THE CONTINUED WAR ON IRAQIS
July 05, 2006
by: jovial_cynic
by: jovial_cynic
The day before the US Independence Day, the Washington Post reported that US soldiers raped and killed a 15-year old Iraqi girl, and then killed four members of her family (including a 7-year old child), and attempted to burn the bodies to cover up the act.
From the story:
U.S. soldiers at the scene initially ascribed the killings to Sunni Arab insurgents active in the area, the U.S. military and local residents said. That puzzled villagers, who knew that the family was Sunni, Janabi said. Other residents assumed the killings were sectarian, with Shiite Muslim militiamen as the likely culprit.
But on June 23, three months after the incident, two soldiers of the 502nd came forward to say that soldiers of the unit were responsible, a U.S. military official said last week. The U.S. military began an investigation the next day, the official said.
While many war-supporters will quickly write off this story as being leftist and liberal, the source of the information is, in fact, US Military officials; they're the ones that brought the story to the Associated Press.
According to a federal affidavit:
... Steven Green and three other soldiers from the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division had talked about raping the young woman, whom they first saw while working at a traffic checkpoint near her home.
On the day of the attack, the document said, Green and other soldiers drank alcohol and changed out of their uniforms to avoid detection before going to the woman's house, with Green using a brown T-shirt to cover his face.
I don't believe the US Military, as a whole, is in the business of killing and raping Iraqi civilians. But I do think that the military's aggressive recruiting campaign is drawing in the worst of the American population. In 2005, CBS News broke a story of recruiters encouraging a high-school student to lie and cheat in order to qualify for enlistment. Didn't graduate from high school? No problem. Drug habit? No problem. And while the recruiters in that incident were reportedly reprimanded, where does it end?
The military is currently reporting that it is meeting its recruiting goals... and now we have rapists and murderers among our troops.
From the story:
U.S. soldiers at the scene initially ascribed the killings to Sunni Arab insurgents active in the area, the U.S. military and local residents said. That puzzled villagers, who knew that the family was Sunni, Janabi said. Other residents assumed the killings were sectarian, with Shiite Muslim militiamen as the likely culprit.
But on June 23, three months after the incident, two soldiers of the 502nd came forward to say that soldiers of the unit were responsible, a U.S. military official said last week. The U.S. military began an investigation the next day, the official said.
While many war-supporters will quickly write off this story as being leftist and liberal, the source of the information is, in fact, US Military officials; they're the ones that brought the story to the Associated Press.
According to a federal affidavit:
... Steven Green and three other soldiers from the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division had talked about raping the young woman, whom they first saw while working at a traffic checkpoint near her home.
On the day of the attack, the document said, Green and other soldiers drank alcohol and changed out of their uniforms to avoid detection before going to the woman's house, with Green using a brown T-shirt to cover his face.
I don't believe the US Military, as a whole, is in the business of killing and raping Iraqi civilians. But I do think that the military's aggressive recruiting campaign is drawing in the worst of the American population. In 2005, CBS News broke a story of recruiters encouraging a high-school student to lie and cheat in order to qualify for enlistment. Didn't graduate from high school? No problem. Drug habit? No problem. And while the recruiters in that incident were reportedly reprimanded, where does it end?
The military is currently reporting that it is meeting its recruiting goals... and now we have rapists and murderers among our troops.
