UK squaddies kick Iraqi to death

by ISP 15 Replies latest social current

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  ISP

  UK soldiers may have kicked Iraqi to death

  LONDON (Reuters) - Eight young Iraqis arrested in the southern Iraqi town of Basra last year were assaulted by British soldiers, and one of them died of his injuries, according to the Independent on Sunday.

  Baha Mousa's body was returned to his family covered in bruises and with his nose broken, after he and seven other men were arrested by British forces in September 2003 and held in military custody for three days, the paper said.

  The newspaper said in its report by veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk that it had seen military and medical records of the case showing that the father of two suffered his injuries in a severe beating.

  British military authorities offered Mousa's family 5,500 pounds in compensation, providing they were not held responsible for his death, but his relatives planned to take the Ministry of Defence to court, the newspaper said.

  A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman declined to give details about the case. "There is an ongoing military police investigation into a death that we had in custody," she said.
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  dh

  i don't know why everyone is fussing about individual cases like this.

  this sort of stuff is normal in a war, we show it on tv every day.

  if we don't want this to happen we need to fix our governments and not have any more wars, not make a drama out of something that was inevitable.

  dh'

  (edited to say: we show it on tv every day as ENTERTAINMENT and pay millions to see it, now when we get it for free we complain?)
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  Simon

  Erm ... excuse me? What war? Wasn't the war announced 'ended' back in the middle of the year?

  It's hardly the way to win 'hearts and minds' is it (combined with the scores of civilians who have been shot)
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  dh

  don't get me wrong simon, i can't stand this war garbage or the governments that started it with their lies, but these guys are soldiers on the ground, uneducated grunts, if you put this type of people in this type of situation, of course this type of thing is bound to happen.

  we don't train soldiers to win hearts and minds, we train them to kill.

  maybe the war is 'officially' declared as over, but in the mind of every soldier still out there the war goes on, and in the mind of every iraqi no doubt until our governments leave them alone, the war will go on.

  dh'
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  SixofNine

  Your position is not logical dhamah. Why don't we just "Mei Lei" a few villages as long as we're at war already?

  we don't train soldiers to win hearts and minds, we train them to kill.

  We train them to do many thing besides kill, and in fact we train them when to kill and when to refrain from killing.
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  ISP

  i don't know why everyone is fussing about individual cases like this.

  Individual cases add up. One person kicked to death is one too many and how do you show that you are better than the previous regime if you torture and kill innocents just the same?

  ISP
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  dh

  my position isn't logical?

  war isn't logical.

  i'm all for stopping a government going TO war, not crying that it did warlike things when it was AT war.

  i think it's logical to want to stop a thing at the source, i think it is illogical to pick at the things that happen afterward.

  sure, we train soldiers to do all sorts of things, have you ever seen a soldier in bayonette training? running at dummies sticking them with a knife on the end of a rifle, crawling through mud? what's the word the drill sergents train them to shout?

  Kill

  Kill

  Kill

  Kill

  why? because that is what soldiers do. primitive, but that is what goes on, if you have that drummed into your head and all the other gung ho shit, of course you are going to do it, and of course some people who joined the army at 16 aren't too smart and don't have the self control or university education of some officers.

  we have to stop the governments if we want to stop the wars, not let the media choose scapegoats.

  dh'
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  patio34

  That reminds me of the WT position whenever anything is wrong with "the world,": "of course, they're ruled by Satan." End of discussion.

  These soldiers, it seems to me, are trained to kill in war according to rules of combat and Geneva conventions, not indiscriminate gang killing. They're also being used as police.

  They're humans, not killing machines and it's a disservice to "our troops" to denigrate them because of the brutal actions of the government under Bush.

  Pat
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  blondie

  Patio34, my dad was career military and he would agree with you. A solider kills to defend himserlf/herself in battle. There are rules of engagement within the military agency, the country they're from, and the world community at large. I'm sure this will be looked into and the parties involved will be disciplined. No one wants to be part of a unit with members that make their own rules whenever they decide. BTW, many of the same rules govern law enforcement. You learn when not to shoot as well as when to shoot.

  Blondie
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  ISP

  DH,

  We got to show ourselves better than that. How about giving £5000 to the family! Makes it worse IMO.

  ISP