soldiers in Iraq trading gory pics of dead Iraqis for porn der=0><

[Dondrei]

You know, I wouldn't consider this neo-colonialism. American foreign policy bears much closer resemblance to that of the early to middle Roman Republic. Like the Romans of that time, America has always been reluctant (not to say unable) to hold foreign countries under its aegis. Witness the fact that despite its vast economic and military power, America has no colonies or foreign territories (except those that it has had for a very long time), which pretty much puts it outside the definition of a colonial empire.

The Romans eventually gained vast provinces largely against its will. After the Punic Wars they took Spain to stop any more invasions from there (having learned a terrible lesson from Hannibal) and Africa province to make sure Carthage didn't rise again. To guard commerce between Rome and the Spanish province they had to take southern Gaul (modern Aix-En-Provence). They actually tried to get rid of Macedonia at one stage, but it collapsed again and they had to take it back. In short, security fears (and later economics) led Rome to garrison and tax foreign nations against its better judgement.

It's interesting to note that nationalism has come in different flavours over the centuries. To colonial Britain, France and Spain, the goal of the true patriot was to extend the country's conquests and colonies across the world. But to Republican Rome (and also I suspect, some in America) things were quite different - conquest and colonialisation of foreign nations was considered an expensive liability, and the granting of citizenship to those "foreign barbarians" was adamantly opposed by conservatives in the Senate. They thought that this was a corruption of the glorious citizenship of Rome, which was intended for the children of Romulus, not stinking Gauls and Germans.

In fact modern America has many such striking similarities to pre-Imperial Rome. Perhaps not surprisingly, since the Roman Republic was considered - perhaps foolishly - by America's founding fathers to exemplify their ideals.

[jmervyn]

Another Red Herring/ad hominem argument-attack ... why am I not surprised?

Beg pardon? What's not ad hominem about this?

You attack my willingness to fight (having done so once already) while you gloat over every setback and casualty we suffer? If your constant BLCD diatribe is related to "conduct unbecoming" by troops, I'd like to know how you're lodging that view - red herring indeed... Otherwise, it sounds like just another covert slap against the military you secretly despise.

You know, I wouldn't consider this neo-colonialism. American foreign policy bears much closer resemblance to that of the early to middle Roman Republic.

I'm waiting for Ill's impassioned "Pax Americana" rant... But you're completely correct, what Ill's ilk view as IMPERIALISM is what many sane people regard as a quest for republican/democratic systems worldwide. If one regards <actual> freedom & equality as problematic, one might be opposed to this quest...

EDIT - if I hear Iraq described once more as debacle, disaster, quagmire (giggidy-giggidy) or similar terms, I'll be sick. Through the lens of history, Iraq's occupation is nothing short of an incredible success. Yes, we could have done far better, should be doing somewhat better, and should have had better plans. However, if you compare our occupation in the light that people like Ill do, we should have suffered several dozen times as many casualties, have had widespread uprisings throughout the nation (rather than that fat little puke Al-Sadr), and have machine-gunned the populace left & right. Think of the USSR in Afghanistan and the Israelis in the occupied territories - or even Britain in Northern Ireland. The only reason this tripe sells is that Americans no longer have a military resolve or long attention spans.

[llad12]

Beg pardon? What's not ad hominem about this?

You attack my willingness to fight (having done so once already) while you gloat over every setback and casualty we suffer? If your constant BLCD diatribe is related to "conduct unbecoming" by troops, I'd like to know how you're lodging that view - red herring indeed... Otherwise, it sounds like just another covert slap against the military you secretly despise.

I referred to your political views.

Nice spin Jman ... but that boat won't float.

I stand by my statement, warmonger.

I'm waiting for Ill's impassioned "Pax Americana" rant... But you're completely correct, what Ill's ilk view as IMPERIALISM is what many sane people regard as a quest for republican/democratic systems worldwide. If one regards <actual> freedom & equality as problematic, one might be opposed to this quest...

... and the rocket's red glare, the bomb's bursting in air

Wrap yourself in the flag Jman. Yah, that's the ticket. Deem all others as anti-american if they don't fall in line with your warped political views and distorted reality.

Invade, conquer, and occupy ... if you don't like what we're doing to your country Iraqi, here's a bullet for ya.

Ah yes, more permanent military bases ... What that? You object Iraqi scum? Call in a sortie! We will bomb your butt to the stone age!!

Oh say can you see ... our military and economic world dominance?

Here get a better view. Climb up that pile of bodies.

Operation Iraqi Freedom ... How sweet it is.


PS:

EDIT - if I hear Iraq described once more as debacle, disaster, quagmire (giggidy-giggidy) or similar terms, I'll be sick.

Quagmire, debacle, disaster ...

Puke for us Jman. The world is watching.

[Dondrei]

Through the lens of history, Iraq's occupation is nothing short of an incredible success.

