BSC: My son is in Iraq too - I know exactly what you mean. When I heard congress was doing what they are doing with this non-binding resolution (Feb 2007) it was all I could do not to go march on Washington myself. They are giving aid and comfort to the enemy and leaving our boys over there with no support.

The dramatic cockpit video and recording begins with two pilots identifying a target and checking with ground control that there are no coalition troops in the area — to which ground control says, “That is an affirm. You are well clear of friendlies,” according to the transcript released by The Sun.

Tempers flare between the two pilots, with one saying it looks like the prospective targets are carrying orange rockets. Coalition troops are often equipped with bright orange markers to identify them as friendly forces.

“I know what you’re talking about!” the first pilot says, after asking about the alleged rockets.

“OK, well they got orange rockets on them,” the second pilot says.

“Orange rockets?” the first pilot asks again, telling the other pilot they need to get back to base soon.

“I think killing these damn rocket launchers, it would be great,” the second pilot says.

The two U.S. A-10 jets opened fire on Hull’s tank, which was part of a five-vehicle convoy engaged in combat outside Basra on March 28, 2003. Four other soldiers were wounded, including the convoy’s leader, Capt. Alexander MacEwen.

Gunfire is heard. Minutes later they learn there are friendly forces in the area and that one person is dead and another is wounded.

Pilot 1: “I’m going to be sick.”

Pilot 2: “Ah f—.”

Pilot 1: “Did you hear?”

Pilot 2: “Yeah, this sucks.”

Pilot 1: “We’re in jail, dude.”

The pilots communicate with ground control again. “They did say there were no friendlies,” the first pilot says.

“Yeah, I know that thing with the orange panels is going to screw us. They look like orange rockets on top,” the second pilot says.

The first pilot then asks if his tape is still on. Seconds later, there is silence.

Sounds like a true Mis-comunacation Huh.

Let it go shit happens.

Here is a link to the story.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-video0206,0,1562705.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

Michael

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,11021-10043,00.html

its our troops

their lives

I’m neither rupublican nor democrat, or ‘liberal’ as you put it, I’m british, your ’supposed’ ally

To: Jack Murtha Congressmen Date: 2/15/07
From: Michael J Whittington.

Dear liberal. You are trying to under fund are troops and playing political games with the men and women who are protecting are freedom and the freedom idiots like yourself do not deserve. Instead of supporting the men and women who put there lives on the line for trash as your self you are trying to destroy this country. We the people are going to block you and your liberal friends of any blocking of are troops. The people will be heard on this topic and will not stand by as fat lawmakers as your self sitting behind your desk making problems for are troops. We are sick and tired of liberals as your self making problems for the troops and your cut and run political fallout. You are gutless and spineless as a man and far from a man. I have 4 children unlike liberals like you who do not support the Jessica law. We will support are troops and do what ever we can to keep them from people like your self trying to screw them. It’s really sad that you think you are slick with this little program you have put together to under fund the troops but we and FOX NEWS will make sure the people see what you are really trying to do to are troops. You need to retire because your age and thoughts are not reality. You’re too old and you seem like you have all timers because the way you are thinking is crazy. We need to get the old out and in with the new young congressmen because people like you are not doing what’s right for the people and are troops and we will not stand by and let you play your little politic games with are troops. You liberals all should pack your bags and get out of are country and go live in IRAN where you will be greeted with open arms. You are a disgrace to the uniform and a trader in a time of war. Take your hearing aid out because you sure don’t listen to the people.

THE PEOPLES VOICE
Michael J Whittington

Lincoln never said this. Ever. This quote is a fabrication of Dr. J. Michael Waller, a long time Republican pundit, who first wrote it in a Moonie publication, Insight Magazine on December 23, 2003 shortly before the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth gave it life in 2004.

I have two original King & Baird pamphlets in my collection, the identical pamphlet Waller sites as his proof, “TRUTH FROM AN HONEST MAN”. Lincoln never wrote anything like this … here, or anywhere else.

How pathetic has the Republican Party become that it insults the reputation of America’s finest Republican president for their political gain?

Cliff Hancuff
The World of Journalism Is Flat, Too

all this crap about Murtha is a Marine Colonel so he understands. that should tell you right there that he didn’t do a damn thing besides press his uniform. The very small percentage of guys that are in combat day in and day out are about 99% low-ranked infantry(or other combat arms) soldiers. trust me when i say, i know EXACTLY every emotion that went through those guys’ heads. I don’t have to get information from what someone else might say because, unlike 99% America, i was there, and i was a grunt.

