"the news today"

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wolfeden

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.....news of U.S. soldiers dragged through the streets in Iraq today.

A friend of mine from college days has been over there for a year now, up until the end of February we'd all been hearing from him pretty regularly either by email or cel phone. He told us he was going out on patrol as of 22nd February and we have not heard anything since. His name has not turned up on the casualty/POWMIA lists and as far as we know his parents have not heard anything either.

But I Can't get this cold sick feeling in my gut to go away.
 
I just saw an image that has made me feel sick.

Hope you hear from your friend soon. :hug:
 
I have been reading the reports of the bodies dragged through the streets........I can't imagine seeing it on the news. I did not watch the news today. I hope your friend is OK.
 
:hug:
I have a co-worker whose husband is in Baghdad and she goes through periods of not hearing from him for awhile-but in the end she has always heard from him.
*crosses fingers and prays you hear from your friend*
 
These were not soldiers, but US civilian contractors for a security company. They were local to my region and people on my news were very upset. They haven't released the names yet but I hear one was a woman.

After they were burned and drug through the street and hit with poles, 2 were hung from a bridge. This is a disgrace. :mad:

These people were employees of Blackwater Security Consultants of Moyock, NC. So I doubt it was your friend Wolfeden :hug: But still I am very outraged and very sorry for the families of the people.
 
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I am ready to be flamed for this post.


The people were alive in the car when it was lit on fire. They were burned alive. They were CIVILIANS. After burning them, they were indeed dragged through the streets. Their bodies were beaten by shovels, and parts of their body were torn off, and hung from power lines. Other parts were indeed hung on the bridges. I have been tempted to post the pictures. I am so disgusted.

When nurses came to retrieve the bodies, they were chased away by a mob of people.

I want the United States Military to launch an operation IMMEDIATELY to recover these bodies. These are American citizens and should be brought home.

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http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20040331/mdf512846.jpg

We are getting ready to bury a soldier here in Plymouth. I am sitting here tonight, ready to enlist again. It saddens me that I see children in the photos behaving in such a manner.

What a wonderful reflection upon their "civilization". I am so glad they are liberated. Maybe Saddam was the best thing for them. Maybe they are not ready for democracy. I hope that the Military Intelligence is circulating the photos among the troops, and I hope they strike back hard on these scumbags.
 
April 1, 2004
4 From U.S. Killed in Ambush in Iraq; Mob Drags Bodies
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

ALLUJA, Iraq, March 31 ? Four Americans working for a security company were ambushed and killed Wednesday, and an enraged mob then jubilantly dragged the burned bodies through the streets of downtown Falluja, hanging at least two corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

Less than 15 miles away, in the same area of the increasingly violent Sunni Triangle, five American soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb ripped through their armored personnel carrier.

The violence was one of the most brutal outbursts of anti-American rage since the war in Iraq began more than a year ago. And the steadily deteriorating situation in the Falluja area, a center of anti-American hostility west of Baghdad, has become so precarious that no American or Iraqi forces responded to the attack against the civilians, who worked for a North Carolina company.

American officials said the civilians were traveling in two sport utility vehicles although some witnesses in Falluja said there were four. "Two got away; two got trapped," said Muhammad Furhan, a taxi driver.

It is not clear what the four Americans were doing in Falluja or where they were going. But just as they were passing a strip of stationery stores and kebab shops around 10:30 a.m., masked gunmen jumped into the street and blasted their vehicles with assault rifles. Witnesses said the civilians did not shoot back.

There are a number of police stations in Falluja and a base of more than 4,000 marines nearby, but even as the security guards were being swarmed and their vehicles set on fire, sending plumes of inky smoke over the closed shops of the city, there were no ambulances, no fire engines and no assistance.

Instead, Falluja's streets were thick with men and boys and chaos.

Men with scarves over their faces hurled bricks into the blazing vehicles. A group of boys yanked a smoldering body into the street and ripped it apart. Someone then tied a chunk of flesh to a rock and tossed it over a telephone wire.

"Viva mujahedeen!" shouted Said Khalaf, a taxi driver. "Long live the resistance!"

Nearby, a boy no older than 10 ground his heel into a burned head. "Where is Bush?" the boy yelled. "Let him come here and see this!"

Masked men gathered around him, punching their fists into the air. The streets filled with hundreds of people. "Falluja is the graveyard of Americans!" they chanted.

Several news crews filmed the mayhem. The images of a frenzied crowd mutilating bodies were reminiscent of the scene from Somalia in 1993, when a mob dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu. That moment shifted public opinion and eventually led to an American pullout.

