I Can't Wait To Go To Iraq

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Are you supposed to ever get your equipment issue situation squared away? i.e. ditching the M16's and getting your issue weapons? This is the Army, what what was I thinking?

You mean have what we need? That would be an interesting turn of events.

On an annual training excercise in Italy a few years ago the state and the feds had an interesting dispute while we were there over who would pick up the tab for us to get back to the United States. It's always a warm fuzzy feeling when you feel that you are wanted. I dont know who ended up paying for it but we did get home.

[Sarxis]

I just heard on Fox News that this story was not true. That the soldiers were shot and killed in their car, and had some personal items stolen, but they were not dragged from the car.

No explanation why they were driving an unmarked car was given.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

...FOX reported that?

How out of character

[Patroklos]

Hello,

1.) I fail to see his wrong reason. YOU may not think econimics is a good thing to initiate conflict over, but that is after all just you. Oil econimics have alot more importance than what the US citizen pays for gas at the pumps. It effects the level of life sustained by populations worldwide. Oil price fluctuations mean I pay .03 cents more at the pumps for my trip to Atlantic City, in other places it means a country's economy fails and 1 million people starve to death. Not that I think Bush grabed for oil out of pity for the world, but national interests, especially economic, are and always have been accepted catalysts for armed conflict, despite what the self-deluding out of work acting students think (not nessecarily you MrFun, I don't know anything about you personally). And while you might think Mr Bush's only reason to attack Saddam was oil, I would contend that the attrocities of his regime oiled his thought processes more than a little bit. And remember the "allies" of Europe were not outraged because Bush attacked Iraq for oil, but because the attack canceled all the UN sanctions violating buisness deals they had there.

2.) We seen to be in agreement.

3.) I would never say that that is what you want, but that will be the effect none the less, only civilians can create a Vietnam era catastrophy. The American military can only do what they are told to, so their atrocities are YOUR attrocities (not that any have happened in Iraq). I think you understand this MrFun, but most of your activist counterparts parading in the streets do not. And becasue they don't I wouldn't be suprised if they begin to demand the restraints on the military that were in place in Vietnam, and thus a repeat.

4.) No it is not his only reason, but unfortunety he does have to cater to the throngs of dimwits that populate the country. So he chose the most popular reason and ran with it. Some things that have to be done are unpopular, and in a democracy you have to convice people to go with it. It is much like trying to get your kids to eat their vegtables.

-Pat

Oerdin, Military officers do not have the luxury of telling you the truth, what you want to here, or what they think. They tell you what they are told to say by your elected officials. Some do not believe in the fact that the officer corps at large does not have its own political motivations. As one of them I assure you of this fact, mostly because we are too busy shaking our heads at the ridculous opinions of the people we are fighting for. I don't think you really want us telling you what we truly think (officially), because such actions open the door for us to do much more.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Oerdin

...I think I will shoot first and ask questions later. If an Arab has a gun which I see or if someone fails to stop at a check point or doesn't follow a command told to him in Arabic then it is simply safer to shoot him then to let him get close and hope he isn't a suicide bomer.

That behaviour of American soldiers has repeatedly been reported in Swedish media and I personally think it will lose you the war. You might bag a few bad guys and possibly even save your own ass, but most of those you shoot will be innocent. You (Oerdin) are perhaps a little smarter and more open-minded than the average soldier and actually learn the basics of the local language, so you can make yourself understood at checkpoints, but most others don't even bother, do they? For every innocent civilian you kill, his 13 brothers and all their cousins will ask for revenge.

What's the mission of this war? According to your admin, it's not about oil. And it's not about weapons of mass destruction, as there aren't any. So the hawks have changed their mind and now call it a humanitarian mission, to establish freedom and democracy in a region totally depraved of it.

If the American mission is to liberate the Iraqi people, kicking their ass is directly counter-productive. It shows that your first priority is saving your own ass and the actual mission is only second. If saving your own ass is more important than the mission, what are you (USA) doing there in the first place?

This is of course easy for me to say, in my comfortable armchair behind my computer screen, but I was not the one who asked for this war in the first place.

[Chemical Ollie]

.

[Chemical Ollie]

Americans tend to compare Iraq with their own historic wars, but I would compare it with Afghanistan - The Sovjet invasion, that is. Both were easy military victories, followed by occupation and long, grinding guerilla wars. In the Sovjet case, it eventually drove the aggressors out. In the American case, we don't know the outcome yet.

The Russians lost about five KIA per day during ten years. The Americans have lost a little more than one soldier per day so far, but the daily average seems to increase rather than decrease. And Sovjet Union had a political system and a culture that could absorb much more casualties than USA.