But it’s funny how the “veterans” that were probably the same guys that were eating three meals a day, showering every day, getting a good night sleep, and always managed to press their uniform are the ones saying that the soldiers are immmoral. Any soldier who can’t relate with them should shut up because they never experienced war. yeah, they experienced deployment but not war. But let’s go ahead and kill some soldiers!!! (sarcasm) nevermind the Ali Baba, let’s kill the only people who still have courage left in this country! I just wish people can’t fathom the idea of what it is really like to truly hate somone. Unfortunately, most people aren’t brave enough to join combat arms.

But for any soldier that says these guys are cruel and immoral…tell me, how many friends of yours did you watch die or get their limbs blown off? It’s bad that the American civilians protest but our own soldiers are selling our own guys out!!! now, that’s a traitor!

and you know what’s funny you get guys like “iraq participant” which yeah, thankyou for serving your country, but come on now. you were in an Army reserve training class one day and someone told you something about war!!??!?!! that doesn’t make your story have any credibility. nobody on earth could tell you what combat is really like so I’m not even going to try. Also, SF is a much cooler job than infantry, but infantry is much more stressful because you deal with a lot more bull shit. And this is coming from a REAL GRUNT that these marines should be TREATED. they do need psychological help, but they don’t need or deserve punishment. Also, don’t try and glorify what you did and make it sound exciting…you were a pogue/POG(piece of garbage). you don’t know anything about war, obviously, so don’t try and kill Marines that actually had the courage to fight.

ever heard of PTSD??? yeah, there are actual physical changes that go on in the brain. Unfortunately, people can’t fathom what these guys actually feel. How can you convict someone when you don’t even know if they were in the right state of mind? How about treating these guys? Instead of making the actual combat soldier more afraid to do his job and afraid of his own countrymen.

Why don’t you read about the Zimbardo prison study! that shows that everyone has a breaking point. hell, basic pyschology should tell you that. you don’t put people in unforgiving environments and not expect them to react. it’s poor leadership though. Bush should have snipped this in the butt, but he’s more focused on his own reputation. i guess dropping bombs and killing a lot more civilians is worse than getting revenge for a friend’s death.(sarcasm) and no! i am very much pro-fighting the war on terrorism.

-Former infantryman

You see, in my view “soldiers” who murder children in cold blood are war criminals who should be hanged and cremated and dumped into a river. Assuming that’s what happened of course. Your willingness to excuse murder is disgusting. I think you’d be right at home in the einstatzgruppen or the death’s head battalions. whovian222@msn.com

It’s been: my old boss Paul Bremer and Gens. Shinseki, Zinni, Baptiste, McCafferty and most military people for more troops vs. Rumsfeld for less troops. Bush and Rumsfeld wanted to fight the war on the cheap or to support their ideas of “transformation.”

Rumsfeld in particular: he opposed expanding the size of the Army, so those soldiers who are in the Army have to serve longer tours and go back again and again.

I think it’s water under the bridge now: if we had started out the right way and had enough troops to stop the looting, restore order, crush the insurgency at the beginning and enough money to provide jobs and hope to the Iraq people, then we would be down to much less troops than we have there now.

But now, we’ve got very little accomplished in basic infrastructure (electricity, water, health) and the violence is getting worse.

I would not support a draft with this incompetent crowd in charge, I advised my sons not to join. They do not care about soldiers, only their crazy ideas.

You say you assume nothing about the accuracy of anyone’s statements, yet you take Murtha’s statements at face value. Without question. You use his words as your argument, ‘he said…’ So you start out contradicting yourself.

You also start each of your posts with inflamatory, insulting comments. That’s a common tactic used to put the opponent off balance from the get-go. It’s then followed by a condescending tone that is also commonly used to belittle the argument of the opponent. These types of techniques are used to be argumentative, dominate and belittle, not to debate or encourage reasonable discourse.

The common factor in these techniques is that they are …. common. [common as in base] They are also not very creative.

You accuse me of rushing to judge Murtha - yet you have judged the soldiers with the only information you have from the word of Murtha. How easy it is to judge soldier’s harshly. How easy it is to judge America harshly. It’s such an easy shot.

You say you have read all you need to know about me - and yet you continue to wax on and on in an extremely long and wordy essay (ever hear of the usefulness of an economy of words?).

You say you know all you need to know of me - and yet you are still here!

And then you go to the children again. Yes, I do value my child more - don’t you. That’s human nature.

I don’t dance on graves. I’ve only seen the Shenanigans dance on her own son’s grave - rather she laid there, smiling.

