THE "WARRIOR'S CODE"--Breaking down again?

[Zlatko Waterman]

my note:

After the Haditha massacres, the Pentagon and its top generals talked much of "The Warrior's Code", a system of ethical and moral restraints on the military during wartime. A Pentagon doctor in charge of the general mental health and state of the US troops I heard on NPR said: "Something is wrong with the culture of the military if these things are happening. Real soldiers don't do things like this . . . "( after Haditha)

The latest case of an atrocity at the hands of US soldiers seems to point toward a further deterioration . . .

(paste below)

Iraqis blast U.S. over rape-slaying case
By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jul 4, 7:23 PM ET



BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi lawmakers blasted the United States on Tuesday over an alleged rape-slaying case, while a southern governor said he was resigning amid fears Iraqi forces cannot handle security once coalition troops transfer responsibility there this month.

Two women legislators called for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to be summoned to parliament to give assurances that justice would be done in the March 12 slaying of four members of a family in Mahmoudiya. A teenage girl allegedly was raped before being killed.

Former Pfc. Steven D. Green was charged Monday in federal court in North Carolina with murder and rape. At least four other U.S. soldiers still in Iraq are under investigation, and the military has stressed it is taking the allegations seriously.

Justice Minister Hashim Abdul-Rahman al-Shebli, a Sunni Arab, denounced the purported attack as "monstrous and inhuman" and called on the U.N. Security Council "to stop these violations of human rights."

The two lawmakers, Safiya al-Suhail and Ayda al-Sharif, said condemnation was not enough.

"We demand severe punishment for the five soldiers involved," al-Sharif said. "Denouncements are not enough. If this act has taken place in another country, the world would have turned upside down."

The March 12 attack on the Sunni Arab family in Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, was among the worst in a series of cases of U.S. troops accused of killing and abusing Iraqi civilians.

The case came to light last week as al-Maliki's new government was seeking to promote its national reconciliation program — a key step in the U.S. strategy to transfer security responsibility to the Iraqis so U.S. and other coalition forces can go home.

As part of that strategy, coalition troops plan to hand over security this month to the Iraqis in Muthanna, a generally peaceful southern province dominated by Shiite Muslims. Muthanna will be the first province handed over to Iraqi forces in its entirety.

On Tuesday, however, Gov. Mohammad Ali Hassan resigned his post effective as soon as British and Australian forces transfer responsibility, probably next week. Provincial police chief Col. Mohammed Najim Abu Kihila stepped down effective immediately.

Provincial council member Mohammed al-Zayadi cited "the deteriorating security situation" as the reason for the shake-up.

The moves followed a rowdy council meeting in Samawah during which nearly 300 fired policemen stormed into the local government headquarters to protest the loss of their jobs. One council member complained he was beaten by former policemen, who broke into his house the night before to protest their dismissals, witnesses said.

Japan is in the process of withdrawing its 600 troops from their base near Samawah, the capital of the sparsely populated desert province 230 miles southeast of Baghdad.

British and Australian troops also are preparing to leave after al-Maliki said Iraqi forces would be ready to take over security responsibilities in Muthanna.

However, the shake-up raises questions about whether Iraqi security forces in the province are ready for the responsibility.

"We reject the transfer of security from the coalition forces to the Iraqi forces because security will deteriorate more and more," one council member said on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The transfer program is a key element in the U.S. plan to set the stage for a withdrawal of the 127,000-member American military force as support for the war wanes in the United States.

However, al-Maliki's government, which took office in May, is still struggling to clamp down on the rampant violence sweeping Baghdad and Sunni Arab areas of the country.

In the latest incident, gunmen in camouflage uniforms kidnapped Deputy Electricity Minister Raed al-Hares, along with 11 of his bodyguards in eastern Baghdad. But they were released several hours later, officials said without elaboration.

The kidnapping occurred three days after gunmen seized female Sunni legislator Tayseer al-Mashhadani in a Shiite area of east Baghdad. She and seven bodyguards remain missing.

