US soldier faces 'murder' hearing, killed two superiors.

[EagleSmack]

<Removed>

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: US soldier faces 'mur

Fuck off and die, troll boy. Take your baby-killing asshole-worshiping hatred back into whatever stinking hell-hole breeds micreant morons like you.

 

[moghrabi]

WASHINGTON - A majority of U.S. soldiers in Iraq say morale is low, according to an Army report that finds psychological stress is weighing particularly heavily on National Guard and Reserve troops.

Still, soldiers' mental health has improved from the early months of the insurgency, and suicides have declined sharply, the report said. Also, substantially fewer soldiers had to be evacuated from Iraq for mental health problems last year.

The Army sent a team of mental health specialists to Iraq and Kuwait late last summer to assess conditions and measure progress in implementing programs designed to fix mental health problems discovered during a similar survey of troops a year earlier. Its report, dated Jan. 30, 2005, was released Wednesday.

The initial inquiry was triggered in part by an unusual surge in suicides among soldiers in Iraq in July 2003. Wednesday's report said the number of suicides in Iraq and Kuwait declined from 24 in 2003 to nine last year.

A suicide prevention program was begun for soldiers in Iraq at the recommendation of the 2003 assessment team.

The overall assessment said 13 percent of soldiers in the most recent study screened positive for a mental health problem, compared with 18 percent a year earlier. Symptoms of acute or post-traumatic stress remained the top mental health problem, affecting at least 10 percent of all soldiers checked in the latest survey.

In the anonymous survey, 17 percent of soldiers said they had experienced moderate or severe stress or problems with alcohol, emotions or their families. That compares with 23 percent a year earlier.

The report said reasons for the improvement in mental health are not clear. Among possible explanations: less frequent and less intense combat, more comforts like air conditioning, wider access to mental health services and improved training in handling the stresses associated with deployments and combat.

National Guard and Reserve soldiers who serve in transportation and support units suffered more than others from depression, anxiety and other indications of acute psychological stress, the report said. These soldiers have often been targets of the insurgents' lethal ambushes and roadside bombs, although the report said they had significantly fewer actual combat experiences than soldiers assigned to combat units.

The report recommended that the Army reconsider whether National Guard and Reserve support troops are getting adequate training in combat skills. Even though they do less fighting than combat troops, they might be better suited to cope with wartime stress if they had more confidence in their combat skills, it said.

Only 55 percent of National Guard support soldiers said they have "real confidence" in their unit's ability to perform its mission, compared with 63 percent of active-duty Army support soldiers. And only 28 percent of the Guard troops rated their level of training as high, compared with 50 percent of their active-duty counterparts.

Small focus groups were held to ascertain troop morale.

The report said 54 percent of soldiers rated their units' morale as low or very low. The comparable figure in a year-earlier Army survey was 72 percent. Although respondents said "combat stressors" like mortar attacks were higher in the most recent survey, "noncombat stressors" like uncertain tour lengths were much lower, the report said.

The thing that bothered soldiers the most, the latest assessment said, was the length of their required stay in Iraq. At the start of the war, most were deployed for six months, but now they go for 12 months.

Asked about this, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference that the Army's 12-month requirement is linked in part to its effort to complete a fundamental reorganization of fighting units.

"I've tried to get the Army to look at the length of tours and I think at some point down the road they will," he said.

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_morale_072105,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

 

[EagleSmack]

Just like allowing genocide to take place is now a Canadian Tradition. Rwanda anyone?

You stupid, lying, worthless piece of dog shit. The Canadians saved a lot of lives in Rwanda. If the US and France hadn't blocked all attempts to get help, the genocide never would have happened. If the US hadn't given missiles to Ugandan rebels to shoot planes down with, the genocide would never have started.

937,000 Rwandans butchered as Canada watched.

The truth hurts doesn't it.

