Seems these soldiers did the honorable thing by standing down.I have to ask why the commanders on the ground do not lend support and solace to these brave individuals .They are under deadly stress 24/7 for it seems endless months with no relief in sight. This is enough. It is not munity it is a remarkably brave show of humanity and humility to recognize when you have hit your limit of pain and possibly good judgement. I salute these soldiers. Now bring them home with honors.

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Are doomed to repeat it.

Shades of Vietnam.

These troops are on the ragged edge, trying to "help" people who don't want them there and would rather do without it.

They know that a political solution is the only solution - and that it's farther away now than ever. Everybody is a potential enemy, there is no clearly defined battle line, and death is around every corner.

They know that if they do flip out, the blame will stop with them. As with Abu Gahrib, the people actually responsible will walk away whistling.

They want to come home - and in one piece if possible. They are willing to give their lives if necessary to defend us - but this fiasco has no relation to that.

Soon they will be back - one way or another - but not soon enough. They are gonna be pissed, traumatized, and many of them will never recover.

My heart goes out to them.

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Are doomed to repeat it.

Shades of Vietnam.

These troops are on the ragged edge, trying to "help" people who don't want them there and would rather do without it.

They know that a political solution is the only solution - and that it's farther away now than ever. Everybody is a potential enemy, there is no clearly defined battle line, and death is around every corner.

They know that if they do flip out, the blame will stop with them. As with Abu Gahrib, the people actually responsible will walk away whistling.

They want to come home - and in one piece if possible. They are willing to give their lives if necessary to defend us - but this fiasco has no relation to that.

Soon they will be back - one way or another - but not soon enough. They are gonna be pissed, traumatized, and many of them will never recover.

My heart goes out to them.

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PAGE 1
The US soldiers forget that their government occupied Iraq on false accusations,and the US imposed sectarian policies in Iraq have led to the destruction of the fabric of Iraqi society. The line that the US soldiers are in Iraq to save the Iraqis is a big lie. They are there to protect US policies greed for Iraqi oil, and to mantain US strategic military basis in Iraq. They are not there for the Iraqi people.
The US actions and imposed SECTARIAN policies have created the “KILLING FIELDS OF IRAQ”.
THIS IS WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO IRAQ AND THE IRAQI PEOPLE:
Genocide:
1 200 000 civilians have been killed. (These are Non-Combat Deaths). (http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/62728/)

Mass Population Displacement:
2 500 000 Iraqi civilians, the cream of the crop of the educated middle class, have sought refuge in Syria and Jordan, and 2 000 000 inside Iraq, in what the United Nations calls the biggest civilian displacement catastrophe in both the 20th and 21st centuries, due to sectarian policies.

Ethnic Cleansing:
Ethnic Cleansing was introduced to Iraq through the sectarian Political Process introduced and forced on Iraq by the Bush Administration, and their and Iran’s agents the Iraqi politicians that entered Iraq on American tanks.

The destruction of Women’s Rights:
Women’s Rights in Iraq were the best amongst Third World and better than in several European Countries. During the period 1980 – 2000, 15 – 25 % of members of Parliament were elected women. Nearly 50 % of Iraqi Government staff was women. 2/3 of the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was women. (United Nations Development Program’s “Arab Human Development Report “2002”).
Today, with the so called US Liberation of Iraq Women’s Rights have deteriorated to such an extent that most women can not leave their houses, have to wear a veil (including Christian Women), and have stopped working in government offices or going to schools and colleges.

Security:
Iraq had 100 % law and orderand, security.Also, foreign personnel in the UN, NGOs and embassies never had a problem of security whether in Baghdad or the 18 governorates.
After the US occupation there is no security whatsoever. People do not dare leave their homes to buy the necessary living needs. In 2006 the average daily killed Iraqis was 120 civilians, (according to the United Nations).