That's one hell of a lens.

[SaroDarksbane]

*opens door and peeks head in*

You guys are still here? For God's sake, go home already! We closed hours ago!

*turns off light and shuts door*

[jimmyboy]

That's one hell of a lens.

Apprantly these Marines didn't have those lens:



Last Marine in Squad Mourns 11 Friends Killed in Bombing
All but One in Close-Knit Unit Die in Roadside Attack in Iraq
By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, AP

HADITHA DAM, Iraq (Oct. 1) - Cpl. David Kreuter had a new baby boy he'd seen only in photos. Lance Cpl. Michael Cifuentes was counting the days to his wedding. Lance Cpl. Nicholas Bloem had just celebrated his 20th birthday.

Travis Williams remembers them all - all 11 men in his Marine squad - all now dead. Two months ago they shared a cramped room stacked with bunk beds at this base in northwest Iraq, where the Euphrates River rushes by. Now the room has been stripped of several beds, brutal testament that Lance Cpl. Williams' closest friends are gone.

For the 12 young Marines who landed in Iraq early this year, the war was a series of hectic, constant raids into more than a dozen lawless towns in Iraq's most hostile province, Anbar. The pace and the danger bound them together into what they called a second family, even as some began to question whether their raids were making any progress.

Now, all of the Marines assigned to the 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, based in Columbus, Ohio, are gone - except Williams. They died in a roadside-bomb set by insurgents on Aug. 3 that killed a total of 14 Marines. Most of the squad were in their early 20s; the youngest was 19.

"They were like a family. They were the tightest squad I've ever seen," said Capt. Christopher Toland of Austin, Texas, the squad's platoon commander. Even though many did not know each other before they got to Iraq, "They truly loved each other."

The August operation began like most of the squad's missions - with a rush into another lawless Iraqi city to hunt insurgents and do house-to-house searches, sometimes for 12 hours in temperatures near 120 degrees.

The intense pace of the operations, and the enormous area their regimental combat team had to cover - an expanse the size of West Virginia - caught some off guard.

The combat was certainly not what the 21-year-old Williams had expected.

"I didn't ever think we'd get engaged," said the soft-spoken, stocky Marine from Helena, Mont. "I just had the basic view of the American public - it can't be that bad out there."

In some sweeps, residents warmly greeted the Marines. But in others, such as operations in Haditha and Obeidi near the Syrian border, the squad members met gunfire and explosions. In the Obeidi operation in early May, another squad from Lima Company suffered six deaths. Williams himself perhaps saved lives, once spotting a gunman hidden in a mosque courtyard, said Toland, the platoon commander.

The night before the Aug. 3 operation, an uneasy Toland couldn't sleep. Instead he spent his last night with his squad members talking and joking, trying to suppress worries the mission was too predictable for an enemy that knew how to watch and learn.

"I had concerns that the operation was hastily planned and executed, with significant risks and little return," Toland said.

The road had been checked by engineers and other units, Marine commanders say. But insurgents had been clever - hiding the massive bomb under the road's asphalt.

Several Humvees first drove over the bomb, but the triggerman in the distance apparently waited for a vehicle with more troops. Then, as the clanking sound of their armored vehicles neared, a massive blast erupted, caused by explosives weighing hundreds of pounds. It threw a 26-ton Amphibious Assault Vehicle into the air, leaving it burning upside-down.

The blast was so large that Toland and his radioman, Williams - traveling two vehicles ahead and not injured - thought their vehicle had been hit by a bomb. They scrambled out to inspect the damage, but instead found the blazing carnage several yards down the road.

A total of 14 Marines and one Iraqi interpreter were killed.

There was no time for grieving - not at first. There was only sudden devastation, then intense anger as the Marines pulled the remains of their friends from the vehicle.

Then there was frustration, as they fanned out to find the triggerman. Instead, they found only Iraqis either too sympathetic toward the insurgency, or too afraid, to talk.

It was a familiar - and frustrating - problem.

"They are totally complacent with what's going on here," said Maj. Steve Lawson of Columbus, Ohio, who commands Lima Company. "The average citizen in Haditha either wants a handout, or wants us to die or go away."

In a war where intelligence is the most valued asset, the Marines say few local people will divulge "actionable" information that could be used to locate insurgents.

"From a squad leader's perspective, the intelligence never helped me accomplish my mission," said Sgt. Don Owens, a squad leader in Lima Company from Cincinnati, who fought alongside the 1st Squad throughout their tour.

"Their intelligence is better than ours," Owens said.

The first night after the attack, Williams couldn't sleep. He stayed near his radio, listening to the heavy sobbing of fellow Marines that punctured the night around him.

He thought of his best friend, Lance Cpl. Aaron Reed, a 21-year-old with a goofy demeanor and a perpetual smile, now dead.

A world without his second family had begun. The young men Williams had planned to meet up with again, back in the States, had vanished in a matter of minutes. He was alone.

