Very good sig Skybird. I take it that is in reference to Germany's donation to Hamas.

If I could read Skybird's mind, I don't think he would argue.

Amongst others, yes. Germany granted an extra 20+ million Euros payment some days ago :dead:, and most politicians of our (and the European) left still insist that Palestinians are not responsible for having voted Hamas into office. :dead: The sig, of course, also with regard to the general european attitude towards Muslim countries. But I think it is a general truth, not only valid for this cultural conflict in special.

@ Scandium
People took this thread as another instance of USA bashing. I know I did, but seeing as I don't know you yet and I don't know what country you are from I thought I would come with a low level approach and see what happens. Nothing happened. I think we are not used to your style of posting and you might want to put a little more thought into your threads.

Back in the day, Skybird made us very sensitive to USA bashing. :rotfl:

I hope meanwhile you have managed to make your wounds stop bleeding :-j

AL, I meant Brad with my last post. you just happened to be faster again with your own. Have edited it.

Yeah, right a eye for a eye isn't it Iceman?

It wasn't intended that way, I posted this article because it seemed genuinely discussion worthy and I thought I'd keep my initial post brief by witholding my own comments from it. I'm not sure what you mean by putting "more thought" into my threads, do you mean adding comments in the initial post of my own after the article?

Yes. To me just posting the article was saying "See the U.S. is f'''''ing up again" and trying to rub my/our noses in it.

Fair enough, and I'll keep that in mind in the future. In my own defence, I had not known when I posted it that it would come across that way, so I only posted in the fashion many others use where only the link, the article itself, or a mix of both is first posted.

Depends on the content. :D

Eye for an eye has never worked save to gratify the flesh at present.Harder to do the right the as some may know...if eye for an eye were the flavor of the day for America, Germany would be a crater...Japan would be an Island of total Glass as would much of the Middle East.Please try to post an intelligent post with some real substance and meat not just some obscure one line headline that points out the obvious evil nature of some.All have sinned and continue to do so....Vanity of vanity ALL is vanity.

Maybe tommorrow I'll post the weather report for central Arizona in case some of you were intrested....or I can save you the trouble....hot..next day hot...next day hot...you get the idea.

Tbqh, the squabling on this thread is without purpose (isnt it always?). Sounds to me like some of you chaps ought to chill out a tad and not 'shoot first, ask question later' when it comes to peoples motivation for posting- to take the posting of a news article as some kind of implied national slurr reveals a good deal more than the content of the atricle itself.
Would it have been so worthy of pique had it been a case of an iraqi unit commiting the offense? Probably not, missing the point entirely: possibly a nasty bit of crime has been commited and a coverup attempt made by those who are responsible for integrity and disciplin in the field. It's news, not america bashing. The same was said of the British a while back concerning beatings meeted out to 'civilians' etc.

I know it's a past 'theme' here on subsim for lively debate where america and her foreign aspirations are concerned (thought not exclusively), but really, it sounds very parochial sometimes :lol:.

What can I say, you can't fight a war these days without every man and his dog wanting to have an oppinion to share about it - if you're gonna get your hands dirty, then expect people to comment on the smell. And I always thought you lot accross the water didn't give a monkeys for what other nations/people thought of you, turns out you just a bunch of marshmallows underneath all of that 'don't tread on me' thing heheheheh :arrgh!:

Well if you said Bush and his foreign asperations that would be OK. :lol:

Of course we care. What do you think we are doing all this for? We did it to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Doing this for WMD was just an excuse. We really wanted to liberate them. Now they are free to shoot, bomb, and kill whoever they want.

Oh? Pray share your revelations with us.

I can't say it's a 'revalation' unless that's said toungue in cheek?

Well, there's deffinitely a sense of caution and perhaps guarded suspicion of such articles as this given the recent spate of serious allegations directed at troops and the whole tone of coalition opperations in Iraq and the reasons for being there in the first place. and I'm not implying some sort of criticism here - nor boldly stating it, for that matter.
Understandably some topics are best aproached with caution (especially around here sometimes ;) ) but occasionally it seems as if there's an anticipation or pre-emptive thought that one should expect every topic of this sort should be considered a dig at the US or the military in Iraq. Scandium even said hardly having a real dig?
Maybe this is expressed in terms of national pride (in a good way? I'm not sure I have the right term there 'national' in this instance) and an understanding not to condemn but to support, sometimes vociferously, regardless of the full story being investigated. A similar thing occured on another forum I visit concerning the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes: as soon as the news was released that a man had been shot to death on the london underground, as a suspected terrorist, a thread immideately appeared titled 'We got one of the bastards...' a little premature in the event.

Dismissing a discussion as mere trolling is a bit forwards (maybe subsim has a more highbrow trolling content than elsewhere? hehe) though maybe I'm being overly generous there?
I don't think it matters who is responsible for rape and murder as soldiers, so long as something is seen to be investigated, as it appears to be in this case. That these are american troops is irrelevant, they might as well be British for all the difference it makes. Regardless, it's news worth discussing with the days unfolding events. On the whole this article or scandiums reference to it is no more a criticism of the US army (or its intentions in iraq) based upon a minority of squaddies than the initial reporting of the article in the news headlines is a critique of the US military.
Following my comment on not caring what others think, I allude to the gentle stereotype of the brash american, similarily we english are seen as tea drinking chaps who wear bowler hats and read the times who say things like 'jolly good' and 'righto' and 'I say..!' in that insufferably polite english mannerism. :lol:
I guess such reactions are to be expected with some of the times facing the world these days, but I always remember being told by my mother that if you go through life with a frown on your countenance as opposed to a smile, then people will respond according to how they see you- frowning.
:shrugs: