The massacre in Haditha is really eating at me. Anyone else?

[MindPilot]

This--unlike anything else that's happened so far--has parked itself in my head and won't leave. It's there right in front of me all the time. I'm having flashbacks to all the bad stuff that happened to me in the military--I can totally empathize with the Marines' rage and frustration. Every unpleasant thing that I've dealt with in my life has just been playing back like a movie. I lash out with stupid broad-brush generalizations and I fear I'm just some minor frustration from completely snapping. I feel like I'm just going though the motions of day to day life and doing in a fog. I really fucking hate feeling like this...

I know, I know, I ain't got shit for problems compared to the average Iraqi, or the average troop in the field for that matter, but if nothing else I want to make an opportunity apologize to anyone here who's been unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of my unreasonable anger.

[acmejack]

1. Real bad.

I have been torn up by it since I heard about it. I am pretty much doing the exact same things you are.

[Auntie Bush]

2. Sounds like you already started healing...keep up the good work. nt

[IndyOp]

3. Want to go a step further? Check out the 3/15/06 massacre in Abu Sifa

Iraqis Killed by US Troops "on Rampage"
By Hala Jaber and Tony Allen-Mills
The Sunday Times UK

Sunday 26 March 2006

Claims of atrocities by soldiers mount.

The villagers of Abu Sifa near the Iraqi town of Balad had become used to the sound of explosions at night as American forces searched the area for suspected insurgents. But one night two weeks ago Issa Harat Khalaf heard a different sound that chilled him to the bone.

Khalaf, a 33-year-old security officer guarding oil pipelines, saw a US helicopter land near his home. American soldiers stormed out of the Chinook and advanced on a house owned by Khalaf's brother Fayez, firing as they went. Khalaf ran from his own house and hid in a nearby grove of trees. He saw the soldiers enter his brother's home and then heard the sound of women and children screaming. "Then there was a lot of machinegun fire," he said last week. After that there was the most frightening sound of all - silence, followed by explosions as the soldiers left the house.

Once the troops were gone, Khalaf and his fellow villagers began a frantic search through the ruins of his brother's home. Abu Sifa was about to join a lengthening list of Iraqi communities claiming to have suffered from American atrocities.

According to Iraqi police, 11 bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the house, among them four women and five children aged between six months and five years. An official police report obtained by a US reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers said: "The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032706K.shtml

WARNING: GRAPHIC Children of Abraham - Death in the Desert


Further? How about realizing that Abu Sifa and Haditha are one of literally 100's of such actions since World War II - "...a few million people have died in the American holocaust and many more millions have been condemned to lives of misery and torture as a result of US interventions extending from China and Greece in the 1940s to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s." William Blum, Killing Hope.

Killing Hope: 250 Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
http://www.killinghope.org/

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. Truthfully, no. I've been assuming that....

....variations of the Haditha scenario were being played out all over Iraq since the American invasion.

This is generally what happens when one country invades another. The defenders naturally enough try to drive out the invaders; the invaders , infuriated by the resistance ( Who knew ? We all watch the same news.) go apeshit and become increasingly less concerned with making distinctions between 'combatants' and 'noncombatants'.

What interests me about Haditha is this: what series of circumstances allowed this particular event to come to light? How exactly was the whistle blown?

[tocqueville]

11. I think that Murtha's intervention was decisive...

then it would be interesting to check how My Lai came into focus too... probably the same mechanism

[MindPilot]

14. I think a Marine who showed up right after the incident

had a cell-phone camera.

I think the reality is that when invading a country, you can generally assume that everyone is a comabtant. They are defending their country. Any of us--if the situation were reversed--would respond the same way.

I mean Ah-nold ain't that great of a governor, but I would be on the front lines of the resistance if China showed up to depose him.

[flamin lib]

5. Been there, done that. It's understandable and it's good to

let it out and admit that in some ways you're just plain fucked up.

