If your a farmer and your driving your tractor, harvesting your crops. And someone chooses to ignore the multitude of signs posted throughout the field that read, "!!!!!!!WARNING!!!!!!! TRACTOR COMING THROUGH FIELD. DO NOT ENTER. IF YOU HAVE ALREADY ENTERED PLEASE LEAVE. IT IS DANGEROUS TO STAY IN THIS FIELD" would you be a murderer if you accidentally harvested the guy along with your crop of corn, since the corn is so tall and its hard to see people from all the way up in your tractor. After all, that is why you posted those signs, because you know the corn is so tall and you cant see people from all the way up in your tractor. Are you still a murderer?

Maybe if you knew that in the process of harvesting your corn you were going to be killing several people. I doubt there is any precident for mass corn harvest deaths. Its really just a matter of how one thinks. It is a concious choice whether or not to harvest the corn. And while I do have a right to harvest my corn I would choose an alternate means in order to avoid ending anyones life.

[quote=cybrsamurai]
Art here are your definitions:
To kill brutally or inhumanly. - I think flying a plane into buildings and crushing and burning people to death qualifies here. Same for collateral damage.
[/qoute]
mmmmmmmmm, no, your reasoning here is kinda like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It might fit, but it's not right.


Well, assuming your ****ing superamn, and and dont die after smoking a half a pound of PCP.......:D
.....IME, If you hurt/kill someone while under the influence of shrooms, that would not be considdered or tried as murder. With halucinagens in particular, if you have a good lawyer, you might even get off as temperary insanity.


no, that would be vehecular manslaughter


no you would get criminal negligence or involountary manslaughter, not murder

what did i say?

That's just it. We don't know. if we did, colateral damage and friendly fire wouldn't happen.

Art you are just wrong on every account of your legality. If you want i can find cases for each.

We know there will be collateral damage.

I was responding to "this is really war. and in war there will be calateral damage. thats just life..." Callous, don't you think? I don't see how it can't offend 9/11 families. They took "collateral damage" in this war of terror (declared loud and clear by both sides well before 9/11), did they not? If we deny 9/11 caused collateral damage by insisting everyone rippled by a military action is a target, then our generals may as well just shut their eyes and stick pins in a spinning globe. Anyway, superart has explained himself, or not.

About moral equivalence. Well. Without first holding others to basic equality with oneself, and then rating their acts against one's own standards (or acts), how does one pass judgement? Do you "just know"? Does a little voice tell you? No, especially the worst of men deserve real justice in all its terrible comprehension of their place among us. You can't weigh them in isolation. Scales of Justice, you know? As it is we're helping them evade justice, and die not like judged human beings, but like lions, thanks to the moral cowardice of those who evade the scales themselves.

"Don't attempt to make a moral equivalence." Now you tell me why not, Lothar5150.
But sovereign countries must allow foreign fighters, in the name of Freedom and Democracy? Revolutionary invaders plowing through borders for causes other than Freedom and Democracy are the bad guys?
300,000 Sunnis out of Falluja will not make it to the local polling stations, or they will boycott the elections, but that will be their choice. Voting with their feet. :D Let's see if other Sunni cities "choose" not to participate, despite the best military efforts to convince them. Watch this unfold.

Wouldn't it be easier to employ specially constructed "stress position" polling booths in just the pro-Ba'ath party areas? This way voters could more simply "choose" whether or not to participate, and go back to their normal lives. This would cost little to all concerned, and, as you say, would not make the process illegitimate because the electorate had a "choice". No "WTF" please. I'm curious to see how this computes.
You wanted to stop (unfavourable) propaganda broadcast from the hospitals, especially that bandied by liberal media. Neutralise just the broadcasts or neutralise the whole hospital along with staff and patients, liberal reporters, and perhaps rebels among them. Why can't you grasp this simple choice?