Education:
The Education System (university and college system) was one of the best in third world countries. The university and college system has become one of the worst in third world countries. Most teachers have fled the country; students do not attend for fear of kidnapping. Shiite religious rituals are being carried out on campus grounds during study hours. Teachers who have continued to teach are constantly under threat from student abuse.

Corruption:
Iraq was considered one of the least corrupt third world countries in the world. Kickbacks during the oil for food program were diverted to the Iraqi Government and were used to pay the salaries of the civil servants throughout the country. Iraq is now one of the most corrupt countries in the world as stated in the Corruption Watchdog Transparency International 2006 Corruption Perception Index (CPI). Iraq is currently number 160 out of 163 worst countries in the world.
The US Embassy in Baghdad Report on corruption (issued in September 2007) concludes that “Currently, Iraq is not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption Laws”.

to be continued on page 2
Faruq Ziada (former Iraqi Ambassador)

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PAGE 2

Professional Staff:
Iraq had one of the best and finest professional staff in its civil service compared to other third world countries. Its civil service contained top quality and qualified staff. These professionals were able to keep the country from collapsing during the 13 years of harsh economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. Most of the professional, top quality, and qualified civil service staff have left Iraq to neighboring countries. Hundreds were assassinated.
The positions are now filled with used-to-be exiles, Governing Council, present government and party’s family members who have no civil service experience. (US Embassy Report on Corruption in Iraqi government).
According to the Report of the Ministry of Health Inspector general of 2005, 65 % of appointees had counterfeit college degrees and had not even finished primary schools.

Medical System:
(hospitals, equipment, and doctors, which were hurt by the imposed sanctions since 1991) was being renewed to its top level position that it had among third world countries. The Medical System is completely broken and shattered. According to the Ministry of Health official Report more than 18,000 doctors have fled the country since 2003

Public Services:
The public services (electricity, water, sanitation, hospital etc.) and its infrastructure, which were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War, were completely restored in less than one year.
Today, after nearly four years the public services are nearly non – existent, although more than (140) billion dollars have entered the Iraqi governments’ coffers since 2003.
Note: Most of the destruction was caused immediately after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, when the US army allowed looters to loot and burn government buildings. Please, refer to Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”).

Drugs:
Iraq was free from drugs. Iraq today is rampant with drugs and drug addicts.

Sincerely,

Faruq S. Ziada
(former Iraqi Ambassador)

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I applaud you sir for your candor and honesty. Keep talking and writing about it.With your stature you should be able to reach the op-ed pages of The New York Times with your view of the war in Iraq. As more and more Americans side with us,the pressure builds for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.Many Americans have known,and more now know, the big lie Bush and Cheney and all their cohorts used to invade Iraq. The invasion of Iraq and the execution of Saddam was a revenge killing by Bush. The occupation was designed to destabilize Iraq and the people living there.It is about the oil.Bush was a loser in the oil business all his life,now he finally struck oil,though it belongs to someone else. Rest assured,many in the U.S. are trying diligently to remove these war criminals from the office they occupy.America has never ,until now,invaded a nation without first being attacked. This is not how American's want their government run.

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If my memory serves me (i have been out of college a looong time) "Those who are ignorant of their history are doomed to repeat its failures." Crazy carlos

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These soldiers are in Iraq and Afghanistan killing civilians anyway, now to top it off they have “anger’ and fear they cannot control themselves. WTF! In fact there already are reports of missing persons, unexplained deaths in both countries and on a large scale. Only Americans could be so crude, selfish, self involved, arrogant and pompous, completely devoid of empathy for others to harp on their anger while oblivious to the anger of an occupied population. To top it off they present these sentiments in such a way as to imply that they are heroic for not slaughtering civilians further.

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While all the comments to this thread all seem to bear a bit of truth, the immediate truth is that, if Iraqis watched the IED being placed and did not warn the patrol, the chain of command does not teach and promote effective counterinsurgency policies. This level of relationship with the people the US Army works for, ostensibly at least, would have produced the warning.

In Vietnam, when officers got some of us killed needlessly, we "fragged" them.

