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2007-10-31 Fifth Column

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Posted by 3dc 2007-10-31 02:08|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top
File under: Global Jihad

#1 What a hateful man who deliberately misunderstands things.

Posted by gromky 2007-10-31 02:25|| 2007-10-31 02:25|| Front Page Top

#2 But the university is only one of a number of areas where an overstretched military, involved in two losing wars, is in a desperate search for new ideas.

Whoa! Dont let any creeping bias slip in now. Emkay?

He noted that, as part of an instruction course named "Combat Hunter", the marines have brought in "big-game hunters" to school their snipers in the better use of "optics".

Some experienced hunters schooling snipers on the use of high-magnification scopes. Perish the thought!

Outraged by the statement, one Sergeant Ramsey K Gregory wrote a letter to the publication asking, "Just what was meant by that comment about the inner city? I hope to God that he's not saying that people from the inner cities are experts in killing each other and that we all just walk around carrying guns."

No, never! We were just trying to fan some flames of indignation about how the Marines manage to kill Americas enemies.

... the implicit comparison of enemies in urban warfare, today largely Iraqis and Afghans, to animals that are hunted and killed as quarry

Hey! They act worse than animals, why not treat them like it as well?

"We're hunting them down, one at a time"

Which happens to be a really big part of the problem. We need to be hunting them down thousands at a time in their mosques and madrassas.

Nor is there anything new about Americans treating racial and ethnic enemies as the equivalent of animals to be abused or killed.

Especially when these racial and ethnic enemies display far less civility than even those animals do at their very worst.

Today, the slurs of the Vietnam era have been replaced by "haji" and "raghead"

Far be it from the author to mention how we in the West are routinely called, pigs, dogs or monkeys by our Islamic enemies. Heaven forefend that there might be some sort of balanced viewpoint regarding this.

That program of instruction is, however, just one recent example of an undercurrent within the military's institutional culture that implicitly reduces people to animals.

See above.

Last month, a piece in the Washington Post, for example, drew much media attention when it came to light that US Army snipers from the "painted demons" platoon of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division allegedly took part in "a classified program of 'baiting' their targets" to lure insurgents within their sniper scopes.

Just doing their job now, arent they?

After all, when you "bait" a trap (or a hook), it's to lure an animal (or fish) in for the kill. But "bait" for a human?

Honor killers, bomb vest murderers and car bomb drivers use no such vocabulary. No, not ever!

Nick Turse needs to spend some time in the killing fields. Im confident his viewpoint would shift 180º in a few seconds. But, maybe, thats just me.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-10-31 03:18|| 2007-10-31 03:18|| Front Page Top

#3 If I was Nick Turse I would pelt myself with rocks too.

Posted by Excalibur 2007-10-31 09:44|| 2007-10-31 09:44|| Front Page Top

#4 But good hunters respect their prey; one needn't read fiction more broadly than Kipling to know that, although clearly Mr. Turse has not done even that much. He reminds me of Isaac Asimov's description of decadent archeologists who weigh one scholar's writings against that of another's to determine history, rather than going to the site to dig things up. (Foundation, of course)

Truther.

Posted by trailing wife">trailing wife 2007-10-31 11:48|| 2007-10-31 11:48|| Front Page Top

#5 We are fighting a war against a dedicated, cruel, ruthless, and barbaric enemy. The goal is to kill them and not with kindness and stupidity.

Posted by JohnQC 2007-10-31 11:52|| 2007-10-31 11:52|| Front Page Top

#6 Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, is due out in the American Empire Project series by Metropolitan Books in 2008.

on planet nick islam is not the problem-

Posted by Icerigger">Icerigger 2007-10-31 18:39|| 2007-10-31 18:39|| Front Page Top

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