…And above us all, waves the American Flag.

[mikelewis]

What is it that drove those men to such a place? I’m talking about the soldiers in Iraq, the ones that killed all those people in Haditha back November last. What brings a man to the point that he can make life such an arbitrary thing as to kill a crippled old man in a wheel chair? What sort of road do you have to walk down to find yourself standing with a gun in your hand and death in your eyes; taking aim at a child, or at a mother shielding that child? For the life of me, I can’t imagine that road but it sure must have followed a twisted path.

In the New York Times, I read an account of that fateful morning. In that account, there was some debate on what exactly transpired. We don’t know if the Marines who killed those people were merely following approved rules of engagement; or if they just simply went mad and started a killing spree when their friend was killed by a roadside bomb. We don’t yet know if the military, our military, tried to cover it up. We don’t yet know but just like Abu Ghraib, I fear we’re gonna know.

Like Abu Ghraib, the story is starting off slowly. The Abu Ghraib story simmered for a bit and then once those pictures came out, it roiled into a full boil all over the world. The picture of the unknown man in black nailed to an imaginary crucifix was etched forever into the American flag. I fear the same thing is going to happen as a result of the Haditha killings; and yet I also believe this time is going to be much worse.

As I read the account of that morning, I tried to picture the event in my mind. I tried to imagine the actions and the emotions of those soldiers who were stunned by a blast that killed one of their men. I imagined them frightened and mad; out of their minds with rage over constantly battling will-o-wisps. I imagined them surrounded in a world that lends definition to the word “alien” and suddenly realizing just how desperate a situation they were in.

I tried to put myself there but I realized there was no way I could. There is no way to envision what horrors these men have seen or what terrible sins they’ve committed that hardened their hearts to the point that cold-blooded killing was an option. There’s no way to bring my mind into a state where I can even pretend I have been broken so fully that I can do what they did. However, no matter what happened in between, the result was the same.

On that day, marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including 10 women and children and an elderly man in a wheelchair. But how and why it happened and who ultimately bears responsibility are matters of profound dispute.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/world/middleeast/17haditha.html?_r=1&ex=1150689600&en=81fa2cd8b71f4070&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

Isn’t that something? It’s amazing to me how words can sometimes form the most beautiful images imaginable and by merely rearranging the very same letters, they can be manipulated into an incomprehensibly grotesques picture that paints pure evil.

In the New York Times article, they told us what may have happened on that day. On that day, they say a man knelt praying to God for deliverance from evil. On that day, they say a mother clung to her child and sheltered her from evil. On that day, they say an old man in a wheel chair sat paralyzed and unable to even flee from evil; let alone fight against it. What staggers me beyond belief is we are the one’s that helped create that evil.

On that day, four students and their cab driver were shot dead on their way to a technical school. On that day, a young girl pretended to be dead as Marines shot and killed her entire family. On that day, women were forced out of their homes while the men in a house were shot and killed. What worries me most is that we are the ones who helped sustain this evil. Those were bullets we paid for that killed those people. Those were our children that we offered up, trained and then sent over to fight in a mythical battle; which ultimately turned into a war. It was our President that ordered the unwarranted invasion based on false pretenses and outright deceit. It was an evil we helped create and an evil we continue to support with American tax dollars and American sons and daughters.

Soon the pictures that spawned the thousand words in these accounts may come out. The New York Times may release these pictures and like Abu Ghraib, they’re going to paint a picture that will put the stain of blood on our hands yet again. And if they don’t, the thousands of words that are to come will paint hundreds of pictures and portray an even grimmer scene that no picture could ever capture. And when that happens, we must all understand something. When the world sees American soldiers killing, torturing and terrorizing innocent men, women and children, they don’t ask whether or not they’re Democrat or Republican. When the American President attacks a seemingly defenseless country based on a pack of lies, they don’t care if he’s liberal or conservative. When an American bullet or an American bomb, or an American tank blazes in trailing Hell’s own fury, they don’t stop to differentiate whether the people who made the bombs, shot the bullets or paid for the tanks were Democrat or Republican. All they see is our Glorious Flag streaked with the blood of their families.

Today, I read another story…

Seven U.S. Marines and a sailor were formally charged with premeditated murder and other offences yesterday in connection with the alleged killing of an unarmed, disabled 54-year-old Iraqi man abducted from his home in April.
The eight were also charged with assault, kidnapping, larceny and housebreaking in connection with the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, and the attempt to cover up the killing by placing a shovel and an AK-47 beside his body in an attempt to make it appear he was preparing a roadside bomb.
Awad had been disabled from injuries suffered in the Iran-Iraq war and was known in his village as "Hashim the Lame" because of his infirmities, locals in his hometown of Hamdania said.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150927811410&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

Dear Lord, we killed another crippled old man. What are we becoming?,,,

You know, everyone’s going to come to the end of their life one day, everyone who reads this now and if anyone should ever find this in the future, you too will perish. This is the way of things and it is inevitable. But for some of us, we believe there is more to this life than just what is offered here. Some of us believe it doesn’t really end.

In this world, we have found Love to be such a precious and beautiful thing that we wrapped it in robes and called it our Lord. When we did this, we found that Love to be beyond all scope; as timeless as sadness and death and yet, more powerful and everlasting. Some have come to believe that if you Love hard enough and Live full enough, your soul can fly up and kiss heaven; and your heart will float in Love forever and ever. This is what some believe; this is what I believe.