Canada wanted other nations to get them out of the mess. Why didn't Canada send it's own troops in? Dellaire asked for a few thousand more troops. Is Canada's military that small that they couldn't get their own boys to the fight? They called on the UN to step in but your govt. stayed stagnant while Rwanda suffered.

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: US soldier faces 'mur

The UN blocked any more troops from ging in because your country said they would veto any resolution to send help. Your country, you murdering fool.

Now quit trolling and go away.

 

[EagleSmack]

The US basically said "We are not going in."

Since when does Canada listen to the US?

All Canada had to do is get their Canadian soldiers on a Canadian plane and fly to Rwanda. Do you think anyone would have stopped you for doing that? It was so easy for the Canadian Gen. in charge to put other countries boys into the fight, but when it came putting his own.

"Non"

You can't tell me that Canada is incapable of moving 2,000 soldiers into a hot spot are you?

Are you?

 

[Reverend Blair]

The US basically said "We are not going in."

The US said they would veto any attempt to send UN troops into the area.

Since when does Canada listen to the US?

Canada is not a rogue state like the US, so when the UN says no, we listen.

All Canada had to do is get their Canadian soldiers on a Canadian plane and fly to Rwanda. Do you think anyone would have stopped you for doing that?

You said you would.

It was so easy for the Canadian Gen. in charge to put other countries boys into the fight, but when it came putting his own.

Every military expert who has looked at the situation has said that Dallaire did the right thing. They've also said that the plan he sent to the UN was sound. You blocked that plan. You killed those people. You were covering your asses in Uganda because of the dirty tricks you were playing there and you didn't want any troops in the area.

 

[moghrabi]

The UN's "scuttle diplomacy" became an international scandal and by April 29, Rwanda was again on the agenda of the Security Council. The secretary general pleaded for the deployment of enough troops to save some of the Rwandese civilians taking refuge in churches, hospitals, and football stadiums. The Ghanaian contingent of UNAMIR, just evacuated, was ready to return at any moment; it just needed transport and armored cars. The Ethiopians offered a fully equipped contingent, lacking only transport. And the remaining 450 UN soldiers (the complete reduction to 270 was never carried out) under the energetic and courageous leadership of the Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire, grossly handicapped by the lack of fuel and spare parts, were reduced to improvising to keep at least some vehicles running. Nonetheless, they managed to save some people.

Over the following weeks and months, U.S. parsimony and insistence on the utmost caution impeded the dispatch of UN troops to Rwanda. In fact, all the troops involved were African, and the U.S. financial commitment amounted merely to a contribution to the UN peacekeeping budget. Finally, despite U. S. recalcitrance and after considerable delay, the secretary general seemed to have cobbled together an agreement to dispatch 4,000 troops. But then suddenly, Ambassador Albright insisted on a more modest plan-only 850 troops and observers to prepare the ground for a full force to follow at some unspecified date. On May 16, the Security Council acceded to this U.S. proposal, adopting Resolution 918. Still three weeks would pass until the UN worked out the precise terms of the deployment -a U.S. precondition for action under Presidential Decision Directive No. 25. Only on June 8 did the Security Council give the final authorization to a deployment that had been accorded the "utmost urgency" on April 29. In the intervening five weeks, at least 100,000 died; probably well over 200,000. Each day's delay in April and May meant at least 10,000 more people dead.

Then, the pressing issue became how to transport the troops and equip them with armored personnel carriers (APC) so that they could evacuate trapped civilians. Gen. Dallaire had publicly appealed to the U.S. for APCs. The U.S. agreed-but introduced tough new preconditions. The Pentagon raised its price for leasing 60 APCs, and then insisted that the UN also pay for returning the vehicles to their base in Germany. The whole exercise was priced at $15 million, with $11 million for transport. The APCs finally arrived in Uganda on June 23 and the Ghanaians began training to use them. On July 2-3, while the vehicles were still being readied for action, the Rwandese government collapsed. On July 9, the Rwandese Patriotic Front took power and halted the genocide. Three months had passed since Habyarimana's plane was shot down. The death toll had reached 800,000.

