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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
16 dead Afghan civilians after US soldier goes on shooting spree
Sunday, March 11, 2012 7:15 AM
AURAPTOR
America loves a winner!
Quote: Updated at 10:55 a.m. ET: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A U.S. service member killed at least 15 members of two Afghan families as well as a 16th person before turning himself in, witnesses and officials said Sunday. Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a statement called it "an assassination," adding that nine of the dead were children, and three were women. The soldier, who has yet to be identified, reportedly left his base in the early hours Sunday and went to two villages just a few hundred yards away. He then opened fire on Afghan civilians sleeping in their homes, Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid told Reuters. The service member entered three homes in the villages in Kandahar province, he said. http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/11/10639152-us-soldier-kills-16-afghan-civilians-officials-say?ocid=ansmsnbc11
Sunday, March 11, 2012 9:14 AM
OONJERAH
Sunday, March 11, 2012 9:17 AM
AGENTROUKA
Sunday, March 11, 2012 11:35 AM
Sunday, March 11, 2012 11:56 AM
JONGSSTRAW
Sunday, March 11, 2012 12:47 PM
BYTEMITE
Sunday, March 11, 2012 1:44 PM
FREMDFIRMA
Sunday, March 11, 2012 1:58 PM
Sunday, March 11, 2012 2:04 PM
HERO
Sunday, March 11, 2012 5:08 PM
HKCAVALIER
Sunday, March 11, 2012 5:11 PM
MAGONSDAUGHTER
Quote:Originally posted by HKCavalier: At some point in human history, people will understand that training humans to perform the acts of violence associated with modern warfare is a war crime in and of itself. It is a crime against humanity to strip these young men of their humanity in order to achieve our political ends. No human is prepared to deal with committing such atrocity and no population in the history of the world deserves such treatment. Least of all civilians of any kind. War is madness, and hopefully, with all the access we now have to what's really going on around the world, some meaningful understanding will come out of all this horror. HKCavalier
Sunday, March 11, 2012 5:41 PM
Quote:At some point in human history, people will understand that training humans to perform the acts of violence associated with modern warfare is a war crime in and of itself. It is a crime against humanity to strip these young men of their humanity in order to achieve our political ends. No human is prepared to deal with committing such atrocity and no population in the history of the world deserves such treatment. Least of all civilians of any kind. War is madness, and hopefully, with all the access we now have to what's really going on around the world, some meaningful understanding will come out of all this horror.
Sunday, March 11, 2012 7:48 PM
Monday, March 12, 2012 12:47 AM
PIRATENEWS
John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!
Quote:"Ron Paul has Governor Jessee Ventura's endorsement. He is the only candidate that wants to talk rather than wage war. All we do is go to war - one after another after another. Until you have hunted men, you haven't hunted yet." -Jesse Ventura, Petty Officer 3rd Class, US Navy SEAL
Monday, March 12, 2012 3:05 AM
GEEZER
Keep the Shiny side up
Monday, March 12, 2012 4:35 AM
Monday, March 12, 2012 8:41 AM
CAVETROLL
Monday, March 12, 2012 8:47 AM
Monday, March 12, 2012 9:06 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Monday, March 12, 2012 9:20 AM
Monday, March 12, 2012 10:43 AM
Monday, March 12, 2012 5:44 PM
RIONAEIRE
Beir bua agus beannacht
Monday, March 12, 2012 7:40 PM
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 3:32 AM
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 9:47 AM
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 8:09 AM
Quote:We don't know why one US soldier in Afghanistan broke into homes last week and killed 16 civilians, but recent research suggests such disasters are just waiting to happen. US army researchers have found that after Middle East deployment, 10 to 20 per cent of soldiers suffer severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a type of chronic anxiety including flashbacks, emotional numbing and anger. They warned in 2010 that these veterans report three times more aggressive outbursts than the pre-deployment average, and that PTSD may not emerge until 12 months after returning from deployment, when soldiers are often deployed again, leading to cumulative stress. We don't know if the rogue soldier had PTSD. However, he was on his fourth deployment from Lewis-McChord military base in Washington state, which has suffered high rates of PTSD, violence and suicide among soldiers with multiple deployments. The only treatments approved for PTSD are antidepressants and psychotherapies, neither of which always work, and reach just one in five veterans in need. Trials of a widely prescribed anti-psychotic drug, Risperidone, showed little benefit. Other common treatments, like tranquilisers, might actually be harmful, says Charles Hoge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. There is a "tremendous unmet need" for new treatments, says John Krystal, head of neuroscience at the US Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. Meanwhile, "there are almost always warning signs in such people," says Bengt Arnetz of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, who studies trauma-related disorders. But, he says "medical and personnel records are not systematically monitored", and there is no standardised system to spot risk-related behaviour. Existing tools to track stress, depression and irritability, he says, could be used to spot people "close to critical levels" before they snap. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21584-soldiers-on-multiple-deployment-need-monitoring.html]
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:15 PM
Thursday, March 15, 2012 11:38 AM
Quote:Two aspects of the crime deserve particular attention to determine whether there is more to the story than the sudden, inexplicable, unpredictable and unstoppable snapping of a single crazed gunman. First: what the Army knew about the soldier’s mental state and when it knew it. This soldier was four months into his fourth deployment in a decade. Senior defense officials told NBC News that the soldier had no history of behavior problems but also acknowledged that in a previous deployment in Iraq he had suffered traumatic brain injury. As my TIME colleague Mark Thompson notes, TBIs can bring on a variety of mental health problems, which renders the official’s statement confusing and contradictory. As I researched a similar crime—the rape and murder of a 14 year Iraqi old girl and the murder of her parents and her 6 year old sister by four 101st Airborne Division soldiers in South Baghdad in 2006, I was shocked to discover that several of the unit’s leaders were aware that the mental state of the murderous foursome’s trigger man was severely degraded, yet they kept him on the front lines of combat. (As an example of just one missed red flag: During a session with a combat stress counselor, this soldier described his intense desires to kill Iraqi civilians. The next day, after two of the unit’s soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb explosion, the counselor told the unit’s battalion commander that she considered the entire platoon psychologically unfit for combat, yet the commander put them back on the front line within 48 hours). Unfortunately, in cases of extreme military malfeasance, the Army has a poor track record of assessing, acknowledging and punishing the leadership breakdowns that allow war crimes to take place. As Army Lieut. Colonel Paul Yingling noted in a 2007 article in the Armed Forces Journal, “A general who presides over a massive human rights scandal or a substantial deterioration in security ought to be retired at a lower rank … As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” Perhaps USA Today is correct in concluding, “People crack, and they kill—the danger they pose obvious only in hindsight.” In this case, let us devoutly hope so. But if it is not, if this soldier demonstrated clear warning signs of instability that were ignored, or if troop management standards had become lax, then the Army has a responsibility to Americans, Afghans and its own ranks to hold the unit’s leaders accountable for contributing, even unintentionally, to an atrocity. http://ideas.time.com/2012/03/14/is-the-army-responsible-for-the-afghan-massacre/ always have problems, but it pisses me off that our military has behaved the way it has, costing us MORE lives, MORE disabled soldiers, and MORE atrocities. Their denial/coverup of rape, intimidation of women so they don't rape, Abu Grabe, and on and on shows a mentality that disgusts me.
Thursday, March 15, 2012 12:51 PM
Thursday, March 15, 2012 1:58 PM
Thursday, March 15, 2012 2:28 PM
Thursday, March 15, 2012 2:35 PM
Thursday, March 22, 2012 2:22 PM
Thursday, March 22, 2012 2:33 PM
ANTHONYT
Freedom is Important because People are Important
Quote:Originally posted by HKCavalier: Oh, of course, Frem. The madness I'm talking about is the raw, unwavering hatred dumped all over Islam since Sept. 11. I thought it would have burned itself out by now. What a deep well of hatred was unearthed on that day. Be honest with me here, brother Anarchist, did you really think our nation was THIS fucking radically insane as we've proven to be in the last 10 years? HKCavalier Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
Thursday, March 22, 2012 2:57 PM
Thursday, March 22, 2012 3:06 PM
Thursday, March 22, 2012 3:58 PM
Quote:Originally posted by HKCavalier: Oh, of course, Frem. The madness I'm talking about is the raw, unwavering hatred dumped all over Islam since Sept. 11. I thought it would have burned itself out by now. What a deep well of hatred was unearthed on that day. Be honest with me here, brother Anarchist, did you really think our nation was THIS fucking radically insane as we've proven to be in the last 10 years?
