for EVERYONE to speak out, not just for those who agree with my point of view. Sorry, but I don't agree with the "if you don't like it leave" rhetoric some like to spew.
Semper Fi!
From what I've read there was no justification for the killings, but I could be wrong. The majority of our military handle the pressure without breaking the code of honor.
But that is just my take.
dude you totally missed my point. thats what im saying. if you look, i say im sure ill get flamed for MY OPINION, but if you dont like the fact that i say what i want,GET THE OUT.
I don't think anybody is telling anyone to get the out.
And I agree, that is a good show on A&E. Also watch Jarheads.
oh jesus...never mind
youre just as closeminded as the rest
havent seen jarhead...not sure why
actually now that i think about it, what are you talking about?
I'm not Jesus and I'm as open minded as they come. Perhaps you are just not getting my point?
probably not
Maybe I FUBAR.
no i def am...memorial weekend...got the next two days off
im pretty excited/
From the original Time magazine article:
More than two months after the incident Time magazine asked the military to respond to allegations of the killings.
The magazine says a Marine spokesman responded with an e-mail stating, "I cannot believe you're buying any of this. This falls into the same category of Al-Qaeda in Iraq propaganda."
It was only after Time magazine showed a video in February to another military spokesman in Baghdad that an investigation was begun.
"Something broke down here in the sense that no investigation was conducted immediately," said Gen. Jack Keane. "Therefore, people most likely in the chain of command who had knowledge and should have taken action appropriately did not and they will be under investigation for the failure to do that.
What makes anyone who condones this type of behavior any different from those who would condone bombing crowded school buses and trains?
Gulf News"in my last week's column, I highlighted the massacre of innocent men, women and children, carried out by up to a dozen Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha. In it, I quoted Representative John Murtha, a highly decorated ex-Marine, who is distressed at the unprovoked attack.
---
"In the meantime, my column had been posted on a well-known right-wing American website (Free Republic), where it attracted 119 comments. Oddly, none of them displayed any hint of disquiet over the behaviour of the Marines under investigation. Rather, their outrage was reserved for John Murtha and yours truly. One poster's reaction was to "nuke the Middle East" adding "thank you very much Dishonourable Rep. Jack Murtha". He was later to write "if you can't stand behind our troops, stand in front of them"
---
If the public, as represented by the 119 posters on the Free Republic website, condones such behaviour or seeks to excuse it, then not only is its members giving their country's soldiers a license to kill arbitrarily, they are altering the fundamental psyche of their nation. To quote a well-known rationalist intellectual Felix Adler "Love of country is like love of women - he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good."
The "Freepers" - as members of the Free Republic website have come to be known - may also like to contemplate the words of theologian Howard Thurman who said "During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism." In short, people who glorify soldiers who purposefully assassinate women and small children are as misguided as those who glorify the blowing up of crowded buses, trains and marketplaces."
And then you have this little jewel from the Korean war. Our most wonderful press
likes to keep bringing stuff up from 50 years ago. I wonder why?
washingtonpost.com
Letter on Korean War Massacre Reveals Plan to Shoot Refugees
Historian Discovers U.S. Envoy's Writings Relating to No Gun Ri
By Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza
Associated Press
Tuesday, May 30, 2006; A04
More than a half-century after hostilities ended in Korea, a do ent from the war's chaotic early days has come to light -- a letter from the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, informing the State Department that U.S. soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.
The letter -- dated the day of the Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950 -- is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government.
"If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," wrote Ambassador John J. Muccio, in his message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
The letter reported on decisions made at a high-level meeting in South Korea on July 25, 1950, the night before the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment shot the refugees at No Gun Ri.
Estimates vary on the number of dead at No Gun Ri. U.S. soldiers' estimates ranged from fewer than 100 to "hundreds" dead; Korean survivors say about 400, mostly women and children, were killed at the village 100 miles southeast of Seoul, the South Korean capital. Hundreds more refugees were killed in later, similar episodes, survivors say.
The No Gun Ri killings were do ented in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by the Associated Press in 1999, which prompted a 16-month Pentagon inquiry.
The Pentagon concluded that the No Gun Ri shootings, which lasted three days, were "an unfortunate tragedy" -- "not a deliberate killing." It suggested panicky soldiers, acting without orders, opened fire because they feared that an approaching line of families, baggage and farm animals concealed enemy troops.
But Muccio's letter indicates the actions of the 7th Cavalry were consistent with policy, adopted because of concern that North Koreans would infiltrate via refugee columns. And in subsequent months, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, do ents show.