Let's pare it down then. Choose between sacrificing a few Americans in Iraq, vs. a few Iraqis (e.g. collateral damage). If you wish, you may imagine a crucial military objective is at stake, and one nationality or the other has to be sacrificed, civilians all. Don't deny this value. It looms over every strategic decision and a good many combat decisions too. Who is less expendable? The American or the Iraqi? If you answer just one of my questions, answer that one.
"In what might mark the beginning of a major offensive to reclaim Fallujah, Iraqi special forces stormed the main hospital on the western edge of the city overnight, blindfolding some people and kicking down doors. No shots were fired."

...

"Several hundred Iraqi troops were dispatched into Fallujah's main hospital after U.S. forces sealed off the area. The troops held about 50 men of military age inside the hospital, but about half were later freed.

According to The AP, Dr. Salih al-Issawi, head of the hospital, said he had asked U.S. officers to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the injured but they refused.

"The American troops' attempt to take over the hospital was not right because they thought that they would halt medical assistance to the resistance," he said by telephone. "But they did not realize that the hospital does not belong to anybody, especially the resistance."

OK. And now the hospital's been taken. Combatants are defending the hospital. According to you, this sets conditions for "an old propaganda trick". I can just hear the suicide bomber's spokesman, after that hospital gets blown to bricks with a car bomb: "Look this is an old propaganda trick. Shift the use of a hospital to military use and then call us bad guys when we take it out."

Get it? In your confused efforts to rationalise this, you apologise for barbarism. I don't like them either, and it irks me America has become a champion of terrorist values.
This is good and I admire it. Truly.
I'm pretty sure you know. You understand macro-economics. You know your dollar.

You know the exit conditions.

Refer to post 473


If it comes down to an Iraqi civilian or a US troop, I would chooses the troop. He volountered for the job, knowing the risk, and accepted the risk. A choice between an American civilian and an Iraqi civilian, I would choose the Iraqi civilian. Just like if you asked that same question to someone in Iraq, they would say they would prefer an American civilian gets killed over an Iraqi. That's human nature.

We secured the hospital w/o firing a shot. What's the problem? Why are you complaining?

How the hell do you know who this Dr. Salih al-Issawi character is? For all you know, he might just be blowing smoke up your ass. Just cus he's a doctor, doesnt mean he's a good guy. Dr. Mendalev was a medical doctor, for all you know, this guy may be no different.

They most likely had their own medical personel attending to the sick/wounded and did not want the locals to get in the way.

It is the policy of the US armed forces to provide medical care to both our own troops as well as any POWs we manage to capture.


once again, they are not defending the hospital. They are using it as a staging ground to launch a military offensive from. Once a hospital is used in this fashion, it is no longer just a hospital, but a military base. We do not use our hospitals in such a manner. Not even military hospitals. We have dedicated military bases that we use to launch our military offensives from.

You are very confused about the real world :rolleyes:

Watch the Nicolas Berg video and then tell me who the terrorist are.

Go for it. I will bet you dollars to dougnuts though, that if you manage to find it, the guy was using a public defendent. Under such circumstances, the prosecuter wont even charge you with murder unless your'e black and using a public defendant, cus they know with any halfway descent lawyer that shit wont fly.


We know there will be collateral damage because we know that we wont know how to avoid it. If we knew how to avoid them, we would. If for no other reason, bombs and rockets are extremely expensive. We don't want to waste them on militareily insegnificant targets if we can help it. Think about it. Why would the US want to blow up a peacefull hispital where civilians get medical care and has no military value?

read it again
focus on "intent"
you failed logic (here anyway)
all killers = all murderers; shit logic

and hey, why not address the other questions ?

Well, it finally happened.

BillA has snapped.

He's actually having a flame war with himself.

I suppose we should have seen this coming:shrug:



;) :D

brutal, inhuman, etc???

how do we know when something is "brutal"???

[argument1]
Killing jews is wrong ... but that's not what Nazis believed and if everyone on earth was a nazi, we'd be saying that killing is wrong unless you're killing jews ... think about that for a moment.

BTW, I'm a jew by ancestry (my ancestors were/are jews, but I don't consider myself one)
[/argument1]

[argument2]
Who is a terrorist??? In my definition, a "terrorist" is a person who "terrorises" ... in views of some people "WE" (americans) are terrorists because we are trying to change someone else's way of life or we hate something about them ...