Did the U.S. have a policy, or did it sit on its hands out of bureaucratic inertia, racist contempt for "tribal" warfare, or simple confusion? Certainly, there was a minimalist imperative at work: Do as little as possible without provoking serious condemnation, especially at home. Throughout this protracted episode of dithering and caution, the State Department was in tune with U.S. public opinion-at least as it was represented by the mainstream media. An April 13 Newsday editorial asked, "What is to be done?" and recommended "nothing." The New York Times was scarcely more subtle: "No member of the United Nations with an army strong enough to make a difference is willing to risk centuries-old history of tribal warfare and deep distrust of outside intervention." Later, in support of the administration's position, the Times wrote: "...to enter this conflict without a defined mission or a plausible military plan risks a repetition of the debacle in Somalia."

The lesson of Somalia might have led the New York Times and the administration to a different conclusion. In that case, stinginess was combined with fear of setting a monetary precedent for the level of U.S. contributions to future militarized humanitarian operations. The human cost of this penny-pinching became evident later in the year when 200,000 Somalis died in a famine that could have been prevented.

For Rwanda, the point of principle was somewhat different, but here, too, avoiding precedent was key. In 1948, the U.S. had signed the Convention against Genocide. A triumph of international humanitarian law, this Convention obliges contracting parties to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. In previous post-World War II cases-such as Cambodia under Pol Pot-the U.S. could pretend that it did not know about the genocide while it was being perpetrated. It could then fudge the issue of punishing those responsible, ostensibly in the name of seeking a peaceful political settlement. In Rwanda, no one could claim ignorance. But the U.S. did not want to act and its failure to condemn and take action to prevent genocide endorsed a more horrific precedent: flaunting an international law designed to never again allow a holocaust to happen while the world stood by.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, an accomplished lawyer, instructed his staff to avoid calling the situation in Rwanda genocide, but merely to say that "acts of genocide may have been committed." Ambassador Rawson went one better: "As a responsible government, you don't just go round hollering 'genocide. 'You say that acts of genocide may have occurred and they need to be investigated." The media rightly mocked this piece of legal obfuscation, and Christopher disingenuously conceded, "If there is any particular magic in calling it genocide, I have no hesitancy in saying that." (Rawson has since compared the killings to a war crime, carefully avoiding the term "genocide.")

Christopher's new-found lack of hesitancy was probably related to a policy statement, issued by the State Department, that the Genocide Convention "enables" contracting states to respond. This required an imaginative interpretation of the term "obligation", but was not beyond Christopher's legal expertise or moral adaptability.

When the White House claimed on July 15 that "As the crisis in Rwanda has unfolded, the United States has taken a leading role in efforts to protect the Rwandan people and ensure humanitarian assistance," it was, as the British say, "economical with the truth." By that point, the genocide was over and the U.S. government could concentrate its moral energies on saving refugee children in Goma, Zaire, from cholera. The war had driven about 2 million refugees to overcrowded camps across the border. They certainly needed help, but, in fact, much of the assistance was gratefully appropriated by the Hutu extremists who had master minded both the genocide and the mass exodus.

Like the killers in exile in neighboring countries, the U.S. government is hoping that the bodies will stay buried and that it can resume business as usual in central Africa. On July 16, the Clinton administration expelled the Rwandese ambassador to Washington. Washington had waited until that regime was militarily defeated and a new RPF-headed government was about to take power. Then, suddenly, the administration was indignant: "The United States," said President Clinton, "cannot allow representatives of a regime that supports genocidal massacres to re main on our soil." Taken in April, the gesture and the words might have had meaning; in July they reeked of opportunism and hollow moralizing. The U.S. had broken a solemn covenant under taken nearly a half century ago that never again would the civilized world al low genocide to occur. President Clinton may utter words in commemoration of Auschwitz, but there is little consolation to the survivors of the Rwandan holocaust of the 1990s. Meanwhile, around the world, dictators have noted the U.S. reaction, taking solace from the policy of non-action. Silence in the face of genocide, with no outcry of "never again" should disturb us all.

http://mediafilter.org/CAQ/CAQ52Rw4.html

Read the above carefully Dicksmack

 

[moghrabi]

RE: US soldier faces 'mur

DickSmack,

Read the above and shut your fu**ing mouth up. You american fool.

