Political Crossfire Forums

[Gilgamesh]

http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5450

“There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq”

Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh slams Bush at McGill address

By Martin Lukacs

10/31/06 "The McGill Daily" -- -- “The bad news,” investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told a Montreal audience last Wednesday, “is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America.”

The good news? “When we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day.”

Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government for nearly 40 years. Since his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, which is widely believed to have helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War, he has broken news about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia, covert C.I.A. attempts to overthrow Chilean president Salvador Allende, and, more recently, the first details about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

During his hour-and-a-half lecture – part of the launch of an interdisciplinary media and communications studies program called Media@McGill – Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about.

He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer.

“Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.”

“Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.”

“About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said.

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.

“In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation,” he said. “It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”

Hersh came out hard against President Bush for his involvement in the Middle East.

“In Washington, you can’t expect any rationality. I don’t know if he’s in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn’t do it, or because it’s the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program,” he said.

Hersh hinted that the responsibility for the invasion of Iraq lies with eight or nine members of the administration who have a “neo-conservative agenda” and dictate the U.S.’s post-September 11 foreign policy.

“You have a collapsed Congress, you have a collapsed press. The military is going to do what the President wants,” Hersh said. “How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?”
Throughout his talk Hersh remained pessimistic, predicting that the U.S. will initiate an attack against Iran, and that the situation in Iraq will deteriorate further.

“There’s no reason to see a change in policy about Iraq. [Bush] thinks that, in twenty years, he’s going to be recognized for the leader he was – the analogy he uses is Churchill,” Hersh said. “If you read the public statements of the leadership, they’re so confident and so calm…. It’s pretty scary.”

[Snake]

You're supposed to add an opinion, or else the thread gets locked.

Anyway, I disagree with this. I have to say the level of violence our soldiers give out is due to the violence and tactics they receive.

[The Newb]

Quote: 10/31/06 "The McGill Daily" -- -- “The bad news,” investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told a Montreal audience last Wednesday, “is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America.”

nope its not biased at all, provide proof of allegations

[Fido]

Look, we drop tons of high explosives on the place every month, and this is how many years after invading? Bombs, even when smart, kill a lot of innocent people. Only if you take the attitude that they may not have liked us before, but now it is immaterial it is still a crime. Taking cities would not be necessary if we could give up on the idea of control. Why is it necessary to control? It is only necessary if we wish to be absentee landlords. To influence affairs it is not necessary to control. To control events there does require complete control. Control invites conflict, and conflict means death. The constant lottery of death brings out a kill them all sort of attitude in our troops. I am certain they learn group responsibility as a facet of Muslim culture. I am equally certain that Armies are made to fight armies and not civilian populations. When the civilians fight it is time to leave, and time to find other methods. To put a trained army up against soft targets invites a criminal use of force. We have a well founded measure of dissent on this war. The victory was achieved and lost in the desire for spoils. There is no army to fight, and only a population armed in its own defense. Unless the object has now become to kill as many as possible, rightly or wrongly, it is time to leave. Our population never did want to fight that population. We were told the war was necessary. Something was necessary, but wars are wastes. We have Saddam out, no wmds found, and every thing is all busted to shiit. I think we have done enough damage to ourselves and to them. Let us leave.

[johnflesh]

Kamel wrote: You're supposed to add an opinion, or else the thread gets locked.

Anyway, I disagree with this. I have to say the level of violence our soldiers give out is due to the violence and tactics they receive.

Indeed. I hate to say it but they are a product of their environment. Adaptation is key and even the president has said himself that change is needed and is to come. This is based on public opinion but also based on the fact that Bush wants to win in Iraq and in order to do so, we must adapt.

War is good and bad no matter what war and we can leave it to people like this to draw disctinctions between them however rhetorical and irrelevant.

[thundertaker]

I'm pretty sure the US Army was more violent and murderous towards the Indians in the 19th century than it is now........

[De0xide]

thundertaker wrote: I'm pretty sure the US Army was more violent and murderous towards the Indians in the 19th century than it is now........

I agree with this statement

[Ssushi]

thundertaker wrote: I'm pretty sure the US Army was more violent and murderous towards the Indians in the 19th century than it is now........

On what basis? I'm not disagreeing but you don't offer a rationale... My concern is that you/we simply do not know what our torrps are doing in the ME atm.

[De0xide]

ME = Middle East, which = Southwest Asia

[JoeBen81]

I seriously doubt that we are any more violent than we have to be while saving as many American lives as we can. Sure there are some bad apples but they hardly represent the average soldier.

