My Lai Tip of the Iceberg

[Riesstiu IV]

I WAZ IN IRAQISTAN! MY CONVOY WAS HIT BY AN IED! BLOOD WAS EVERYWHERE! 9/11 CHANGED EVERYTHING!

[zakubandit]

Glad you guys find comedy in the fact I had the balls to volunteer for my country, while you cower behind a computer screen.

You don't want to believe my story, I don't give a **** anymore. I know what I did. I give respect to Oerdin for his deployment, he probably doesn't give me the same, but you know what? I did serve and I did my job.

[Riesstiu IV]

I've been around enough soldiers to know that you don't even sound like one. You don't use the military jargon or the acronyms and you conveniently mention catchy themes like IEDs, RPGs, and a wounded buddy with a leg wound. A soldier who has been in combat wouldn't use his war experiences as some kind of crutch for moral superiority in order to lord it over other people on an internet message board. You are a damn joke.

[SlowwHand]

We live in a real world with real evil.

Yes, like Captain Medina.

Thank God someone has paid attention.

[DaShi]

I've been around enough soldiers to know that you don't even sound like one. You don't use the military jargon or the acronyms and you conveniently mention catchy themes like IEDs, RPGs, and a wounded buddy with a leg wound. A soldier who has been in combat wouldn't use his war experiences as some kind of crutch for moral superiority on an internet message board. You are a damn joke.

QFT

[Solomwi]

Solom, the day comes that you NEED help because of those carebears you don't see worthy of being killed in combat they encourage to continue, your going to find a different person standing at the end of the gun. Not exactly how you imagine it, but I can bet you that if that time ever comes it will be a person you don't care exists and didn't pay enough (lack of a better word) respect to for what he/she did.


I could care less of all of your opinions about me. Call me crazy, fu.ck it I told the psych that myself in a psych eval a few months ago...but I actually passed that eval just fine and the doc recommended i take psychology in school (screw that, i don't care to know people any better than i already do). But Solom this is something you won't trully understand coming from someone elses mouth (or don't care to even try to understand coming from me specifically)

When you are told that you are being uprooted and going to war the world changes for you. It is different in everyone, for me it was imminent fear of death mixed with "this is what I was trained to do" excitement. When we got hit by an IED the first time it was like being transported onto an alien world. I knew what to do, I was already ready to go, and I reacted how I was trained to react. You get into a mindset that is all actions and thought is mixed into the adrenaline so you don't actually think because it is all processed (you won't understand this unless you have been shot at, you are thinking but actions and thought at merged in a way). The first time I saw a friend get hit it was just like a movie, no sound, no motion, just my friend, a guy I had known for about a year, body falling over and then crimson red and dirt. He lived, just got hit in the leg, not a bad wound actually, but it was still the first time I was in that kind of sh.it. Now did I feel I the enemy needed to die? At that moment yes, because they felt I didn't deserve to live. The enemy sees it that way, and do not try to misconstrue this because past actions are more than enough fact for this statement, our enemy wants us dead, rotting, birds eating our corpses. They don't want to maim us, to scratch us, to hurt our feelings. They want us dead. Now when you are being shot at by a person who you know will not hesitate to shoot you if you hesitate to shoot them you stop thinking about should I kill or just hurt him. When you got bullets flying and RPGs flying (not the intense intense combat in movies) you do not consider "shoot in the knees". I didn't consider them as anything more than a target. Call it brainwashed...but like I said, you won't understand until you have personally lived it.

Oh, zakudl, how you and your fantasies complete me. By the way, I never mentioned where the line is. I assure you that a soldier killing an enemy in combat doesn't cross it. That's kind of what we hire them to do.

[zakubandit]

See thats where your line of combat and mine are not close to relating, as you have 0 experience and I have 5 years experience. A soldier kills an enemy on a battlefield, thats right. A soldier kills an insurgent in an occupied city, thats right. A soldier kills a possible terrorist at a checkpoint, that is wrong or right? An undercover operative, military trained, kills a terrorist cell in an unknown country, is that wrong or right? A special forces team kills a terrorist cell while they are plotting an attack, is that wrong or right? A cover operative detains and interrogates an enemy insurgent who has information that could save hundreds of Iraqi civilians, he uses extremes to get information, is that wrong or right? A SEAL team finds and detains a high ranking terrorist and do what they have to do to stop a nuke attack on a major city, is that wrong or right?