I had a sort of reverse intervention with my immediate family and let them know that there are things I can't face without tears, there are things I can't ignore and the combination sometimes makes me unpleasant to be around and hard to understand.

Post traumatic stress, survivor's syndrome and sometimes just unmitigated rage at the arrogance of power. There are times when I get a glimmer of understanding about why someone would strap a bomb to their body and see how close they can get.

I get over it. Sometimes with the catharsis of DU and sometimes with the understanding of my friends and family.

Most of the time I'm pretty happy.

[msongs]

6. not a topic of conversation at work or among people Ive talked to

and when I mention it the response indicates lack of awareness this event occurred. granted this is a small sample of people but I am wondering if this massacre is kinda being brushed off by the US population in general. ya know the line, ++++ happens in war.

let us hope these people do not die in vain so bush can go to arlington cemetary and try to like like anything but the coward he is.


Msongs
www.msongs.com
batik & digital art
mugs and shirts

[bullimiami]

7. not worse for me than the torturing and murders of captives.

its all as bad as it gets.

[Boomer]

8. Other incidents have hit me harder

The Iraqi atrocity that has stuck in my mind happened at least a year ago. A car full of civilians approached a checkpoint too quickly and was sprayed with machine gun fire. One of the few survivors was a woman whose two little girls died in her arms, their heads practically blown off.

Of all the tragedies, that one just won't let go of me. I'm haunted by the vision of that shell-shocked mother sitting in a car cradling her mutilated dead children.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

9. PTSD can come back to anyone at anytime-

Please try to talk to a professional

:hug:

[FloridaPat]

10. They've been doing this for 3 years in Iraq and 4 years in Afghanistan.

Why they picked this particular event to go balistic on I have no idea. There have been tons of stories about familys driving to a check point and being gunned downed. The two cities they bombed to pieces was like this. They bombed the cities to pieces and shot anyone that was left. They've been bombing weddings in Afghanistan. And doing the same this there I would bet. This invasion is a mess. It is one war crime after another. Read the fine print in all the reports. The morgues can't keep up. Where do people think all those bodies are coming from?

This whole invasion has been eating me from the minute * started it.

[mrcheerful]

12. Mia Lia village Vietnam comes to mind as well as Kent state and the black

school in mississippi where we the people said never again after american military opened fire on unarmed citizens. Well here we are again, just goes to show americans refuse to remember the lessons of the past. If you thought our troops were going to be freedom fighters after Abu Grabass prison, well I guess some just had their heads buried in the sand. I'm just waiting until shrub starts killing american protesters once again, the police are already using force when protesters don't stay in the little box the police sit up.

[MindPilot]

15. Oh no, I harbor no illusions about what these guys are doing

I've always hated that meme that our military is in Iraq (or anyplace else for that matter) protecting our freedom and giving them theirs. I've always said that if those troops were protecting our freedom, they'd have surrounded the Whitehouse long ago.

[tridim]

13. This is the kind of thing that real leaders are good for.

Not that I think President Gore or Kerry would have ever let it happen on their watch, but if it did they'd be on TV within an hour explaining what happened, why it happened and they'd apologize profusely to the Iraqis from the heart and without notes.

What does Bush do? Nothing.

I feel for you. Seeing the video on Countdown was almost too much to handle.

[Ilsa]

16. Yeah, it really f#@ks with my head, and if I try to discuss it anywhere

else, people wonder what's wrong with ME. There is a mentality of "So what? Ten druggies died in the streets and crack and meth houses of Detroit last night. Why is this any different?" And they never get it that this is our international message of peace: "We're gonna kill you and everyone you love." Dominance in the name of security is our hegemony.

[ninkasi]

17. As a woman

every death of innocent human life makes me grief-stricken. I had 3 children, born in 1962, 1964, and 1967. The youngest, my only daughter, was born as a frank breech, ankles over shoulders, butt first. Her two brothers in no way prepared me for the agony of her birth. It was "natural", and without much pain medication, since I had to be alert enough to cooperate, and push.

