I don't really understand all the outrage over these incidents.
First of all, if you didn't know this sort of thing was going on then you just haven't been paying attention. All of the history of war is riddled w/ stories like these.
Second, WTF?! You're fine with bombing people and their towns and w/ shooting them outright. Military occupation and all the indignity and suffering that entails is A-OK w/ you. But this particular variety of cruelty is somehow more appauling?
What did you
think our soldiers were sent to do over there? What do you think the "advisors" and "contractors" in So. America are doing right now? There's plenty of testimony and evidence in the Congressional Record about all that they did in Nicaragua under the watchful eye of John Poindexter. That was around the same time former drug czar, Barry McCaffrey took over as head of SOCOM. Do you think they've been sent there to walk old ladies accross the street?
Look, if someone supports these foreign adventures, knows what that means and thinks there's a good enough reason for it, fine, we can discuss it and probably disagree respectfully. But if you don't know what war is and you support it anyway, fuck you! Go be an idiot w/ your priavate life but leave me and the rest of the American public out of it.
For the community to have 10% to 25% of its men unable to vote or unable to access credit or other privileges of citizenship for the rest of their lives in some states creates a permanently diminished
group within society.
http://www.urban.org/authors/travis.html' target='_new'>Jeremy Travis, Urban Institute