The Muccio letter, declassified in 1982, is discussed in a new book by American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, who discovered the do ent at the National Archives, where the AP also has obtained a copy.
Conway-Lanz, a former Harvard historian and now an archivist of the National Archives' Nixon collection, was awarded the Stuart L. Bernath Award of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for the article on which the book is based.
"With this additional piece of evidence, the Pentagon report's interpretation [of No Gun Ri] becomes difficult to sustain," Conway-Lanz argues in his book, "Collateral Damage," published this spring by Routledge.
The Army report's own list of sources for the 1999-2001 investigation shows its researchers reviewed the microfilm containing the Muccio letter. But the 300-page report did not mention it.
Asked about this, Pentagon spokeswoman Betsy Weiner would say only that the Army inspector general's report was "an accurate and objective portrayal of the available facts based on 13 months of work."
Said Louis Caldera, who was Army secretary in 2001 and is now University of New Mexico president, "Millions of pages of files were reviewed, and it is certainly possible they may have simply missed it."
Former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Don Oberdorfer, a historian of Korea who served on a team of outside experts who reviewed the investigation, said he did not recall seeing the Muccio message. "I don't know why, since the military claimed to have combed all records from any source."
Muccio noted in his 1950 letter that U.S. commanders feared disguised North Korean soldiers were infiltrating American lines via refugee columns.
As a result, those meeting on the night of July 25, 1950 -- top staff officers of the U.S. 8th Army, Muccio's representative Harold J. Noble and South Korean officials -- decided on a policy of air-dropping leaflets telling South Korean civilians not to head south toward U.S. defense lines and of shooting them if they did approach U.S. lines despite warning shots, the ambassador wrote to Rusk.
Rusk, Muccio and Noble, who was embassy first secretary, are all dead. It is not known what action, if any, Rusk and others in Washington may have taken as a result of the letter.
Muccio told Rusk, who was secretary of state during the Vietnam War, that he was writing him "in view of the possibility of repercussions in the United States" from such deadly U.S. tactics.
But the No Gun Ri killings -- as well as others in the ensuing months -- remained hidden from history until the AP report of 1999, in which soldiers who were at No Gun Ri corroborated the Korean survivors' accounts.
Survivors said U.S. soldiers first forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S. lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment. Troops of the 7th Cavalry followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter under a railroad bridge.
The late Army Col. Robert M. Carroll, a lieutenant at No Gun Ri, said in a 1998 interview that he remembered the order radioed across the warfront on the morning of July 26 to stop refugees from crossing battle lines. "What do you do when you're told nobody comes through? . . . We had to shoot them to hold them back."
Other soldier witnesses attested to radioed orders to open fire at No Gun Ri.
Since that episode was confirmed in 1999, South Koreans have lodged complaints with the Seoul government about more than 60 other alleged large-scale killings of refugees by the U.S. military in the 1950-53 war.
The Army report of 2001 acknowledged that investigators learned of other, unspecified civilian killings, but said these would not be investigated.
AP research uncovered at least 19 declassified U.S. military do ents showing commanders ordered or authorized such killings in 1950-51.
In a statement issued Monday in Seoul, a No Gun Ri survivors group called that episode "a clear war crime," demanded an apology and compensation from the U.S. government, and said Congress and the United Nations should conduct investigations. The survivors also said they would file a lawsuit against the Pentagon for alleged manipulation of the earlier probe.
Gary Solis, a West Point expert on war crimes, said the policy described by Muccio clearly "deviates from typical wartime procedures. It's an obvious violation of the bedrock core principle of the law of armed conflict -- distinction."
Solis said soldiers always have the right to defend themselves. But "noncombatants are not to be purposely targeted."
But William Eckhardt, lead Army prosecutor in the My Lai atrocities case in Vietnam, sensed "angst, great angst" in the letter because officials worried about what might happen. "If a mob doesn't stop when they're coming at you, you fire over their heads. And if they still don't stop, you fire at them. Standard procedure," he said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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May 31, 2006
Investigation
Files Contradict Account of Raid in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, May 30 — A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq.
Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the marines' story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, the official said.
The investigation, which was led by Col. Gregory Watt, an Army officer in Baghdad, also raised questions about whether the marines followed established rules for identifying hostile threats when they assaulted houses near the site of a bomb attack, which killed a fellow marine.
The three-week inquiry was the first official investigation into an episode that was first uncovered by Time magazine in January and that American military officials now say appears to have been an unprovoked attack by the marines that killed 24 Iraqi civilians. The results of Colonel Watt's investigation, which began on Feb. 14, have not previously been disclosed.