Friday, March 23, 2012 4:34 AM
Saturday, March 24, 2012 11:24 AM
Sunday, March 25, 2012 11:14 AM
Sunday, March 25, 2012 11:23 AM
Quote:WASHINGTON (AP) - Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is expected to be told he faces 17 counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder, along with other charges, in connection with a shooting rampage in two southern Afghanistan villages that shocked Americans back home and further roiled U.S.-Afghan relations. The charges come almost two weeks after the massacre in which Bales allegedly left his base in the early morning hours and shot Afghans, including women and nine children, while they slept in their beds, then burned some of the bodies. Bales will be read the charges on Friday at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he has been held since being flown from Afghanistan last week, a U.S. official said. In addition to murder and attempted murder, the charges will include six counts of aggravated assault as well as a number of other violations of military law, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the charges before they were announced. The 38-year-old soldier and father of two, who lives in Lake Tapps, Wash., faces trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but it could be months before any public hearing. Military authorities had originally said Bales was suspected in the killing of 16 Afghan villagers, nine children and seven adults. They changed that Thursday to 17, raising the number of adults by one but without explaining how the change came about. It's possible some of the dead were buried before U.S. military officials arrived at the scene of the carnage. Six Afghans were wounded in the attack.
Sunday, March 25, 2012 11:48 AM
1KIKI
Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.
Sunday, March 25, 2012 9:25 PM
Monday, March 26, 2012 7:43 PM
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 2:54 AM
Quote:Originally posted by RionaEire: A manprice? This isn't old Ireland where you'd do that if you killed someone. I didn't know people still did that today.
Quote:Pashtun norms of criminal law are based on the notion of restorative justice rather than on the notion of retributive justice relied upon in Western and international law. Rather than being sent to prison for a wrong committed, the wrongdoer is asked to pay Poar, or blood money, to the victim and to ask for forgiveness.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 2:54 PM
Friday, April 13, 2012 3:10 PM
Sunday, November 11, 2012 7:37 PM
Sunday, November 11, 2012 9:13 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Geezer: Quote:Originally posted by RionaEire: A manprice? This isn't old Ireland where you'd do that if you killed someone. I didn't know people still did that today. Apparently the payment of blood money has been part of Afghan law off and on for the last couple of centuries. Quote:Pashtun norms of criminal law are based on the notion of restorative justice rather than on the notion of retributive justice relied upon in Western and international law. Rather than being sent to prison for a wrong committed, the wrongdoer is asked to pay Poar, or blood money, to the victim and to ask for forgiveness. http://theilf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/reports-ilfa-customary-laws.pdf "Keep the Shiny side up"
Sunday, November 11, 2012 9:17 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Oonjerah: Attorney tells Afghanistan shooting suspect not to participate in sanity-board hearing => http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/13/4412548/attorney-tells-afghanistan-shooting.html SEATTLE -- Staff Sgt. Robert Bales has been instructed by his civilian attorney to not participate in an Army sanity-board process scheduled for this spring that would determine whether the Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier is fit to undergo a court-martial on charges of murdering 17 Afghan civilians. The attorney, John Henry Browne, said that base officials denied defense requests that included allowing counsel to be present at the board proceeding, make a record- ing of the proceeding and to put a neuropsychologist on the board. "We have asked that these ill-advised decisions be reconsidered, no response so far," Browne said in a statement released Friday. Browne said that his client has a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and not participate in the sanity-board process. . . . . .The worst and most frequent consequence of paranoia is that it's self-fulfilling.
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