Green Berets Face Hearing on Killing of Suspect in Afghan Village

FORT BRAGG, N.C., Sept. 17 — From his position about 100 yards away, Master Sgt. Troy Anderson had a clear shot at the Afghan man standing outside a residential compound in a village near the Pakistan border last October. When Capt. Dave Staffel, the Special Forces officer in charge, gave the order to shoot, Sergeant Anderson fired a bullet into the man’s head, killing him.

You are a phoney - you have never served this country- you have never been in harms way for this country.

No, you're right, I've never been in harm's way for the country. I am extremely grateful that others have. Even for your contributions, if you've done so. Of course, being in harm's way doesn't absolve you from the responsibility to behave like an adult -- which you're not doing.

It is also true, however, that I have served this country, and continue to do so. Combat is not the only way one may serve, after all.

Return to the leftist sites from where you come from.

Ah, there's the mindlessness I had been expecting.

I think I've explained my position well enough. I voiced a doubt. Some disagreed -- fair enough. Unlike you, some of those folks actually engaged the question. Others, like you, resorted to foolishness. Par for the course at FR.

Have a nice life, little fella.

"But at the same time, there's that 2% doubt: what if there's something real behind this? I don't think there is, but what if there is?"

I suppose if it were possible we could appoint a judge and jury to follow and monitor every soldier on the battlefield, to determine if each and every shooting in a war is 'justified'. We could call them "The Wartime Morality Inquisitors", so that folks like yourself can go to sleep peacefully each night, knowing that if any American soldier fires his weapon 'irresponsibly' or 'unlawfully', he will be summarily courtmartialed. The problem with this ridiculous concept is that when the enemy knows that each and every bullet or bomb is being unleashed only after being carefully considered through a filter of lofty morals and strict legalities, then we foolishly give that enemy a great advantage.

I don't know what world you're living in, and I doubt that you've ever been to war beyond the silver screen, because your preoccupation with this thing is borderline insanity. Those who squawk and lose sleep when a soldier shoots at the occassional target which is not a positively confirmed enemy are nothing but pimples in the arse of prosperity. The leftist media, knowing this, love to squawk and make the craven lose sleep. I suggest you try Ambien.

I don't know what world you're living in, and I doubt that you've ever been to war beyond the silver screen, because your preoccupation with this thing is borderline insanity.

Oh, I don't know. There's this post today about a tactic called "baiting," which is described as follows:

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Captain Matthew Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon is quoted as saying in a sworn statement.
"Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it," Didier continued. "If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against US forces."

While there's undoubtedly a lot more to it than this quote, it shows precisely the sort of ambiguity to which I was referring. As described, the tactic takes no account of actual intent, only perceived intent as seen from sniper distance.

Depending on the circumstances, indiscriminate use of this "baiting" tactic could certainly lead to mistakes that would seriously jeopardize our strategic position in a place like Ramadi -- so there's a practical as well as moral aspect to the issue.

Having read your posts on this thread, I don't expect you to recognize anything resembling a moral argument. But the fact is that you're making an idiotic claim -- essentially, that Americans don't and shouldn't care about whether their soldiers behave like war criminals. That's preposterous, of course. Americans do recognize moral responsibility, even in times of war, and even (perhaps especially) on the part of American soldiers. Consider the Germans at Malmedy and elsewhere who made a "necessities of war" argument -- and we tried them for it after the war, and we punished them.

I don't think these soldiers, or American soldiers in general, come remotely close to that status. But your position is that you wouldn't care, even if they did.

That's a dangerous, and stupid, position.

Welcome to Free Republic, Seabee133!!!

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FR’s Finest, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1901171/posts?page=49#49
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"Having read your posts on this thread, I don't expect you to recognize anything resembling a moral argument. But the fact is that you're making an idiotic claim -- essentially, that Americans don't and shouldn't care about whether their soldiers behave like war criminals."

Actually, I'm much more concerned about some of our citizens who act as subversives by carping on and condeming our troops. Our troops I know are great patriots so I don't worry about them beyond praying for their well being and for their victory over islamofacism. As for many of our citizens, they are not quite so brave and reliable as our troops, so it is them I worry more about, especially the ones that unconcionably, immorally and treasonously snipe at our troops.

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