"There were enough inconsistencies that things didn't add up," said the senior official, who was briefed on the conclusions of Colonel Watt's preliminary investigation.
The official agreed to discuss the findings only after being promised anonymity. The findings have not been made public, and the Pentagon and the Marines have refused to discuss the details of inquiries now underway, saying that to do so could compromise the investigation.
When Colonel Watt described the findings to Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the senior ground commander in Iraq, on March 9, they raised enough questions about the marines' veracity that General Chiarelli referred the matter to the senior Marine commander in Iraq, who ordered a criminal investigation that officials say could result in murder charges being brought against members of the unit.
Colonel Watt's findings also prompted General Chiarelli to order a parallel investigation into whether senior Marine officers and enlisted personnel had attempted to cover up what happened.
Colonel Watt's inquiry included interviews with marines believed to have been involved in the killings, as well as with senior officers in the unit, the Third Battalion of the First Marine Regiment.
Among them were Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, whom officials had said was one of the senior noncommissioned officers on the patrol, and Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, the battalion commander, the senior official said. Colonel Chessani was relieved of his command in April, after the unit returned from Iraq.
In their accounts to Colonel Watt, the marines said they took gunfire from the first of five residences they entered near the bomb site, according to the senior military official.
The official said the marines had recalled hearing "a weapon being prepared to be used against them."
Colonel Watt also reviewed payments totaling $38,000 in cash made within weeks of the shootings to families of victims.
In an interview Tuesday, Maj. Dana Hyatt, the officer who made the payments, said he was told by superiors to compensate the relatives of 15 victims, but was told that rest of those killed had been deemed to have committed hostile acts, leaving their families ineligible for compensation.
After the initial payments were made, however, those families demanded similar payments, insisting their relatives had not attacked the marines, Major Hyatt said.
Major Hyatt said he was authorized by Colonel Chessani and more senior officers at the marines' regimental headquarters to make the payments to relatives of 15 victims.
Colonel Chessani "was part of the chain of command that gives the approval," Major Hyatt said.
"Even when he signs off on it," the major added, "it still has to go up to" the unit's regimental headquarters.
Colonel Chessani declined to comment on Tuesday when visited at his home at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
The list of 15 victims deemed to be noncombatants was put together by intelligence personnel attached to the battalion, Major Hyatt said. Those victims were related to a Haditha city council member, he said. The American military sometimes pays compensation to relatives of civilian victims.
The relatives of each victim were paid a total of $2,500, the maximum allowed under Marine rules, along with $250 payments for two children who were wounded. Major Hyatt said he also compensated the families for damage to two houses.
"I didn't say we had made a mistake," Major Hyatt said, describing what he had told the city council member who was representing the victims. "I said I'm being told I can make payments for these 15 because they were deemed not to be involved in combat."
The military began its examination of the killings only after Time magazine presented the full findings of its investigation to a military spokesman in Baghdad in early February.
(... this is exactly why the WH/Repugs want the US press muzzled and intimidated and imprisoned, why the WH/Repugs want increased maximum secrecy in govt operations, so the WH/Repugs can commit their crimes without having to deal with the press snooping around. With the Time investigation, the military would probably never have made their own invesigation public.
... is exactly why head went after Joe Wilson who didn't go along with the WH lies "justifying" the Iraq invasion. )
General Chiarelli, an Army officer who took command of American ground forces in Iraq in January, learned soon after the spokesman was notified that the Marines had not investigated the incident, according to the senior military official.
On Tuesday, the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said President Bush first became aware of the episode after the Time magazine inquiry, when he was briefed by Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser. "When this comes out, all the details will be made available to the public, so we'll have a picture of what happened," Mr. Snow said.
===============
The details may come out ONLY because of Time magazine, not because of some mythical Marine/military honor code.
^^You know boutons, you more than likely have me on ignore, but
the military was investigating this before Time heard about it. And
the honor code is no myth. I now you support the troops, cause you
have said so. But please go crawl back under your rock. If we need
you, we will flush to toilet. Okay!
let's put away Politics aside for a second, let's put away wether or not it was cold murder or innocent mistakes.
There isn't more of a situation of on Earth to see your dead loved ones. It feels as if your heart has been ripped out of your chest. As if your life is draining away inch by painful inch, that's just a small measure of what the victims of war must feel. Those of you with little cousins, little brothers, little sisters, grandchildren, young sons or daughters, imagine one night asleep, being woken up in the middle of it, having people storm into your house, FOR WHATEVER REASON, and shoot down those same little cousins, little brothers, little sisters, grandchildren, young sons or daughters, right in front of you.
