The ACLU would object if they were treated equal to the less affluent member of society....

Hell the ACLU would object just to hear their own voices......worthless bunch of bums they are.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Reminds me of General Pershing's method for dealing with Muslim revolt. Similar to your idea. Turned out to be very effective. Harsh though.

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

Scum like the islamonuts interpret kindness as weakness.....look at France...(ok not a good analogy...France = weak)

You have to be harsh.....real harsh with them.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Here, CMAC, you must have missed this since you ref'd an earlier note.

Bot

No I saw it, didn't know quite what to make of it. POWs are allowed a clasp knife? How serious of a knife is that? I'm unfamiliar with the specific meaning of that.

I haven't studied PNAC in depth. I think you said once that you agreed with most of it. My main concern is that it assumes that we are the ones most suited to be in the driver's seat of the grand global destiny machine. That might sound good to you as well, I don't know.

My feeling is that we need to recoginze and preserve that which distingishes us, and have a healthy self-respect w/o carrying on as though we're the rightful rulers of the world. Assuming the role of leader flies hard in the face of my mentor Lao Tzu (I dig the guy, it's true) who tells us that the best leader is hardly known.

Our profile is way too high and engenders too much friction.

The people who actually plotted, supported, and carried out the targeting of civilians on a mass scale, something you cite now and then, constitute an incredibly tiny percentage of Arabs, Muslims, you name it. A few hundred or a few thousand. By all means, hold these people's feet to the fire hard.

But focusing that judgement on all Islamo/Arab/Persians could lead us to grief as it might get the ol' self-fulfilling prophecy mechanism in motion. IOW, if they're not bent on destroying America now, after we treat them to the quality of punishment befitting OBL for a few years, they might come around to Jihad -- (wild ululating and waving of AK_47s.)

Besides, you ask Sunnis about targeting innocent civilians, they will tell you that in their experience, this is what Americans do. Sure Saddam's Sunni henchmen targeted civilians all the time, but in recent memory, which is what hotheads and dimbulbs run on, we have done stuff like put a crater where a half block of houses used to be because we were tipped that Saddam was there. Oops. Sorry, all you families that were shredded. Our bad.

Then, the pulverizing of Fallujah could serve as a potent battle cry for these guys for years - decades. More later on that one - some chit is breaking there....

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Dangit man! Would you read some other point of view besides PBS and SF Chronicle. Try someone who has been there for a long time and doesn't do fly by night journalism looking for the next bomb or hostage corpse.

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

Funny, my complaint against you. Did you listen the the Marine who was on the Commonwealth Club radio show? I listed the link a while back. On Democracy Now today they had a serviceman from Iraq talking about white phosphorous being used on civilians. Whether accidental or not, this is bad politics. The chit burns flesh and water don't help. Simple people think it's witch-craft. Many credible reports of the same thing being done in Panama under HW, in that most secret of wars. On the show was also a Lt. Col. giving the admin. view. He says white phosphorous is a legal weapon. Yeah, legal if used right. Too dangerous to have around, IMO. You don't hear about this stuff from the sources you follow, I'll reckon. Or how about Maj. Doug Rokke, US Army? You never answered me when I asked before. Without googling, ya heard of him? I'm actually quite curious about how well known he is.

You seem to think this thing is as simple as we're the good guys and they're the bad guys. Wrongamundo. The roots of this conflict are tangled and go way back. Don't think we're going to establish the kind of democracy we want just cause we're such good guys. They don't share the opinion. We have failed to persuade them. It's a failure that started a long time ago.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

See, my goal was always to let them establish the kind of democracy THEY wanted. And I do mean democracy. Probably why I have lack of heartburn with the Iraqi constitution whilst many on the left are busy talking about how worthless and useless it is.

Would this be the Marine of whom you spoke?

***

Is Jimmy Massey telling the truth about Iraq?
By Ron Harris
POST-DISPATCH WASHINGTON BUREAU
11/05/2005

Jimmy Massey former marine staff sergeant says Marines intentionally are killing innocent Iraqi civilians.

WASHINGTON

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

Among his claims:

Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.

Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.

A tractor-trailer was filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children killed by American artillery.

Massey's claims have gained him celebrity. Last month, Massey's book, "Kill, Kill, Kill," was released in France. His allegations have been reported in nationwide publications such as USA Today, as well as numerous broadcast reports. Earlier this year, he joined the anti-war bus tour of Cindy Sheehan, and he's spoken at Cornell and Syracuse universities, among others.

