Iraqi Government faces collapse one day after the Yanks leave...

edited 24th Jan '12 2:37:44 AM by Baff

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Every single man in that unit involved in that shooting should have recieved life in prison. Why didn't they?

Bradley Manning is gonna spend more time than that guy. Ditto homeboy that we're asking the UK to extradite over copyright issues.

The world is fucking nuts.

"He will now be held accountable for those actions"

No he won't, he's being held accountable for robbing a liquor store, not killing 24 people.

Seriously, 3 months? What the fuck is wrong with them?

You know there's places where a black man would get more than three months for robbing a liquor store.

I would think that since they got a guilty plea he would later be tried for the killings as well, at least one would hope.

Y'know, you're the military law expert Barkey, why no dishonorable discharge?

What a load of fucking horseshit that is. Par for the course these days though, I suppose. We all know the US Government sure doesn't give a shit, at least.

@Radical Taoist

You should mention the stuff about the black guy and the liquor store in the white privelege thread.

@Barkey

One would hope indeed.

@Flyboy

Somewhat related, I've actually just read a string of stories of crap-ups within the military, including one where a 19 year old soldier was driven to suicide. Would you (or Barkey, he knows about this kind of stuff as well) say that problems like these are a growing issue?

Everything is going wrong. Suicide rates, PTSD, homelessness and joblessness among veterans.

Peacetime is bad enough with the politicians always a phone call away from an undeclared war, but during the wars themselves the first people to get shafted are the soldiers themselves. Meanwhile, the people are too busy either waving their flags like jingoistic fuckwits or pretending like nobody in the military is worth anything as "killers" to do jackshit about it.

A suicide car bomber has killed at least 32 people and injured about 60 in a predominantly Shia Muslim district of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Sure looks like Mission Accomplished to me

Not to shit on our military, but Iraq was a glorified fox hunt for Washington nobles. There is and never was any point to it. I would even go so far to say there's no point in tormenting the Afgans, either.

coff*oil in the caspian sea region to reach by pipeline*coff

So thats worth the ongoing attacks against Shia Muslims in the capital?

Obviously not, but you and I are sane ethical human beings, rather than, say, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney.

That's usually something reserved for after they serve their time in Leavenworth. The UCMJ no longer applies to someone once they are out of the military, and thus while they serve time, they are still military. E-1 without pay, but still a soldier.

When they finish their time, if there are no other infractions they are being tried for, then comes the dishonorable discharge.

The military has had a soft touch in all the wrong places with regard to our more infamous law cases lately. We don't have the balls to execute anybody these days, if we did, Major Hasan would have faced a firing squad long ago.

As to the questions about Bradley Manning, you have to remember the charges. In the military, Treason is worse than Murder, based on the fact that the actions that count as treason can result in the deaths of many others, it is often murder indirectly.(And that could well end up being the case, since some of the information Manning leaked involved names of informants and agents, while we've managed to suppress them publicly, I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of that slipped through the cracks somewhere.)

I'm not positive if what they actually charged Manning with was treason or not, but from a military mindset, what Manning did was far worse and more unforgiveable than what happened at Haditha. Both are atrocious acts, but very different. It's hard for me to explain and harder still for civilians to understand, but death is a part of military life. It's something you want to avoid, but you get a little dulled to it after a while. Treason, however, is a fresh and raw experience for soldiers. Insurgents, comrades, and civilians all get torn to shreds in war and regardless of the circumstances it's something you come to accept.(note, this does not mean approval) Treason, however, or any act of disloyalty or betraying the trust given to you in a security clearance is a cardinal sin in the military. We take loyalty very seriously.

From the military playbook, I can't think of two things worse from our point of view than killing your own(Hasan) or betraying your own(Manning).

That being said, all involved in actual killing in Haditha deserve to be executed, and all who can be proven to have known about and kept silent need to be dishonorably discharged by virtue of a lack of integrity that resulted in loss of life. However, I don't see it happening. If we won't execute Major Hasan, we won't be executing anyone anytime soon, at least not until there's either a major change in the outlook of military leadership or someone does something sufficiently worse, which is hard to imagine.

As for Iraq itself, we're glad to be gone, and they are glad for us to be gone. They would have been much more happy if we had shown up, unseated Saddam, and then just flat-out left. It was our actual occupation of Iraq that pissed them off, the Iraqi's were more than happy that Saddam was gone.(especially the Shiites) We look poorly on that course of action because we see it as not cleaning up after ourselves, they would have been thankful that we got rid of Saddam for them and bid them farewell to bring order to their own house without foreign interference. This would also have left us to keep Afghanistan in order. Terrorism had time to rest, resupply, and gain a foothold while we were busy skullfucking Iraq and forgetting about Afghanistan. That respite we gave the Afghani theatre has cost us dearly in lives, resources, and the war effort. I would like to explain the intricacies of exactly how this all happened in greater detail, but this isn't the place to do it. The Military Thread, however, is always an open thread for those sort of questions and I'd be more than happy to oblige questions about why we can't win in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Besides which, we won't make any headway in any middle eastern country until Pakistan, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are brought to bear. All the extremists who cross the border and perpetuate the worst crimes of the insurgency and bring them supplies come from those countries.

edited 27th Jan '12 9:22:08 PM by Barkey

That is a lot of countries that need lassoing.

I really never understood how some US politicians could preach about defeating fundamentalists but then ignore Saudi Arabia.

Money, Dear Boy, Money.

The ringleaders are in Saudi Arabia, and all the extremist cannon fodder that come into Iraq and Afghanistan are from Syria and Pakistan.. By and large, the locals are victims. Sure, there are insurgents who are local, but if it weren't for all the foreign fanatics throwing a wrench in our plans constantly, the locals would never have gotten as involved in the insurgency as they did. I feel a lot of sympathy for the Afghani people and all that they've been through, but the Iraqis as a culture can kiss my ass, they all just lie and tell people what they want to hear, and then have their own conversation amongst themselves. They wanted our help as much as they deserved it, meaning they didn't.

edited 28th Jan '12 8:25:46 AM by Barkey

But they didn't want our "help" especially after what happened in 1992 and the Anglo-American invasion made stuff worse rather than better

Only because we told them to revolt against Saddam and then left em holding the bag. The first Gulf War wasn't about helping Iraq, it was about protecting Kuwait. I'm pretty sure they had the plans on the board for invading Iraq, but decided they didn't have enough justification and dropped em once the ball started to get rolling.(Apparently post 9/11 administrations don't need much in the way of justification.. We had no business there in 03..)

edited 28th Jan '12 8:31:17 AM by Barkey