NYT: Americans Jolted by Gruesome Reminders of Mogadishu

[DeepModem Mom]

SHOCK WAVES
Americans Are Jolted by Gruesome Reminders of the Day in Mogadishu
By MONICA DAVEY

Published: April 1, 2004


WICHITA, Kan., March 31 — The grisly television news images from Iraq left David J. Rogers shaking his head in sadness on Wednesday evening and turning away. In a quiet bar here, Mr. Rogers learned of American bodies, beaten and dragged through streets in Iraq, body parts hanging from a bridge, crowds cheering and taunting....

***

As Americans began to see the images of the charred corpses of four civilian workers, many, like Mr. Rogers, reacted with horror and disgust. Some, like Ryan Butler, a Wichita bartender, wondered whether this was a sign that it was time for the Americans to leave Iraq altogether....

***

The shock of Mogadishu carried its own legacy: an era of United States military operations that placed a premium on avoiding casualties. Two weeks after Mogadishu, American troops bound for Haiti in a ship turned back, rather than confront a mob gathered at the docks. In the spring of 1994, the Clinton administration declined to commit troops to Rwanda, despite the devastating massacre unfolding there.

That mind-set seemed to shift after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — and rightly so, according to some here in Wichita and elsewhere. But as the number of American troops killed in Iraq now approaches 600, including 5 Army soldiers who were killed by a bomb on Wednesday, and as the particularly gruesome manner of death and mutilation of the four American civilians played out on televisions around the country on Wednesday, some said the number of casualties had passed painfully out of control....

***

Elsewhere, though, Americans said, sometimes apologetically, that they had grown inured to violence, to deaths, and even now to reports of bodies carried through streets....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/national/01REAX.html

[saigon68]

1. The CHIMPANZEE started this crap

Remember Bremer holding up these pictures saying how glad he was



PAYBACK is bitch

[leftchick]

3. Yuck saigon!

You are absolutely correct, chimpass* started this whole thing. Beginning with the bombing of innocent people in Iraq a year ago to the showing of the images, you have here, on tv around the world 24/7, to the continued lack of ANY counting of Iraqi casualties. You reap what you sow......but... Yuck those are nasty shots!

[dbt]

2. What if this had happened UNDER CLINTON???

The talking heads on your TV and the talk show oinkers on your radio would be howling like thousands of wolves. We'd be hearing all about how a draft dodger was not fit to command brave American troops and how we had "no business being there in the first place."

All we get is how bu$h is a great wartime president.

:puke:
dbt

[izzie]

4. Does anyone recall the people who burned them selfs up and on TV?

It is time the US got it through their heads that we do not win wars any more. And to know their history enough to know we only helped in the first world war and were also part of a group in WW2. We left Korea in the same place we stated and we left Vietnam with 2 million dead and 57000 of our own dead.And we did not win. We may spend more on the military than anyone in the world but we do not win wars. I will debate you on this if you like.