Posted on 05/29/2006 4:46:05 PM PDT by Coop
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In the meantime, my column had been posted on a well-known right-wing American website, 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".
A few of his co-posters rushed to the website of Murtha's Republican challenger Diana Irey to donate campaign funds.
The fact that this murdering troop has the support of even those 119 posters is worrisome. Surely, nobody should defend the indefensible based on some false notion of patriotism.
Military personnel should act as ambassadors for their country and behave according to international rules of law and the Geneva Conventions that were drawn up as a result of atrocities committed during the Second World War. There should be a difference between real soldiers and ruthless thugs with public opinion the final arbiter.
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.
Does the donning of a uniform render its wearer impervious to justice? The Nuremberg trials indicate not...
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com
We have a couple of troops that lose it under very stressful conditions and the next thing you know US fighting forces are no better then NAZI storm troopers.
It says more about the media than it does about those serving.
The investigation isn't over and this clown has them tried, convicted and is demanding they be hung. What a disgusting excuse for a human being.
I hope it was good for Ms. Heard too... ;)
"Roya Tolouee, 40, was beaten up by Iranian intelligence agents and subjected to a horrific sexual assault when she refused to sign forced confessions. It was only when they threatened to burn her two children to death in front of her that she agreed to put her name to the documents."
Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?
Good job FReepers, getting under her skin. :)
http://www.gulfnews.com/aboutus/contact/email.html
This is linda's response page.....please FREEP it!!!!!
Thank you for your best wishes. Stay healthy.
And it won't matter if they're cleared: in the tiny, twisted, knife-edge-narrow minds of Heard and her ilk, they will always be guilty and the military will be guilty of a coverup.
"The fact that this murdering troop ..."
Excuse me??? They haven't even been charged yet you b!tch.
I have been lied to so many times by your kind, that I will wait for those "facts" before I ever call these men murderers.
Exactly. I've been saying all morning this whole thing reminds me of the Duke U BS.
Oh yeah! That's a cottage industry. There are websites that function only to whine incessantly about Free Republic. There are crazies whose entire life is about whining incessantly about Free Republic. These people are called kooks!!! :)
Yeah. In a manner reminiscent to Jenjiz Kahn. We've heard it all before.
God bless our troops!
The more I read about this the more I've come to believe that Muthra and the rest are heading towards an "awf**k" of massive proportions.
First they denied that there was any sort of firefight, then then denied that there were any Marines Killed while saying that Marines simply flew off the handle because one of their own was killed,then they said that everyone was killed excution style, and it was bad real bad.
Here is why they are going to eat their words. This Marine Unit was not operating solo in less then a third of a mile away insurgents ran into a huge firefight on the same day, Let's call the accused unit group A and the firefight unit group B.
After group A was attacked by a IED they dismounted attacked the insurgents, that jives with the reports, the insurgent withdrew through a series of house where they either killed excution style the innocents or they used said innocents as human shield.
Meanwhile group B is called in to behind the insurgents to set up an ambush, some insurgents drop their weapons and try to hightail it out of dodge in a taxi they had place there before hand and are cut down.
Group A drives the remaining insurgents into group B's ambush and in the resulting intense firefight the insurgents (the real murderers) are wiped out.
All signals from this event are recorded, and all the action is within a half a mile radius of the original attack and takes place in three to five hours undrer the watchful electronic eye of a drone sent by the marine commander.
What has taken so long to decide the facts in the case is putting it into a solid argument that will destroy any reasonable doubt from the media about what happened, including video and audio presentations of what really occured.
If these charges are not true, however, Mr. Murtha's political career will not survive. And Ms. Heard will disappear from Free Republic, so her hate-filled rants will once again get little to no exposure. The accused and their loved ones can at least take some solace in that.
Where ya been? You're missing all the fun! :-D
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