Posted on 05/14/2010 3:30:56 AM PDT by tlb
May 11, 2010 — HERSH: The purpose of my [Abu Ghraib] stories was to take it out of the field and into the White House. It's not that the President or the Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld, or Bush, or Cheney, it's not that they knew what happened in Abu Ghraib. It's that they had allowed this kind of activity to happen.
And I'll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan. They're being executed on the battlefield. It's unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn't necessarily get reported. Things don't change.
What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban. You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free.
What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place. Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now.
Don’t worry - the NY Times will pick up the story and run with it!
It didn’t strike me before I hit Enter, but I believe mmflint is Michael Moore’s Youtube account.
Obama lies and people die!! Sounds good to me.
Is this surprising to anyone? Hmmm...I wonder how long these things have going on, particularly on the SpecOps side of the house...
I doubt it’s widespread, but I know it happens.
Seems to me that Hersh is living outside the real World of War with the animals we are at war with today.
He seems to want to play by rules of yore.
Hersh must wise up and understand the Taliban, Al Quaeda, terrorists no matter what they call themselves don’t play fair, and we cannot win playing other than by the equivalent of their rules.
NO WE ARE NOT LOWERING OURSELVES TO THEIR STANDARDS IMO as we aren’t out there deliberately killing innocents as they are. We are killing the murdering, raping, beheading, participant aggressors.
There’s no playing fair with the bastards. They don’t.
I’m ok with executing captured Taliban on the spot, and good on Teleprompter Jesus for looking the other way when it happens.
I just hope he doesn’t change his policy because of this revelation and doesn’t try to make an example of one of our guys for doing this.
Why would anyone believe Seymour Hersh? Isn’t this pretty much the opposite of what Marcus Luttrell said happens?
“How’s the war going?”
“We’re murdering them.”
GOOD!!!
Hersh has always tried to make our troops sound like war criminals.
Obie complained of incarceration without trial (of terror suspects). Yet under his command, unmanned drones are falling on Afghani villages - killing people without a trial. Surely some of the anonymous dead are innocents, some children. Obie (blessed be his name) cannot be openly criticized.
A couple things here:
“They’re being executed on the battlefield.”
• NOT a unique military concept in that part of the world, or anywhere else
• NOT ineffective
• NOT encouraging to non-combatants who willingly associate with combatants
• NOT confusing to the enemy
• NOT worse than the enemy hands THEIR opponents (i.e.-us)
1. Anecdotes don't equal facts.
2. If true, what's the problem?
Given the ROE, many of us here expectesd this to happen.
Warms my cold, cold heart...
War is Heck!( or so I’m told)
One of the great tradgeties of my country is that a nimrod like Seymour Hersch has access to a typewriter. His infantile moralizing has cost us a great deal of blood and treasure.
“Why would anyone believe Seymour Hersh? Isn’t this pretty much the opposite of what Marcus Luttrell said happens?”
Agreed. Sy Hersch is a known liar. He even admits that the stories are ‘anecdotal’. Surprised he didn’t just put some fake quotes in the story. He must have had an off day.
Anybody looking at the JAG proscecutions of our SpecOps guys knows that our troops are being watched VERY closely for any signs of atrocities or abuse. Now we’re supposed to take Sy Hersch’s word that our troops are committing murder?
Seymor Hirsh certainly has a strange case of equality. Obama's executing prisoners without trial is the same as Bush forcing them to wear panties on their heads?
Sy Hersh is vicously anti-military. You could make a fortune if you had a nickle for every false story he has told since Viet Nam.
SEYMOUR Hersh is a proven fabricator, and hates America.
I was only a medic so I was on the listen and learn curve, but when we practiced assaults it was to work through the objective, re-group and work back finishing everyone off.
On ambushes, after the initiation, and before leaving our ambush positions, we were to work over the site with M-60’s, at our leisure. then a whistle or command, then up and walk through killing off everyone.
Getting instruction in infantry tactics from Vietnam vets was really a wake up as to what happens if things go south for me, and the nature of the military. Killing people, preferably stunned, asleep, confused, choakng....the weaker the better.
War is heck
Maybe the tolly bons ought to take up a less dangerous profession than murdering civilians, poisoning school girls, and taunting coalition troops
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