Remember the 100 years war? All christians hated muslims for one reason and one reason alone, it was because they "controlled" jerusalem.

Today the situation is very similar, except that the muslims hate the jews for the same thing. One thing they are forgetting is that the epileptic ferret who founded the whole religion was saved by jews in Medina ... in I believe 13th century (or was it 7th, I don't remember exactly), so if anything muslims should be thanking jews who were in what we call today the middle east WAY before muslims ever appeared and WAY before christians became a giant cult.
[/argument2]

[argument3]
A cult is a religion and a religion is a cult. Look in the Merriam Webster dictionary and you will see they are describing the same thing.
[/argument3]

It's interesting that you should say that, since modern day christianity is really just a compendium of beliefs from many different ancient cults.

My points weren't explicit.

Firstly, that the hospital was secured by US and other foreign fighters without firing a shot is a pretty good indication Fallujan rebels weren't occupying it. We understand those guys to be die hards and suicidal even; there would have been shots fired if they were there. Plainly the rebels decided beforehand to respect the neutrality of the hospital.

Secondly, when I talk about soldiers actually in the hospital, I quote the US commander who says his men are "defending" it. Embedded reporters are now at the hospital with their military handlers; it's become "secured" turf. The offensive proceeds onwards. It is difficult not to see this hospital as a staging point for attacks - not by Fallujans but by the foreign fighters pouring into Falluja.

You say, "We do not use our hospitals in this manner." and that's true. The Falluja General Hospital doesn't belong to Americans. Neither are Fallujans trying to "secure" your hospitals.
I'm sure we agree the thugs who killed that guy are terrorists. However, another's wrong does not make one right.

The worst terrorists are those who use horrible acts against civilians to advance a bloody cause. I have not watched the execution video. Are you going to offer me a link, so I'll feel better about the terror war?

I am sure if you Google the kids name you can find a link...by the way it is not an execution, it is unambiguously murder. I will warn you in advance, you will not feel right for a very long time once you watch it. However, sometimes people like you need a does of hard reality. So that you understand that the only thing standing between you and the fate that befell Nick Burg are the Marines and Iraqi Soliders fighting in Falujah right now.

I think we're speaking different languages. My last question - if you'd like me to taste terror - was rhetorical. No, I prefer not feed my own fear and hatred thank you.

Some farmers grow opium poppies. Then there must be processors, packagers, distributors. Then the pushers on the street. Then finally the consumers. No thanks. I trade many things with many people, but I'm not in the business of trading gore and horror with Iraqi teenagers.

I guess you feel the world is a nasty place, and people want to hurt you. Nick Berg, one out of six billion, embodies the fate I'm sure to suffer if not for the vigour of US artillery abroad. I understand where you're coming from.

That's all.

Yes, I speak plainly. I don’t attempt to use outlandish metaphors in order to make myself sound intelligent.

Kobuchi, I don’t "feel" the world is a nasty place...I know it is nasty place based on experience. While, most people I have meet on this planet are good, others will not think twice about doing you or your family harm. Honestly, you speak like someone who has never left the safety of BC. Your problem here is your assumptions about people. Most people like you think that all people are essentially good. What you should understand is that most people are essentially good but not all.

L5
I disagree
I believe it is the veneer of civilization that restrains some, others require the inhibition of police on-call, others do what they think they can get away with

remove effective/honest police from the equation and there is a huge shift in the size of the groups towards lawlessness

I do not think that people are 'good', I think they can choose to act 'good' - a very different thing

I use term 'good' but don’t think that means people don't do things based on self-interest. I personally think that everyone operates on some level of self-interest. For 'good' people, self-interest is avoiding guilt from brought on by empathy. 'Bad' people often lack the empathy or have it severely suppressed in some way. The latter group will need the restraint of law or simply will not care at all about law. However, I think that most humans fall into the former group. I’ve been and seen humans at their most base animal level, people jump on grenades to avoid the guilt of letting a down a buddy…not to survive.

