On Aug 17, 9:22*pm, Dan wrote:
William Black wrote:
"La N" wrote in message
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"William Black" wrote in message
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"La N" wrote in message
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"tankfixer" wrote in message
Our friend has been claiming it is policy.
A most absurd statement IMHO.

It is indeed an absurd statement.

So why are they still bombing weddings?

Are you suggesting that Americans bomb weddings because they don't like
weddings? *What are they getting out of bombing weddings besides bad p.r.?

I'm saying they bomb weddings because they refuse to take note of the
culture of the people on their side that they're killing.

* * How many weddings has the U.S. actually struck?

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Good question, at least a few dozen. Thing is, WE know its not
intentional, THEY don't. All they know is they had a wedding and the
Americans bombed it. Then claimed it was terrorists or whatever. There
might have even been a terrorist there. But, most was collateral
damage. And the consequence is, we lost the hearts and minds. Did that
in another war as I recall.

We can do better than that.

I think the whole truth on the mess has not come out, and I think that
once the truth does come out, and its going to be way after we're
gone, its not going to be pretty.

Some of the Marine Air Wings have dumped tons of ordinance on some
cities. There was one report that was sort of hushed up of a million
pounds of ordinance by one Wing. Think of where you live. Think of
AC-130s hitting it. Or a bunch of 500 lb bombs going in. That's a lot
of damage in an urban area. I've seen stuff go in real time. I can't
see any reason to dump it on an urban area. Period.

We did it in WWII, we hit military targets. It wasn't until later that
we started pretty much carpet bombing of large areas.

I've seen some of the after action bomb plots on the amount of damage
done in Japanese cities, percentages destroyed. Yeah, war is hell.
Yeah, we were breaking the back of an evil empire. But that is a lot
different than Iraq where we're supposed to be bringing in Democracy.

Christ, we're as bad as the RAF using chemical weapons on the Iraqi
tribes. And they did tons of that in the 20s. Still lost.

Look, we had the Turks shut down water to Iraq (and there's a whole
wealth of information that is just coming out in the states - google
Aaronson (sp?) who mapped water resources in the Middle East and how
it would reduce conflict IF the borders were defined correctly - they
weren't). That in part led to a ton of deaths the US refuses to
acknowledge. Lots of other countries and NGOs do.

The Iraqis were the most educated group in the Middle East. They know
whats going on over there, we don't. And its the media, Bush, DoD that
are to blame. Bluntly, not only are we going broke propping up a lie
promulgated by Bush, we're also committing war crimes.

Don't believe me? Read the laws of ground conflict, read the laws of
war. You can find copies cheap in most bookstores.

Part of being a military professional is having a sense of ethics. We
seem to have lost that somehow.