The Associated Press reports:
An Iraqi military official said Tuesday that the bodies of two missing U.S. soldiers showed signs of torture, and that men appeared to have been killed “in a barbaric way.” Also, the umbrella group for Iraqi insurgents claimed responsibility for the soldiers’ deaths.
“We give the good news … to the Islamic nation that we have carried God’s verdict by slaughtering the two captured crusaders,” said a statement in the name of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, which groups five insurgent organizations including al-Qaida in Iraq.
I grow tired of all this crap about al-Qaida in Iraq, but these soldiers are dead and it looks like they were badly mistreated prior to being killed. I am truly sorry for their families. I hope that we will soon extract ourselves from Iraq so that no more soldiers will suffer such a fate. I’d like it if Karl Rove would go meet with the families and explain their sons’ sacrifice.
MURTHA: He’s in New Hampshire. He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside, saying stay the course. That’s not a plan. … We’ve got to change direction. You can’t sit there in the air-conditioned office and tell troops carrying 70 pounds on their backs, inside these armored vessels hit with IEDs every day, seeing their friends blown up, their buddies blown up — and he says stay the course? Easy to say that from Washington, DC.
My wife had told me that they’d been beheaded. Really sucks.
Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio reported this afternoon that they were possibly tortured with electric drills; that this is the latest torture of choice. Just conjecture though, she warned.
And the Bushites will use this to say how savage the enemy is, and call for revenge for this vengeful killing, and the savage torture of American soldiers, which is so unlike the necessary torture of people who may or may not be soldiers or terrorists in Iraq and Guantanamo. These savage terrorists who violate civilized standards, so unlike those on Our Side who find the Geneva Conventions irrelevant, and on and on and on.
Now the US is in business with the savage terrorists, the gooks and slopes of Vietnam, just as the CIA, Cheney and Rumsfeld used to be in business with Osama, armed him and sent him to their terrorism school. And on and on and on.
Of course this is awful, especially for the pawns in this game, and the savagery is graphic, though we’re more so used to the savagery of bombing that we don’t notice it. And on and on and on. RIP.
yes it is, and what’s even worse, most people are more interested in arguing about popularity, than the cold bare reality of death….I’m just shak’n my head here.
Doomsday will occur, and I get the feeling we’ll still be bogged down in debates about Green vs Orange. Feh.
very true Benjamin as I posted a brief diary earlier to see what the response would be……
well, I should have mentioned orange in the heading, and maybe, just maybe, the shit battle could stop long enough to pay attention to the real horror amongst us today……
fuck it, I’m going to the beach with a Beck’s, my old Gibson, and say a lil’ prayer….good luck with the orange
it’s good to picture you at the beach with your guitar and a beer. Have a nice evening IP.
The “shit battle” as you put it is just as important, since it is ultimate a battle about our vote, the very thing these guys are dying to defend, or so we’re told. It’s all connected. I’m sorry you don’t see it that way.
What really upsets me is when soldiers offer to guard us with their lives, and we abuse their trust that we will not send them unless we are truly being threatened. We were never truly threatened by the Iraqis. We might be, now. But it didn’t have to and shouldn’t have been this way.
I can’t help but think that this story is yet another example of the birds coming home to roost. After the gross human rights violations that have been perpetrated by our government over there, it is hardly surprising that troops get kidnapped, tortured, and killed. I’m actually surprised that more of that hasn’t happened already.
I remember telling folks back in Feb and early March of 2003 that nothing good would come of this war – there would be nothing but tragedy. Being right of course hasn’t even provided cold comfort – just anger.
With a sickness in my stomach, I feel I must agree. That hurts.
Since this admistration keeps calling this a WAR and not occupation, and we are in uniform and the enemy is not, it stands to reason that the time has come for POW’s for their side to preform against us. I have stated this probability for some time to a few friends of mine.
preform? Not sure what that is.
perform..sorry
My question is why were there only 3—three at the site to guard anyhow. WHY! There should have been a whole platoon there, if you ask me considering the site they were in.
Three women recently back from Iraq gave a talk in our town. Two vets, the other an md who was visiting family. The two vets were part of a small group that had to guard broken down US contractor trucks. Spent their days out there guarding the trucks, knowing full well no repairs would be made. Then trucks were burned or blown up so that the desperate Iraquis wouldn’t get any of the food or other goodies in them. Crowds would gather. The 2 vets were amazed they got out alive. Also, Halliburton trucks went to Baghdad empty and came back empty–had to log miles to get their dollars
Rush Limbaugh is using the death of these two poor soldiers to spread lies against Liberal and Democratic blogs. Crooks and Liars has an MP3 file of the radio broadcast:
Remember, that this shit from Rush is broadcast to the troops on Armed Forces Radio every day.
I am not surprised by this news…only sickened by it.
I condem torture in all forms no matter who does it.
My heart goes out to the families. I cannot begin to imagine what agony they must feel.
Bush=unending pain
“War is all Hell” William T. Sherman
I hate this. I feel like Cassandra.
As did many of us, I marched (hobbled) for months before this exercise in adventurism, chanting “Don’t Bomb Iraq”, “No Blood for Oil”, et al.
We KNEW that the inevitable outcome of invading Iraq and removing Hussein would result in a civil war, spreading to Syria, Turkey, Iran, and throwing the entire Middle East into chaos. It didn’t take a crystal ball or super secret intelligence to see that we’d be unleashing old rivalries and fears. Every subgroup in the area will fight for power, even if it’s only because they’re terrified of being slaughtered by the others. We knew that invading Iraq was like whacking a hornet’s nest.
Now that the hornets are swarming around our heads, Republicans sneer that we lefties don’t have a plan to fix the problem. We had one. It was “Don’t invade Iraq.” Nothing can fix the mess they’ve made.
I cannot bear all this stupid, senseless death. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dead men, women and children, for what ? An election ? Poll numbers ? Bigger balls than Daddy ?
The immorality of it is incomprehensible.
I like this. We had a plan. Don’t invade Iraq. You are so right.