In Mahmoudiya, Mayor Mouayad Fadhil said Iraqi authorities have started their own investigation into the rape-murder. Iraqi authorities identified the rape victim as Abeer Qassim Hamza.

The other victims were her father, Qassim Hamza; her mother, Fikhriya Taha; and her sister, Hadeel Qassim Hamza. FBI documents estimated the rape victim was about 25. But a doctor at the Mahmoudiya hospital gave her age as 14. He refused to be identified for fear of reprisals.

Mahdi Obeid, a neighbor, said he saw fire coming from the house on March 12. He rushed over to find Abeer's body on fire. He extinguished the flames and saw bullet wounds in her head and chest, he said.

"It was a horrible scene," he said. "If I could go back in time, I would have not dared enter the house. I cannot wipe those barbaric scenes from my memory."

An insurgent group, the Mujahedeen Army, distributed an account of the incident on an Islamist Web site. It appeared the report, which generally corresponded with details already made public, was designed to draw attention to the deaths and stir up hostility against the U.S. military.

In other developments Tuesday, according to police:

• An 11 p.m.-5 a.m. car and pedestrian curfew was imposed starting Friday in Basra to bolster a state of emergency because of increasing violence in the southern city.

• A roadside bomb struck a police patrol in eastern Baghdad, killing three policemen and wounding three others.

• A Sunni sheik shot by gunmen in Fallujah on Monday died of his wounds and large numbers of clerics and other mourners participated in a funeral procession.

• Coalition forces said they detained one senior al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist and four suspected terrorists Monday during a raid near Tikrit.

• The military said Iraqi soldiers raided a farmhouse southwest of Baghdad on Monday, capturing 14 members of an al-Qaida foreign fighter cell and killing a key "terrorist facilitator."

___

Associated Press reporters Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Bushra Juhi and Qais al-Bashir contributed to this report.

[jimboloco]

the presidunce is to blame as well as the kid
for whom
he set this bogus schllammer up
these kidz are at th butt end of a baad deal.

plus his unit occiferz stonewalled this reportage as well, i am led ta believe, until this later incident happenned with th kidnapping, torture and beheading of his 2 fellow unit troopers, a revenge killing no doubt. and th beat goes on.

my own tour of duty was not without it's misgivings, one such i am stating here:

in the nam in th summer of '71, we ferried a large number of arvin, south vietnamese, troops up from ban me thuot to kontum up in th northe central highlands, from whence they were engaged into laos in operation lam son, and were massacred by th north viets, mercy

about two weeks later, we picked up a load of us army troops at ahn khe, same area but closer to the coast, and flew into pleiku, large army base in central highlands. the dead lined the runway in rows. we were supposed to take the army troopers on down to cam ranh bay, our end stop for that day, where they were to out process and get the freedom bird outa there, but, no
the base commander had said he wanted those bodies outa there, so tho we deplored, we instead bumped off those grunts and got a single south vietnamese soldier, in wooden casket draped with southviet flag, and flowers, which did not cover the stench, and his family. we were told to take them back to banmethuot, where they came from, but instead in a wearied act of disrespect for the family, i flew the plane non-stop to camranh, let the grieving vietnamese family off on the tarmac where a forklift scooped up their young dead soldier and hauled the body away to the large morgue, 100 kilometers away from their home, southeast across the coastal range and down into the seacoast.

it was late one afternoon
after the rain showers
i helped an old vietnamese woman off the airplane
gently taking my arm she said
"you are so young."

[stilltrucking]

You’re right Jim it stinks. What the hell is the warriors code when you push a button and kill a hundred thousand people? Where the hell is dugout Doug when we need him? What was the good war; tell me about any war without atrocities? Thinking about the Band of Brothers, the tale about the Captain in the 101st that gave cigarettes to the German POW's and then shot them all in cold blood. Yeah a good war. We need to bring back the good old days when women were never raped and innocents were never killed in cold blood.

