Posted on 05/29/2006 4:46:05 PM PDT by Coop
...
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...
Kinda the way our home-grown presstitutes say ''Senator Reid'' and ''Congressman Jefferson,'' but ''Republican Congressman Tom DeLay'' and ''Republican Representative Randy Cunningham.''
No effin wonder she wants public opinion that other ''thing of wax,'' this one in the hands of the fifth-column Fourth Estate to be the final arbiter of, well, pretty much everything.
Why do you and your ilk demand "one more look" at the evidence for people on death's row that have been found guilty time and time again? Now you wish to even dismiss charges against these Marines, much less a trial.
In one interview, she says that, yes. In another interview she says she didn't see who was shooting...just the barrels of their rifles.
Here are the links to 3 different versions of Safa Younis' story:
Safa Younis (also seen spelled as Yunis) Salim.
There was one survivor, Safa Younis Salim, 13, who in an interview said she lived by faking her death. "I pretended that I was dead when my brother's body fell on me and he was bleeding like a faucet," she said.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,418464,00.html
Only 13-year-old Safa Younis lived -- saved, she said, by her mother's blood spilling onto her, making her look dead when she fell, limp, in a faint.
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060527/NEWS/605270390/1039
Twelve-year-old Safa says she survived by hiding under the bed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13053200/
Sorry to ping you again, the information was too much to put into one post.
Check out this post and please view the video to see the younger girl Eman tell the reporter that she KNEW ahead of time that the IED was going to go off, so she covered her ears!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1641124/posts?page=227#223
I reposted the links at post #464 of this thread. :-)
As are all others who send our warriors into danger and refuse to back them up.
Dear Ms. Heard,
When I flushed the toilet a little while ago I thought I'd seen the last of your kind for tonight...... unfortunately you're back...... I'll just try flushing again.
Coop, thanks for the welcome.
If "shrieking" means quoting news and asking questions, count me guilty.
By the way, did you note that Fox News host John Gibson said yesterday that he is "against massacres of covilians and cover-ups"?
Does Gibson also hate America and the Marines?
If you view this as at a murder trial, it's possible for all these things to have taken place.
Coop, my other point was about damage control. When some bad (or that looks bad) happens, the Administration should be ready to deal with it publicly. Sitting back creates ground for your political opponents.
Did you miss this or simply disagree?
No. The left is like The Devil in that it can't stand ridicule.
Mock her well.
I'd be concerned if John weren't against massacres of civilians and cover-ups.
I'm against wife beating. So stop it.
cannot the democrats give our troops the benefit of the doubt till the facts all come in...just like howard the duck dean said we must do for obl??
Not the brightest bulb in the drawer -- is she.
Dear Linda,
Sorry about your public school education, but even and 8th grader should know enough about the Geneva Conventions to know they weren't "drawn-up" as a result of anything in WW2.
Start with dictionaries and encyclopedias and work your way up.
P.S. Word of advice. Go ahead. When you need a soldier, ask for a diplomat.
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