The White House blamed terrorists and remnants of Saddam Hussein's former government for the attack. "This is a despicable attack," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, told reporters, adding that "there are some that are doing everything they can to prevent" a transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.

American military officials said the violence in Falluja, however chilling, would not scare them away. "The insurgents in Falluja are testing us," said Capt. Chris Logan, a marine. "They're testing our resolve. But it's not like we're going to leave. We just got here."

Captain Logan, who is stationed at a large walled base on the outskirts of the city, said Falluja was becoming "an area of greater concern." Last week, a contingent of marines, who recently took over responsibility for Falluja from the Army, fought gunmen in a battle in which one marine, a television cameraman and several Iraqi civilians were killed.

"This is one of those areas in Iraq that is definitely squirrelly," Captain Logan said.

Many people in Falluja said they believed that they had won an important victory on Wednesday. They insisted that the four security guards, who were driving in unmarked sport utility vehicles, were working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

"This is what these spies deserve," said Salam Aldulayme, a 28-year-old Falluja resident.

Intelligence sources in Washington said the four were not working for the C.I.A. They worked for Blackwater Security Consulting of Moyock, N.C., providing security for food delivery in the Falluja area, according to a statement from the company. The occupation authorities have hired hundreds of private security guards for a range of duties.

Witnesses in Falluja said several of the men had Defense Department badges, though such identification is common for contractors working for the occupation. A senior military officer said the four were retired Special Operations forces ? three Navy Seals and one Army Ranger. American officials declined to immediately identify the dead men.

In the last three weeks, more than 10 foreign civilians have been killed in Iraq, though no attack provoked the spasm of brutality that followed this one.

Since the war in Iraq began, Falluja has been a flash point of violence. Of all the places in Iraq, it is where anti-American hatred is the strongest. The area is predominantly Sunni Muslim. Many families remain loyal to the captured dictator, Mr. Hussein, who is also a Sunni Muslim. Over the years, Mr. Hussein cultivated a network of patronage and privilege among the tribes and elders of Falluja. Many became top army officers. Some ran big companies. When Mr. Hussein was ousted last April, the people here lost their jobs, their businesses and their power.

That set off a cycle of killing and responses, a bloody feud between a clannish society and occupiers from thousands of miles away. Last April, American soldiers killed more than 15 civilians at a demonstration in Falluja. In November, an American helicopter was shot down outside the town, killing 16. Townspeople danced on the wreckage.

In February, insurgents mounted a brazen daylight attack against a convoy carrying Gen. John P. Abizaid, the American commander in the Middle East. He escaped unscathed. But two days later, gunmen blasted their way into a Falluja jail, killing at least 15 police officers and freeing dozens of prisoners.

Last week, the First Marine Expeditionary Force formally took control of the city, population 300,000, which sits on a desert shelf about 35 miles west of Baghdad. Marine commanders said they were going to try a different approach from the Army, which had basically pulled back to bases ringing Falluja and left policing up to the locals.

"We're doing work outside the wire," Captain Logan said. "We're running patrols. We're rebuilding things. We're working with Iraqis."

Most of the Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, has become so unsafe that American forces stick to their bases, their movement usually limited to heavily guarded convoys.

Around 7 a.m. on Wednesday, an Army convoy passing through the town of Habbaniya, west of Falluja, rolled over an I.E.D., or improvised explosive device. The bomb was buried in the road and blew up under an armored personnel carrier, killing five soldiers. Roadside bombs are everyday occurrences in Iraq. But few have claimed as many casualties. "It was a very large I.E.D.," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for the occupation forces.

A few hours later the men from Blackwater Security drove into downtown Falluja. After they were shot, the scene turned grisly. A crowd of more than 300 people flooded into the streets. Men swarmed around the vehicles. Some witnesses said the Americans were still alive when one boy came running up with a jug of gasoline. Soon, both vehicles were fireballs.

"Everybody here is happy with this," Mr. Furhan, the taxi driver, said. "There is no question."

After the fires cooled, a group of boys tore the corpses out of the vehicles. The crowd cheered them on. The boys dragged the blackened bodies to the iron bridge over the Euphrates River, about a mile away. Some people said they saw four bodies hanging over the water, some said only two. At sunset, nurses from a nearby hospital tried to take the bodies away.

Men with guns threatened to kill the nurses. The nurses left. The bodies remained.


Christine Hauser contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
 
Dreadsox said:
What a wonderful reflection upon their "civilization". I am so glad they are liberated. Maybe Saddam was the best thing for them. Maybe they are not ready for democracy. I hope that the Military Intelligence is circulating the photos among the troops, and I hope they strike back hard on these scumbags.

