Soldiers ordered to kill all military age males?

rich23 I am not denying that horrible incidents are happening in Iraq or that some of them are being perpetrated by U.S. soldiers. I am simply stating that all U.S. soldiers cannot be condemed for the actions of a few. In my opinion, even one such incident is one too many. During the heat of battle emotions run very high and sometimes people get shot and killed that did not need to be shot and killed. It's sad, but it happens more frequently than most everyone will ever know. The military has to come down hard on every incident they become aware of because that kind of behavior can get completely out of hand in a hurry if they don't.

The fact that such incidents happen infrequently enough to be newsworthy, should tell you they are relatively rare, expecially considering the tens of thousands of troops we have over there. Compare such happenings with what you know went on in Kosovo and that region when they had a war and you will quickly see that our troops are relatively some of the best behaved troops that ever fought a war.

[edit on 25-7-2006 by Astronomer70]

another point that has just struck me , is the " logic " of the alledged order :

four soldiers have claimed that their orders for a raid on a suspected insurgency training camp were to kill all males of military age.

wot no prisoners ? strikes me as strange to say the least .

dead men tell no tales , i have no figures on the effectiveness of interogation on iraqi suspects , or the veracity of intel gained -- but to not even try ??

an unrelated charge against US forces is that the extra ordinary rendition figts are being used to move suspects the US wishes to interogate from countries with good human rights records , to places where torture can be carried out -- so dont attempt to claim thst the US has given up on interogation

Astronomer - as I posted in a previous link, an SAS officer has refused to go back to Iraq because of the way the US forces treat the "hajii". This kind of racist stuff is institutionalised and prevalent, and there are plenty of stories out there (which the US media doesn't find newsworthy - which proves my point about it being biased) both from abused Iraqis and from ashamed ex-soldiers to bear out this assertion.

And where does this name "hajj" come from? Are people just inventing the idea that this is how US forces refer to Iraqis? I don't think so.

Btw, the SAS is equivalent to Special Forces, and these guys are tough. I know, I've worked with some of them. So any accusations of softness or cowardice with that guy won't wash. He doesn't want to take part in the action out there because he thinks it's unjust and he can see the US soldiers treating Iraqis like untermenschen.

My whole point is that this is NOT an isolated incident. It's part of an all-too-obvious pattern.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about it then because I do not see any obvious pattern or benign neglect from above.