[rev]

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
I just heard on Fox News that this story was not true. That the soldiers were shot and killed in their car, and had some personal items stolen, but they were not dragged from the car.

Fox's source is presumably the Pentagon, so this is a COMPLETE reversal of their stance just 24 hours ago of never commenting on the specifics of fatalities such as these. Yesterday, they were trying to spin the reports by saying they never comment and, for that reason neither should the media. It sounds to me that all they were doing was trying to avoid another Somalia situation, in which American soldiers' bodies were dragged through the streets to the delight of international television cameras.

[Chemical Ollie]

For (supposedly) neutral reporting in English, I prefer the BBC.

... upsurge in violence in the north of the country, in which two US troops were reportedly killed on Sunday by an angry lynch mob.

Eyewitnesses in Mosul, said two US soldiers were shot, then dragged from their car in broad daylight and beaten with bricks and stabbed by a group of young Iraqi men.

Some witnesses said the two soldiers had had their throats cut, but the US military would not confirm this.


"We will not be ghoulish about this," Brigadier General Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad.

"We have an ongoing investigation. It is not our policy to discuss the specifics of injuries sustained by soldiers and this is not a good place to discuss these kind of things."

The dead men, from the 101st Airborne Division, had been on patrol in Mosul, 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Baghdad.

The town had been considered fairly peaceful. But there are fears that the Iraqi insurgency is spreading northwards, widening from its stronghold in the so-called Sunni Triangle in central Iraq.

[Patroklos]

This is an active subject, so many posts before I even finished typing my last one. If I repeated anything up there sorry

-pat

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Hello,

1.) I fail to see his wrong reason. YOU may not think econimics is a good thing to initiate conflict over, but that is after all just you. Oil econimics have alot more importance than what the US citizen pays for gas at the pumps. It effects the level of life sustained by populations worldwide. Oil price fluctuations mean I pay .03 cents more at the pumps for my trip to Atlantic City, in other places it means a country's economy fails and 1 million people starve to death. Not that I think Bush grabed for oil out of pity for the world, but national interests, especially economic, are and always have been accepted catalysts for armed conflict, despite what the self-deluding out of work acting students think (not nessecarily you MrFun, I don't know anything about you personally). And while you might think Mr Bush's only reason to attack Saddam was oil, I would contend that the attrocities of his regime oiled his thought processes more than a little bit. And remember the "allies" of Europe were not outraged because Bush attacked Iraq for oil, but because the attack canceled all the UN sanctions violating buisness deals they had there.

2.) We seen to be in agreement.

3.) I would never say that that is what you want, but that will be the effect none the less, only civilians can create a Vietnam era catastrophy. The American military can only do what they are told to, so their atrocities are YOUR attrocities (not that any have happened in Iraq). I think you understand this MrFun, but most of your activist counterparts parading in the streets do not. And becasue they don't I wouldn't be suprised if they begin to demand the restraints on the military that were in place in Vietnam, and thus a repeat.

4.) No it is not his only reason, but unfortunety he does have to cater to the throngs of dimwits that populate the country. So he chose the most popular reason and ran with it. Some things that have to be done are unpopular, and in a democracy you have to convice people to go with it. It is much like trying to get your kids to eat their vegtables.

-Pat

The wrong reason that I am talking about, is the delusion that Saddam Insance actually had WMDs.

We had what -- only almost a year now, to have obtained evidence of WMDs in Iraq??

[Chemical Ollie]

Here's the last checkpoint f*ckup, fresh from BBC today. If you shoot someone in this way, Oerdin, his ghost will come back to haunt you in your nightmares.

A Hungarian man has been shot dead by US troops west of Baghdad, the Hungarian foreign ministry has said.
A statement quoted US sources as saying troops opened fire after the man drove his car towards a US checkpoint at high speed.

The victim had been working in Iraq for a firm of US subcontractors, the statement said.

He was the first Hungarian casualty in Iraq since the US-led war was launched in March this year.

"US sources informed the ministry that the car driven by Peter Varga-Balazs approached a checkpoint at high speed... he failed to slow down despite calls to stop and warning shots," the ministry said in a statement.

"Therefore, US troops fired aimed shots at him, causing his death."

Hungary has about 300 soldiers, mostly logistics experts, serving in Iraq.

[MrFun]

The guy failed to slow down for a checkpoint inspection, so the US soldiers decided to be better safe than sorry.

[Chemical Ollie]

Safe AND sorry

[MrFun]

The US soldiers are grappling with guerrilla forces day and day out -- did you expect those soldiers to ask nicely for this person -- whom they could not identity as friend or foe yet -- to stop???