They do understand fear and fear is what we should be providing. Absolutely - they should be executed.
Very well said. Let's get the fear factor going . . . ASAP! Execute these bastards! FAST - - but painfully!!
Posted on 11/23/2003 1:27:33 PM PST by areafiftyone
MOSUL, Iraq - Iraqi teenagers dragged the bloody bodies of two American soldiers from a wrecked vehicle and pummeled them with concrete blocks Sunday, witnesses said, describing a burst of savagery in a city once safe for Americans. Another soldier was killed by a bomb and a U.S.-allied police chief was assassinated.
The U.S.-led coalition also said it grounded commercial flights after the military confirmed that a missile struck a DHL cargo plane that landed Saturday at Baghdad International Airport with its wing aflame.
Nevertheless, American officers insisted they were making progress in bringing stability to Iraq (news - web sites), and the U.S.-appointed Governing Council named an ambassador to Washington — an Iraqi-American woman who spent the last decade lobbying U.S. lawmakers to promote democracy in her homeland.
Witnesses to the Mosul attack said gunmen shot two soldiers driving through the city center, sending their vehicle crashing into a wall. The 101st Airborne Division said the soldiers were driving to another garrison.
About a dozen swarming teenagers dragged the soldiers' bodies out of the wreckage and beat them with concrete blocks, the witnesses said.
"They lifted a block and hit them with it on the face," Younis Mahmoud, 19, said.
Another teenager, Bahaa Jassim, said some looted the vehicle of weapons, CDs and a backpack.
"They remained there for over an hour without the Americans knowing anything about it," he said. "I ... went and told other troops."
Television video showed the soldiers' bodies splayed on the ground as U.S. troops secured the area. One victim's foot appeared to have been severed.
The frenzy recalled the October 1993 scene in Somalia, when locals dragged the bodies of Marines killed in fighting with warlords through the streets.
In Baqouba, just north of Baghdad, insurgents detonated a roadside bomb as a 4th Infantry Division convoy passed, killing one soldier and wounding two others, the military said.
In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt confirmed the Mosul deaths but refused to provide details.
"We're not going to get ghoulish about it," he said.
The savagery of the attack was unusual for Mosul, once touted as a success story in sharp contrast to the anti-American violence seen in Sunni Muslim areas north and west of Baghdad.
In recent weeks, however, attacks against U.S. troops have increased in Mosul, raising concerns the insurgency is spreading.
Simultaneously, attacks have accelerated against Iraqis considered to be supporting Americans — such as policemen and politicians working for the interim Iraqi administration.
On Sunday, gunmen killed the Iraqi police chief of Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, and his bodyguard and driver, American and Iraqi officials said. No further details were released.
The assassination occurred one day after suicide bombers struck two police stations northeast of Baghdad within 30 minutes, killing at least 14 people. Gunmen on Saturday also killed an Iraqi police colonel protecting oil installations in Mosul.
Elsewhere, Iraqi police said six U.S. Apache helicopter gunships blasted marshland after insurgents fired four rocket-propelled grenades at the American military garrison at the city's northern end. One Iraqi passer-by was killed in the air attack, police said.
In Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded at an oil compound, injuring three American civilian contractors from the U.S. firm Kellogg Brown & Root. The three suffered facial cuts from flying glass, U.S. Lt. Col. Matt Croke said.
KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, also has a significant presence at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, which was rocketed by insurgents Friday, wounding one civilian.
"We all know that Americans are being threatened," Croke said.
Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad that witnesses saw two surface-to-air missiles fired Saturday at a cargo plane operated by the Belgium-based package service DHL as it left for Bahrain.
The plane was the first civilian airliner hit by insurgents, who have shot down several military helicopters with shoulder-fired rockets.
DHL and Royal Jordanian, the only commercial passenger airline flying into Baghdad, immediately suspended flights on orders of the coalition authority.
Despite the ongoing violence, U.S. officials insisted the occupation was going well.
"If you look at the accomplishments of the coalition since March of this year, it has been enormous," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Tikrit.
Pace is touring Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq.
Also Sunday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said veteran Washington lobbyist Rend Rahim Francke was appointed Iraq's ambassador to the United States. Francke, an Iraq native who has spent most of her life abroad, led the Iraq Foundation, a Washington-based pro-democracy group, and has helped plan Iraq's transition from Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s rule.
The appointment will renew the diplomatic ties between Washington and Baghdad severed in 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
I don't like finding about more U.S. deaths in Iraq every time I check the news, but that's the reality of our times. Whenever I learn about one of my countrymen dying in battle, it feels like I've been smacked in the face with a two by four. Needless to say, my virtual face looks pretty damn ugly right now.
But I don't want to be cut off from the truth, and the truth is that this is a painful, costly and vital mission that must not fail. I'll be damned if I ever lose sight of that, or forget how crucial the work of our troops is in defending my homeland.
I have a problem with the way things are being handled in Iraq, but it is not the same problem leftists have. My problem is the realization that we should not be trying to win a popularity contest in Iraq, which apparently is our goal based on our actions there.
