Tape showing US soldiers killing an unarmed and wounded Iraqi

[Felch]

AH, I admitted it was a troll after Mr. Quisling and his friend threw their fit. I know right from wrong, I just like to tease.

[Sikander]

I'm happy that the insurgent / terrorist was killed, but unhappy about the way it was done.

[Alexander's Horse]

He could have been the mosque watchman for all you know.

Anyway, these things happen in war. The battlefield is a dangerous place and people make bad decisions in the heat of the moment.

[Guardian]

Originally posted by Felch
Heh, I like how all the holier-than-thou Scandanavians take one inflamatory paragraph out of three to fret about.

That's your problem right there. You'd rather fight the easy fight, make me look like some nitwit hill-billy, instead of actually arguing the key points that I made. You're nothing but a bunch of limp-wristed whiners. When you want to tear apart what I say, tear the whole thing apart, not just the part that hurt your precious little feelings.

I'm not talking about my feelings here, I'm talking about 300 000 people I do not know and your insinuation that somehow they were all guilty of a crime commited in their city.

If that's the attitude, then why don't we just nuke all cities that ever had a violent crime?

Of course we won't do that, and nobody's saying we should, but I hope you see my point.

That said, I fully understand that a person can get a little trigger happy in situations like this, with enemies creeping around all over the place and were you can't cross the street without having 3 or 4 guys trying to kill you. Of course I understand that. And having enemies who like to masquerade as civilians, pretend to surrender or hide behind the wounded sure doesn't help.

Like yourself, I have experienced this myself just from playing computer games. I have personally killed both women and children in those games, for no other reason than because I was jumpy and they appeared in the wrong places at the wrong time.

These things happen. I don't disagree with you there.

But when you go from there to all but saying that an entire city is somehow responsible for four bodies being strung up on a bridge, then, yeah - you lost me.

I live in Bergen myself. This city is actually slightly smaller than Falluja, and about 99% of the time, I don't even know about stuff that happens here unless I hear about it in the news or something. With literally hundreds of thousands of people running around, there's just no way in hell anyone could possibly know what everyone's doing.

[Guardian]

Originally posted by Felch
AH, I admitted it was a troll after Mr. Quisling and his friend threw their fit. I know right from wrong, I just like to tease.

Evidently so.
I don't mind a few trolls from time to time, but if you call me stupid names like "Mr. Quisling" one more time, I'm going to have a word with Ming about it.

Just so you know.

[Felch]

If you're disgusted by my insinuation about collective guilt, good. It was a troll, and anybody who doesn't disagree with it is a tool.

I'm glad you see my point about people getting trigger happy, since that was the real meat and potatoes of what I said. And I'm glad that we have common ground there.

Sorry about my trash talking, I just get annoyed when people take the joke too seriously and miss the whole point. You're a good guy by what I read, I'd just wish folks here would consider a little about what's going on in the heads of Americans a little more before they go talking about atrocities. We're wrong quite often, but I think we deserve credit for trying to fix what we break, and trying to make something right out of a ****ed up world. We may be the source of all the world's problems in your eyes, but we're also the first country to have this sort of power and responsibilty. There are no rules or traditions for us to rely on here, and it's annoying and frustrating to be nitpicked by a bunch of countries who have willfully bowed out of any major international role.

I'm not a fan of the Iraq war, but I get really pissed when guys my age are being called murderers by people who don't know what they're going through. That's all.

[Felch]

Originally posted by Guardian


Evidently so.
I don't mind a few trolls from time to time, but if you call me stupid names like "Mr. Quisling" one more time, I'm going to have a word with Ming about it.

Just so you know.

Sorry about the Quisling bit, too.

[Chemical Ollie]

In my opinion, (after reading Oerdin's description of the event) some officer should be questioned for putting a man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder back on the line so soon. They must be short of people.

[Berzerker]

No, they were told that, if they stayed in their homes, they wouldn't be hurt. No one declared Falluja to be a free-fire zone.

According to Bill O'Reilly, there were no civilians in Fallujah.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Yeah, MSNBC is reporting the Iraqi was an insurgent but he had been wounded by a different group of Marines who had patched the insurgent up and left the insurgents to be picked up by a later patrol. The second patrol arrived but had not been informed about the wounded insugents that had been placed in the building.

Earlier that day another Marine was killed by a booby trap set off by a dying Iraqi insurgent who was saying he wanted to surrender and recieve medical care. Also the Marine who shot the wounded insurgent had himself been wounded the day before but had been returned to duty; it seems he was likely suffering from combat stress or at least wounded combat personel who are returned to the lines often suffer from combat stress.

It seems the wounded Iraqi began moving when the soldiers entered and the Marine shouted about the insurgent faking he was dead and then fired a single shot from either an M-4 or a combat shotgun. It sucks, it was a bad situation, and that guy will probably go to jail.

There will obviously be an investigation, but if thats what happened i.e. he was reacting to a situation rather than callously shooting the guy then he should be OK. I cant imagine the effect on morale to convict this guy based on bogus public sentiment.

BTW: we used "soldier" to generically describe someone who was supposed to know (or did know) which end of their rifles to point at the enemy, not just someone who wore camo and may have carried a rifle.

[Kropotkin]

C.O.:

(not to be confused with commanding officer)

Or perhaps the officer in charge doesn't believe in such hippie concepts as post-dramatic stress disorder. hat might be something that happens to puny civlians, but not an united states marine! Hooray!

[Arrian]

In a word: Doh.

-Arrian

[Gangerolf]

If you think he's about to blow himself up, you don't have much choice now have you. It looks a lot like self defence to me. Especially when you take into account what was said in the video. We'll see.

[Arrian]

Even if it's the "best" case scenario (he really thought the guy was a potential suicide bomber, and acted accordingly), it's still bad because the Arab media will have a field day with this. Either he's a murderer, or a "trigger happy American" who lost his nerve.

Blah.

-Arrian

[The diplomat]

Our soldiers have faced boobie traps and insurgents that pretend to be wounded to lure our troops near and then blow themselves up. How was our soldier suppose to know if these people were helpless civilians or insurgents in disguise ready to blow them up?