Hey, I'm back, with a little input. Maybe to round this discussion off, cause alot of what both sides are arguing on is complete heresay... The video itself shows some guys out in a field, some of you say they must be terrorists, and some of you say farmers. First off, a helicopter is not dispatched to an area without some sort of pre flight brief as to what they might encounter during the flight. The fact that this video was taken during the war itself last spring makes any argument over these peoples legal rights just squabbling. Now, since that might be cleared up, there are two distinct differences between peacetime law, and the laws of war, mostly governing engagement with an armed enemy. If you want a lesson on that it won't be here, but I'm going to tell you all how it works. In one of my earlier responses I stated the fact that there were prior mortar attacks that were coming from the area that these Iraqis were in. With that intelligence a threat was identified. A mission was dispatched in order to meet and identify the threat. Since this was during combat operations, on both sides, the right to trial by a jury of your peers, well, that doesn't happen. It's a war and ther are seperate laws governing our actions. The trucks... Thos types of trucks were commonplace during the war for transporting troops and weapons, you see the Iraqi army was not anywhere near what the US and British armies were as to the uniformity of the equipment they used. Saying that the army itself was very unorganized, but it still was an army. These facts are quite obvious when you look back at all the desertions and surrenders that took place during the war. We, i.e. American soldiers, Marines, Seamen, don't have a bloodlust, and we don't go around blindly killing everything that moves, or even looks suspicious. That's why so many of us have been killed on gate security and other types of guard posts. Somalia was different, we were there as part of a UN sanctioned peace keeping force, it was not a war. Currently the US and other countries are occupying Iraq as a peacekeeping for in order to rebuild and stabilize the country. Nowadays when you hear of an Iraqi civilian being killed it usually isn't from a member of our military. As illustrated by a mortar attack that happened last week, the Insurgents mortard an Iraqi neoghborhood, killing Iraqis. The insurgents couldn't give a fuck about the Iraqi's, cause they themselves are not Iraqi's at all. Stated earlier, these people are recruited by these clerics, for their own personal means of taking some sort of control over their region of the country. Before Iraq was even a country it was a scattered quilt of tribal kingdoms if you will... Ala Middle age England, Europe for that matter. Constantly at war, and what your seeing today is the resurgency of that train of thought in these radical muslim clerics. I can truthfully state that the majority of the Iraqi civilian populous does NOT want this, because it only brings more death and chaos to the region. Arguing over polls done by some periodical is pointless. The people attacking the infrastructure that we've protected, and the troops themselves are a small percentage of the country's populous as opposed to the ones that want a peaceful country where they can finally lead a safe, secure, and happy life. If you want my opinion, 9/11 wasn't the biggest reason we attacked Iraq, that's why we're still in Afghanistan and the surrounding countries. We invaded Iraq with the expressed reason to oust Hussein, and no one can say that wasn't a good thing for the people of Iraq. Today we're there rebuilind Iraq into something better than it ever was. Do not argue as to who are WE to say it's better, until you lived in a country where you could be murdered in the street over an opinion you made, or tortured because you were friends with someone who opposed the leaser, AND enjoyed it! We can discuss this for years, and believe me it will be done by some, but, what's done is done and there's no going back. We did what we did because no one else felt they could. That might seem wrong, but if no one is willing to stand up for what they see as right and good, then they've failed themselves and the entire world. We came to Iraq and it will be a better place. I couldn't give a shit about the WMD's. I knew when we went there that that wasn't the real reason for going, it was so much more. Whatever, I'm out of thoughts on this for now.