:sad: :down:

No flaming, I just think it's a shame that you draw such ugly conclusions from one incident.
 
Dreadsox:
Maybe Saddam was the best thing for them.

...

I hope that the Military Intelligence is circulating the photos among the troops, and I hope they strike back hard on these scumbags.

I understand that you're really upset, but think about it for a moment...
Could this what hapened inside you when you saw the pictures and heared the story be exactly the same "mechanism" in you which turns Honnest iraqis to people who hate the US and simply want revenge?
 
I think maybe this should be a separate thread considering wolfeden's personal situation

But I understand the anger and disgust about this-I saw it on the news last night, including the most graphic part that most stations censored. The children cheering made me especially sick. Certainly that group of people is not representative of all Iraqis, but maybe it's human nature to feel such anger about something like that.

I saw someone on CNN this morning who talked about the large numbers of Iraqis who are pleased w/ what the US is trying to do and disgusted by that horrific incident, but that the media isn't covering that.

God help the families of those people who were killed in that way-there are no words...:sad:
 
Dread. :hug: I hear you. But I think FW and Klaus have wise words. Also...do I have my facts wrong? I'd thought they were dead already. Not that this mitigates much, but I'd heard differently on the news last night.

Either way, a devestating incident that really has me grieving, and angry that our admin got us into this without proper planning.

:sad:

SD
 
Maybe I will feel differently when we are done burrying the kid who goes to my church and graduated from my school.

I think back to the debates in here, and I do remember saying that I believed American soldiers SHOULD NEVER be used to spread Democracy. I wonder how I moved from that belief over the past year to holding on to this as my soul belief in the fact that we removed a brutal and viscious person, and we were doing something good for others.

They are NOT ready for Democracy, and I find myself moving back to my original position before the war. If there is NOT a CLEAR and PRESENT DANGER, the forces of the United States should be home. Damn the UN to hell for not doing something about Iraq LONG before this. Instead, we can play f-ing politics with a food for palace program and using veto votes to do anything meaningful for 12 years. Damn the UN for not authorizing the coalition to finish the job 12 years ago. If they had acted as they should have the US would not have been led down this path by an administration that needed a TARGET.

I am not sure which way is up anymore.

I do not believe that "Honest People" do the things I saw in the photos. I do not believe that a "civilized" people react this way towards people who have come and freed them from one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world.

I would love for someone, anyone to explain why it is logical for "Honest Iraqis" to seek VENGENCE against Civilians. I would love for someone to explain to me why my feelings and emotions are characterized as being VENGEFUL. I want justice. Do me a favor, do not characterize me as wanting revenge. I want to know why so many have died in this area in one week including soldiers, and nothing is being done about it by the Iraqi POLICE or the US forces.

If you believe these people are ready for Democracy, I would love to see a logical argument. Don't tell me its a shame I have drawn this conclusion from one incident! I find that pretty insulting that you would think so little of me that I would come to this conclusion on ONE incident. I do more reading that I have time to share in here about Iraq. This is not the 1st incident of the past year in which they have attacked civilians or bombed non-military targets. This is not the first time in the past week that this part of Iraq had a civilian uprising.
 
wolfeden said:
.....news of U.S. soldiers dragged through the streets in Iraq today.

A friend of mine from college days has been over there for a year now, up until the end of February we'd all been hearing from him pretty regularly either by email or cel phone. He told us he was going out on patrol as of 22nd February and we have not heard anything since. His name has not turned up on the casualty/POWMIA lists and as far as we know his parents have not heard anything either.

But I Can't get this cold sick feeling in my gut to go away.

I am sorry if I pulled your thread off track. I hope and pray you hear from your friend soon.
 
Sherry Darling said:
Dread. :hug: I hear you. But I think FW and Klaus have wise words. Also...do I have my facts wrong?
SD

Sherry,

Bottom of the article......says some witnesses claim the people in the car were alive.
 
Dread, I have been arguing that these people are not ready for democracy. I think this has struck some people as being excessively cynical. But that's really the crux of my whole argument about the situation in Iraq a year ago and now. These people have no experience in democracy, or even much in the way of any kind of reform. There's no way a culture that lacks a sense of individualism as we know it in the West is going to adopt a Western-style democracy. While I do not want to keep brutal dictators in power anywhere, I fear Iraq could still fall into the hands of a dictatorial faction, and the place would be no better off. Yes, Turkey became a democracy, but they did it themselves. Anyone wanting to understand how this happened can read Andrew Mango's excellent and honest book about Ataturk. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to understand the development of a secular, democratic state in the Middle East.
 