 

[no1important]

RE: US soldier faces 'mur

Boy I am really getting to you tonight Rev. I forgot how much I missed this forum!

I don't think the forum missed you.

You seem to be here just to get a certain member of this board going so you can take it back to the troll board and have something to talk about.

Don't you have anything intelligant to say instead of trying to flame? This thread was about a US soldier being up on possible murder charges yet you start dissing Canada, our military and bring in Rawanda and none of which has anything to do with this thread.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: US soldier faces 'murder' hearing, killed two superi

The US basically said "We are not going in."

Since when does Canada listen to the US?

All Canada had to do is get their Canadian soldiers on a Canadian plane and fly to Rwanda. Do you think anyone would have stopped you for doing that? It was so easy for the Canadian Gen. in charge to put other countries boys into the fight, but when it came putting his own.

"Non"

You can't tell me that Canada is incapable of moving 2,000 soldiers into a hot spot are you?

Are you?

ya looking to provoke.incite someone here??? :evil: Ya got the wrong place.....go play your silly games elsewhere :x

ummm. the troll factor not welcome.

 

[moghrabi]

Re: RE: US soldier faces 'mur

Boy I am really getting to you tonight Rev. I forgot how much I missed this forum!

I don't think the forum missed you.

You seem to be here just to get a certain member of this board going so you can take it back to the troll board and have something to talk about.

Don't you have anything intelligant to say instead of trying to flame? This thread was about a US soldier being up on possible murder charges yet you start dissing Canada, our military and bring in Rawanda and none of which has anything to do with this thread.

This is how you tell he is a fu**king American. By his arrogance and ignorance.

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: US soldier faces 'mur

It looks like when Eaglesmack was faced with the truth about his country's involvement in Rwanda, he ran away like a scared child.

 

[moghrabi]

RE: US soldier faces 'mur

So my post gave him the truth Rev? I have a lot of things to show this idiot.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: US soldier faces 'mur

It looks like when Eaglesmack was faced with the truth about his country's involvement in Rwanda, he ran away like a scared child.

little league is little league

 

[peapod]

Alas childern, it is much simplier than that Gather round the campfire now..get all snuggly and warm...

Eaglesmack is bitter, who can blame him 8O He blames the canucks for the "canadian figure skater blunder" 8O Alas, he told his tale of woah, when first he did cometh to CC. Well it appears he thought he would have his "way" with a particular canadian figure skater, although its clear, she/he was not that particular his/herself. And has eaglesmack pointed out, being canadian, she was "easy" Now this is where it gets kinda sticky 8O The said canadian figure skater, was actually once a he, but than became a she and a canadian figure skater to boot.
And so childern, there in lies the hatred of the canucks.

 

[Vanni Fucci]

Alas childern, it is much simplier than that Gather round the campfire now..get all snuggly and warm...

Eaglesmack is bitter, who can blame him 8O He blames the canucks for the "canadian figure skater blunder" 8O Alas, he told his tale of woah, when first he did cometh to CC. Well it appears he thought he would have his "way" with a particular canadian figure skater, although its clear, she/he was not that particular his/herself. And has eaglesmack pointed out, being canadian, she was "easy" Now this is where it gets kinda sticky 8O The said canadian figure skater, was actually once a he, but than became a she and a canadian figure skater to boot.
And so childern, there in lies the hatred of the canucks.

Not only that pea, but as I understand it, he didn't realize his peril until after the said Canadian figure skater had fairly shanked him...

Guess Eaglespank should have payed closer attention in biology class...but then where he comes from they don't teach real science in schools anyway...

 

[Andem]

Thread Closed.