(no subject)

[apocalypsos]

I just saw the video of the American being decapitated by the Iraqi extremists that's up on Ogrish.com. All I have to say is just ... ugh. And I have a strong stomach when it comes to mind, so the act itself isn't what disgusts me. (Be forewarned if you're going to go see it ... it's forty seconds long of them literally sawing on his neck. And just when you think you've seen enough, his screams just cut off.)

Let me put it this way. The first person to so much as imply that now we have to retaliate back at the Iraqis runs the risk of a first-rate TP-issue bitch-slap. "An eye for an eye" works just fine until you realize if you keep it up, everyone in the kingdom ends up a one-eyed whiny freak.

When. The FUCK. Is all this going to end?

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[sleepyaardvark.livejournal.com]

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS COMMENT

But the reason none of this should suprise anyone is because--well, all the anti-war people pretty much foresaw all this before the first US soldier entered Iraq. And this was not just rabid liberals, the conservative Cato Institute put out numerous papers detailing why going into Iraq would be ill-advised. Now consider the aftermath: we have 18 and 19-year old kids in the middle of a totally alien culture that they do not understand doing a job that they are not trained to do, that they do not have the resources and support to do. There's no way to tell easily who is an enemy and who is a friend. The batallion put in charge of running the prison had no experience or training running a prison except what they had learned in one summer camp. They didn't know what to do if they were assaulted, what to do if there was a riot (there have been two). Not to mention that the prison is not just insurgent fighters, but also hard-core street criminals that were released by Saddam before the war and re-arrested later by Allied troops when they went back to being criminals. I can understand why things such as this happen when you put people in such extreme situations under such extreme stress.

My sympathy is with everyone involved in this mess that is of Bush's creation. The American soldiers put into such a terrible situation without proper planning to do the job right, their families waiting at home not knowing if the next stray mortar round or roadside bomb will take one of their loved ones, the anti-war activists who are watching all this unfold with utter despair and for whom "I told you so" is little, if any, comfort. Above all, my sympathies are with the Iraqi people, whom we have grossly failed. And it didn't have to be this way.

And the costs will be with us for years in terms of returning soldiers with psychological problems and post-traumatic stress disorder and the loss of America's moral high ground around the world. International goodwill is going to take years, if not decades, to restore. And what of the soldiers when they return? There a sizeable number of homeless in this country who are veterans of Vietnam. Will it be any different this time around?