News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. (emphasis mine) Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.

He wasn't.

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

"Psychopathic killers"

Massey, 34, of Waynesville, N.C., was with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines based out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. The unit went to the Middle East in January 2003 and participated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of that year.

Massey was discharged in December 2003, shortly after returning from Iraq due to depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

He began turning up in the press and on broadcasts last spring with stories about military atrocities. Massey's primary thrust has been that Marines from his battalion - some of whom, he told a Minneapolis audience, were "psychopathic killers" - recklessly shot and killed Iraqi civilians, sometimes, he said, upon orders from their commanders. During a hearing in Canada, Massey said, "We deliberately gunned down people who were civilians."

The Marine Corps investigated Massey's claims and said they were "unsubstantiated."

From the beginning, Massey misled reporters.

In early interviews, he told how he had lost his job at a furniture store because of his anti-war activities. But when asked about the incident in an interview Oct. 19 with the Post-Dispatch, Massey said he had quit his job but never had felt pressure to leave.

"I left on good terms," he said.

He also backtracked from allegations he made in a May 2004 radio interview and elsewhere that he had seen a tractor-trailer filled with the bodies of Iraqi civilians when Marines entered an Iraqi military prison outside Baghdad. He said the Iraqis had been killed by American artillery.

He told listeners that the scene was so bad "that the plasma from the body and skin was decomposing and literally oozing out of the crevices of the tractor-trailer bed."

He repeated the story in the Post-Dispatch interview. But when told that the newspaper's photographs and eyewitness reports had identified the trailer contents as all men, mostly in uniform, Massey admitted that he had never seen the bodies.

Instead, he said, he received his information from "intelligence reports." When asked if those reports were official documents, he answered, "No, that's what the other Marines told me."

Changing stories

The details of Massey's stories changed repeatedly.

For example, he almost always told his audiences and interviewers of an event he said he'd never forget: Marines in his unit shooting four civilian Iraqis in red Kia automobile.

In some accounts, Massey said Marines fired at the vehicle after it failed to stop at a checkpoint. In another version, he said the Marines stormed the car.

Sometimes he said three of the men were killed immediately while the fourth was wounded and covered in blood; sometimes he said the fourth man was "miraculously unscathed."

Sometimes he said the Marines left the three men on the side of the road to die without medical treatment while the fourth man exclaimed: "Why did you shoot my brother?" In other versions, he said the man made the statement as medical personnel were attempting to treat the three other men, or as the survivor sat near the car, or to Massey personally.

There is no evidence that any of the versions occurred.

In another story that Massey often tells, he and other Marines in his platoon fired upon a group of innocent demonstrators shortly after they arrived in Baghdad. Massey said that the demonstrators were protesting the Marines' presence, holding signs in English and Arabic.

The Marines heard a shot, Massey said, and in panic began firing into the demonstrators.

In some versions, the demonstrators were near a checkpoint. In other versions, they were outside a prison on a road about 200 meters away, or anywhere from 5 to 15 miles from Baghdad International Airport.

Massey told a version of the story before an immigration hearing in December in support of an American soldier trying to flee to Canada. Then, Massey said he and the Marines killed four of the demonstrators. In other interviews, he said the Marines shot at 10 demonstrators and killed all of them but one, whom he let crawl away.

In interviews with more than a dozen Marines and journalists who were in the military complex that morning, none can recall such an incident.

They say that during the first week to two weeks inside Baghdad, they never saw any protesters.

Ron Haviv, an independent photographer embedded with the unit, said he never saw any protesters or demonstrators, with or without signs.

"Basically, the only people who were on the streets in the first week were there to loot," said Haviv, who has covered conflicts across the globe, including the first Gulf War, Haiti, Yugoslavia and Russia.

Lt. Kevin Shea, the commander of Massey's platoon, recalls that on the morning after they arrived, about 20 Iraqis from a nearby community did approach the Marines to ask what was happening. Shea said that he had explained what the Marines were doing and that the Iraqis had gone back to their homes.

Civilians shot

The Marine Corps readily admits that some of its men shot civilians, but not intentionally, they said. The Post-Dispatch reported on the second day of the war that Marines in one battalion had mistakenly shot and killed members of a British-based television network while shooting at Iraqi attackers.

