South Korean hostage killed in Iraq
(via NY Times.) Response from Bush: "The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal action of these barbaric people."
Too late.
This world isn't free. My significant other needs $3200 for tooth crowns.
I'm not intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people. I'm intimidated by the lack of realization that these acts wouldn't be going on if we weren't in Iraq.
And jeez, free, is your SO a hockey player?
/soapbox
There is no excuse for this.
Absolutely barbaric.
Bush misses the point though (and one of the truisms of terrorism is that there is always a point--an audience towards which a "message" is being sent). This action is not calculated to intimidate the "free world," just a very particular segment of it: American contractors and the companies for which they work.
Because the interim government will only gain legitimacy if they can bring a measure of stability (ie: clean water, a functioning electrical grid, steady oil revenue), the insurgents (terrorists, whatever you want to name them) are mounting a very deliberate campaign to choke off the supply of foreign contractors capable of bringing these systems back on line. Behead enough civilians (making sure the ensuing media frenzy surrounding your act spreads the message far and wide) and it eventually becomes very difficult to recruit the people who have the expertise to repair infrastructure.
And every day the lights are not on or the sewers are backed up undermines the interim government, makes the Americans even more hated, and provides an rallying point for the insurgency. Much as we would like to deny it, there is a terrible logic in these acts, and we would do well to understand it and develop some way to counter it--if only to give the new government a fighting chance of succeeding and to prevent Iraq from descending into civil war...
But Iraq is free! They're much better off without Saddam! And we're winning the war against terrorism!
Well said chriss.
phew... i feel safer already!
freethought- tell your SO to stop drinking so much soda and maybe switch to coffee. personally, i like my coffee black.
...like my men.
This act is completely tasteless.
As are the photographs of the families reactions.
If a relative or friend was murdered I would not want some asshole photographer in my house taking my picture.
that stupid word 'barbaric'
IMHO, bombing entire cities from high above in the middle of the night is far more barbaric than beheading a hostage in broad daylight.
how can you call them savages?
They make death real and immediate and vivid to those of us who have never lived under wartime conditions.
We want our war to be all explody and tracer bullety and night goggley and they...those savages....want to make it personal.
the bastards.
I agree with PatB.
George Bush = War Criminal
Why do you hate America?
Cos.
Nostril, surly, think about it.
the most honorable and righteous american images are all about 'this time, its personal', one man against the System, out gunned, out thunk....one man, or one small band of true believers, making a personal stand against the Tyrannical Big Guys Who have Vastly Superior Technology, Faceless Technology and totally huge bombs that may be thwarted by those savage, tasteless, ignorant, sadistic, non-freedom-loving unchristian bug snorting
resting back
See that choir over there, Pat? Yer preachin' to it...
Do I think what happened to this poor guy is right? Hell no. Wouldn't wish shit like that on my worst enemy. Just like I wouldn't wish saturation bombing on my worst enemy. There's no moral equivalence here. You kill someone with intent and you're not defending yourself, you're a barbarian no matter what your method. And by "defending yourself", I don't mean this pre-emption bullshit the bushies are spouting like a mantra to keep the "bad people" at bay.
That said, I also know that if we pull out of this clusterfuck called Iraq, things will get worse. The country is an albatross around the US's neck now, but we've got to carry that weight and help build something lasting now that we've gone in and broken everything.
Unfortunately so. Unfortunately so.
Let us remember that even after Iraq has "full sovereignty" there will be about 150,000 coalition troops on the ground to get shot at and respond by bombing "safe houses".
Also, odds are the interim PM will get assasinated before the he gets to the end of the month.
surylboi is spot on: Operation Iraqi Freedom Clusterfuck.
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
*stands up in the back, says in small voice amid the condemning din...*
Bush may be wrong here in term, but he's right in impetus - beheading a man and videotaping it is an effort to intimidate those who remain, the idea being: "you might be next. We take the civilian and the unguarded, we subject them to torture and, ultimately, a public spectacle of death, and we can do it to you." It is ghastly and cowardly, and the act of a group who is losing their influence and power, and ultimately, is right to be condemned and *ignored*. There will be more beheadings, but I applaud at least one part of the South Korean response: sending more troops. Asserting one's resolve in the face of bullies with sacks on their heads to hide their identities (where have we seen that before, hmm...) is the mark of resolve, not folly.
If the US' aim is to eventually see to it that a democracy is established in Iraq (and I believe this is true), then we are right to continue on with this aim both despite and because of these beheadings. They represent what all Iraqis will be subject to if we leave, and if indeed we do care what happens to them, it is our duty to stay.
The origins of the Iraq War and the motivations behind it may be (and have been) debated ad inifinitum; regardless, we are there now. And while I have in the past advocated total withdrawal, I must admit that to do so (as viscerally satisfying as it might be to watch) would be both ignoble and a betrayal of the ideals that I still think are the ultimate goals of this war.
Continuing, to equate Bush and, by proxy, the American presence in Iraq with the depredations of the Hussein regime grossly inflates the influence of the Bush administration while belittling the suffering the Iraqi people were subjected to; neither wins converts to your cause. And I wholeheartedly disagree with PatB's assertion that beheading a bound kidnap victim is somehow less barbaric than conducting a bombing run on a military position.
