“There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq” (1 Viewer)

Dave

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Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh slams Bush at McGill address

....During his hour-and-a-half lecture – part of the launch of an interdisciplinary media and communications studies program called Media@McGill – Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about.

He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer.

“Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.”

“Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.”

“About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said.

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.

“In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation,” he said. “It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”
http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5450
 
All the other reporters in the region have been waiting it out the past few years for the perfect time to break the story. If it was that bad then release the damn video. Oh wait, you wouldn't want to release the video this close to elections because you feel that it would really hurt the Republicans and you would never want to do this right? Or is it because you don't want the american public to see the video become upset and cause the political leaders to start pulling the troops out right? Or is it because you are afraid of the fame and fortune you might receive from the most controversial video in years, right? Or is it your afraid that the check CNN would cut you would change your life forever and your afraid that having tremendous wealth would change you too much, right? Or is it because if you show the video your view of it might be seen as a lame attempt at a very biased report, RIGHT?
 
War ain't pretty and neither are the stories that come out of war zones. I'm also continuously brought back to images of innocent American civilians getting their heads chopped off by knives. Images and footage of the event occurring, complete with sound, and published on the internet for the world to see. Yep...war is ugly.
 
An Abu Ghraib Offender Heads Back to Iraq

Yes Seymour Hersh "a Pulitzer Prize Winning" writer must be spewing his lies again...That's how he ends up on Meet the Press all the time with Tim Russert and with a Pulitzer cause he's aaaaaaaaaa... aaaa....wait....a LIARRRREEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRR.....NAH i don't think so homies....here....have some perspective

"As if the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal weren't bad enough for America's image in the Middle East, now it may appear to much of the world that one of the men implicated in the scandal is returning to the scene of the crime.

The U.S. military tells TIME that one of the soldiers convicted for his role in Abu Ghraib, having served his sentence, has just been sent back to serve in Iraq."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1554326-1,00.html
 
Yes Seymour Hersh "a Pulitzer Prize Winning" writer must be spewing his lies again...That's how he ends up on Meet the Press all the time with Tim Russert and with a Pulitzer cause he's aaaaaaaaaa... aaaa....wait....a LIARRRREEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRR.....NAH i don't think so homies....here....have some perspective

"As if the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal weren't bad enough for America's image in the Middle East, now it may appear to much of the world that one of the men implicated in the scandal is returning to the scene of the crime.

The U.S. military tells TIME that one of the soldiers convicted for his role in Abu Ghraib, having served his sentence, has just been sent back to serve in Iraq."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1554326-1,00.html
Do you agree with Hersh's comment about the military? The quote you cited from the Time article is from retired General Barry McCaffrey. It seems that you are using this article to defend Hersh. Do you know what Hersh wrote about McCaffrey?
New Yorker article

According to an article written by Seymour Hersh published in 2000 The New Yorker, General McCaffrey committed war crimes during the Gulf War by having troops under his command kill retreating Iraqis after a ceasefire had been declared. Hersh's article "quotes senior officers decrying the lack of discipline and proportionality in the McCaffrey-ordered attack." One colonel told Hersh that it "made no sense for a defeated army to invite their own death. ... It came across as shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone was incredulous." [2]
These charges had been made by Army personnel after the war and an Army investigation had cleared McCaffrey of any wrongdoing. Hersh dismissed the findings of the investigation, writing that "few soldiers report crimes, because they don't want to jeopardize their Army careers."

Hersh describes his interview with Private First Class Charles Sheehan-Miles:

When I asked Sheehan-Miles why he fired, he replied, "At that point, we were shooting everything. Guys in the company told me later that some were civilians. It wasn't like they came at us with a gun. It was that they were there -- 'in the wrong place at the wrong time.'" Although Sheehan-Miles is unsure whether he and his fellow-tankers were ever actually fired upon during the war, he is sure that there was no significant enemy fire. "We took some incoming once, but it was friendly fire," he said. "The folks we fought never had a chance." He came away from Iraq convinced that he and his fellow-soldiers were, as another tanker put it, part of "the biggest firing squad in history."



