[scandium]

Originally Posted by bradclark1

Ah, I see. You want an argument.
Afraid you really aren't going to get one. There really isn't anything to argue about. I think you want me to defend the incident for some reason but it's not going to happen.

A discussion perhaps, but fair enough.

I will however expand on the military in peacetime and wartime. The peacetime miliary is kept strictly supervised and disiplined. Wartime on the other hand is not so strictly supervised and disiplined. It's impossible too. What could get you busted in peacetime will get you nothing but an eye roll in wartime. It's harder to control your soldiers because they are more spread out and communication is done by radio ( in a city enviroment). You expect and trust that your soldiers will do the right thing. If they do the wrong thing as in rape and murder and it is found out they will be disiplined under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMF). What more could you expect? No military force in the world has a pych test to see how you will react under the pressures of combat that I am aware of. You put a loaded firearm in someones hands and they change and thats a fact. Skybird might have a twenty page essay on the subject somewhere dealing with the subject. I'm not going to get into it.
You are under the mistaken impression that soldiers are supposed to be knights in shining armour and we are in the age of chivalry. I find that amusing. You have good and bad just like any society and you trust that justice will prevail as it will in this case.
To expect everyone in an armed force to be perfect gentlemen is pretty delusional. That hasn't happened in the age of mankind yet and it won't in the future.

Well said, and in fact I don't expect the armed forces to behave as chivalarous knights. This is actually a very good arguement as to why the US Military had no business "liberating" Iraq from its own government, unless of course they themselves would not succumb to the same behaviour that Saddam Hussein's henchmen had partaken in. But as you say, this is an impossible standard and the brutality of acts such as this and warfare in general completely undermines the "liberation" rationale for the war. Perhaps that's what Skybird was getting at (I won't put words in his mouth, and besides, he can write his own essays on this and probably already has ).

I won't say you're guilty of this, because I don't know your feelings on the subject, but there seems to me to be a definite disconnect among those who advocated the war on humanitarian grounds but are curiously silent on this subject, or else simply dismiss it as "statistics", the "heat of battle", etc. I mean collateral damage is one thing, and that's been dismissed from the outset as a "necessary evil", but this is a whole other thing to me. Especially after Abu Ghraib and Haditha - and especially in light of the fact that there is still no end to this occupation in sight.