"As I passed through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for I am the baddest mother fucker in the valley." - an armour crewman's prayer.
to clarify that last: when a bombing is conducted, the target is slected based on intelligence that recommends it; that intelligence is vetted as best it can be; the target area is assessed for "colateral" (to see if the target is likely to produce unitended, civilian casualties); if so, the target is not bombed, or theordnance is changed so that the likelihood of civilian casualties, damage to needed infrastructure and the like is minimized. Once all that is ascertained, the order is given, and the bomb is dropped.
It is not a perfect situation - the innocent are harmed. But the Air Force takes every precaution to see to it that that harm is minimized - to the detriment of the overall war, and frequently to the detriment of American forces on the ground. It might be far and removed from the butcher knife to the throat, but until al Qaeda shows concern for noncombtants - rather than explicitly targeting civilians, murdering them for effect, and using them as shields - then I will consider the moral equivalancy argument of the two acts.
Violence is violence, to be sure, whether big or small, and is rightly excoriated. To connote the two positions as done above demeans the Air Force man who works dilligently to avoid hurting the innocent and attempts to render service when he inadvertantly does.
Respectfully, Fes. when faced with overwhelming odds against you, can you honestly say you'd act any different if a hostile occupying force took up residence in your home town and told you they were doing it because they knew what was best for you?
My condemnation of BushCo isn't due to the occupation per-se, but to the gung-ho, "the only combat I've ever actually seen is the kind in the movies" attitude that got us there and the half-assed prosecution of the aftermath.
I agree with you that we have to make a stand in Iraq now and have said as much, but it doesn't mean I have to be happy abput what got us to this point.
Respectfully, Fes. when faced with overwhelming odds against you, can you honestly say you'd act any different if a hostile occupying force took up residence in your home town and told you they were doing it because they knew what was best for you?
The question is, do the people who are doing the beheading/bombing/etc. represent/speak for the people of Iraq who AREN'T taking up arms against American troops? They may share common dislike of the troops on the ground, but dislike doesn't necessarily translate to active violence against civilians.
While I appreciate the delicacy of the question, I would never - EVER - slaughter a civilian like a swine on video. And I will forever comdemn those who would, regardless of the cause. Same goes for those who whould strap bombs to themselves and detonate them on school busses, those who would bulldoze the homes of families with them in them, those who would burn a church or assassinate a prime minister or cower behind a mask and an AK. There is always an alternative - stand up, al Qaeda! remove the Kaffiyahs from your faces, Hamas! If your argument is valid, if your grievance is justified, the world will flock to your cause. I denounce terrorism for it's casual cruelty and dismissal of the value of a human life, but that denunciation is even more pronounced by the fact that it is *unnecessary*. Want the US out of Iraq? Join the government and work to make them as unnecessary. Every bomb, every ambush, every beheading only ensures our longer stay.
In the meantime, I agree with you in that the administration gave little thought to the inevitable aftermath of the campaign, and the casually patronizing justifications given. But I yet believe that, in the end, this war was (and continues to be) the right thing to do, despite its dubious origins. I think liberating the Iraqis from Hussein was a good thing; I think a free Iraq may serve as an example to the rest of the middle east; I think that the display of American military power and the apparent willingness to use it will convince nearby states that have historically supported terror (basically, all of them) to curtail that support; I think hunting al Qaeda ultimately makes the world safer; and I think that standing up and saying "We will fight this" in the face of world opinion shows them that we are a country of principle and are unwilling to continue to sacrifice the occasional kidnapping and murder, the occasional truck bombing, the occasional USS Cole for the privilege of maintaining our detachment from a world that has suffered more from terror than we.
Bush may not be the best man to continue this fight - indeed, he may be the *worst*, although I think he may have been the best man to *start* it - but it is, in my opinion, yet a fight worth continuing.
I think hunting al Qaeda ultimately makes the world safer;
Agreed. Problem is, Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until we went in there and created a great place for them to recruit new members.
and I think that standing up and saying "We will fight this" in the face of world opinion shows them that we are a country of principle and are unwilling to continue to sacrifice the occasional kidnapping and murder, the occasional truck bombing, the occasional USS Cole for the privilege of maintaining our detachment from a world that has suffered more from terror than we.
Prvilege? We are of this world, not above it. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we'll start to see why things like this happen and what we can do to make it stop happening. All we're doing now is delaying the inevitable.
we'll start to see why things like this happen and what we can do to make it stop happening
What is the "this" and "it" to which you refer? Terrorism? Beheading? Al Quaeda specifically? US imperialism? War? I'm not sure what you're talking about here...
Not only was he beheaded, he was booby-trapped to target the Imperialist Colaborators (aka the Iraqi carrying the gurney).
Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until we went in there and created a great place for them to recruit new members.
I agree to the latter point. Although the official links between the Hussein regime and al Qaeda have been shown to be extremely tenuous if not non-existant, Iraq has for decades served as a de factor safe house for terrorists of all stripes and a financier of various terror organizations. It's improbable that Iraq was completely free of al Qaeda until we got there. They just weren't on Hussein's list of Terrorists We Officially Help Out.