<DL><DD></DD></DL>McCaffrey's and Powell's rebuttals to allegations of misconduct

McCaffrey denied the charges and attacked what he called Hersh's "revisionist history" of the Gulf War. According to Georgie Anne Geyer of the Chicago Tribune from May 2000, Hersh&#8217;s accusations were disputed by a number of military personnel, who later claimed to have been misquoted by the journalist. She argues that this may have been Hersh&#8217;s misguided attempt to break another My Lai story, and that he "could not possibly like a man such as McCaffrey, who is so temperamentally and philosophically different from him&#8230;&#8221; Finally, she suggests that Hersh may also have been motivated to attack the general for McCaffrey&#8217;s role as the drug czar.[3]

Lt. Gen. Steven Arnold, interviewed by Hersh for the controversial article, was one of the officers who later claimed to have been misquoted. He wrote the editor of The New Yorker saying "I know that my brief comments in the article were not depicted in an entirely accurate manner and were taken out of context&#8230;. When the Iraqi forces fired on elements of the 24th Infantry Division, they were clearly committing a hostile act. I regret having granted an interview with Mr. Hersh. The tone and thrust of the article places me in a position of not trusting or respecting General Barry McCaffrey, and nothing could be further from the truth." [4]

Similar criticism came from Gen. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Iraq War, who described the Hersh article as "attempted character assassination on General McCaffrey," in an interview with Sam Donaldson for the TV show This Week, in May of 2000.

ABC investigation of misconduct allegations

ABC News followed up on Hersh's report in June 2000, interviewing six soldiers from the platoon of scouts under the command of Gen. McCaffrey. All six confirmed Hersh's report, telling ABC News that they witnessed the attack. Two of the scouts, Edward Walker and David Collatt, claim to have witnessed the attack from 200 yards away.

ABC interviewed Major General John LeMoyne, who oversaw the Army investigation into the charges against McCaffrey. LeMoyne denies the incident occurred: "Nobody was killed. None, zero. Soldiers--the Iraqi soldiers were never shot at, ever, at that point. None of us, hundreds and hundreds of us ever saw a body. None of us."

ABC reviewed LeMoyne's investigation and found it "flawed and incomplete. The Army failed to interview the aide Le Moyne told investigators he immediately sent to the area. It failed to interview many of the Scouts, and it failed to interview all the Bradley crews. While the Army did conclude there was firing, it failed to establish which Bradleys were firing. The Bradley crew members who did submit statements denied any knowledge of the incident and denied shooting at anything. Further, the Army failed to establish why there was firing at all in an area known to hold the prisoners. To this day, Battalion Commander Charles Ware does not have a clear explanation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McCaffrey
Hersh:

Criticisms
Hersh\'s supporters regard him as a dogged and fearless journalist who uncovers important incidents. His detractors see him as a liberal whose stories are often ideologically motivated.

Many of his most \"scoops\" in recent years have come at public speaking events, rather than in print, though Hersh caused a small controversy regarding his credibility when he admitted in an interview with a New York Magazine writer Chris Suellentrop, \"Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people...I can&#8217;t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.\" <SUP class=reference id=_ref-15>[16]</SUP>
<SUP></SUP>
One of Hersh\'s allegations made during a speaking engagement in July 2004, during the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, was later amended by Hersh. He alleged that American troops sexually assaulted young boys: \"basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking. That your government has. They&#8217;re in total terror it&#8217;s going to come out.&#8221; <SUP class=reference id=_ref-16>[17]</SUP>

In a subsequent interview with New York Magazine, Hersh admitted, \"I actually didn&#8217;t quite say what I wanted to say correctly...it wasn&#8217;t that inaccurate, but it was misstated. The next thing I know, it was all over the blogs. And I just realized then, the power of&#8212;and so you have to try and be more careful.\" <SUP class=reference id=_ref-17>[18]</SUP>

In his book, Chain of Command , he wrote that one of the witness statements he had read described the rape of a boy by a foreign contract interpreter at Abu Ghraib, during which a woman took pictures. <SUP class=reference id=_ref-18>[19]</SUP>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh
 
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Do you agree with Hersh's comment about the military? The quote you cited from the Time article is from retired General Barry McCaffrey. It seems that you are using this article to defend Hersh. Do you know what Hersh wrote about McCaffrey?

Hersh:

Yeah...and so what...are you even reading and discerning what you're posting??...The things written about McCaffrey have a ring of truth and are coroberated by other soldiers but amount to a he said/she said and therefore without solid proof/evidence McCaffrey could not be therefore prosecuted...AND from that your surmising that the Seymour Hersh made everything up and usually does with most of his articles...Sorry but that's a very very weak arguement if any at all..you'll have to do better than that to get anyone to believe that Seymour Hersh is making up this fantasical goings on in Iraq and elswhere...maybe in the early days of Iraq you get away with that..but not anymore...moving on...
 