....I think this is a philosophical point best discussed over beers ;)

aiiiii
more than one I suspect
Sat it is

Good one. :)
Did you know that, once, Falluja was a peaceful city? There was no insurgency. Americans could go where they pleased without being shot at. Wandering in the markets and so forth. Some marines decided to set up base in a conveniently empty schoolhouse: they piled the desks outside as a roadblock, stationed guns at the windows. Do you remember what happened when parents and teachers brought the children there to protest, at the start of Iraq's school year?

Some would think those actions prudent. Sound "force protection" at every fateful step.

Did you know that Fallujan rebels are now believed to be mostly hiding, waiting for soldiers to enter buildings? So now the orders, according to the troops interviewed, are to fire into houses before entering. Every house still standing must be raided in this fashion. No choice, because Falluja just gets nastier by the day.

I think the whole chain of events in Falluja guided by insecurity and cowardice. I speak plainly too.

WTF does growing opium have anything to do with selling DVDs of beheadings?

i can't even properly respond top that post.

All i can say is, wtf?

WTF?



However, on a somewhat unrelated note, since you bring up opium poppies, my grandma makes a realy really really good strudle out of poppy seeds. Damn good. Deeeeelllliiiiiiccccoussssss!!!!
:D

Did the school look like this, I'm sure it did. Saddam piled weapons at all the elementary schools. The locals wanted us to occupy this school if for no other reason to keep the children out of it...There where three kids at the local hospital who had blown off their hands playing with mortar rounds.

http://home.socal.rr.com/lotharspub/...-at-school.gif

That’s normal clearing procedure for urban warfare. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. You don't know the square root of jack. This operation is actually going allot better than anyone expected.

The Marines (make sure you capitalize it next time...it is one of the few actual titles in United States) and the Iraqis attempting to secure the town right now are all heroes.

BillA's transactional analysis could explain it better. I see a big demand in America for evil abroad. I was trying to illustrate how packagers , distributors, and pushers are essential to the trade, and most essential of all are end consumers who use the product to feel superior or victimised or to focus aggression or even trick congress - like the heroin junkie this is id appeal, reason in tow. This assumes people naturally need these feelings and unwittingly find safe objects (e.g. foreign) to dwell them in. This is a weird perspective, I know, and only one.

On the other side we have Iraqis feeling righteous, in precisely the same way, because they're looking at an Abu Ghraib pic of a man with electric wires clipped to his figs. They can make this to mean all American soldiers are bad guys, so they themselves must be the good guys. A "pusher" would call such material a hard dose of reality, say I won't feel right for days after seeing it, but then learn to appreciate the fighters protecting me from, or avenging, such a fate. Hey, maybe it'll stir me up enough to go fight those devils.

The currency, hate, just recycles and escalates between the "sides". To an outsider this exchange looks cooperative. A joint venture.
Wow. Over half of Iraq's citizens are under 15. So then just the ratio of weapons piled up at elementary schools to Iraqi soldiers must have been enormous. And that would be just a fraction of all the Army's weapons. Why did the Iraqi army have so many more weapons than they could possibly use?

Anyway, that's great you helped keep the kids from playing with weapons. :)

Did you get to destroy any?
Try cajoling a toddler off the road while balancing a sleeping baby in one hand and collapsing a stroller with the other. On second thought, better stay in your "real world".
Good job. Rescuing those people does make them heroes. Spread it all around. But how does that not make their methods essentially cowardly, just the same? A soldier putting his own safety ahead of civilians is cowardly, right?

I checked what you said about clearing buildings, and it appears the procedure in Fallujah is to pump the house full of metal, then blast an alternate entry though the wall, because there might be a fighter hiding in there. My apologies if that's just normal, common knowledge. Every house gets this treatment, and since fighters are now popping up in previously cleared neighbourhoods, I guess a lot of buildings will be cleared repeatedly.

This is for the safety of American soldiers. At some point, considering one's own safety at the expense of others becomes cowardice, whether it's one soldier betraying his platoon or one nation betraying the human race. Crossed the line there, don't you think?