Yet from a military standpoint, it was important to press on to show the enemy that even their best hits couldn't stop the world's most powerful military. The Marines were ordered away from the blast site, to hunt insurgents, just one hour after the explosion.

They stayed out for another week, searching through dozens of homes in the nearby city of Parwana and struggling to piece together intelligence about who had planted the bomb.

"I pushed them back out the door to finish the mission," said Lawson. "They did it, but they were crying as they pushed on."

As word spread back in the United States that 14 men had been killed, the Marines on the ongoing mission couldn't even, at first, contact their families to let them know they had survived.

Marine commanders say the large-scale raids in western Anbar province have kept the insurgency off-balance, killing hundreds of militants and leaving a dwindling number of insurgent bases in the area.

But, among some Marines and even officers, there are doubts whether progress has been made.

"We've been here almost seven months and we don't control" the cities, said Gunnery Sgt. Ralph Perrine, an operations chief in the battalion from Brunswick, Ohio. "It's no secret."

For Williams, the calculation is much more visceral and personal.

"Personally, I don't think the sweeps help too much," he said quietly on a recent day, sitting in a room at the dam, crowded with Marines resting from a late mission the night before.

"You find some stuff and most of the bad guys get away. ... For as much energy as we put in them, I don't think the output is worth it," he said.

Williams, a Marine for three years, has decided not to re-enlist.

Instead, in these last days in Iraq, he thinks of home and fishing in the clear streams of Montana. He hopes to open a fishing and hunting gear shop once he returns and complete his bachelor's degree in wildlife biology. He looks forward to seeing his mother, his only surviving parent, and traveling to her native Thailand this fall.

He said his "best memory" will be the day he leaves Iraq. His only good memories, he said, are of his friends:

Of Dyer, 19, an avid rap music fan who would bop his head to Tupac Shakur. He played the viola in his high school orchestra and had planned to enroll in a finance honors program at Ohio State University.

Of Reed, his best friend. He was president of his high school class from Chillicothe, Ohio, and left behind a brother serving in Afghanistan.

Of Cifuentes, 25, from Oxford, Ohio. He was enrolled in graduate school in mathematics education and had been working as a substitute teacher when he was deployed.

"I think the most frustrating thing is there's no sense of accomplishment," Williams said. "You're biding your time and waiting. But then you lose your friends, and it's not even for their own country's freedom."

Associated Press reporter Antonio Castaneda spent three weeks in western Anbar province in Iraq with Marines in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, 4th Division, earlier this year. He was with the unit when they led an offensive into the city of Haditha in late May. And he returned to the area after an August blast killed 14 Marines - and shortly before the unit began demobilizing to return to the United States by early October.

The ranks listed for the Marines were those they held when they were killed. Some of the men were promoted posthumously.

[jmervyn]

Apprantly these Marines didn't have those lens:

My point being that for the amount of time, the volume of troops, and the degree of restlessness (if not outright hatred) by the populace, this doesn't hold a candle to similar situations. Of course, I'm well aware that the trick is to drill down to the most detailed observations about a single individual or incident and then infer that these are representative of the whole.

[jimmyboy]

My point being that for the amount of time, the volume of troops, and the degree of restlessness (if not outright hatred) by the populace, this doesn't hold a candle to similar situations. Of course, I'm well aware that the trick is to drill down to the most detailed observations about a single individual or incident and then infer that these are representative of the whole.

Sure, dismiss this Marine. He can't possibly the representative of the FUBAR in Iraq.

There must be some other reasonable explanation for Iraq like a "liberal media" or a "grand liberal conspiracy."

[SaroDarksbane]

Sure, dismiss this Marine. He can't possibly the representative of the FUBAR in Iraq.

His story might be representative.
His story might not be representative.

If you want to disprove J's argument that the war in Iraq is going better than other wars, find a war that went better. Giving an anecdotal story, while tragic, does not disprove his point in the least.

[jmervyn]

If you want to disprove J's argument that the war in Iraq is going better than other wars, find a war that went better. Giving an anecdotal story, while tragic, does not disprove his point in the least.

Thanks, Saro. Nice to see that some people here still can comprehend a logical stance without going off the (BLCD) deep end.

I don't doubt that the large volume of contrary (positive) anecdotal information I've heard isn't completely representative, either. First, soldiers who <desire> to badmouth their fellows and their mission probably wouldn't remain in the service for long; secondly, some of these soldiers doubtless have mixed feelings which wouldn't sound completely gung-ho. I'd almost have been surprised by the lack of sound bytes from bitter, dismembered veterans ala Ron Kovic; except these vets are generally quite aware of just what views those who would suddenly be their bestest buddies really hold.

Oddly enough, the greatest critic I've heard who has been deployed/in uniform had operational and tactical complaints, not strategic/geopolitical ones...