Registered: Aug 2001
Location: is futile
Posts: 5027

BBC

apparently, an angry mob just attacked four US contractors, set their car ablaze and desecrated their corpses.

The Sunni Triangle is not a fun place to be at the moment.

bummer

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Upstate NY
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Well, not "just". The story has been up all day on Drudge, including links to pics of the burnings and the corpses hanging off the bridge.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: is futile
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yes... it still qualifies as "just" IMHO... but no sense in arguing about semantics.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Upstate NY
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Well, glad to hear I have the rest of the day in front of me since I just woke up!

Cheers.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:

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Originally posted by MstrG
Well, glad to hear I have the rest of the day in front of me since I just woke up!

Cheers.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: In a Blue, Blue State
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[blindrage]

Usually I'd never advocate something like this, but it may be time to go Viet Nam on Fallujah. Let the military circle Fallujah like a noose and kill every living thing inside. Then tell the world that we had to destroy Fallujah to save Fallujah.

[/blindrage]

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
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When dealing with savages the civilized always make the mistake of projecting civility upon them. History is replete with examples of this error. It is only after a sufficient period of time and a sufficient number of acts of savagery that the civilized understand that the savage must be tamed. Once tamed, the savage invariably learns through osmosis that being a savage isn't so great and longs to join modern man so as not to become just another layer in the fossil record. In time, we will recognize this dynamic in the Iraq and every place that knuckles are still considered useful for walking.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Trenchant_Troll
When dealing with savages the civilized always make the mistake of projecting civility upon them. History is replete with examples of this error. It is only after a sufficient period of time and a sufficient number of acts of savagery that the civilized understand that the savage must be tamed. Once tamed, the savage invariably learns through osmosis that being a savage isn't so great and longs to join modern man so as not to become just another layer in the fossil record. In time, we will recognize this dynamic in the Iraq and every place that knuckles are still considered useful for walking.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
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quote:

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Originally posted by billgerat
[blindrage]

Usually I'd never advocate something like this, but it may be time to go Viet Nam on Fallujah. Let the military circle Fallujah like a noose and kill every living thing inside. Then tell the world that we had to destroy Fallujah to save Fallujah.

[/blindrage]

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
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quote:

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Originally posted by mudded
Welcome to the anthropology of the 1930ies

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quote:

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Originally posted by Trenchant_Troll
Ignore it if you choose, but thousands of years defy your idealism.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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quote:

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Originally posted by CHiPsJr
Jesus. Who'd have ever thought that bill would be to the right of ME on an issue?

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Registered: Jun 2002
Location: Just to the right of the moon
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Yeah. Go Lidice on Fallujah and you get 100 Fallujahs, and then thousands more springing up in surrounding countries.

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Registered: Jun 2002
Location: Just to the right of the moon
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quote:

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Originally posted by mudded
are you trying to teach me a lesson about history and prehistory?
Well that should be interesting as I am wholly ignorant of that subject.

Prey tell... tell me more of the sort of data you base your inferences on?

how do you define the civilized and the barberic?
what are the processes of cultural exchange involved?
How do we measure the variables of "progressiveness" and "stagnation"? and how do we quantify such variables in a diachronic fashion?

this should be interesting

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Not to mention that Fallujah has a population of 300 000.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
Not to mention that Fallujah has a population of 300 000.

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Last edited by Weasel Spoor on 04-01-2004 at 11:09 AM

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These guys are apparently ex-special forces. There was an article I read yesterday in the Telegraph about ex-special forces guys working in Iraq for great money, with one US general complaining that he is losing a fair number of special forces guys, who are leaving to take up this sort of much better paid job.

I don't get why this is such a big deal that Bill O'Reilly is apparently calling for Fallujah to be evacuated and then, if they don't cooperate, destroyed. He can't actually believe that shit, but why the fuck is the hysteria such that he feels the need to say it (assuming that the reports that he did say that, are true).

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Registered: Jun 2002
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Both the reports in the Independent and the Times today say that the charred and headless corpse hanging from the bridge had dog tags. They apparently are working for an independent security firm (if we were being unkind we would probably call them 'mercenaries' and indeed that's what the locals think of them as) for the US govt.

The news pictures shown on Arab TV are stomach lurching. One of the corpses has it's head kicked clean off by a foaming Arab.

It's dumb with a capital D that the US continues to blame remnants of the old regime for this sort of behaviour. The problem is a lot more serious than that - the Sunni population of Iraq seems to loathe the US with passion on the edge of inhuman insanity.

If you match this up with the report from Basra I posted yesterday where the brits seem to exist very much on sufferance of the Shia mullahs as well it's not a pretty picture. Iraqis of all stripes want us out of there.

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Registered: Jun 2002
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According to the independent, (at least one of) the guys were still alive at one point before they were doused in petrol and then set alight, prior to being mutilated

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Registered: Jun 2002
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Yep. Grenade attack, they were dragged out the cars begging for mercy as they were doused in petrol then set light.

The front page of the Independent is especially harrowing, a picture two hands begging for mercy wreathed in flame.

I have been having the shivers over it all morning.

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Registered: Jun 2002
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I dunno. Corpses tend to tighten up and shrivel when they burn, and the arms often get draw up into odd positions.

I told my DS about Pariss's article in the Times yestarday. Funnily enough, his response was eerily similar to mine:

"Fucking shitstabbing mincer. What the fuck does he know?"

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And I was hoping for a bright side to this (that they would be employees of Halliburton).

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Registered: Aug 2001
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has anyone come across the full video sequence for this event? The mainstream media seem to have withheld the most graphic sequences.

damage control compared to the mogadishu event perhaps?

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