Originally posted by colyla:
Thank God for the 'ignore button. I will go use it now. |
Online Journalism Review, USC Annenberg material on this subject
I understand that the people involved in this, as are the people who were involved in Abu Ghraib, make up a minority of the US military service. But I do believe that there is no excuse for ANY of it. Ultimate responsibility rests in the hands of the system and the leadership that have allowed ANY of this to happen.
I took particular interest in the following passage quoting someone who defended the practice of spreading around shots of kills:
"I made it real clear in most if not all of my posts how I feel about the Iraqi people in general and that feeling has not changed a bit in my time here. I [put] a good friend of mine [in a body bag] just a week ago and that really clinched it for me and my teammates. We will always shoot first and ask no questions, period. The military brass will always try to sanitize the effects of war, no matter when or where, and yes if it was possible they would censor all media coming out of this country, pics and stories."
As an American, I find it extremely disturbing that even a SINGLE American soldier happily confesses to a "shoot first, ask no questions" attitude. Frankly, this just smacks of a lack of proper training, and a lack of knowledge of the terms of the rules of war, and in particular the Geneva Convention.
I'd also like to add that ignoring something like this is just about the most irresponsible out of the list of possible actions.
Message edited by author 2005-09-28 10:15:08.
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