Dreadsox said:
I think back to the debates in here, and I do remember saying that I believed American soldiers SHOULD NEVER be used to spread Democracy.

I fully agree

They are NOT ready for Democracy

I'm affraid you could be right with that too

and I find myself moving back to my original position before the war. If there is NOT a CLEAR and PRESENT DANGER, the forces of the United States should be home.

Again 100% agreed

Damn the UN to hell for not doing something about Iraq LONG before this. Instead, we can play f-ing politics with a food for palace program and using veto votes to do anything meaningful for 12 years.

Yes, shame on all our "civilized" politicans, they f**k it up for decades until hate and violence is at an unbelievable level. There's so often one *** country with veto-power who saves the ass of a government who brakes humanitarian rules again and again.

We saw it in Iraq and see that in Palestine too. (just 2 examples of a way to long list)

I do not believe that "Honest People" do the things I saw in the photos. I do not believe that a "civilized" people react this way towards people who have come and freed them from one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world.

I'm affraid you're right here too.
Real Honest or Civilized people don't kill others except the case of self-defense.

I would love for someone, anyone to explain why it is logical for "Honest Iraqis" to seek VENGENCE against Civilians. I would love for someone to explain to me why my feelings and emotions are characterized as being VENGEFUL. I want justice. Do me a favor, do not characterize me as wanting revenge. I want to know why so many have died in this area in one week including soldiers, and nothing is being done about it by the Iraqi POLICE or the US forces.

I asume that lots of them who got violent over the last decades in iraq wanted justice for a long time, maybe some of them had to big expectations in the liberation and after they got liberated lots of friends and relatives were shot down while protesting for their rights.
And i'm sure they didn't forget what our countries did to them under the "UN-banner". With the perverted food-for-oil program and with the bombings between Iraq war "Bush Senior" and the Iraq war "Bush Junior".

And remember that the US army didn't even say "sorry" when they accidentially shot civilians.
Do you think many of these people still believe in our justice system?
We don't even have an official statistics over the "colateral damage" from their perspective it must look like we don't give a **** about their lifes.

I don't think that you could ever be a person like them, i don't believe you would make terror strikes against another army who occupies your country.
It was just thinking that both, you and these criminals finaly lost hope.

If you believe these people are ready for Democracy, I would love to see a logical argument.

I don't think they are ready for that.
Ask one of the people who thought that invading a country and starting nation building could work that easily.

Except in self-defense or extreme cases of going to war against a nation that wants to conquer the world (Nazi Germany, Napoleon-France, British Empire etc) i don't think that war helps in solving a problems.
The change has to come from the people - they make the revolution. Maybe international help can be good - but i still think that only the UN should decide if the international comunity should react.

Klaus
 
One thing that disturbs me is how these horrible images are slapped on the front page of the New York Times while we never see images of bodies being returned home, or caskets, or funerals or wounded soldiers back at home. We're only shown terrible images that portray the Iraqi people as animals while we are not allowed to see grieving families or funerals or, God forbid, GWB attending the funeral of a US soldier.
 
joyfulgirl said:
One thing that disturbs me is how these horrible images are slapped on the front page of the New York Times while we never see images of bodies being returned home, or caskets, or funerals or wounded soldiers back at home. We're only shown terrible images that portray the Iraqi people as animals while we are not allowed to see grieving families or funerals or, God forbid, GWB attending the funeral of a US soldier.


Shall I post an article that totally shows that most of the media, including FOX refused to show the immages.

And do we have to reopen the GW BUSH attending funeral topic again. There is NO HISTORICAL PRECIDENT for Presidents to do this. LBJ attended ONE if memory serves me correct. It was the funeral of a friends son who died in Vietnam. If I can find the link I will, but history is on GW's side on this issue.
 
Dreadsox said:


And do we have to reopen the GW BUSH attending funeral topic again. There is NO HISTORICAL PRECIDENT for Presidents to do this. LBJ attended ONE if memory serves me correct. It was the funeral of a friends son who died in Vietnam. If I can find the link I will, but history is on GW's side on this issue.

You don't have to jump down my throat. I was not part of any funeral discussion. Believe it or not, I have not read every thread in these forums. I am just expressing an observation about the control of the images we see around this war.
 
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joyfulgirl said:


You don't have to jump down my throat. I was not part of any funeral discussion. Believe it or not, I have not read every thread in these forums. I am just expressing an observation about the control of the images we see around this war.