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.
George Washington

The latest case of an atrocity at the hands of US soldiers seems to point toward a further deterioration . . .

Norman I have no idea what that means.

Deterioration from what?

[Lightning Rod]

What self-respecting army in history hasn't done the rape and pillage thing.

Alright, you take green, uneducated kids and you set them down in a foreign country with loneliness and deadly weapons and absolute power over the population. This is their third tour of duty, they haven't been laid in a coon's age and the native women have dark mysterious eyes and lithe brown bodies. I'll give you three guesses what is going to happen.

I'm not excusing it by any means. It's just the course of nature. When you mix bicarbonate of soda with vinegar, it foams up. The ones that need to take responsibility are the ones who mixed the soda and the vinegar in the first place.

[Zlatko Waterman]

BUSHCO pretends that "real American soldiers" will act against nature, LR.

(My deterioration remark is an obvious sarcasm, ST).

Monsters created this mess, not green American kids-- you're right, LR.

--Z

[Dave The Dov]

I thought the only code that is followed by them is the code of revenge.
_________________
Saute'ing Forum

[stilltrucking]

Well some of us have a flair for the obvious.

I think the warrior code went out of style with the cross bow.

[Zlatko Waterman]

I couldn't agree more with you, ST.

"The Warrior's Code" was the Pentagon's language, not mine.

It's an absurd phrase applied to contemporary warfare, of course.

You're right.

--Z

[hester prynne]

Warrior's code?
Yeah, and a true patriot supports the troops regardless of their acts, or why they are fighting.

It's another agressive phrase meant to make a young innocent human into a monstrous brute that will strive to get away with premeditated murder after quelling his warrior boner.
It's disgusting.

It's another twist of the truth to suit the "decider's" purposes.

What else is new?
h

[Doreen Peri]

fuck war

[stilltrucking]

Not to put word's in mnaz's mouth but he had a post about there will always be warriors and fools that will follow them. We will never have as many warriors as there are fools. I suppose I am thinking about knip, I would not call him a fool. He may be a warrior, in the highest sense of the word. But is anyone who they appear to be on this super slab, this world that firsty says does not exist? Take me for example. I have convinced everyone that I am this ex truck driver cum dirty old man, when in truth I am a 14-year-old virgin from Astoria Oregon.

Dam Hester ramble ramble.
Long day, and it was hammer hammer all the way. I got thousand-mile totally beat exhaustion kind of mellow buzz going. So I am rambling all over the place trying to get back to my point. I keep knip in mind, jimbo, and s-mike, and abstroint, and Cecil, all these people who were warriors once. I can't find any fault in them. I think a lot of this is because the recruiters are scarping the bottom of the barrel, but maybe that is what war always comes down to the lowest common denominator.

But Knip is our only active duty warrior, I try to keep him in mind, got dam war is right, but I will never forget Rwanda, the Canadian military officer that was there when it happened. He wrote a book called Shake hands with the Devil. Knip said that the guy had a nervous breakdown. He stood face to face with the devil he said.

Oh well, I am already having posters remorse. Going to run this through Word and remove as many squiggles as I can.

random text boxes R us.
random posts
random deletions
go figure

[stilltrucking]

Professor ZW:

LR says he gets me about half the time Norman. I feel like Ted Williams if I can bat 500 with clay. He is the one that I feel the most connection with when I think of violence. Street samurai. Not sure what violence has to do with warriors, the dots are drifting apart on me, hard to connect them at this edge of consciousness I am at. I love it, not trance writing, but something like it. It almost seems to make sense to me. These words clicking off this jitterbug keyboard. I suppose war is the most sincere form of mindless violence. HST called it a "police action" when we fought the battle of the 38th parallel; I suppose we could call our war on the Iraqi people a “police Riot."



Oh lordy have mercy on those weary old English professor eyes of yours, I can't deal with Word anymore tonight. In the morning this will have so many dam squiggles.