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The Hurt Locker - really opened my eyes to the war in iraq

L

longearedfriend

today I watched locked up abroad

and strangely, this time the person wasn't jailed per say

he was in a division of un blue berrets (peace keepers) in sierra leone

wouldn't say that that's what made me think of joining the army but

the idea of discipline, camradery (this might not be something current in the us army) and the work of a soldier

was really appealing to me

of course, I couldn't fight for something I didn't believe in but I am not scared of death,
and maybe killing some people would make me feel better but I think I could never get enough of it

stepping on a mine or a home made explosive would suck though
I read up an article in the news paper about this girl, she was 24-25, wanted to go do her part in afghanistan

not as a soldier, but some kind of reporter/social worker

didn't take long before the apc vehicle she was in rolled over an explosive and now she only has one leg

what a life
 
G

greenmatter

the hurt locker made you realize war is fucked up ?????

watch the entire rambo series ....... after that you will believe in super soldiers who can single handedly win all the battles.

there should have been a draft at the start of this one ........ i bet anything we would be out of there by now .......OR........ the cowards who got us into this would not have had the balls to get our collective dicks shoved this far into the hornets nest in the first place

i did love the "mission accomplished" dog and pony show though ...... shows what the media and the president can do when they work together

what a joke
 
S

sso

Active member
Veteran
the hero drug.

empires need enemies, need war.

but it only works if the people at home know nothing about the war.

because usually the opponent is much weaker and the reasons for the war monetary. (power basically :))

not a holy crusade like they would want the people to believe (cant have hero´s without a just cause.)

and america has been fighting pisspoor countries that are barely out of the stone age in some cases (afghanistan f.e) basically primitive hut people for the most part or ww1 advanced at best.

not very heroic butchering primitive folks that have spears in comparison to you.

and so much easier to have just gone in on friendly notes and influenced the population to rise out of the dark ages, rather than try to force it on them. (compared to many countries we are almost like gods...and very much looked up to, or would have been if not for the brutal "handling" of them, treated like animals in many cases..) (lol though the god analogy is inept but will do)

much more economically sound in the long run to have raised the world up,instead of trying to beat it into submission, unless one´s sole or largest business was weapon manufacturing, weapons do need to be tested after all.

and empires cant be risked. :)

and thats what it obviously is, for a country of pure freedom and justice, would have gone the good route,helped to raise the world up.

never would have done this evil dictatorial shit.
 
P

Plant Early

Member
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC

1881 - 1940

Double recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor

"War Is A Racket"

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was part of a racket all the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service."


Who Pays The Bills?

Who provides the profits -- these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them -- in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us -- the people -- got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par -- and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement -- the young boys couldn't stand it.

That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead -- they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded -- they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too -- they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam -- on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain -- with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

But don't forget -- the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.

Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share -- at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.

Napoleon once said,

"All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively hunger for them."

So by developing the Napoleonic system -- the medal business -- the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.

In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side . . . it is His will that the Germans be killed.

And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies . . . to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill . . . and be killed.

But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance -- something the employer pays for in an enlightened state -- and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all -- he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.

We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back -- when they came back from the war and couldn't find work -- at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!

Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly -- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.

And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.


http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c5
 
Growcephus

Growcephus

Member
Veteran
The Hurt locker was so fucked up and ridiculous I didn't even bother finish watching it...

That flick was just another in a long line of stereotypical bullshit that was about as realistic as the old school "Blaxpoitation" films, and just as insulting to those of us who actually served outside the wire for a living.

Most citizens won't know any better, and Hollywood doesn't care.
 
mrcreosote

mrcreosote

Active member
Veteran
Had to give Saddam and anyone else with the idea to sell oil for something other than dollars a lesson they won't forget.
Iran is next.

Gotta try to keep the Ponzi Petro-dollar Scam going so we can spread our inflation globally like herpes on Spring Break.

Mission Accomplished...for a little while longer.
Then it's Bye bye American pie, can't drive the Chevy cuz the tank is bone dry...
Dismal evil fuckwad banksters.
 
P

Plant Early

Member
"Willy McBride"
by Eric Bogle

Well how do you do Private William McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside,
I'll rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, Lord and I'm nearly done
I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the great fallen of 1916
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene?

Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
did they sound the death march as they lowered you down ?
and did the band play the last post and chorus ?
And did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916, to that loyal heart are you forever 19.
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enshrined there forever behind a glass pane
In an old photograph torn and tattered and
stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

(Chorus)
------

The sun's shining now on the green Fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plough
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no man's land
And the countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

(Chorus)
------

And I can't help but wonder young Willie McBride
Do all who lie here with you know why they died
Did you really believe it when they told you the cause
Did you honestly think that one war would end wars
Well your suffering, your sorrow, your glory, your shame
Your killing, your dying, it was all done in vain..........
'Cos young Willie McBride it all happened again, and again, and again, and again and again.
 
P

Plant Early

Member
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."

--Goering at the Nuremberg Trials
 
L

longearedfriend

long time since they have talked about iraq

I have a book on saddam, never got around to reading it

seemed like quite a character
 
T

toughmudderdave

I have an old high school friend who lost her firstborn in Afghanistan almost 2 years ago. Instead of scrutinizing "why" her eldest son died, she decided to fill herself with hatred and "patriotism"..."He died to protect our freedom" is her mantra now. She proudly goes to Marine Corp ceremonies honoring the boys that die....for what?

And she doesn't even bother to think "why is she doing this"? Remember when the video came out of the Marines pissing on an Afghani "Taliban came out? She applauded it!!!

She's a Catholic...I'm sure that's what Jesus would do.
 
L

longearedfriend

Why do you feel that your friend has to be doing certain things/thinking a certain way ? ^^
 
P

Plant Early

Member
longearedfriend said:
long time since they have talked about iraq

I have a book on saddam, never got around to reading it

seemed like quite a character
Click to expand...



In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, ‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.' The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.' The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did."

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/08/wikiileaks_april_glaspie_and_saddam_hussein​
 
T

toughmudderdave

longearedfriend said:
Why do you feel that your friend has to be doing certain things/thinking a certain way ? ^^
Click to expand...

I disagree with her. Her son died needlessly and I've tried to tell her that, but all she wants to do is send more boys over there to kill "terrorists" because they want to kill us. WTF?

I'm a veteran. I'm a Republican. She fucked up and all she sees is hatred and wants more death.

I swear...As a "Non Christian", I'm more "christian" than most Christians I suppose.
 
T

toughmudderdave

And I sent my only child off to the military during this time too.
 
P

Plant Early

Member
xfyemb.jpg




I pray for the next generation, may they have the courage to break free from the old dogma which ensnares us into war.
 
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