Yeah...and so what...are you even reading and discerning what you're posting??...The things written about McCaffrey have a ring of truth and are coroberated by other soldiers but amount to a he said/she said and therefore without solid proof/evidence McCaffrey could not be therefore prosecuted...AND from that your surmising that the Seymour Hersh made everything up and usually does with most of his articles...Sorry but that's a very very weak arguement if any at all..you'll have to do better than that to get anyone to believe that Seymour Hersh is making up this fantasical goings on in Iraq and elswhere...maybe in the early days of Iraq you get away with that..but not anymore...moving on...
Wow. You think that “There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq.” I never said Hersh makes everything up in most of his article. All I did was post section from each of their Wikipedia pages. I will say that I don't agree in the least with Hersh's terrible comments about our troops. Why doesn't Hersh release the video so everyone can see if he is correct? I do doubt his claim especially since Hersh said "Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people...I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say."
 
Oh I can believe that things happen, but when your life is on the line, and seeing what has happened in the past in Iraq. It is war the problem is so many Americans are pansies. There is a reason it is called war. My son and son in law both served. They said after a while you could kinda tell by mannerisms who to suspect. They said many appreciated the soldiers, but were scared by the insurgents whole families went missing!!! My son told of times they would help an Iraqi family and the guy would comeback with a couple of chickens to show their appreciation, knowing that that was their supper or lunch for a couple of days, but they wouldn't take no for an answer!!! I don't really know if ever in that area will ever clear up too much dispair, too many religious fanatics to posion people with little hope. Ripe recruiting grounds.
 
The supply people would have a hard time keeping me in bullets if I was over there.
 
Terrorism's best friends - the Democratic party-the liberal media and people, and I use that term lightly, like Hersh. God help us!
 
I think American Indians might argue with Hr. Hersh...
 
Pretty much a ridiculous, historically specious arguments.

But look for the most strident supporters of the war to point to Hersh's comments as somehow representative of the anti-war sentiment per Saintnsane's post.

Of course, we all know that communists, socialists, fellow travellers, the Democratic Party and the liberal press are to blame for what's going on in Iraq.

Gag me with a fork.
 
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Here is a story about what my Nephew went through in Iraq.

He came home in September of 2005 with two purple hearts, after the Bradley he was patroling in was hit with IED's on two separate occasions. In both incidents he was the guy with his head and upper torso out of the forward hatch. In the first incident he only received minor facial lacerations. The second incident resulted in him recieving second degree burns on his face, neck and shoulder areas.

I sat with him and we talked about what happened and I asked him what was the reaction of the guys with him when they were attacked. He tod me, "Unk, we wanted to kill everything and everyone in the area when that happened. The only thing that prevented it was kowing that we were under strict orders that we could not fire on anyone unless we were fired upon."

I then asked him how were they setting the bombs off. He then told me about how the terrorists used remote control devices, and would stand around with a group of people and activate the devise when the Bradley's or Humvees came upon them. He told me that this was the hardest thing to take when they were attacked. Knowing that the person who activated the IED was standing within 50 to 100 ft. of them and they could do nothing about it.

All I know is it takes a lot of discipline to not fire into a group of people, knowing that the person that just set off a device to try and kill you is in that area. War is hell and I can never pretend to know what the awfull conditions these young men and women are put through are like.
 
Here is a story about what my Nephew went through in Iraq.

I sat with him and we talked about what happened and I asked him what was the reaction of the guys with him when they were attacked. He tod me, "Unk, we wanted to kill everything and everyone in the area when that happened. The only thing that prevented it was kowing that we were under strict orders that we could not fire on anyone unless we were fired upon."

Yeah, and that tends to be the natural human reaction by those who don't know who the enemy is or don't have tangible military objectives.

Such are the perils of a guerrilla war.

With no conventional enemy military fighting this war, the enemy easily blends in with an otherwise innocent population.
 
War? What is this "war" of which you speak? I don't recall anyone declaring war. Even if we had, the enemy military has been smashed and their leader deposed. The "war" part of the proceedings is over. Has been for years.

What we are doing now is police/counterinsurgency work. The sooner the Iraqi government is able to take over this work, the better.
 

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