US Marine Kills Wounded Prisoner

[Hein]

Now this is an interesting quote:

A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. . . .

"Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.(1)

Is there any proof that the situation has since changed? I don`t think so, not with Haliburton and Rumsfeldt around......

CRONYISM, CORRUPTION AND CALAMITY IN IRAQ

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/04m...rch04corp3.html

[twpdyp]

Is it just me or does it seem like the ones who do the most United States bashing are not citizens of the United States. Just an observation no numbers to back it up.

Arm chair quarterbacks, it is easy to sit in your comfortable homes and criticize decisions made by people who have access to more intel than we will ever have, who are making these decisions under pressures we will never be able to understand. Criticism after the fact is easy. I still cannot find fault with the actions of this young Marine, because I was not standing in his shoes, I did not see what he saw, nor am I under the same stresses and pressures as he was. I maintain that unless you were there feeling what he was feeling there is no way to judge his actions and reactions to the situation he found himself in........

[jeceris]

Now this is an interesting quote:

A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. . . .

"Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.(1)

Is there any proof that the situation has since changed? I don`t think so, not with Haliburton and Rumsfeldt around......

CRONYISM, CORRUPTION AND CALAMITY IN IRAQ

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/04m...rch04corp3.html

363692[/snapback]

hein. newbie. good quote.

but back to the topic, i may wear liberal glasses, and i do belive this war, sorry, invasion, is not right and is way out of control.

to the american soldiers walking the streets of falujah, the politics and economic reasons for this invasion, really don't matter.

so i put myself in the boots of a soldier going building to building, getting shot at and having adrenalin pump through my veins day in and day out. and if i was to come upon the same situation, i wouldn't wait to see what happened, being scared and wired from adrenalin, i would likely shoot first as well.

it's not right, it's just what i think most of us would do in that situation.

but hearing from the iraqi's that this was a cowardly act, ranks among the top ten most hypocritical statements this year.

nothing is more cowardly and disgusting, not even the american invasion, as someone with a hood over their head, beheading an engineer, or shooting an aid worker in the head. the act defines cowardice.

[Art Vandelay]

is it just me or does it seem like the ones who do the most United States bashing are not citizens of the United States. Just an observation no numbers to back it up.

363736[/snapback]

No, you're correct, for the last five years the people I've debated with about U.S. foreign policy have all been from England (not picking on England, it's just my experience).

Now if I see a vehement U.S. basher and note they are from England I don't even bother debating because it's a complete waste of time....

[Hein]

it is easy to sit in your comfortable homes and criticize decisions made by people who have access to more intel than we will ever have, who are making these decisions under pressures we will never be able to understand.

363736[/snapback]

What an incredibly naive statement! I can not believe people like you still exist!

[twpdyp]

What an incredibly naive statement! I can not believe people like you still exist!

There are a lot of people just like me sir or madame whichever fits. Judging by election results it would seem that there is more of my type than of the other type. By the way just where are you from? Your profile does not specify, I find that does not add to your credibility. Short of your real name how about completing your profile, it only seems fair.

[Hein]

someone with a hood over their head, beheading an engineer, or shooting an aid worker in the head. the act defines cowardice.

363739[/snapback]

What that American soldier did can be forgiven, because he was probably brainwashed up to a point where he would shoot his own mother if ordered to do so. But those who put him there under false pretences, who knew exactly what they were doing, should never be forgiven by the world.

To put the killing of civilians in perspective: According to this (US) source, 100,000 civilians may have died in Iraq as a direct result of the American invasion:

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/041025-20.html

When the US invaders kill civilians - and many of them - it is called "collateral damage." When their opponents get their turn to kill a few, it is called "savage murders".

Selective morality? Yes

Despicable? Yes

[Art Vandelay]

What that American soldier did can be forgiven, because he was probably brainwashed up to a point where he would shoot his own mother if ordered to do so.

363808[/snapback]

Hmm, I was an American Soldier and I was never brainwashed into killing anybody. Where's your "evidence" that he was "PROBABLY" brainwashed?

[Hein]

No, you're correct, for the last five years the people I've debated with about U.S. foreign policy have all been from England (not picking on England, it's just my experience).

Please do not think it is only the British who don`t like American unilateralism. NO international opinion poll has ever shown support for America acting as if the rest of the world does not exist. As this article clearly demonstrates:

"Perceptions of American unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war in Iraq has undermined America’s credibility abroad. Doubts about the motives behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism abound, and a growing percentage of Europeans want foreign policy and security arrangements independent from the United States. Across Europe, there is considerable support for the European Union to become as powerful as the United States."

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=206

[twpdyp]

America and the Barbary Pirates: An

International Battle Against an Unconventional Foeby Gerard W. Gawalt

Gerard W. Gawalt is the manuscript specialist for early American history in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

Ruthless, unconventional foes are not new to the United States of America. More than two hundred years ago the newly established United States made its first attempt to fight an overseas battle to protect its private citizens by building an international coalition against an unconventional enemy. Then the enemies were pirates and piracy. The focus of the United States and a proposed international coalition was the Barbary Pirates of North Africa.

Pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast) were the scourge of the Mediterranean. Capturing merchant ships and holding their crews for ransom provided the rulers of these nations with wealth and naval power. In fact, the Roman Catholic Religious Order of Mathurins had operated from France for centuries with the special mission of collecting and disbursing funds for the relief and ransom of prisoners of Mediterranean pirates.

Before the United States obtained its independence in the American Revolution, 1775-83, American merchant ships and sailors had been protected from the ravages of the North African pirates by the naval and diplomatic power of Great Britain. British naval power and the tribute or subsidies Britain paid to the piratical states protected American vessels and crews. During the Revolution, the ships of the United States were protected by the 1778 alliance with France, which required the French nation to protect "American vessels and effects against all violence, insults, attacks, or depredations, on the part of the said Princes and States of Barbary or their subjects."

After the United States won its independence in the treaty of 1783, it had to protect its own commerce against dangers such as the Barbary pirates. As early as 1784 Congress followed the tradition of the European shipping powers and appropriated $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, directing its ministers in Europe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to begin negotiations with them. Trouble began the next year, in July 1785, when Algerians captured two American ships and the dey of Algiers held their crews of twenty-one people for a ransom of nearly $60,000.

Thomas Jefferson, United States minister to France, opposed the payment of tribute, as he later testified in words that have a particular resonance today. In his autobiography Jefferson wrote that in 1785 and 1786 he unsuccessfully "endeavored to form an association of the powers subject to habitual depredation from them. I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their ministers at Paris, for consultation with their governments, articles of a special confederation." Jefferson argued that "The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States to perpetual peace." Jefferson prepared a detailed plan for the interested states. "Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden were favorably disposed to such an association," Jefferson remembered, but there were "apprehensions" that England and France would follow their own paths, "and so it fell through."

Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America's minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, "I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro' the medium of war." Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: "The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both." "From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."

Jefferson's plan for an international coalition foundered on the shoals of indifference and a belief that it was cheaper to pay the tribute than fight a war. The United States's relations with the Barbary states continued to revolve around negotiations for ransom of American ships and sailors and the payment of annual tributes or gifts. Even though Secretary of State Jefferson declared to Thomas Barclay, American consul to Morocco, in a May 13, 1791, letter of instructions for a new treaty with Morocco that it is "lastly our determination to prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form, and to any people whatever," the United States continued to negotiate for cash settlements. In 1795 alone the United States was forced to pay nearly a million dollars in cash, naval stores, and a frigate to ransom 115 sailors from the dey of Algiers. Annual gifts were settled by treaty on Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli.

When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."

The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war. The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806. Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, "The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship."

In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war.

For anyone interested in the further pursuit of information about America's first unconventional, international war in the primary sources, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress holds manuscript collections of many of the American participants, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington (see the George Washington Papers), William Short, Edward Preble, Thomas Barclay, James Madison, James Simpson, James Leander Cathcart, William Bainbridge, James Barron, John Rodgers, Ralph Izard, and Albert Gallatin.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/je...s/mtjprece.html

In the late 1800's an American President used the Military to put an end to terrorism, so the actions of President George w. Bush are not without precident.

[twpdyp]

Please do not think it is only the British who don`t like American unilateralism. NO international opinion poll has ever shown support for America acting as if the rest of the world does not exist. As this article clearly demonstrates:

"Perceptions of American unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war in Iraq has undermined America’s credibility abroad. Doubts about the motives behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism abound, and a growing percentage of Europeans want foreign policy and security arrangements independent from the United States. Across Europe, there is considerable support for the European Union to become as powerful as the United States."

My response to that is if the rest of the world does not like what we do then the rest of the world can either get over it or stop us. Until such time as the rest of the world feels froggy enough to stop us then I guess they can just get over it.

[Hein]

Hmm, I was an American Soldier and I was never brainwashed into killing anybody.  Where's your "evidence" that he was "PROBABLY" brainwashed?

363812[/snapback]

It is part of the nature of being brainwashed that the victim will not know that he is brainwashed. In fact he will vehemently deny being brainwashed. Shooting an unarmed, dying man is evil. Either the perpetrator himself is evil, or he was brainwashed into committing such an evil act, in which case the guilt lies with his masters.

In this case I believe the second scenario is closer to the truth.

[Art Vandelay]

It is part of the nature of being brainwashed that the victim will not know that he is brainwashed.

363837[/snapback]

Wow, that sounds like a perfect definition of these terrorists that you are supporting. They are so intent in believing that they will recieve 67 virgins or whatever in the after life they will do anything for it.

Edited November 19, 2004 by Art Vandelay

[Hein]

Until such time as the rest of the world feels froggy enough to stop us then I guess they can just get over it.

363836[/snapback]

As I said before: respect is earned, not enforced over the barrel of a gun. The decline of the American empire has already started, as Prof. Galtung explains below:

"A country's violence, Hannah Arendt said, can destroy its power. The United States is moving quickly down this path. Do American leaders imagine that the people of the world, having overthrown the territorial empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are ready to bend the knee to an American overlord in the twenty-first? Do they imagine that allies are willing to become subordinates? Have they forgotten that people hate to be dominated by force? "

http://www.transnational.org/features/2004...l_USEmpire.html

[Hein]

[Wow, that sounds like a perfect definition of these terrorists that you are supporting.  They are so intent in believing that they will recieve 67 virgins or whatever in the after life they will do anything for it.