But I also believe that if you destroy your soul by doing evil, by ruining your heart so that Love can never enter; God cannot bear the site of you, even though he loves you. What troubles me most is not for the Iraqi’s who suffered and died, for I believe God reaches down and grabs their souls into his arms and holds onto them. No, though I weep for their deaths, I have hope for their eternal souls. But what causes me more pain, more despair, is the deaths of the souls of these soldiers and the knowledge that it didn’t have to be.

We didn’t have to Kill. We didn’t have to Covet. We didn’t have to bring False Witness. We didn’t have to Steal. We didn’t have to sacrifice to a God of Fear and we didn’t have to Take the Name of our Lord and use it for our own Vanity. Jesus didn’t tell George to invade Iraq; just as he didn’t tell the Romans to nail him to a Cross. He just knew that they would and he cried out for forgiveness. He knew George would too, and he still cries…

May God have mercy on them; for they know not what they’ve done…

…And above us all, waves the American Flag.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Kicked and recommended.... the mercy will be slow in coming

but for the ones who hatched this illegal endeavor.... I am afraid the mercy will be served cold.

[uppityperson]

2. Difficult to be patient during all this, very difficult.

[mikelewis]

3. ...think of it, always.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always.
Gandhi

[MisterP]

4. holy cow, that was good!!!!

[mikelewis]

8. Thank you...

[leftchick]

5. a little insight: "Haditha, Vietnam & War Crimes"

I have a hard time understanding this horror as well. This helped a little...

<snip>

The Haditha slaughter is also drawing unavoidable comparisons with the My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, when a bloodied unit of the Army’s Americal Division stormed into a hamlet known as My Lai 4.

With military helicopters circling overhead, revenge-seeking American soldiers under the command of Capt. Ernest Medina and Lt. William Calley rousted Vietnamese civilians – mostly old men, women and children – from their thatched huts and herded them into the village’s irrigation ditches.

As the round-up continued, some Americans raped the girls. Then, under orders from officers on the ground, soldiers began emptying their M-16s into the terrified peasants. Some parents desperately used their bodies to try to shield their children from the bullets. Soldiers stepped among the corpses to finish off the wounded.

The slaughter raged for four hours. A total of 347 Vietnamese, including babies, died in the carnage that would stain the reputation of the U.S. Army. But there also were American heroes that day in My Lai. Some soldiers refused to obey the direct orders to kill and one helicopter crew intervened to save some of the Vietnamese.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/061306a.html

[mikelewis]

6. The same thing those soldiers did in that vilage in Cambodia...

seems to be happening nationwide in Iraq.

US soldiers kill two Iraqi women
A pregnant Iraqi woman in labour and her cousin were shot dead by US forces as they rushed to hospital along a closed road, police and relatives say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5037124.stm




3 U.S. Soldiers Charged With Murder
101st Airborne Members Accused Of Killing 3 Men In Military Custody
he U.S. Army has charged three soldiers in connection with the murders of three Iraqi men who were in military custody in Iraq in early May, the military said Monday.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/19/iraq/main1729623.shtml?source=RSS&attr=HOME_1729623






The so-called Rules of Engagement that every U.S. soldier lives under are constantly changing as the insurgents adopt new tactics. As one U.S. serviceman who served in Iraq explains, "The nature of the fight over there has widely expanded the definition of threat. Car drives too close to your convoy — suicide bomber or stupid driver? Male with a shovel on the side of a road at 2 a.m. — coming home late from work or digging an IED hole? On the roof of a house within line of sight of an IED explosion — trigger man, cameraman, or just enjoying an evening on the roof when he heard an explosion and came over to the edge to look?"

A former U.S. officer in Iraq suggests that there may be an increasing frustration level among the troops, who increasingly feel that they're dealing with a society that does not appear willing or able to help itself. "It would not surprise me a bit if the troops involved had a keen and strong understanding of the Iraqi culture," says the officer, "and finally got sickened to the point of snapping when much of that culture refuses to protect itself, refuses to take steps to provide for security in its neighborhoods and homes, and will, with full knowledge of the consequences, say nothing when they know full well that death is coming to their doorstep."

"It may very well be that the reason the Iraqi government was so late coming to the table to condemn the incident in Haditha, was because they really, culturally, don't understand what the big deal was. We can't accept those types of degraded values in our soldiers and Marines, and are outraged when we think they went over the line."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1207035,00.html

[leftchick]

7. agreed

the truth will come out eventually. :(

[silvertip]

9. What drove them to such a place?

    We did! The American people who in their infinite wisdom
voted for and allow to remain in power the people who continue
to send young men into combat in an unjust war over and over
again. The human brain can only with stand so much killing and
seeing your friends blown to bits and having to pick up the
guts and bloody parts and placeing them into a rubber bag to
be sent back to their familys. When you send men into combat
2-3-or even four times some of them already being treated for
P.T.S.D. and on Prozac things are going to happen, unpleasant
things, no one can face those conditions on a constant and
daily basis and remain sane. All of the people who are
screaming for these men to be hung should have to walk in
their boots, I have and even after 41 years I still have
screaming nightmares. So folks when the time comes around to
vote again think about who drove those men to that place!