Weary of War and Torture YET?

They go hand in hand.
And why do we spend so much tax, time, and energy to fight? For economic interests. But not mine or probably yours.
If so-called capitalism is the greatest system in the universe, why can't it stand on it's merits? Why is it forced on others with the bullet?

Point of interest: crowds in Mogadishu riot to protest American support of warlords who are pulling that nation further into chaos. A few days ago it was casually mentioned that 'we' were illegally sending weapons to that country.
I'd rather spend the same amount of money sending medical workers or teachers, medicine and food.

Point of interest: repetition, repetition, repetition that American troops have been "cleared of any wrongdoing" in atrocity incident that killed a family of 11. So, the building collapsed on the people after they were sumarily executed, but it was apparently done according to rules of engagement.
Some reports fail to mention this atrocity was not the Haditha atrocity. And when it is pointed out, the Haditha atrocity is called "alleged" (Thanks, but you can look up the video) and it is said to be under investigation. I beg to differ. The atrocity has been proved. The cover-up and delay in admission are the questions. But maybe they will decide that those 24 executions were committed "according to the rules of engagement" as well.

There are more than those two atrocities.

Our Army trains troops to kill civilians using video games. It is part of their training in urban warfare.

But these kids have been shooting everything that moves in increasingly horrendous video games for the past 10 years or so. It's fun. It's a reward. It's recreation.

How could an average kid not just respond to what he has been doing every day since he was 12? How, under intense pressure and mental exhaustion, could he separate, in his most basic reflexive thinking, a 6 month old child, a 70 something year old woman, an amputee grandfather, and their family from an "insurgent?"
The trigger finger and the video game finger are the same finger.

These unfortunate young men, even if they come home to brass bands, will be ruined forever.

'Marines are good at killing. Nothing else. They like it'
By Oliver Poole(Filed: 01/06/2006 The Telegraph)

In January, shortly before the first published reports emerged about US marines methodically gunning down men, women and children in the Iraqi town of Haditha, The Daily Telegraph spent time at the main camp of the battalion under investigation.
Rumours had spread that what happened on Nov 19 diverged from the official line that locals were killed by a roadside bomb.
None of the troops wanted to talk, but even a short stay with the men of the 3rd Bn 1st Marine Division in their camp located in Haditha Dam on the town's outskirts, made clear it was a place where institutional discipline had frayed and was even approaching breakdown.
Normally, American camps in Iraq are almost suburban, with their coffee shops and polite soldiers who idle away their rest hours playing computer games and discussing girls back home.
Haditha was shockingly different - a feral place where the marines hardly washed; a number had abandoned the official living quarters to set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out; and a daily routine punctured by the emergency alarm of the dam itself with its antiquated and crumbling machinery.
The dam is one of Iraq's largest hydroelectric stations. A US special operations unit had secured it during the invasion and American troops had been there ever since. Now they were spread across the dozen or so levels where Iraqi engineers once lived.
The lifts were smashed, the lighting provided only a half gloom. Inside, the grinding of the dam machinery made talking difficult. The place routinely stank of rotten eggs, a by-product apparently of the grease to keep the turbines running.
The day before my arrival one soldier had shot himself in the head with his M16. No one would discuss why.
The washing facilities were at the top and the main lavatories at the base. With about 800 steps between them, many did not bother to use the official facilities.
Instead, a number had moved into small encampments around the dam's entrances that resembled something from Lord of the Flies. Entering one, a marine was pulling apart planks of wood with his dirt-encrusted hands to feed a fire.
A skull and crossbones symbol had been etched on the entrance to the shack.
I was never allowed to interview a senior officer properly, unlike during every other stint with American forces. The only soldiers willing to speak at length were those from the small Azerbaijani contingent whose role was to marshal the band of Iraqi engineers who kept the machinery going into and out of the facility.
The US troops liked them. "They have looser rules of engagement," one said admiringly in a rare, snatched conversation.
It is not yet known where exactly the men responsible for the killing of the 24 civilians in Haditha were based. There was a handful of small, forward-operating bases in the town and surrounding area, with two dozen or so in each. If they were in these, it is highly unlikely their conditions were any better.
They would certainly also have shared the recent history of the battalion. It had undergone three tours in Iraq in two and a half years.
More than 30 of its members had died in the previous one, the majority when the unit led the major attack on Fallujah, then at the heart of the insurgency. Now they were in Haditha, one of the most dangerous settlements in Iraq, after only seven months away.
It is a place where six marines died in three days during the previous August and where in nearby Parwana 14 died shortly afterwards in the most deadly roadside bomb attack of the war.
At the dam there was one American civilian, an engineer sent out by the US government with instructions to keep the facility operational.
It was a difficult task. Each time there was a power cut the turbines stopped working, the water against the dam would start to build up and everybody knew that if the local engineers could not get the generators started in time it would collapse.
The American's job was not helped by the marines viewing his Iraqi workers as potential saboteurs. The troops he was quartered with terrified him, so much so that he would not let his name be quoted for fear of reprisal.
He was keeping a secret dossier of breaches he said he had witnessed, or learned of. He planned to present it to the authorities when he returned to the US.
"Marines are good at killing," he said. "Nothing else. They like it."

Memorial Day
by Bob Herbert

The point of Memorial Day is to honor the service and the sacrifice of those who have given their lives in the nation’s wars. But I suggest that we take a little time today to consider the living.

Look around and ask yourself if you believe that stability or democracy in Iraq — or whatever goal you choose to assert as the reason for this war — is worth the life of your son or your daughter, or your husband or your wife, or the co-worker who rides to the office with you in the morning, or your friendly neighbor next door.

Before you gather up the hot dogs and head out to the barbecue this afternoon, look in a mirror and ask yourself honestly if Iraq is something you would be willing to die for.

There is no shortage of weaselly politicians and misguided commentators ready to tell us that we can’t leave Iraq — we just can’t. Chaos will ensue. Maybe even a civil war. But what they really mean is that we can’t leave as long as the war can continue to be fought by other people’s children, and as long as we can continue to put this George W. Bush-inspired madness on a credit card.

Start sending the children of the well-to-do to Baghdad, and start raising taxes to pay off the many hundreds of billions that the war is costing, and watch how quickly this tragic fiasco is brought to an end.

At an embarrassing press conference last week, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain looked for all the world like a couple of hapless schoolboys who, while playing with fire, had set off a conflagration that is still raging out of control. Their recklessness has so far cost the lives of nearly 2,500 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, many of them children.

Among the regrets voiced by the president at the press conference was his absurd challenge to the insurgents in 2003 to “bring ‘em on.” But Mr. Bush gave no hint as to when the madness might end.

How many more healthy young people will we shovel into the fires of Iraq before finally deciding it’s time to stop? How many dead are enough?