Every death in Iraq makes me think of the woman who gave birth to the one killed. How many babies, how many innocent children, have been killed? To the pro-life, right-wing religious sects of this country, how do you live with the deaths of these innocents? How do you justify the carnage?

You are either pro-life, or not. If you are pro-life, you should be working nonstop to end this unjust war, and do whatever it takes to get Iraq on it's feet. If you are pro-death, then spare us your hypocrisy. An Iraqi child is no less precious than a child born to me, or any other American. You can't have it both ways, every life being sacred, except for the babies of our enemies. What will it be?

To me, there is no measure to weigh which life is more valuable than another. While I would die to protect my children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, my love for them is no more, nor less, than the love an Iraqi mother feels for her own family. I would would love to join in solidarity with ever woman on this earth who has nurtured life, and given birth to one. Let all of our children be precious, and none be destroyed for some man's ideal of power, or government.

I hope that the women of the world can unite, and see past the bullshit, and drag our men into the light of reason, and sanity. Let it be so.

[madmusic]

18. That's real, man

Never been there and done war, but you and these guys were obeying orders. It is the war that is unjustified. It's ugly as hell and we shouldn't put our young people through that hell without a damn good reason, a real reason, not a make believe one.

Though this might not help your flashbacks, probably won't, you did the best you could. They all do.

So the real wrong is the war itself. WW I and WWII were a whole different ball game: we were justified, that was ugly enough.

What makes it worse is that the world didn't ask us to be its policeman.

Hope you get better soon. And thanks for serving.

[deFaultLine]

19. Sand Creek, Wounded Knee and White Bird Pass...

among others. Those were just 3 of the "battles" that Indians in this country have had to deal with. (Oh wait, White Bird is where the U.S. Army got it's ass handed to them...my bad.)

I just add Haditha to the list, but it doesn't make me feel any better about it.

[peacetalksforall]

20. Your post just hit me - I never realized how we use the geographical

name to define the acts and we just glide from one decade to another reciting and referencing them. We can't keep up with the knowledge of each one. They are coming so fast that we might have the earth's surface totally marked in war acts, war deaths, war burial places, war memorials.

Save those fetuses so the cells can multiply into muscles and organs that are blown to bits at the direction and pleasure of profiteers in some - blown away in a country the young kid didn't know existed except maybe from its biblical name or from fourth grade geography lessons.

Absolutely bizarre. Creatures running entire industries of entertaining news and vile propaganda with which the war acts are hyped and through which the message is delivered that loving war is patriotic and war haters are spoilers.

I think of the photos of three little girls on film and obe who lied. The photos are of a little girl running away from the napalm, the little girl in Iraq standing over her dead parents with her bloody hands hanging down towards them, the little girl from this morning whose parents were in one of the massacres, and the little princess who lied for President Bush I by telling us how Hussein pulled life support systems from babies in hospitals in Kuwait.

[peacetalksforall]

21. Your post just hit me - I never realized how we use the geographical

name to define the acts and we just glide from one decade to another reciting and referencing them. We can't keep up with the knowledge of each one. They are coming so fast that we might have the earth's surface totally marked with places of war acts, war deaths, war burial places, war memorials.

Save those fetuses so the cells can multiply into muscles and organs that are blown to bits at the direction and pleasure of profiteers - blown away at a places in some country the young kid didn't know existed except maybe from its biblical name or from fourth grade geography lessons.

Absolutely bizarre. Creatures running entire industries of entertaining news and vile propaganda with which the war acts are hyped and through which the message is delivered that loving war is patriotic and war haters are spoilers.

I think of the photos of three little girls on film and obe who lied. The photos are of a little girl running away from the napalm, the little girl in Iraq standing over her dead parents with her bloody hands hanging down towards them, the little girl from this morning whose parents were in one of the massacres, and the little princess who lied for President Bush I by telling us how Hussein pulled life support systems from babies in hospitals in Kuwait.