US soldier admits killing unarmed Afghans for sport

[cube_b3]

Yeah, let's invade a country looking for a man you've got no proof against and he probably died during the 1st drone attack.

Then invade another country for weapons of mass destruction that never existed.

America gave 3 countries 10 times the damage 9/11 gave them, and they are still no closer to ending it.

[Autosaver]

Yeah, let's invade a country looking for a man you've got no proof against and he probably died during the 1st drone attack.

Then invade another country for weapons of mass destruction that never existed.

America gave 3 countries 10 times the damage 9/11 gave them, and they are still no closer to ending it.

Maybe I watch too many movies or something, but I've seen movies where the Taliban actually attack the US Army. And they Taliban have planted bombs to kill people.

... Yeah, I watch too many movies.

[max_cady]

@cube

Again, I'm going into very dangerous territory here, but perhaps you aren't looking at this the right way.

Once again, there is the misleading assumption that the US somehow declared war against Islam and muslims in general and that somehow evidence was made on the fly to justify invading foreign countries.

However, historical facts do not mesh at all with the narrative that was created over this.

The problem that the US faced at the time and I don't mean 9/11, I mean other terrorist plots against americans supported by Iraq, Iran, Syria and others.

During the Clinton years, the answer to terrorism was simply a matter of pushing the sporadic "Fighter Jet Bombing" button and expecting things to simply work out by themselves. Swatting a couple of flys here and there, won't work. People thought it worked, but that's because Al-Qaeda never got close enough to hitting US shores until that day.

After being elected, early on George Bush decided to take it to a whole other level, you see, it didn't matter doing selective bombings here and there, because they wouldn't fix the problem in the long term.

Bush made it very clear, early on, that the US would not make the distinction between countries who finance terrorism and those who harbor them.

You see, when the US initiated the offense against the Taliban, it wasn't because they were in any way, shape or form, related to the events of 9/11, but they were the enablers, they provided shelter and resources to these groups.

The same principle was applied to Iraq, given the overwhelimg ties to terrorism.

Oh and about the "fake" WMDs, let's rewind the clocks back all the way to 1992...
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[Emmett The Crab]

@ Cube: Thanks.

@ Max Cady: I think (or hope) it's universally understood that the whole government got bad intelligence about WMDs in Iraq, and they all supported him in that attack, for the most part.  It's crazy that Saddam didn't just say, "I don't know what you are talking about.  Go ahead and look if you want."  He would have avoided an enormous war and his own death, but he chose to be a jerk.

[George]

This is what I believe and most people in my country disagree with me.

- If we weren't so fucking nosey, going around the world and bombing countries out of suspicion just because they are weaker than us, then 9/11 wouldn't happen. Lets be honest, why do you think the people that attacked us, did it?

As it because they didn't like our freedom, or whatever lies the media feed us? Was it because they wanted us to turn into whatever religion they believe? No. It was because we bombed them. Same reason everyone was up for war right after 9/11. People don't think straight during tragedy.

The government took their power and ran with it. Doing whatever they want and even passing laws that shouldn't have been passed. See Patriot Act.

I'm not voting for Obama again due to his inability to stop the war. Its been 8 years, lets move the fuck on.

[cube_b3]

Well assuming if the Taliban are behind the war, they could simply be pissed off America abandoned them after they helped them over throw Russia?

Remember Rambo?

Yeah, let's invade a country looking for a man you've got no proof against and he probably died during the 1st drone attack.

Then invade another country for weapons of mass destruction that never existed.

America gave 3 countries 10 times the damage 9/11 gave them, and they are still no closer to ending it.

Maybe I watch too many movies or something, but I've seen movies where the Taliban actually attack the US Army. And they Taliban have planted bombs to kill people.

... Yeah, I watch too many movies.

Yeah man Taliban are idiots, uneducated illetrate mindless manipulated bodies. They live in mountains without any technology, the closest they come to hurting the US is either with a home made gun or by straping themselves with home made explosives and blowing themselves up in Mosques (how is that killing Americans again?)

