[Kazan]

1) There is no reason why the palestinians and the israelies couldn't just form a joint state and who cares who your neighbors is - act like human ****ing beings and grow the hell up

2) soon as you pick up a gun and fire at a soldier you're a combatant and you will be shot

3) if you direct military, paramilitary, or terrorist operations you are a valid target for elimination

4) Most of the insurgents in Iraq are not iraqi born OR they're not iraqi commanded (see Al Sadr <---> Iran connection)

[Rictor]

4) I thought be established this months ago. While there are foreign organizations, there is a large homegrown reistance who are no one's "puppets" but they just want the US out. Around September of last year, **** was claiming that there is little or no genuine Iraqi resistance, and I remember reporters going out to interview Iraqi insurgents and they got quite a different picture.

And you seem to think that any anti-American organization with religious ties is Iran's puppet. Thats just to broad a statement. Have you met al Sadr, do you know his motivations? Or are you just omniscient??

[Kazan]

Rictor: my statements about Al Sadr come from the intelligence community (and NOT ****'s intelligence 'specialist')

[Rictor]

US hits mosque, 40 killed

Nearly 3 million Iraqis approve of anti-American attacks

AMerican attack in Fallujah kill 26, includng women and children

Sunnis, Shiites unite to fight US
also here

and here is an interesting bit by Wolfowitz:

There’s not going to be any difference in our military posture on July 1st from what it is on June 30th, except that we will be there then at the invitation of a sovereign Iraqi government, which I am quite sure will want us to stay there until killers like the ones who perpetrated these atrocities in Fallujah are brought under control.

 Do they even bother to check this stuff before they release it?

from here

[Gank]

Kazan Al-Sadr has nothing to do with Iran, the Badr Brigades have Iranian connections but they're still Iraqis.

Globalsecurity is a pretty good source for stuff like this:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/al-sadr.htm

[Gank]

Originally posted by Bobboau
I was talking about Yugoslavia at the time we bombed it,
and the only people I've heard evedence that there was no genocide were ether Serbs themselves or had some huge 'I hate America and look for anyhting I can to make a piss storm about it' thing going on.

Eh, Nato themselves say theres no genocide before they went in. I actually know a couple of Kosovan refugees who've confirmed this and blamed all the violence on the KLA, Albanian mafia they call them. Btw the "we dont do anything wrong people just hate us for no reason" act is a bit pathetic.

[Rictor]

Gank, thank you. I'm outnumbered like 10 to 1 on this, even more than in the usual "US in Iraq" threads. There's hope yet.

[Gank]

Well if Nato had done things the right way you wouldnt hear a peep out of me Rictor, I have no respect for Serbia after what happened in Bosnia.

[Gank]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040408/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=2100

Bloodlust satisfied yet?

Also just seen wounded boys being pulled out of an abrams on sky, guess the iraqis do have some of those weaps I was on about earlier

[Kazan]

Rictor: that US missile strike "on a mosque" was on an outer compound wall, which there were insurgents actively using for cover to fire out of -- soon as you turn a building into a combat zone (_ANY_ building) it becomes a legitimate military target.  Trying to use a mosque for cover is cowardly and just trying to make your opponant look bad.   The people who turned it into a military target by using it to shoot from should be the ones looking bad

"Women and children" -- you know women are sometimes combatants - there is a nice AP photo of an all opressins-garbed-out woman holding a HK up in the air.   In somalia little kids would sometimes retreive fallen RPGs, etc and occasionally use them.  Soon as they touch that weapon they become a combatant

[Gank]

The US army has said no bodys were recovered from the mosque

And heres one of your "combatants"

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/rdonlyres/8CB7C17E-F69E-48A2-8034-DEA425192815/33968/1.JPG

You could just say people get caught up in the crossfire, trying to justify their deaths is just sick

I'm not sure that kind of image is appropriate to be directly linked. Anyone who wants to look at the link is free to do so. //Kalfireth

[Kazan]

indeed - peopel get caught in the crossfire

certain terrorists are also known to use children has human shields, or to recover dropped weapons (recovering dropped weapons makes them a combatant technically)



In short: collateral damage _HAPPENS_, you know it's the insurgents who didn't wait patiently and see if we would actually leave like we promised and picked up guns and started shooting

[Rictor]

Well, isn't collateral damage just a nice fix-it-all excuse. 99% of the time, when innocents are killed, they just say "collateral damage, our bad" and expect it goes away. Sorry, but I don't see the difference betweem intended casualties and accidental ones.

Yes, on a theoretical level, you're a *bit* less guilty, but its still a human life. If you kill more people by accident than most militant organizations are capable of doing on pupose, don't you think its time to re-evaluate your procedures?

[Kazan]

rictor: you clearly don't know the first freaking thing about war --- your entire post is basically talking out of your arse

[Rictor]

And do you know about war? Please enlighten me.

Heres my basic theory: whoever kills the most innocents is the worse criminal.

why is that not a good rule? Why should the US (or whoever) be excused for collateral damage? No one ever intends to run over a person with their car, but when you do you are still guilty, even though it was an accident.

[ionia23]

An unfortunately truth about war now is it's no longer a case of two armies meeting on a battlefield, and whomever is left standing wins.  Now it's in cities where you can't tell combatant from non-combatant until they are shooting at you.

US Military defines "victory" on two principles.  1. Were our objectives accomplished, 2. How few non-combatants did we kill in the process?

Arguing over "should've done this/should've done that" is merely exasperating.  Some of us knew invading Iraq was a bad idea in the first place, some thought it was good then and disagree now, some are stalwart in their support to this day.

So all "should'ves" aside, what should be done now?

[ionia23]

Originally posted by Gank
The US army has said no bodys were recovered from the mosque

And heres one of your "combatants"

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/rdonlyres/8CB7C17E-F69E-48A2-8034-DEA425192815/33968/1.JPG

You could just say people get caught up in the crossfire, trying to justify their deaths is just sick

Again, direct linking removed. //Kalfireth

I have to comment on this little piece of propaganda.  I noticed you conveniently left out pictures of the charred bodies from the Fallujah incident.

One can criticize the US all they want for shelling that mosque, a facility from which rockets were being fired.  What does that say about the insurgents willing to place the very people they were supposed to be protecting in harms way?

[Kazan]

i wasn't behind the war, but i am behind our troops doing their jobs and coming home alive
 

I am not going to tolerate slander against my country - whether I agree with the current administration or not

[vyper]

I'm smelling that blind patriotism again.

[Kazan]

vyper: then you need to get your nose examine

FYI: you just extremely offended me to the point i am hardly refraining from telling you to do various inpolite things