U.S. Town Sees GIs as Real Victims in Iraq Abuse

[ringmastery]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1896&ncid=1896&e=6&u=/nm/20040508/us_nm/iraq_abuse_town_dc

For some, shock mingled with embarrassment over their hometown's sudden and unwelcome notoriety. For many others, sympathy for the soldiers far outweighed their concerns.


"Excuse me, if I see somebody dragging my people through the streets and hung up on a bridge -- I mean, the bible even says an eye for an eye," said retired Vietnam War veteran Robert Zalewski, 56, drinking a beer at Pete's Parkview Tavern and Grill.


"People are trying to kill you. You got to protect yourself," he said, adding the abuse by the soldiers was "half what they (Iraqis) have done to us."


Jamey Hill, a local postal worker, said the photos of naked prisoners in sexual positions, in a pile or on a leash, were nothing compared to the images of murdered Americans dangling from a bridge in the town of Falluja in March.

[Wonk]

1. That'd be funny if it wasn't so stupid.

The prisoner torture at the hands of US troops was occurring months before the incident where those four were hung from the bridge, for example.

[madmax]

2. Maybe that's why they did what they did to the merc's

The torture stories were already out there.

[mmonk]

3. This is the ignorance that is the American people

thanks in large part to an inept press.

[ewagner]

4. Uhhmmm.... excuse me

but the abuse of the prisoners took place BEFORE the mutilation of the four civilian contractors in Falluja.

I've had to do some thinking on this issue. An a few things disturb me about the entire, post-invasion situation in Iraq.

Do you remember when we killed Saddam's sons? The Pentagon thought it necessary to release pictures of their bodies; both before and after they had been cleaned up. The Muslim community didn't like that one bit. They thought the treatment of the bodies defiled the religion. The manner in which they were eventually buried didn't help much either.

Pictures provided to the entire Arab world by Al Jazeera over and over again of civilians including woman and children wounded or killed in raids, bombings or crossfire in battles with insurgents have implied that the United States does not value life as it says it does.

The point I am trying to make is that subconsciously life in Iraq has been degraded...all life...American and Iraqi alike to the point where mutilation of bodies is acceptable.

And now, there are these quotes above....life is becoming cheap here too I guess.

[Malva Zebrina]

5. Yup , dragging, "their people" through the streets

"their people" were mercenaries, making an enormous salary, compared to the soldiers.

They were "paid killers" and, indeed, Americans out to make the most in monetary compensation for killing Iraqi people.

They did not take an oath to defend the Consitution of the US.


The only thing they could be conceivably loyal to was their corporation, who hired and paid them this wonderful salary that they could never have made back home.


After they were killed by Iraqi resistance fighters, who knew the role these mercenaries played in killing the families of these resistance fighters, we decided that we, in the form of Marines, would punish an entire town for this terrible thing they did to
Americans--American mercenaries


So we invaded Fallujah and killed some estimated seven hundred of people, civilians, mostly women and children according to the doctors.

Just to avenge, in furor, goddamn mercenaries who would not take an oath to defend us.

Jesus

[trof]

6. Right statement. Wrong reasons.

I too view our young men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan as victims.

Not victims of those who fight them, victims of the administration who sent the there.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. But the people in the prison

were abused before the four contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated. I cringe at the inherent racism/anti Islamic bias that is found in many Americans.

[BlueStateGirl]

8. It's not just the people of FT. Ashby. I have heard that

sentiment expressed in my bar,in the heart of Center City Philadelphia. Of course I have also spoken with many people who have no idea what's going on at all.

Unfortuantely, that attitude isn't limited by geographical boundaries. I will say that I don't detect hate or ignorance as the reason behind it (in my example), it seems more like a deep desire to deny that "we" could be that evil. It's like a justification because they don't want to face the truth.

[kalian]

9. "the Bible even says an eye for an eye..."

Hmmmm....does the bible say anything about ILLEGAL invasions and
subsequent occupation...? Hmmm...thought so.

Fuck'em all...xtians, jews and muslims alike. Man I wish we could
blast them out into space.... :mad:

[bigtree]

10. The bombing of innocents and the starving of Iraqis by sanctions

in the first Gulf war was apparently not enough reason to hate us for some Americans.

More than 250,000 individual bombs and missiles were dropped or fired in 42 days onto Iraq in that first war. Some 244 laser-guided bombs and 88 cruise missiles were reportedly delivered against Baghdad targets. The people of Iraq suffered from power outages and systems failures caused by bombing attacks on their weakened infrastructure. Medicine deteriorated without proper refrigeration. Food spoiled; water stagnated and became dangerously polluted.

The citizens of Iraq, already starving and impoverished as a result of the crippling sanctions imposed on Iraq by the U.N., at the bequest of the U.S., were not 'liberated' by the destruction. Of Iraq's 545,000 troops in the Kuwait Theater of Operations, about 100,000 are believed to have lost their lives. http://www.cryan.com/war/

Before the imposition of sanctions in the '80's, and before the war, Iraq boasted the region's best schools and hospitals, and enjoyed the smallest gap between the rich and poor of any of its neighbors. Also, Iraq's educated class ranked among the region's best.

Six weeks of intensive bombing reduced Iraq to what was described as a pre-industrial state. Unemployment soared and the black market flourished, resulting in a widening of the gap between the impoverished majority and those few who managed to cling to wealth.

Before sanctions were imposed, ninety percent of Iraq's income came from oil exports. Once sanctions restricted oil sales, lack of basic food and medicine soon reached catastrophic levels.

The country's water, electrical, and oil systems, and other infrastructure were devastated in the bombing campaign.
Human Rights Watch documented the effects of the first U.S. aggression against Iraq and found that more than 500 civilian buildings and homes were targeted and destroyed with no apparent connection to any threat to the U.S. or its allies.

Middle East Watch, in a more damning account, tells of some 9,000 homes, housing some 72,000 people, that had been destroyed or badly damaged during the bombing. Some 2,500 of the buildings reported destroyed were in Baghdad and another 1,900 in Basra. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP5.htm (THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND:EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF CIVILIAN CASUALTIES AND DAMAGE)


"People are trying to kill you. You got to protect yourself."

This is just for American invaders, right? American invaders should expect safe harbor from the Iraqis? Why should we expect to be welcomed there?

We all know what the reaction of Americans would be if some foreigner decided that our president was a danger to his/her country and employed all available means to remove him from power. But our false authority disregards these occupied citizen's forced expressions of their nationalism, in defense of basic prerogatives of liberty and self-determination, as threats to our consolidation of power.



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