Thanks to the constant drone attacks more and more survivors enlist in the Taliban and the US makes those attacks almost on a weekly basis.

Most of the time these Taliban can't even come close to US soldiers, so they end up killing Pakistani soldiers and stealing their arms.

Watch the movie "In The Name of God" to understand the American Operations, European Operations and the Taliban.
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[max_cady]

That is actually one of the major myths surrounding the Taliban. First off, they played no part in the Soviet conflict. The Taliban originated from Pakistan and took over Afghanistan long after the Soviets had retreated. The Mujaheedin were in part assisted by the US, but it was the Paquistani Secret Service that played a major role in the defeat of the Soviets.

And like I mentioned before, the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11, but the US went to war with them because they were harboring and assisting Al-Qaeda's thugs, don't take my word for it George W. Bush made this very clear in his address to the nation on September 20th, in which he also made the very clear distinction between muslims and extremists, who in his very own words, says that do not respect Islam and it's tradition and culture.

If there was a country called Al-Qaeda-Land it would certainly make things a whole lot easier. But when you have terrorist groups with no paper trails, no clearly defined structure, but with cells scattered all around, some of them only require a simple phone call and they'll do their bidding.

But once again, many myths about terrorism get tangled into the cold hard facts, many say that terrorism is the result of a desperate penny-less man who takes his own life by attacking the wealthy (a myth largely created by the motion picture Syriana).

For the most part, it is quite the opposite, these organizations are not a rag-tag of individuals like the ones you see on a movie like Red Dawn, they have money and resources available to them (Al-Qaeda even has it's own PR and news agency, that creates fake reports on a daily basis) . The scenario in which the sheep herder becomes an explosives/logistics expert overnight does not play out like that.

And as far as an intelligence officer goes (if this was indeed a f***-up, it was certainly the largest f***-up of all time, when you considered that every other intelligence agency, be it french, Israel or Russian thought it was true), you might be the most incompetent officer in your field but I'm sure that even you would tell the difference between some vague threat and a real danger. The same way that I'm pretty sure the military can tell the difference between a farmer and an armed thug.

And long before Obama, Bush and Gen. Petraeus had already instated Rules of Engagement and those are very clear (even if Wikileaks conviniently edits video to make it seem otherwise).

And then enter Obama, a person with next-to-no experience, largely a victim of his own propaganda and campaign slogans who, like I stated before, appears to be doing things on the fly and not take things seriously.

[Autosaver]

Everything has a reason.

I think these wars are doing good deeds. Even if we simply don't understand why. Maybe if we got Obama to evaluate and explain why we are attacking these countries...

[max_cady]

That's the thing, Obama already kinda messed up with Lybia and before with Egypt.

The "I apologize for America's Past Transgressions towards these countries" tour and quite honestly, it never amounted to anything.

It was already weird that President Obama only made his case to Congress 10 days after he personally decided to assist France and Great Britain in this operation. Like I said before, ever since Khadafi's nuclear weapons program was dismantled (due to the military intervention in Iraq), Lybia stopped being an actual security threat to the US. And, in part, it was thanks to Bush and Rumsfeld that Khadafi is only using conventional firearms to stop the uprising, otherwise he would've unloaded mustard gas on his dissedents as well as the coallition.

And even, Obama saying that he will simply hand over operations to NATO, that's really not saying much, 'cause NATO's major driving force is still the US military.

But then again, I do tip my hat to Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron simply because at the very least, they were honest about it, even though Obama dropped the ball on this.

But that is nothing compared to what my former PM did(he resigned this week). José Sócrates considered himself a major friend of Khadafi and commercial ally. However, Portugal voted for the military intervention against Lybia on the UN council. But, so far they did nothing, they are not giving any logistic support to the coalition (and the Lajes military base doesn't count, as technically the US is paying for that piece of land in the Azores), even worse, nobody spoke. Sócrates never said anything, DefSec Augusto Santos Silva has said anything, the only one who spoke was Luís Amado, the Foreign Affairs secretary. If they wanted to no part in this, they would not vote. That would be something. Not like this...