When Marines moved into Baghdad a month later, the Post-Dispatch reported two separate automobile-related incidents in which Marines from Massey's battalion inadvertently shot and wounded 12 civilians. All of the passengers survived after treatment by medical personnel.

In a fourth incident, Maj. Dan Schmitt said, Marines shot "what we believe to be a non-combatant" because when the Marines raised their arms in a signal to stop, the vehicle continued moving quickly at them.

An Iraqi doctor who helped treat the wounded passengers told them that they needed to use another hand signal because they one they were using indicated solidarity, not stop.

But none of the five journalists who covered the battalion said they saw reckless or indiscriminate shooting of civilians by Marines, as Massey has claimed. Nor did any of the Marines or Navy corpsmen who served with Massey and were interviewed for this story.

One of the checkpoint shootings is apparently the basis for one of most poignant recollections claimed by Massey in numerous speeches and interviews: The shooting of a 4-year-old girl in the head.

While touring with Sheehan in Montgomery, Ala., he told of seeing the girl's body. "You can't take it back," he said, according to the local newspaper.

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

the rest of the article.

***

But in the interview with the Post-Dispatch, Massey admitted that he never had seen the girl.

"Lima Company was involved in a shooting at a checkpoint," he said. "My platoon was ordered to another area before the victims were removed from the car. The other Marines told me that a 4-year-old girl had killed."

Girls unharmed

No 4-year-old died in the incident or was even wounded, according to witnesses including a Post-Dispatch photographer at the scene who filed photos of the incident that were published in the newspaper.

Two women and two girls were in the car that the Marines shot when it failed to stop at a checkpoint and continued to approach the Marines at high speed, said Maj. George Schreffler, then the commanding officer of Lima Company. Schreffler was there at the time.

Petty Officer Justin Purviance, who treated them, said the two women were wounded but survived. The girls were unharmed, he said.

In other speeches, Massey has said he personally shot a 6-year-old child. In some versions, the child was a boy; at other times, a girl.

"How is a 6-year-old child with a bullet in his head a terrorist, because that is the youngest I killed," Massey told a Cornell University audience in March. In a speech in April in Springfield, Vt., he said: "That's war: a 6-year-old girl with a bullet hole in her head at an American checkpoint."

In a speech in Syracuse in March, the Post Standard newspaper quoted him as saying, "The reason the Marines teach you discipline . . . is so that you can confront the enemy and kill him. . . . Or so you can put a bullet into a 6-year-old, which is what I did. "

In the interview with the Post-Dispatch, Massey said he never personally had shot a child.

"I meant that's what my unit did," he said.

He could not provide details.

Nor could he name any Marine who could corroborate any of his stories.

"Admitting guilt is a hard thing to do," he said

****

I'm sure we'll see him run for president in a few years.

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

No, I spoke of Marine Officer Nathaniel Fick. Audio archive available at:

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/index.html

You have to scroll down to Oct. 14, '05. It's in weird order. You have to look a bit. You can play the audio while you surf the web.

Maybe this guy Massey is a whacko liar -- sorta sounds like it. I haven't read all of it yet. Ya gonna listen to the one I posted? You, the guy who takes in all kinds of fairer media than me?

BTW: Without googling, ya ever heard of Major Doug Rokke?!??!?

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

By policy and law, we have not attacked civilian targets since 1945.

Holding feet to fire, once a common interrogation technique among Europeans, would violate the Geneva Conventions.

Speaking of which, here's a bit of info from them concerning prisoner treatment. After reading them, I cannot recall any time in which the Saddamite or Al Queda forces have ever acted within these parameters.

Part I General Provisions

Art. 4. A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

(1) Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:[ (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

(3) Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

(4) Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization, from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.

(5) Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.

(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

B. The following shall likewise be treated as prisoners of war under the present Convention: (1) Persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country, if the occupying Power considers it necessary by reason of such allegiance to intern them, even though it has originally liberated them while hostilities were going on outside the territory it occupies, in particular where such persons have made an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the armed forces to which they belong and which are engaged in combat, or where they fail to comply with a summons made to them with a view to internment.