IMHO all of the above are right. Why they are right is simple, no loss of civilian lives. The moment someone picks up a weapon, sells a weapon, trades a weapon, helps plot, etc. with terrorists/insurgents/ etc. they are enemies and are due for a bullet. Now I won't say those that cooperate are enemies because our enemies don't follow any rules and will murder entire families to make someone cooperate, they will not hesitate to kill. I have seen what happens when an insurgent straps a bomb to his chest and blows himself in a crowd of people, I have seen what happens when a couple of terrorists drive a car to a check point loaded with explosives and set it off. They have no care for us or innocent life, they expect that the innocents are supposed to die to bring about their cause. Now where you stop seeing these vermin as enemies is beyond me, but I am curious to know how you draw your conclusion that some murderers deserve to die and some do not.

[KrazyHorse]

zakudl

[Solomwi]

Zakudl gets more mileage out of the mythical nuke attack on a major city than even Dick Cheney.

[Solomwi]

See thats where your line of combat and mine are not close to relating, as you have 0 experience and I have 5 years experience. A soldier kills an enemy on a battlefield, thats right. A soldier kills an insurgent in an occupied city, thats right. A soldier kills a possible terrorist at a checkpoint, that is wrong or right? An undercover operative, military trained, kills a terrorist cell in an unknown country, is that wrong or right? A special forces team kills a terrorist cell while they are plotting an attack, is that wrong or right? A cover operative detains and interrogates an enemy insurgent who has information that could save hundreds of Iraqi civilians, he uses extremes to get information, is that wrong or right? A SEAL team finds and detains a high ranking terrorist and do what they have to do to stop a nuke attack on a major city, is that wrong or right?

IMHO all of the above are right. Why they are right is simple, no loss of civilian lives. The moment someone picks up a weapon, sells a weapon, trades a weapon, helps plot, etc. with terrorists/insurgents/ etc. they are enemies and are due for a bullet. Now I won't say those that cooperate are enemies because our enemies don't follow any rules and will murder entire families to make someone cooperate, they will not hesitate to kill. I have seen what happens when an insurgent straps a bomb to his chest and blows himself in a crowd of people, I have seen what happens when a couple of terrorists drive a car to a check point loaded with explosives and set it off. They have no care for us or innocent life, they expect that the innocents are supposed to die to bring about their cause. Now where you stop seeing these vermin as enemies is beyond me, but I am curious to know how you draw your conclusion that some murderers deserve to die and some do not.

I don't stop seeing those who are enemies as enemies, and don't consider soldiers on the battlefield to be murderers, though I'm slightly surprised you do. I'm not squeamish about death and killing, and unlike you, that extends to civilian deaths. Why are civilian deaths the correct measure of morality? Civilians die every day.

By the way, it's not about what the enemy does. It's about what our guys do.

[Blaupanzer]

"5 years." You never saved millions of people in anything you did. The atrocities, cited by people who had a lot more than 5 years EACH, never saved millions either. The military kills in order to defend. I know, I was there. This is our duty and our charge. Real soldiers work for civilians and are proud to do so. Your rants make you sound unreal.

Separately, torture has a short half-life and mostly doesn't work. Ask the Mafia, they are real pros. Ask the VC, they were pros too as were the North Koreans and the NKVD. All of them did it, all of them got a lot of bad data.

[Elok]

Re:OP, I'm surprised at the relatively low incidence of rape. And Zaku's really not doing anything for me here. The wall of text is just painful to look at, at the little I can stand to read is kinda boring.

[Lul Thyme]

I'm not even sure why you would bother with legitimate responses to Zakuassbandit's posts. They're a little too obvious as trolls.

While I agree that they are not worth replying to (and I almost fell into the trap in this thread), I actually don't think he's a troll.
I wish more posters wouldn't let lunatics like him (Ben Kenobi comes to mind) ruin every thread they post in. Why do some many posters feed them?

[Straybow]

[Q=zakubandit;5698843]And Stray, perfect example of a good man doing an evil thing for the greater good.[/Q] Not really, the interrogation produced nothing useful, and the murder of the officer contrary to the prevailing rules of war was a permanent black mark on his honor.

It is merely to point out that things happen in the field when judgment gets distorted. That doesn't make all such incidents war crimes.

[loinburger]

I wish more posters wouldn't let lunatics like him (Ben Kenobi comes to mind) ruin every thread they post in. Why do some many posters feed them?

It was the same way with Giancarlo - there's no point addressing zaku/fez seriously because they're so far gone in their own world, there's no point in ignoring them because that only works if everybody ignores them (it only takes one person blithely quoting their idiocy to defeat the ignore function), they're not going to get banned because only Asher gets banned, so you might as well try to make the most of their malignant presence.