Your argument is silly, immature, mean-spirited, intolerant and full of misinformation and contradiction.

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa), one of the Bush Administration’s chief critics, and an ex-Marine himself has made a public accusation that U.S. Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood” after allegedly responding to a roadside bomb ambush tha…

If the soldiers are guilty they need to be dealt with. If they are not, they have been damaged by a public figure making this accusation public before the investigation is complete.

Even so, he doesn’t need to be ‘airing dirty laundry’ for the world to see. The other countries are picking that up and it undermines everything our soldiers are doing. It makes us appear weak.

It’s dispicable and inexcusable.

Let the investigation take its course and the soldiers be cleared or convicted as the law demands. But don’t have Murtha making political hay at their expense!

BTW - I have heard different opinions about the numbers of boots on the ground. i personally would have no problem with instituting the draft. I think it would do a lot of good in a lot of ways. But that’s for the military to decide, not me.

The instructor, a Special Forces master sergeant (who was in Vietnam and also in Bolivia when Che was killed), instantly berated the idea that My Lai was justified, saying that Calley should have been “hung by his balls” for killing innocent civilians and dishonoring the USA.

That made me proud to wear the uniform.

Atrocities against women and children do not make me proud to be an American.

If the facts come out as badly as Murtha implies, and it appears that he has inside knowledge, he is to be commended for telling the truth.

I was in Iraq, as a contractor on governance and democracy programs - I was there then Abu Ghraib broke. It had a devastating effect to our image in Iraq.

Aren’t we supposed to be bringing democracy to Iraq?

I sympathize, as Murtha does, with the beleaguered Soldiers and Marines - there are not enough of them to do the job, and Rumsfeld has fought expanding the size of the force tooth-and-nail. The media is not the source of the problems which Soldiers and Marines face: it is the fact that there never have been enough of them to do the job. They have to roll out of the gate every day and night to patrol streets which have never been secured.

Since I know Iraqis, have worked with Iraqis and have friends who are Iraqis, I can’t just dehumanize them and place their lives as worthless. The bad guys, and only the bad guys, have to be killed or captured.

Reprisal killings of civilians are wrong. Telling the truth, however unpleasant, is right. If we can’t do this job right, then Murtha is right, we should get out, because we are harming the Iraqis and ourselves.

Works for me.

Are you so far loosened from your senses that you can make such statements? The gaps and illogic in what passes for your argument are so many and so huge that I hardly would know where to begin pointing them out. For starters: “I have as much information as Murtha has in making his accusations. You are assuming what he has put forth is accurate. His statements are based on the statements of insurgents in Iraq.”

Absurd. Murtha said that he was told about the state of the military investigation by some of those who have inside information about it. He obviously has also read all the reporting on the incident, which goes back months. You, by contrast, began shooting your mouth off before you even could find a link to any stories on line.

I assume nothing about the accuracy of anybody’s statements, except that the various accounts given by the Marines and the military of what allegedly occured are full of basic contradictions. Their story has changed over time. Second, the military has admitted at several stages that some of the things said by the Marines who did the killing conflict with the physical evidence.

You have either no knowledge or no interest in those basic facts. Instead, you rush to the assumption that the dead Iraqis and the other villagers were “insurgents”, though you have no proof of that.

You also are exceedingly eager to label a man a traitor because he’s stating things about military activities that you don’t care to be said. But you’re all in favor of freedom of speech? Hah.

I see nothing patriotic about American troops massacring civilians anywhere, if that is what they did. It brings our nation into disgrace. Any other soldiers who would want to be associated with those kinds of activities are likewise a disgrace to their uniform–and in my experience, they would be in the distinct minority. Decent minded servicemen and women don’t tolerate those kinds of scum in their midst.

As for your other bizarre ideas, such as that I’m a democrat, or can’t tolerate dissent, I won’t waste any further time on them. You’ve said just about as much as any person needs to know about you, when you declared that Murtha is seditious and treasonous because he dared to expose apparent wrongdoing by the military.

So you’re going to line him up against a wall and kill him? Tough talk is always quick out of the mouths of wackos. In your fantasies, you and your allies on the rightwing fringes are always killing Americans off. Yet you’re patriots at the same time, aren’t you all? And you’re just absolutely full of sympathy for, well, yourselves and your own families.

Isn’t it just lovely that you care so much about your own child that you have zero sympathy left for Iraqi children who are being slaughtered in this war. Perhaps you could get up a collection among your fellow-minded readers, to pay for you to fly over to Iraq and dance on the kids’ graves there? That would surely make your heroics here all the more impressive.