The Ethics Of War

[illbill]

http://www.realopinion.com/realboards/showthread.php?t=1657


<snip>It isn't only a question about the moral culpability of American troops, their commanders or their political leaders. While they bear moral responsibility for their actions, we as citizens in a democracy share responsibility for actions undertaken in our name. That responsibility is not diminished by the fact that Iraqi insurgents are committing horrific crimes against their own people. In years to come, the world community will likely ask of us: Did we know? Did we care? Did we speak out?<snip>

http://www.realopinion.com/realboards/showthread.php?t=1657

[SeanQuinn]

1. Well said. :)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Did we care?

Our collective caring was taken down several notches by the Saddam/911 link bullshit, the mushroom cloud smoking gun bullshit, and he anthrax/measles/smallpox bullshit. Fear took away the average American's ability to think coherently.

You can place much of the blame for this on the MSM. They should be hanging their heads in shame for the atrocities that they have helped to unleash against a country that did us no harm.... inspite of the fact that they had 10's of thousands of reasons to do so. While the PBS Frontline interview with Trainor says this...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/appendix/tdeath.html
>>Q: What do we know about how many Iraqis soldiers were actually killed? What's the best estimate?

Trainor: They've been all sorts of estimates of Iraqis casualties run by a lower ranked D.I.A. officer that put it at something like 100,000. But it was nothing like that. We don't know the exact number but I think you have to distinguish between the Iraqis in Iraq and those were mostly civilians and there I think they were relatively few killed in Iraq. Saddam Hussein puts the figure at about 3,000. That may be correct, although I think that that's probably a little high, given the type of targets we were going after and the accuracy. Within the theater, I don't think anybody really has a feel for that. The air campaign was not going after the Iraqi soldiers.

The air campaign that preceded the ground attack was going after equipment and stores and supplies and the soldiers were pretty much smart enough to stay away from their equipment and supplies so that they weren't killed and then the ground attack went in so very, very quickly that the the casualty rate had to be low. We had all sorts of medical facilities there to take care of of the wounded and they received very few wounded, either American or Iraqi. So, while I can't put a figure on on the number of casualties, it certainly --for the size of the war and the size of the numbers of troops on both sides involved--probably broke the Guinness Book of Records on minor casualties.<<

Another source says this.... now, in my mind, a picture is worth a thousand Iraqis... so perhaps Trainor was trying to put a happy face on a grisly event. These two articles paint a different picture of reality. I'm not surprised.




I highly recommend you watch this, listen to OUR TROOPS and see if Trainor's story holds water...

"The allied blitzkrieg has gone like clockwork" the BBC's Brian Barron

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events02/world/me/iraq/barron.ram

"The bombers overhead caught the flood or escaping soldiers" Kate Adie, Basra Road

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events02/world/specials/iraq/basra_road.ram