US Troops in Iraq: "You Are Authorized to Shoot Children"

[georgephillip]

What happened when rock-throwing children target US soldiers and Marines during the occupation of Iraq[

Brian Turner was a sergeant and infantry team leader in the 3rd Stryker Brigade in Iraq during 2003 and '04. He wrote poems in a small notebook while he was there, and recently took part in a two week writers workshop at UMass.

This is what he related to Chris Hedges about children tossing rocks in his direction:

"'Kids would run out and throw rocks at us,' Turner said. 'We were going 35 or 40 miles an hour. A rock hits you like that and you can be damaged for life. One of those kids smashed the windshield of one of the freight trucks. It jackknifed, flipped and the driver died in about 90 seconds.'

"'I remember hearing over the radio some higher-up saying, ‘You are authorized to shoot children.’ ”

"The schizophrenic nature of the war meant that on some days children were to be courted and on other days threatened."

"The children could never tell how troops would respond."

Chris Hedges: Pity the Children - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

 

[shart_attack]

Maybe those children should stop throwing rocks and 7.62-millimeter bullets themselves, hmmf?

No one ever said war is pretty. People die in it, and children kill.

 

[georgephillip]

Maybe those children should stop throwing rocks and 7.62-millimeter bullets themselves, hmmf?

No one ever said war is pretty. People die in it, and children kill.

Yeah, I agree. I'm pretty sure we've got a few in the US who would have no second thoughts about tossing rocks at any foreign troops occupying their towns. I posted this because I believe what we've sown in Iraq and Afghanistan will one day find its way home.

And Turner's poetry rings true, for me:

"The ghosts of American soldiers
Wander the streets of Balad by night,
Unsure of their way home, exhausted,
The desert wind blowing trash
Down the narrow alleys as a voice
Sounds from the minaret, a soulful call
Reminding them how alone they are,
how lost. And the Iraqi dead,
they watch in silence from rooftops
as date palms line the shore in silhouette,
leaning toward Mecca when the dawn wind blows.

"None of these veterans are at ease in America. They never will be."

Chris Hedges: Pity the Children - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

 

[1776]

Echo chamber

 

[georgephillip]

Echo chamber

"debacles of the future.

"Joshua Morgan Folmar, 29, a bearded Marine Corps veteran from Alabama who participated in 200 combat patrols in Iraq, sat next to me. He handed me his poem 'Contemplating the Cotard Delusion on the Downeaster to Boston.' It begins:

"Maybe I’m a walking corpse, or maybe I’m in a coma in
Germany, or Walter Reed, sucking MREs
through plastic tubes, while a few children in Haditha pick up bone
shards from the explosion and trade them like card games for chocolate.

"My head droops against the window: face reflecting broken
limbs and stagnant water, blurring against the train’s scratched safety
glass. And somewhere out there is my last combat patrol. And somewhere out there, my dead friends are waiting."

Chris Hedges: Pity the Children - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

 

[1776]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqk9hfVna28]Beats International - Echo Chamber - YouTube[/ame]

 

[georgephillip]

Beats International - Echo Chamber - YouTube

To which Chris Hedges might respond:

"For the United States, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be over soon.

"We will leave behind, after our defeats, wreckage and death, the contagion of violence and hatred, unending grief, and millions of children who were brutalized and robbed of their childhood.

"Americans who did not suffer will forget.

"People maimed physically or psychologically by the violence, especially the Iraqi and Afghan children, will never escape.

"Time and memory will play their usual tricks.

"Those who endured war will begin to wonder, years from now, what was real and what was not.

"And those who did not taste of war’s noxious poison will stop wondering at all."

When will you begin to wonder, when children in the US begin dying like those in Iraq?

Chris Hedges: Pity the Children - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

 

[Claudette]

The war in Iraq was already over till dumbass sent three hundred troops back to that shithole. Hell. The minute our guys were gone I knew Iraq was doomed to internal war. You can bet more terrorists will be
rolling across the world from there as well.

As for Afghanistan, just as soon as we are gone the Taliban will be ruling the country once again and we know AQ and the Taliban are on the same side.

 

[LogikAndReazon]

No wonder those third world arab degenerates hate us. Lol

 

[longknife]

No wonder those third world arab degenerates hate us. Lol

Yeah, I'm sure they do. After all, we don't wrap massive bombs around pre-teens and send themselves out to blow themselves up for the Gory of Allah!

 

[georgephillip]

The war in Iraq was already over till dumbass sent three hundred troops back to that shithole. Hell. The minute our guys were gone I knew Iraq was doomed to internal war. You can bet more terrorists will be
rolling across the world from there as well.

As for Afghanistan, just as soon as we are gone the Taliban will be ruling the country once again and we know AQ and the Taliban are on the same side.

We know the US paid the Taliban and the "Sunni Awakening" in Iraq NOT to attack US troops and supply convoys, and there's a good possibility we've been funding various AQ chapters since Reagan was in the White House, probably with money laundered from the sales of illegal drugs. None of this changes by "choosing" between R or D in the voting booth; we need an awakening of our own, before the IEDs and dead children come home to roost.

 

[LogikAndReazon]

If we only understood islamo-fascist jihadists better and opened up a dialogue.... Lmfao

 

[georgephillip]

No wonder those third world arab degenerates hate us. Lol

Yeah, I'm sure they do. After all, we don't wrap massive bombs around pre-teens and send themselves out to blow themselves up for the Gory of Allah!