[The Newb]

JoeBen81 wrote: I seriously doubt that we are any more violent than we have to be while saving as many American lives as we can. Sure there are some bad apples but they hardly represent the average soldier.

agreed, but i still do not agree with the original post, there has never been proof of such an act

[thundertaker]

Ssushi wrote: thundertaker wrote: I'm pretty sure the US Army was more violent and murderous towards the Indians in the 19th century than it is now........

On what basis? I'm not disagreeing but you don't offer a rationale... My concern is that you/we simply do not know what our torrps are doing in the ME atm.

If I read a reliable account of whole Iraqi villages being wiped out in punitive expeditions to punish the actions of the fighters, weeping children being used as live target practice in cold blood, or being forced to leave their land and starve to death in a barren wilderness, I'll revise my opinion on whether the US Army now is more violent and cruel than it has ever been. Until that day, I'll stick with my previously stated position on the matter......

[mendosan]

thundertaker wrote: Ssushi wrote: thundertaker wrote: I'm pretty sure the US Army was more violent and murderous towards the Indians in the 19th century than it is now........

On what basis? I'm not disagreeing but you don't offer a rationale... My concern is that you/we simply do not know what our torrps are doing in the ME atm.

If I read a reliable account of whole Iraqi villages being wiped out in punitive expeditions to punish the actions of the fighters, weeping children being used as live target practice in cold blood, or being forced to leave their land and starve to death in a barren wilderness, I'll revise my opinion on whether the US Army now is more violent and cruel than it has ever been. Until that day, I'll stick with my previously stated position on the matter......

good post!

[Ssushi]

thundertaker wrote: Ssushi wrote: thundertaker wrote: I'm pretty sure the US Army was more violent and murderous towards the Indians in the 19th century than it is now........

On what basis? I'm not disagreeing but you don't offer a rationale... My concern is that you/we simply do not know what our torrps are doing in the ME atm.

If I read a reliable account of whole Iraqi villages being wiped out in punitive expeditions to punish the actions of the fighters, weeping children being used as live target practice in cold blood, or being forced to leave their land and starve to death in a barren wilderness, I'll revise my opinion on whether the US Army now is more violent and cruel than it has ever been. Until that day, I'll stick with my previously stated position on the matter......

Quote: If I read a reliable account

And there the problem starts... Considering we've been misled about pretty much the whole war, from start to finish I'd say that reports coming out of Iraq, regarding the actions of US or UK servicemen (not all, but some) would be challengable.

War is war, people do shi**y things, this war is no different. Except that all we seem to have done is make matters worse for the people living there... Hence the mitigation of ''the ends justifies the means'' doesn't hold any weight.

And don't forget that Seymour Hersh has been around for a lot onger than you or I... [/quote]

[DSwain]

Seymour Hersh is like the animal that tastes human blood - once it's on the palate, he wants more. So, he made his career by reporting on one incident in Vietnam - and since then, he's 'Hersh of My Lai' - and he's always looking for the next My Lai. For him to extrapolate from an account of one unsubstantiated incident to that this US Army is somehow 'ultraviolent' is laughable.

Incidentally - what does Mr Hersh think is the function of the United States Army? To dig wells and build schools? It isn't - although they do that as well. Its primary function is to be capable of immense controlled violence - so to throw the allegation of being 'too violent' at an army is rather like saying that a Ferrari is too fast.

[thundertaker]

Seymore Hersh has described nothing that is worse than historical accounts of what happened to the Native Americans at the hands of the US Army. He has described a scenario were terrified soldiers have basically shot dead innocents in a state of panic and fear moments after several of their comrades were blown up right in front of their eyes. I have read historical accounts of far worse atrocities being commited in the 19th century against the Native Americans, which were carried out on direct orders from senior officers with premeditation, in cold blood and on a much larger scale.
If Mr Hersh wants to use what he just described as evidence that the contemporary US Army is the most violent it has ever been, he needs to crack open the history books, because he is talking out of his arse, and I don't care how old he is.......

[mattman42]

Is there any real proof that this actually occurred? If not, I tend to lean towards the guy being full of s**t.

[superskippy]

Oh please, what about the US suppression in the Phillipines? The Indian Wars? People seem to have grown quite attached to hyperbole these days.

[The Newb]

superskippy wrote: Oh please, what about the US suppression in the Phillipines? The Indian Wars? People seem to have grown quite attached to hyperbole these days.

this was about our actions in iraq and an incedent that never took place

[superskippy]

I was making a statement in general not the specefic, this isnt an isolated comment it is sentiment I have heard before regardless of the linking event claimed.