U.S. troops being forbidden to fly our nation's flag? I will never agree with such utter nonsense. It's a disgrace, an insult to those sworn to defend our flag and the nation it represents, and a crime against those soldiers who are denied their sacred right to die under the colors of their country.
We are in Iraq to impose a new government by force, not by acclamation. After all, Saddam Hussein won 100% of the vote in the last election, a fine example of "democracy in action", and we are there overturning the "will of the people" by such euphemistic standards.
As in past wars, including those in Europe, the west Pacific and more recently in Afghanistan, we are in Iraq to neutralize a dangerous enemy and convert that enemy to an ally. We have done it before, and we'll do it again as many times as we must. We have no other choice except our own destruction.
In the Middle East, nice guys do indeed finish last, and become the targets of opportunity for every bad guy or would-be bad guy in the region, a description which includes a huge number of people.
From a strategic standpoint, I believe our forces are making a crucial mistake in Iraq: we are trying to be liked. This is the wrong approach. As things stand, the Iraqi people fear Saddam's loyalists and Al Qaeda more than they fear American troops. This leads to disrespect, which leads to contempt, which leads to mobs dragging the bodies of U.S. troops through the streets.
Every incident where U.S. troops are killed demands ruthless reprisals, informed and directed by top-notch intelligence. The U.S. Constitution applies within the borders of the United States, not to foreign war zones. Swift military tribunals and public executions must reign supreme until Iraq establishes its sovereignty and is able to stand on its own. This can all be accomplished with brutal efficiency without violating the Geneva or Hague conventions, and the alternative is not only more U.S. casualties in Iraq, but possible mission failure.
If U.S. leaders and military commanders fail in Iraq because they were too nice or politically correct, I will never forgive them, and teach my children and their children to curse their names. Do not abandon the needs of our nation for your own vanity and ambitions, lest you earn and incur the undying wrath of your countrymen.
Iraq, and the world, must come to fear the U.S. military, not love it. While we may be Iraq's liberators, we must make sure that once our troops are gone, Iraq will never want to see them return for any reason. We must ensure that the prospect of American troops returning to Iraq is far less desirable than a return to Baathist totalitarianism. And that means we must be even meaner and nastier than the Baathists.
No one, anywhere, should come to favor the presence of American troops over solving their own problems, lest we be drawn into endless conflict leading to our ultimate ruin.
My advice is a bitter prescription, especially for a people we wish to have as allies, but history shows that our best allies are those whom we have defeated soundly and indisputably in battle. That truth may be unpalatable to some who are ignorant of history and prefer fantasy to fact, but it is nonetheless the truth, against which all contrary opinion is irrelevant.
Even our closest allies, in the end, should fear our wrath. Otherwise, they will themselves eventually become enemies, and possibly our masters.
It is long past time that we demonstrate beyond contention that contempt for the U.S. is not only unprofitable, but fatal. This means doing things we'd rather not do, including lining thugs, rapists and murderers up against walls and killing them. Once such beasts are either cowed or exterminated, then, and only then, our mission becomes feasible and our nation more secure.
Having established ourselves as a strong and resolute force for justice that cannot to be opposed by any means, we can move on and rid the world of the kind of savage scum that murder women and children simply for being women and children.
President Bush, I urge you, no, I beg you to change our military policy. Please, for the sake of our warriors, their families and all Americans, please teach all enemies of the United States to fear our troops!
| Warning | Warriors Eyes Only | Japanese Army's Atrocities |
Yup.
And a daisycutter display just outside of town.
Two different incidents I think
Per the following Fox News Report, I think it's the same incident. Please, God, let there be only two casualties rather than four so treated....
Probably the original perpetrators used knives; those who later came upon the American bodies used whatever was at hand.
Excellent.
This Administration is hell bent on wanting these people to be our friends and it is convinced it can build a country in our likeness. That's impossible and will never happen.
Goofy crank is a start.
There it is.
Post of the Year!
That's because you don't fit into the new order. You know, this one world, great Wal-Mart economy, where protecting the borders in some piece of sh*t third world country 7,000 miles away is more inportant than protecting our very own borders....
That is in fact precisely what I am doing at this moment. I live in the second largest city in New Mexico. We are 40 miles from the Mexican border. Local government is viley corrupt, Police protection is for the few families out of thousands that are tied in to the local Democrat elite and we live inside a six foot fence with alarms, security lights, a barky dog and long guns near every door and window because we are surrounded by thugs, gangs. drug dealers and assorted other illegal aliens.
Bring you money on down and retire in the sunny southwest.
carpio
They do understand fear and fear is what we should be providing. Absolutely - they should be executed.
Very well said. Let's get the fear factor going . . . ASAP! Execute these bastards! FAST - - but painfully!!
If U.S. leaders and military commanders fail in Iraq because they were too nice or politically correct, I will never forgive them, and teach my children and their children to curse their names. Do not abandon the needs of our nation for your own vanity and ambitions, lest you earn and incur the undying wrath of your countrymen.
Your ignoring "POS" countries like this, that harbored terrorists such as saddam's Iraq, is a major cause of 3,000 of your countryman dying on 9/11.
Oh that's right Joe has to have a good rant without thinking, what else is new.
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