"People who carry weapons and travel with armed units have a terrifying God-like power to humiliate, to demand instant and unquestioned obedience and to kill. Those who do not carry weapons live in states of unrelenting terror and powerlessness.

"The powerless often seek to become invisible, avoiding contact with the hydra-headed groups of killers that roam the landscape and speak in the language of violence."

Chris Hedges: Pity the Children - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

 

[georgephillip]

If we only understood islamo-fascist jihadists better and opened up a dialogue.... Lmfao

Or we could stop killing their children for money and market share

 

[KNB]

No wonder those third world arab degenerates hate us. Lol

Yeah, I'm sure they do. After all, we don't wrap massive bombs around pre-teens and send themselves out to blow themselves up for the Gory of Allah!

No, Americans are much too lazy for that. Americans prefer to have our 19-yo X-Box "pilots" sit in an air-conditioned room in New Mexico or Nevada, watching on a television as his remote-controlled plane blasts a Hellfire missile into a crowded market or a wedding party to kill one or two people and actually killing over a dozen, four of whom were children, and we write them off as "collateral damage" and go about our greedy business.

Obama deserves to hang next to Bush.

 

[georgephillip]

No wonder those third world arab degenerates hate us. Lol

Yeah, I'm sure they do. After all, we don't wrap massive bombs around pre-teens and send themselves out to blow themselves up for the Gory of Allah!

No, Americans are much too lazy for that. Americans prefer to have our 19-yo X-Box "pilots" sit in an air-conditioned room in New Mexico or Nevada, watching on a television as his remote-controlled plane blasts a Hellfire missile into a crowded market or a wedding party to kill one or two people and actually killing over a dozen, four of whom were children, and we write them off as "collateral damage" and go about our greedy business.

Obama deserves to hang next to Bush.

Both Bushes and Clintons and Obama should die in federal prison, save the rope for the bankers.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

What happened when rock-throwing children target US soldiers and Marines during the occupation of Iraq[

Brian Turner was a sergeant and infantry team leader in the 3rd Stryker Brigade in Iraq during 2003 and '04. He wrote poems in a small notebook while he was there, and recently took part in a two week writers workshop at UMass.

This is what he related to Chris Hedges about children tossing rocks in his direction:

"'Kids would run out and throw rocks at us,' Turner said. 'We were going 35 or 40 miles an hour. A rock hits you like that and you can be damaged for life. One of those kids smashed the windshield of one of the freight trucks. It jackknifed, flipped and the driver died in about 90 seconds.'

"'I remember hearing over the radio some higher-up saying, ‘You are authorized to shoot children.’ ”

"The schizophrenic nature of the war meant that on some days children were to be courted and on other days threatened."

"The children could never tell how troops would respond."

Chris Hedges: Pity the Children - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

War's pretty bad isn't it. Maybe instead of trying to sanitize it and make it acceptable we should make it more horrible and run kids over with tanks and put that on the news. If you "support the troops" but have a problem with them defending themselves when their attacker is a child you need to reexamine what you support.

 

[deltex1]

No wonder those third world arab degenerates hate us. Lol

Yeah, I'm sure they do. After all, we don't wrap massive bombs around pre-teens and send themselves out to blow themselves up for the Gory of Allah!

No, Americans are much too lazy for that. Americans prefer to have our 19-yo X-Box "pilots" sit in an air-conditioned room in New Mexico or Nevada, watching on a television as his remote-controlled plane blasts a Hellfire missile into a crowded market or a wedding party to kill one or two people and actually killing over a dozen, four of whom were children, and we write them off as "collateral damage" and go about our greedy business.

Obama deserves to hang next to Bush.

Simply keeping up with the Painters 10000 eyes for 1 eye ratio...

 

[Skull Pilot]

We all know that kids are a threat to the United States don't we?

 

[georgephillip]

What happened when rock-throwing children target US soldiers and Marines during the occupation of Iraq[

Brian Turner was a sergeant and infantry team leader in the 3rd Stryker Brigade in Iraq during 2003 and '04. He wrote poems in a small notebook while he was there, and recently took part in a two week writers workshop at UMass.

This is what he related to Chris Hedges about children tossing rocks in his direction:

"'Kids would run out and throw rocks at us,' Turner said. 'We were going 35 or 40 miles an hour. A rock hits you like that and you can be damaged for life. One of those kids smashed the windshield of one of the freight trucks. It jackknifed, flipped and the driver died in about 90 seconds.'

"'I remember hearing over the radio some higher-up saying, ‘You are authorized to shoot children.’ ”

"The schizophrenic nature of the war meant that on some days children were to be courted and on other days threatened."

"The children could never tell how troops would respond."

Chris Hedges: Pity the Children - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

War's pretty bad isn't it. Maybe instead of trying to sanitize it and make it acceptable we should make it more horrible and run kids over with tanks and put that on the news. If you "support the troops" but have a problem with them defending themselves when their attacker is a child you need to reexamine what you support.

Possibly, we should think about a "Death Tax" for war profits (and profiteers)?
If our corporate war machine paid a significant penalty for every innocent death their products created, war would go the way of King Cotton and chattel slavery.