Heroic my ass
I'm so damned mad after seeing this horror and hearing how cheap life is to a couple of these guys talking.

http://agonist.org/wikileaksvideo

You will see people gunned down from a very safe distance. If this is herioc warfare, I'll be dipped in dogsh##

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I do not fight fascists because I think I can win.
I fight them because they are fascists.
Chris Hedges

A riot is the language of the unheard. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

this is the detachment you get from constant redeployments. the Soldiers see less people and more targets. Honestly, a horrible situation made worse by actually seeing it. If you were seeing actual bad guys with guns go down I'm pretty certain we wouldnt be talking about this.

Soldiers do say horrible things when in combat. None of it is usually fit for pleasant conversation

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

War is utterly wrong - Americans typically say "God bless America" - why would god bless a country that invades other nations and shoots civilians, just like as shown in that video? Disgusting. You guys (and by 'you' - I mean the US government... the people are lovely) have a leaky roof (public debt, obesity, medicare, medicaid) and your re-shingling abroad.

But hey, I don't mind - anything to lower the human population is good in my books...

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- Luke.

I agree Luke
Almost every American citizen I've met has been a pleasure to get to know.
It's the damned corporate structures and a government filled with weaklings willing to do corporate dirty work (for a reward) that project such a sick image to the world.

There are so many people that buy into the idea that America can do no wrong.
The guy talking in the video saying "That's what they get for bringing their kids into a battle" when they see two children being rescued from the van.

The people on the ground didn't come to a battle. That's where they live.
What would you do if you came across a wounded man in the street?
Would you try to help as they did?

Does helping a wounded man make you a target?

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I do not fight fascists because I think I can win.
I fight them because they are fascists.
Chris Hedges

A riot is the language of the unheard. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

this is the detachment you get from constant redeployments. the Soldiers see less people and more targets. Honestly, a horrible situation made worse by actually seeing it. If you were seeing actual bad guys with guns go down I'm pretty certain we wouldnt be talking about this.

Soldiers do say horrible things when in combat. None of it is usually fit for pleasant conversation.

Detachment from relating to other humans is a major problem even without mutiple deployments. If you take an honest look at the process of "Basic Training" the key element is the dehumanization of other people, i.e., "the enemy".

The most enlightening program series I have ever seen that addressed the dehumanization issue was out of Canada and the series title was "War" (Gwynne Dyer was the host of the series). As far as I know, it was shown only once here in the States and not widely. It's owned by an agency of the Canadian Government and I think they only approve it for use by schools.

If you get a chance to see it you should. It's a bit old and dated but the points it makes as to how people are changed from the way they look at human life to a soldier is more than "interesting".

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I wont defend any of what happend in that video. I think they call it clinical detachment and it was first diagnoswed in WW2 for bomber and fighter pilots. Im the first gulf war i think they said it was video game syndrom. That one stretch of highway out of kuwait that was a death strip. You dont see your enemy up close like the grunts do.

But I have talked with some US marines who fought in the Pacific. they became detached to. they had to or they would have gone crazy. The human mind can only see and take so much.

Now Im not a combat vet. But i did 8 years in the US Air Force as a crash and rescue firefighter. Ive seen and smelt things no man should.

War sucks, instaed of sending our soldiers we should send our politicians. !!!

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Old James

All I will say is in the full version of the video once the ground troops got there and turned the bodies over, someone had an RPG. Did the pilots get it wrong? Or were the AP photographers going out to take pictures of the enemy shooting at the US troops? We will never know. This is called the fog of war.

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