Not jumping...sorry...just tired.
 
Re: Re: "the news today"

Dreadsox said:
I am sorry if I pulled your thread off track. I hope and pray you hear from your friend soon.

Thank you.... and everyone else for the hope and concern expressed.....

Dreadsox it's alright, with the way things are I'm open to anything becoming a topic of communication as long as people keep their heads and don't flame.. I'm wearing "Nomex undies" (fire proof material, old FF/EMS joke) but others have every reason and more to get upset... Yau is an old friend of mine and I love him a lot but for others it is their families...husbands, wives, parents, children in danger...

I saw the footage last night on PBS' Newshour and I damn near threw up. In my line of work (EMT) I've seen the worst things that can happen to the human body and while I can't say I'm "used to it" I certainly don't have that kind of reaction as a professional.... here it was the context and the desecration that took place that turned my guts.

The behavior of the Iraqis shown was so terribly, frighteningly different than what my friend has been telling us he's experienced in Tikrit and Baghdad. Fallujah, where the incident took place, is being described as a 'Saddam support zone' and if what we are told is true (and that's a big if, my friends) it is something of an isolated pocket of pro-Saddam sentiment in an otherwise relieved country.

Certainly it will stir up rage and disgust in anyone's heart and spirit, and the temptation to dismiss all Iraqis as being 'secretly' just like the Fallujah men is very strong. It is a visceral reaction and rises within all of us -- but we must not allow it to overrule our minds.

Yes. I stared at the images on my small, badly-receiving (no cable) TV and with the bile in my throat rose that cold hard knot of fury that screams "F--- them all, nuke them to glass, how dare they, ignorant brainless savages" -- but my mind knows better than that. It's so hard seeing the bodies come home to Massachusetts where Dreadsox and I both live, or to Illinois, or Texas, or Scotland or everywhere else that has lost one of its own. It's hard to breathe when I think that one of these times it could be Yau in that casket, or worse, only his dog tags....
I feel the same rage and disgust at those who perpetrated this attack as anyone else with a heart does, but I will not allow myself to let it write off the entire country's people. I cannot.

I don't agree with the premise that got us into this conflict and I have protested it - as I protested the first one - , but now that we have gone in and shaken everything up we cannot leave without putting back some semblance of order and we cannot simply throw up our hands and declare it futile to try.
True, the existance of the average Iraqi was ugly and brutal under Saddam - but also under the US-imposed sanctions, which created incredible hardship for most of the population but did not affect the regime and its sympathizers in the slightest. They have no reason to celebrate us as liberators when much of their misery came from us to begin with.

Christ, I don't even know where this is going anymore. I guess I'm trying to say we all need to keep talking and informing and challenging one another's point of view, and keep it as civil as possible, because there is no one single easy answer and we all stand to learn from one another.


"Talk to each other......." - Bono, at the end of Kite at Slane
 
I hope you hear from your friend soon. There is hope, I know a girl whose brother was not heard from for 5 days and they expected the worst, but he turned up fine and had been in a situation where he couldn't get away or contact anyone. Once the coast was clear he came out. Good vibes :hug:
 
you know, i actually watched the video coverage on this last night.

the person that refuses to watch passion of the christ or many other movies or tv shows watched it. ME.

I have to say, i cannot judge whether it is our right to say if iraqi's are ready for democracy or not.

But the people that did this are pure evil.

no matter what your religious belief or what kind of country you live in or what your mores are, that is a pure act of evil.

it's a sad day and I don't know what else to say...
 
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First of all, wolfeden, I hope you hear from your friend. :hug:

Second, I can understand why Dreadsow is feeling mad at the moment. What these people did was an act of such disgust and gore. It made me absolutely sick what those people did to the corpses. How can someone do this? They must be fuelled by so much hatred.

What repulsed so much more is that kids were participating in this. How can a child engage in something so atrocious? I cannot understand.

I saw the footage and the photos, Im still shocked.
 
Iraq Muslim Cleric Condemns Mutilation

In Fallujah, Sheik Fawzi Nameq addressed 600 worshippers gathered at the Hmood al-Mahmood Mosque, which is opposite the mayor's office and a few blocks from the scene of the deadly ambush Wednesday.

"Islam does not condone the mutilation of the bodies of the dead," the cleric said.

The killings were not condemned, just the mutilations. At least they have some boundries.....
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
I think maybe this should be a separate thread considering wolfeden's personal situation

God help the families of those people who were killed in that way-there are no words...:sad:
I agree so i can feel free to react,...

I hope your friend will be OK wolfeden,....
 
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