All I ask , is that you put everything aside, and before you go to sleep tonight, Pray for those that are suffering around the world, no matter what race, religion, ethnicity. We should all share Humanity.
One can't put the politics aside in the case for Iraq because the phony Iraq war was a purely Repug-political decision to assure victory in the 2004 prez election, for a string of illegit objectives, all supported by outright lies.
You're preaching "humanithy" to the wrong people.
I didn't start this war, nor did I vote for the people who did.
The suffering you cite is horrendous, and in the case of Iraq, 100% unnecessary and useless.
Impeach dubya/ head/condi/powell/wolfie/rummy.
The Band of Murderous Mothe ers.
Last edited by boutons_; 06-01-2006 at 07:37 AM.
Excellent post. I concur.
Well lets really put this in perspective. How bout when
you are walking down the street and someone blows up
the whole family. Or how bout when you place a tire
around someone neck, fill it with gasoline and ignite it.
Where the where you when things like that were
happening. You only feel compassion for the "innocent"
when our troops are involved. How bout feeling a little
compassion when the "innocents" are having the heads
chopped off or blown off. You sir, are a hypocrite.
And do you feel that way when Al Qaeda does this to the
little cousins, brothers, mothers and fathers. Or beats the
crap out of someone because they don't conform to their
religious standards. You have some very strange standards.
WTF?? you are the one with the ed up standards. Nobody here is apologizing for the actions of terrorist, but that doesn't mean what those soldiers did is excusable! It seems to me you are still dwelling on this pro war vs anti war crap! this is not about that! a crime was commited and should be punished accordingly.
and what the do terrorist has to do with this scenario? these were innocent civilians, not terrorist, and you seem to want to excuse your soldiers for commiting as atrocious a deed as any terrorist. So who here is the one with the double standards?
I'll tell you what this has to do with it. First, a crime has been
alledged. It has not been proven. Second, I never hear
all the whaling and crying when innocents are killed
by the terrorist. Only when the military does something
that appears out of line. No you have your sense of
morality all screwed up. I want to hear you condemn the
other side when they blow the out of innocents walking
down the street shopping. When they blow the back of
someones head off because they are joining a police force.
Where he is you outrage, mister goody two shoes.
I have no double standards. But the one thing I do know
if someone did something wrong.......they will be punished
by our side, and punished severely. Possibly by death. I
ask you. Will the other side do the same? no they
want. They will be praised, by some here on this forum.
So get off my butt and get a friggin life.
would you stop making up! nobody here supports what terrorist do and you ing know it! There is not one person here that wouldn't be outraged and dissgusted if American civilians were murdered by Iraqui soldiers. I was shoked and deeply disturbed when those americans were kidnapped and murdered by the Iraqui insurgents, I truly could not understand how people were capable of such cold blooded murder. Furthermore I resent you claiming that I would not be outraged by such a thing, you don't know about me and yet you're intent in spewing out BULL to prove your point, regardless of wether its true, or makes any sense.
It really seems that you are so caught up in your pro-Bush, anti liberal crusade that you will say any ing thing without giving it another thought, correction, without ANY thought.
By the way, who is this "other side" you're talking about?? All Iraquis? terrorists?? who?? Seems to me YOU really can't tell the difference. Just a thought you might want to take into account, these people were INNOCENT CIVILIANS, not terrorists. These are not the people you hold so much contempt for... or are they now? I have a feeling you wouldn't lose a night's sleep if Iraq and all its people were blown off the map, would you?
Do you think this didn't happen? Are you saying it is impossible? Didn't you expect something like this to happen? Are you that far to the right? Your leader has already said "Mission accomplished".
Mister, you are the one that made the accusations. Not me.
You are the one that said our troops were guilty before
the investigation has been completed. I never heard from
you before about anyone being beheaded. And how do
you know they were INNOCENT CIVILIANS. Haven't they
used women and children to carry their bombs? How bout
we wait until the results of the investigation are completed.
We damn sure know one thing, don't we, those that are
guilty of any crime will be punished. Now we do know that
don't we. Who the started the investigation, damn
sure wasn't Time magazine or some other damn media
group. It was the military themselves and our government.
I am just sick and tired of everyone wanting to jump on
our troops ass about something that may or not be true.
If it is true, someone will pay and everyone damn sure
knows that. You are most of the time willing to trash
our government and troops. Well I am not. I wont
protect the guilty but I am damn sure going to sure they
are guilty. And I don't hear all of you holy than thou types
putting anything on the site about those mean old
terrorist killed another 30 civilians today. Now do you.
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