363843[/snapback]

Yes, sounds like being brainwashed to me. Same goes for a brave young GI with stars in his eyes allowing himself to be flown 10 000km to a country he can`t even point out on a map, to kill people he has never met, in the belief he does it for the good of humanity. That`s brainwashing for you.

[wunarmdscissor]

No, you're correct, for the last five years the people I've debated with about U.S. foreign policy have all been from England (not picking on England, it's just my experience).

Now if I see a vehement U.S. basher and note they are from England I don't even bother debating because it's a complete waste of time....

IM not english , your point is irrelevant.

twdyp

you know america needs the rest of the world as much as the world needs it.

Oh and btw to whoever said it.

Neither I or astofix blamed america for WW2 , we just get verry uneasy when americans start preaching to us , using ww2 as an example, when after all it took you 3 years to actually enter the war.

[twpdyp]

twdyp

you know america needs the rest of the world as much as the world needs it.

Oh and btw to whoever said it.

Neither I or astofix blamed america for WW2 , we just get verry uneasy when americans start preaching to us , using ww2 as an example, when after all it took you 3 years to actually enter the war.

My remarks were directed at Hein not you.

[wunarmdscissor]

oh cool.

But you see the very same applies to the war on teror , you know many countries around the world have been fighting terrorism for decades including us.

It is America who has joined us not the other way around.

BAck on topic .

You know my feelings about teh war and also this soldier, i cannot condemn him , IN FACT id have done EXACTLY the same with no remorse.

The guys in a situation that plainly is not in his control but while hes there hes gotta do his job.

Its ok to sit here thousands of miles away and preach about humanity like vinjams does, difference is that the militants dont recognise the geneva convention , do u think that britain wiped out the IRA by using the geneva convention ? lol.

Like I said before

RIGHT WAR

WRONG TIME

WRONG LEADER

WRONG REASONS

now ill add

SOLDIER MAKING THE RIGHT DECISIONS.

They wouldnt have p***ed on him if he was on fire, nor would they have a felow iraqi, women, your gran or a sick child .

The people they are fighting in Falijah arent innocent iraqis.

[Fluffybunny]

Neither I or astofix blamed america for WW2 , we just get verry uneasy when americans start preaching to us , using ww2 as an example, when after all it took you 3 years to actually enter the war.

363947[/snapback]

Pffft...But Wun, I saw a movie once that showed that America took care of the Nazis single handedly...I think england was there too, but just as an ancillary country to make the movie seem more cultered and refined...I don't think they actually did anything...

Anyway, I am pretty sure that America won WW2 without any help. That's what the movie said anyway, and if it was made into a movie it must be right...

[wunarmdscissor]

I bow to your all knowing self fluffy ;-)....

i stand "smited".

[twpdyp]

Its ok to sit here thousands of miles away and preach about humanity like vinjams does, difference is that the militants dont recognise the geneva convention , do u think that britain wiped out the IRA by using the geneva convention ?

I made a very similar point in an earlier post on this thread, something about armchair quarterbacks and not knowing what the situation was like at that time, we were not there.

[Art Vandelay]

No, you're correct, for the last five years the people I've debated with about U.S. foreign policy have all been from England (not picking on England, it's just my experience).

Now if I see a vehement U.S. basher and note they are from England I don't even bother debating because it's a complete waste of time....

IM not english , your point is irrelevant.

twdyp

you know america needs the rest of the world as much as the world needs it.

Oh and btw to whoever said it.

Neither I or astofix blamed america for WW2 , we just get verry uneasy when americans start preaching to us , using ww2 as an example, when after all it took you 3 years to actually enter the war.

363947[/snapback]

Hmm, I said the people that "I've" debated with, I've never posted or responded to any post of yours before have I? This is the first time I've even acknowledged you so your point was irrelevant.

Edited November 19, 2004 by Art Vandelay

[wunarmdscissor]

Hmm, I said the people that "I've" debated with, I've never posted or responded to any post of yours before have I? This is the first time I've even acknowledged you so your post was irrelevant.

So your post was just an irrelevant attack on english people then? ahh get ya now ;-)

I made a very similar point in an earlier post on this thread, something about armchair quarterbacks and not knowing what the situation was like at that time, we were not there.

Ahh but it was american governments who protested at our tough handling of IRA "freedom fighters ".

It was also a fact that americans and particulalry new yorkers who both sheltered and funded that brand of freedom fighters.

So you WERE there.

Just werent being a particlalry loyal or helpful ally to us ;-)

Edited November 19, 2004 by wunarmdscissor

[wunarmdscissor]

Like i said though everything isnt black and white .

BUt if you use a few of the people on this site's logic then the above statement i made means that america would by its own governments logic could possibly add itself to the "axis of evil" lol. how ironic.

Edited November 20, 2004 by wunarmdscissor

[zukie&jim]

dam--tham means i won't get to wear my "darth-vader" outfit in the next war !

--LOL