More Wikileaks.Follow

Oh so all the talk of removing a savage and cruel dictator was meaningless then? ****, your face must be red.

It's quite clear to everyone here how much you paid for yours.

Wow. I've read some insane **** in your posts. This is just... Wow.

Damnit, Alma, you're really trying to come off as a dense, arrogant cnut, aren't you? When you read the article, we'll continue talking. Until that point, feel free to stick to your "I'm in the military so you don't know what you're talking about unless you agree with me" rhetoric.

We send our boys and girls out there to fight and lay down their lives for the right for corrupt locals to off unarmed civilians.

Makes you proud doesn't it.

A propos of nothing, I must've misremembered a time when Alma made any fUcking sense.

He makes varrus sound like a reasoned, tolerant individual.

That's funny because I wasn't using that rhetoric. I specifically asked you to prove you claim. If you can't do that, then don't expect people to believe you... So, feel free to stick with your "I don't have to actually show any proof to my outrageous claim, you find it yourself" rhetoric and I'll stick with reality and common sense.

I quoted a bit of the article which fit my claim of "shady" and "possibly illegal." Read the article yet?

Ignoring the irrational arguments flying about, the larger question is whether there was a "cover up", or if this proves some kind of unlawful behavior on the part of the US military. My issue here is merely finding reports of events like this (rare given the volume of documents and the amount of time we're talking about) doesn't tell us what action was taken afterwards. Was disciplinary action taken against those soldiers? Were reports made (obviously there were, or we'd not be reading about it, right)? Was this case and others brought up when US commanders met with IA commanders to discuss the numerous issues involved in securing the country? What came of that? What policy changes were put in place?


We don't know any of that. To leap to the conclusion that nothing happened, no changes were made, the US just looked the other way, and then classified the reports so as to cover it up, is frankly just wild speculation. Bad things happen during war. I'll repeat my comparison to the kinds of reprisals which went on in France, Belgium, and Holland during the liberation of those nations from the *****. Did the US intervene there? Did we arrest people? Did we hold trials of those who acted in this way? Did we stop in the midst of fighting the war to make sure that no one we liberated took matters into their own hands?

No. We didn't. Because sometimes war just plain sucks and these sorts of things happen. Now imagine that instead of occupying those nations for 4 years, it's been 20. Imagine people living their entire lives in fear of their government. Imagine them having loved ones "disappeared", sometimes because they dared to say or do something they shouldn't, and sometimes just randomly to serve as a warning to those who might. I'm not excusing the actions of those Iraqi soldiers. I am, however, explaining why this sort of thing happens, and questioning the value of second guessing our response to their actions.



No. It doesn't. Just as it doesn't make a police officer "proud" when he has to fire his weapon on a suspect in order to stop a crime. It's unfair emotional rhetoric to even present it that way. It's not about something you want, or seek, but something that sometimes becomes necessary and/or just happens and you have to deal with it. There is no perfect solution here.

What we can be proud of is changing the conditions themselves. We don't measure that just by counting bodies or looking at violent actions. We measure that by looking at the hope for the future. We look at the likelihood of a route being found to a future with less violence and less death. If this wasn't true then no one would *ever* fight for freedom. No one would ever fight to overthrow the yoke of oppression. Because mathematically, there is less death and less violence if we just accept the powers over us. And we can even take a moral high ground and say that we're not the ones doing the killing or the violence.

But that's a cop out. Always has been, and always will be. In the long run the Iraqis are better off for our actions. They know this, even if western anti-war liberals have forgotten it. It reminds me of an Air America host I was listening to years ago. He made a big deal about mocking the "coalition of the willing" during the Iraq conflict by showing how they were all tiny little nations and all the "important" countries had stayed out. And as he was rattling off this list it occurred to me that while most of them were small countries, many of them had something very significant in common: They were countries who had been liberated from some other nations control within the last generation or two. A whole lot of former eastern block nations were among that coalition.


Think maybe they know the value of freedom? Think maybe they understand what it's like to live under an oppressive regime? Yeah. I think they do. So that list, instead of being something to mock really becomes an list of nations that "get it". Dunno. I just found it very interesting.

The documents were classified, kept from the public. I disagree with the fact that they were. The wikileaks revealed these documents to the public. The activity I linked to was shady and possibly illegal. Using logic, we can connect this shady, possibly illegal activity back to being kept from the public. This satisfies my claims. I don't see what more you can want. Read it yet?

And so were the other 399,990 documents out of the 400k dumped by wikileaks that *didn't* contain anything that appeared shady in any way. What's your point? At what point do you realize that the military normally classifies *all* of its operational documents and doesn't just make them available to the general public? There's nothing unusual about this at all.


Anyone remember when my first thought in this thread was that some people were making assumptions about these documents purely because they were classified and then leaked? Why would anyone do that if they didn't show something illegal going on? Why indeed?



That they were what? Classified? Kept from the public? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.



No we can't. You've got the direction of action backwards. You have military reports which are not normally made public. Period. Within a large volume of these reports you have an incredibly tiny number of them which report on activities which appear to you to be "shady" or "possibly illegal". If your logic was valid then none of the other reports would have been classified since they didn't contain anything that was shady or illegal in them, right?



You're allowing your own assumptions to lead your conclusions. The correct conclusion is that these reports were given no more specific classification, nor was any greater attempt made to secure them or "hide them" than any other random report on paper clip use or potato consumption rates. You're free to point to these events as examples of "bad things" which happen during war. But to argue they were "covered up"? Absurd.

Edited, Nov 4th 2010 5:29pm by gbaji

Alma and gbaji both miss the point. I'm not calling for military classification procedures to be changed, I'm stating that I'm ideologically opposed to such things being kept separate from public knowledge. Not once did I say all documents which are classified contain shady and/or possibly illegal conduct. I'm not sure where gbaji pulled that from. However, the very act of this information being classified causes it to be held from the public. My link here is sound. I didn't say they were given special classification or special attention. Ever.

lilwoc,



and just how do you think a govn should be expected to respond to a foreign aggressor who's openly illustrated it's willingness to sacrifice the lifes of that nations soldiers? Do you know what a nations most sacred charge is?

What...? The US population "doesn't want to know" that the military is allowing abuse to happen in an occupied territory??

I'd be incredibly interested to know which ******* of your body you pulled that wonderful little nugget from.