[Skybird]

Those "isolated incidents", Neon, costed the lives of - varying estimation - 40-75 thousand children who were send as mine exploders ahead of Iranian senior units of older and experienced soldiers. I had that in a thread longer time ago, three years or maybe even more, and lined to material back then, however, I also base on statements by Iranians from my own stays in Iran. Khomeni authorized these orders himself, referring to quotes from the Quran where Muhammad mocked his soldiers before a battle over their fear of loosing their lives. The boys were sent to be spearheads of advancing Iranian units and to clear safe lines through known minefields by exploding mines with their bodies, so that the soldiers coming after them would have safe transit and then would be capable to fight, undecimated by the mines.

Some foreign correspondents who were reporting from that war and experienced it at close range - amongst them my former boss from that time of travelling of mine - also confirm these "procedures".

Is it really that surprising that things like this get done by regimes? Heck, even Western militaries and health services acted repeatedly with similar contempt for humans, from intentional exposition of troops to radiation from nuclear explosions to the infamous Tuskegee-Syphilis-Study. During Normandy landing, they sent the inexperienced new recruits with the first wave to let them serve as bullet catchers, to save the more valuable and experienced veterans who maybe also would not throw themselves as enthusiastically into the enemy fire as the unknowing newbies, the latternot knowing what was waiting for them.

Really, Neon, you should not be surprised, not at all. It's man's world - and man does things like all this.