Note I'm not suggesting organised cowardice is a poor way to win battles.

umm, its not common practice for US soldiers to vaporize Iraqi "figs" with a car battery.

It is common practice for insurgents to brutally behead civilian hostages.

Neither is common practice, really. How many rebels are there in Iraq, and how many beheadings have there been? A dozen? You have far more gruesome murders committed by Americans upon each other, back home, but in the western style we're accustomed to: strangulation, rape/murder *yawn*, gun in the mouth and so on. This is an expression of American culture, and sharply characterises it to outsiders (I can speak for the Japanese perception, at least), though it's not "common practice" at all. I'm talking about perceptions.

Apparently some rebels believe American soldiers are torturers. Listen to this:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In areas controlled by U.S. forces, loudspeakers mounted on Humvees urged that "all fighters in Fallujah should surrender, and we guarantee they will not be killed or insulted."

From a loudspeaker on a mosque still controlled by insurgents, the fighters replied: "We ask the American soldiers to surrender and we guarantee that we will kill and torture them."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Detect cynicism in that reply? So of course we know those people won't be brutalised and their homes pillaged, if they surrender, but they're stuck fighting under the perception American soldiers mean to do evil.

And guess what? Americans are fighting too, and trashing the lives of countless civilians, for their own equally self-serving perceptions.

So are you implying that these events are part of normal everyday society? Or just normal American society? I think you need to do a little study of your own history before you start off on others.

And I think you should stop speaking for your countrymen, you can only speak of YOUR perception.

And perception can only be as accurate as the information that creates it. If you limit yourself to one-sided media, you will have a one-sided perception.

Consider the source: Did these rebels get tortured, or perhaps see torture occuring? Maybe they heard it from a reliable source, like uncle akbar's sons' wifes' best friend's brothers' mistresses' fathers' former roomate who swears by allah that every word she said is true.

Do you have any idea how biased any information out of Iraq is, on both sides. you must take info from both sides, run it through a bullshit detector, and then start discussing.

Kobuchi, You can disagree with how things are done, but you can't begin to comment on why things are done. Get your head out of your ass, check your sources for bias as stringently as you check us for it, and take a moment to step back and see the overall scheme. You may still disagree, but perhaps you can eliminate the 'pop media' ramblings shit.

No. I'm saying we all like to judge a group by its most spectacular acts, even if by the rare extremist. The Iraqi resistence (broadly speaking that's the bulk of the population) cuts off heads as "common practice", for example. I'm saying there is a great hunger in America to find evil abroad. This is a problem.
We could be agreeing, but you're determined the foreigner must be at odds.

The rest of the argument I roughly agree with, and includes points I've made already:
I can comment on why things are done. You can't make an enemy of me; you'll need to look elsewhere.

If there are messages being broadcast from mosques controlled by insurgents saying that any soldier who surrenders will be killed and tortured, then that is their official policy. Then that makes it common practice for the rebels to kill and torture soldiers that have surrendered. Thank you for validating my point.

I would disagree. Most americans have been living in a dream world since the fall of the soviets. I prefer not to use terms like 'evil'; its a bit too indefinable for my tastes. But in the context of your reply, we are not hungry to find evil; instead we are opening our eyes to its (pre)existence and realizing that we havent been taking care of things as much as we may have thought we were.

The though occurred to me that you could be an expatriate, an emigree, or a normal citizen. I was not directing my comments at you because you are any of the above. I was referring to you because you were speaking for your ENTIRE country, instead of just for you. You of all people would be more aware of your local opinions, but I have a hard time imagining that all of Japan is as firmly against this war given your militarys current involvment. Your prime minister would be out of a job very quickly if that were the case.

I misspoke. I meant to say you can't have an absolutist opinion that your view of events is the correct one, IE why things are done. I think our differences lie in what we consider biased. I am not trying to make a enemy out of you.

And since this is basically boiling down to the 'perception is reality' arguement, I'll get my first stab out there. Perception is only reality once you stop accepting information.