This chain of command prolongs the war. It is part of the problem rather than the solution. The men are right to "mutiny," and if they have any adult supervision whatsoever, that adult should step forward and remove the problem - those who refuse to engage appropriate counterinsurgency training and tactics - before the men have to do that in order to stay alive.

Led by the unfit to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful, we said in Vietnam. The Nixon administration folks who now run the Iraq war did not learn Vietnam's lessons. If they hadn't dodged the draft and hid out in the Reserves or grad school, they might have been fragged in Vietnam, too, and the world would have been better off.

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Many of the responses here are heart felt and wonderful. Great words and phrases like "my brothers in arms" and "stand down" "honorable" and so on. And they are all words and phrases that are absolutely correct when refering to the men and women who have been placed into such a situation as the Iraq occupation.

The problem is that when words move the heart the mind tends to shut down. Certainly we all owe our lives and freedoms to the men and women who protect us. Most of us can never begin to percieve the horrors that the soldiers of the world see on a daily bases. However, when we talk and read about autrocities such as what is going on in Iraq in a manner that "moves" the heart using words like honorable and commradory etc. we start thinking that the whole picture (in this case the war itself) is somehow honorable and righteous and the fact is that it is in no way honorable and righteous. The things that our men and women do for each other and us here at home are most honorable and righteous of course. But doing what we are doing in Iraq is in no way honorable and righteous. And our soldiers have NO CONTROL over that.

It is the people who make the decisions to put our soldiers in a situation where they have to do what they do in order to survive that is the problem.

Fear was used to get us to accept this war in the beginning. As the war developed stories such as the heroric saving of female POW's dominated the media. Remember the girl soldier that was supposedly being held as a POW injured and god only knows what else by the Iraqis only to be found being treated in a hospital by Iraqis? You would have thought by what the people of this nation saw on TV that this girl was dramatically rescued from some torture chamber in the basement of Hussien himself. This kind of thing is all designed by our govt. and the media to appeal to our hearts and thus ours logic (minds) quit thinking rationally.

None of what I am saying here has anything to do with the soldiers and the obvious courage honor and discipline that each and everyone of them have and display everyday!! It is about the fear driven territorial world dominating dictator wannabe people who are "driving the bus" in this country. We should have impeached GWB, Dick Cheney and all the others who got us into this mess using their fear and lies immediately!!! We need to take our soldiers out of a situation they cannot win and have no control over immediately!!!! This is where our energy and focus must be right now. Every "pair of boots on the ground" in Iraq is absolutely a hero and deserves our admiration thanks and support. We just cannot let the "warm and fuzziness" that comes with these very warranted heartfelt emotions when it comes to our soldiers themselves get mixed up with the anger and frustration we all should be feeling towards the "war mongers" that got us into this mess in the first place.

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Google it. It's in the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Once understood, you'll readily see that the actions (or lack thereof) in this instance, don't constitute mutiny at all, but DO make good sense.

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The only way this war will ever end including the massacre of american soldiers, and innocent people, is for every soldier to lay down his arms and refuse to fight this illegal war.

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Why are we even in Iraq killing its people? The US was never asked or invited to send its military into the Iraq.

- neither Saddam or Iraq had anything to do with 911
- Congress never issued a formal declaration of war against Iraq
- the decision to attack Iraq was based on falsified intelligence (now admitted)
- the cost of the Iraq war has bled the US economy and destroyed America's reputation in the world

It's very obvious that Americans have been lied to, that the media isn't giving us all the facts and America's military men and women have been placed in harm's way needlessly. It also becomes clear that continued involvement in Iraq will destroy the US economy, if it hasn't done so already.

With such overwhelming evidence that the occupation of Iraq is 100% wrong, how could any reasonably informed soldier of moral character not be compelled to disobey their commanders?

One can only imagine how many more deaths need occur and how much longer must America wait before the military realizes that the real enemy is already inside the gate. The United States is being destroyed from within.

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