(2) The persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or non-belligerent Powers on their territory and whom these Powers are required to intern under international law, without prejudice to any more favourable treatment which these Powers may choose to give and with the exception of Articles 8, 10, 15, 30, fifth paragraph, 58-67, 92, 126 and, where diplomatic relations exist between the Parties to the conflict and the neutral or non-belligerent Power concerned, those Articles concerning the Protecting Power. Where such diplomatic relations exist, the Parties to a conflict on whom these persons depend shall be allowed to perform towards them the functions of a Protecting Power as provided in the present Convention, without prejudice to the functions which these Parties normally exercise in conformity with diplomatic and consular usage and treaties.

C. This Article shall in no way affect the status of medical personnel and chaplains as provided for in Article 33 of the present Convention.

Art. 5. The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.


Part III. Captivity

Section 1. Beginning of Captivity

Art. 17. Every prisoner of war, when questioned on the subject, is bound to give only his surname, first names and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or serial number, or failing this, equivalent information.

If he wilfully infringes this rule, he may render himself liable to a restriction of the privileges accorded to his rank or status.

Each Party to a conflict is required to furnish the persons under its jurisdiction who are liable to become prisoners of war, with an identity card showing the owner's surname, first names, rank, army, regimental, personal or serial number or equivalent information, and date of birth. The identity card may, furthermore, bear the signature or the fingerprints, or both, of the owner, and may bear, as well, any other information the Party to the conflict may wish to add concerning persons belonging to its armed forces. As far as possible the card shall measure 6.5 x 10 cm. and shall be issued in duplicate. The identity card shall be shown by the prisoner of war upon demand, but may in no case be taken away from him.

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

Prisoners of war who, owing to their physical or mental condition, are unable to state their identity, shall be handed over to the medical service. The identity of such prisoners shall be established by all possible means, subject to the provisions of the preceding paragraph.

The questioning of prisoners of war shall be carried out in a language which they understand.

Art. 18. All effects and articles of personal use, except arms, horses, military equipment and military documents, shall remain in the possession of prisoners of war, likewise their metal helmets and gas masks and like articles issued for personal protection. Effects and articles used for their clothing or feeding shall likewise remain in their possession, even if such effects and articles belong to their regulation military equipment.

At no time should prisoners of war be without identity documents. The Detaining Power shall supply such documents to prisoners of war who possess none.

Badges of rank and nationality, decorations and articles having above all a personal or sentimental value may not be taken from prisoners of war.

Sums of money carried by prisoners of war may not be taken away from them except by order of an officer, and after the amount and particulars of the owner have been recorded in a special register and an itemized receipt has been given, legibly inscribed with the name, rank and unit of the person issuing the said receipt. Sums in the currency of the Detaining Power, or which are changed into such currency at the prisoner's request, shall be placed to the credit of the prisoner's account as provided in Article 64.

The Detaining Power may withdraw articles of value from prisoners of war only for reasons of security; when such articles are withdrawn, the procedure laid down for sums of money impounded shall apply.

Such objects, likewise sums taken away in any currency other than that of the Detaining Power and the conversion of which has not been asked for by the owners, shall be kept in the custody of the Detaining Power and shall be returned in their initial shape to prisoners of war at the end of their captivity.

I suppose that point is relevant to those who use Saddam and al Qaida as their guideposts for moral behavior.

Panama was a secret war?

We're the bad guys and they're the good guys?

Bot

The signatories are held to the treaty only so long as the belligerents follow them.

So, since Al Queda is not a state and has never claimed or implied that it wished to invoke the Conventions, we are not bound by the Conventions in our treatment of them. We maybe bound by other treaties or our own laws, but the Conventions do not apply except insofar as we may choose to arbitrarily accept them.

Also, Saddam's former soldiers who are currently engaged in the insurrection could have chosen to accept foreign fighters and been a legitimate, recognizeable army according to the conventions if they had followed the various obligations of combatants under the Conventions. I think the only one that they have followed is in having a recognized chain of command.

So, a strict interpretation of the Conventions could easily make the case that Saddam's former soldiers are terrorists and NOT protected by the Conventions.

What the USA has done is afforded the Al Queda detainees some protection under US law and some from international treaty. This is why they are called detainees and not POW's.

Also, the USA has, in general, treated Iraqis caught in the insurgency as POW's and not as Al Queda detainees. This will mean that when complete military and civil authority is returned to the Iraqis, the disposal of the Iraqi POW's will be up to Iraq, not the USA. That might be a bit sticky for them.

Bot