Prvilege? We are of this world, not above it.
Agreed. My point was that prior to 9/11, the US could act as if terrorism was someone else's problem, and we were willing to allow the occasional American to be killed in service to that idea. That detachment from this particular aspect of the world can no longer be maintained, is what I meant.
"Agreed. Problem is, Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until we went in there and created a great place for them to recruit new members."
So Saddam stored his military armaments in various villages' civilian homes? Many caches of weaponry were found there right after the fall of Baghdad, that were old & had been there for some time. Would you let your children sleep in the same room with explosives and ammunitions? Why were these homes found in this state during this time by my brother?
Will agree that many forigners snuck into Iraq during the war and today because the borders are wide open and impossible to fully control with the # of our military force there, per my brother whom had the mission doing it.
What is the "this" and "it" to which you refer? Terrorism? Beheading? Al Quaeda specifically? US imperialism? War? I'm not sure what you're talking about here...
The "this" I'm referring to is terrorism in general and all the myriad ways it is carried out. Be that beheadings or anything else.
So Saddam stored his military armaments in various villages' civilian homes? Many caches of weaponry were found there right after the fall of Baghdad, that were old & had been there for some time. Would you let your children sleep in the same room with explosives and ammunitions? Why were these homes found in this state during this time by my brother?
Saddam storing weapons in civillian houses has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. That has everything to do with the fact that he ran his country the way he did. He was a despot and a man ready to go to war with any of his assembled enemies. The same way we hid weapons in our homes during the American revolution, he did the same.
I've said it before and I'm saying it again, Bin Ladin and Hussein were idealogically opposed. Bin Ladin is a fundamentalist, Hussien was a secularist. The two do not mix. Hussein was an asshole, but he was a predictable one. The war in Iraq has replaced the devil we know with one we don't and the world will suffer for our folly.
The two do not mix.
And the Titanic will never sink.
And the Titanic will never sink.
The Bush administration was the iceberg.
The two weren't mixing and Al Qaeda wouldn't have had the hold they now have in Iraq if we hadn't opened the door for them.
Believe otherwise all you want, but the "draining the swamp" theory was and is a load of crap. We dropped the ball in Afghanistan to pick up and drop another one in Iraq.
"Capital Report," June 17, 2004
Gloria Borger: "Well, let's get to Mohammed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that [the Iraq-Qaeda link] was quote, "pretty well confirmed."
Cheney: No, I never said that. Absolutely not.
"Meet the Press," December 9, 2001:
Cheney: "It's been pretty well confirmed that [Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April."
I always try to remain open-minded with this stuff, but I'm finding it very difficult to see this situation from a different perspective than the one I've had for a long, long time.
Meet the Press, 12/9/01
[RUSSERT] Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?
CHENEY: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.
Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point. But that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.
/Meet the Press, 12/9/01
Just becuz I'm an asshole, I wanted to point out to you to use actual quotes from the VP than from another blog. It may help you in the future with staying open-minded, to question who is feeding you what, and a more solid attack/defense.
Regardless of where I got that quote (and it wasn't another blog), the innuendo in many of Bush and Cheney's speeches and talks going into the Iraq war was that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11. Bush directly tied Iraq to al Qaeda at least six times before the war, and Colin Powell certainly tried to, even if it was against his will (which it very well might have been).
Perhaps it was not Bush et al intending to lie to the American people, but 'bad intelligence'. I still feel that they can and will spin whatever they can get in every way possible to achieve their purposes, whether the information they get their hands on is good or bad. In this case, I needed to check my sources better. But it seems based on several past events that Bush needs to as well.
Either way, I don't feel the need to go straight to Bush and Cheney for the truth, because I think they're putting just as much of their bias on it as you and I, if not more.
Just becuz I'm an asshole, I wanted to point out to you to use actual quotes from the VP than from another blog. It may help you in the future with staying open-minded, to question who is feeding you what, and a more solid attack/defense.
The addition of the rest of the text at the end doesn't make the quote any less damning, blog. Cheney's still backpedalling and he's still wrong.
The addition of the rest of the text at the end doesn't make the quote any less damning, blog. Cheney's still backpedalling and he's still wrong.
Never said it wasn't damning, nor am I defending Cheney. With the 'polarization' of the electorate and tempers seeming short this election year, I am trying in my own (misguided?) way to minimize potential flash points. I see a quote like that, I immediately try to find a/the source. Those quotes of Mfpb only gave me one site when Googled. and the only comletely whole transcript I found of the Meet The Press was from Drudge since Meet the Press hasn't released its transcript.
Afghans behead Taliban in revenge for beheadings
posted by homunculus at 03:19AM UTC on June 24
Anything you can do, I can do better Anything I can do better than you.
"No you can't!"
"Yes, I can!"
I am trying in my own (misguided?) way to minimize potential flash points.
As am I, as is everyone else (I hope). That being said, there's probably more worthy 'flash points' to debate than this.
...whatever. I was wrong.
(so was Cheney.)
FreedomClusterfuck.