cathocutie Suspended 162 Posts user info edit post |
Just got off the phone with a great friend of mine who just finished his 5th tour in IRAQ, and I am in shock and even more ashamed of us right now. He says that what we hear on tv and on the news is NOTHING compared to what you see on the ground and it has gotten exponentially worse with each tour. Rape and executions of entire families is a widespread thing and not just an isolated case.
He spoke of several accounts where many of the guys he was with at times on the ground did some nasty things to the Iraqi people EVERY DAY just because they were A-bored and looking for excitement B-pissed at being in Iraq, C-pissed at disrespect from the Iraqi people D-tired of fighting against an "invisible" enemy E-all of the above
remember this is just what he saw
The other soldiers never report this because they don't want to deplete our already depleted manpower and have the old case of tattle tell syndrome. Also, chance of blackmail for small rules every soldier breaks all the time. Reporting someone for misconduct is a huge inconvenience and everybody there just wants to get home as soon as they can with no drama.
I mean have you noticed the character of most the guys that join the military these today? Guys who are down and out and have 4 options. Fast food, prison, death or military. When people join the military just for money or a way to go to college and not to represent what this nation used to stand for then you already have a problem right there.
I've been reading blogs the last few minutes and saw some interesting things and I will try to dig up some good stuff tonight. I saw something called "Rap of Iraq" "America terrorizes Iraq" and others. Heres what i'm looking at right now http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2006/07/13/american-soldiers-arrested-for-rapeexecution-of-14-year-old-girl-and-her-family/
Sad thing is, we used to be freedom fighters and have now turned into THEE terrorist nation.
Meanwhile, our "terrorists" are getting a wicked serving lately and have a terrible hand. How long will it be before we count our losses and fold?
How many years would it take to get our image out of the gutter?, if we started working on it today (which won't happen any time soon)
Could we ever recover or are we gonna go down in history as an evil empire? 10/20/2006 10:28:32 PM |
jwb9984 All American 14039 Posts user info edit post |
shut up 10/20/2006 10:33:02 PM |
theDuke866 All American 52839 Posts user info edit post |
Quote : | "I mean have you noticed the character of most the guys that join the military these today? Guys who are down and out and have 4 options. Fast food, prison, death or military. " |
I'm in my 3rd year of active service in the USMC, and no, I haven't noticed that.
Maybe that's an Army thing.
Quote : | "When people join the military just for money or a way to go to college and not to represent what this nation used to stand for then you already have a problem right there." |
Concur there, however often it actually does happen.10/20/2006 10:36:16 PM |
0EPII1 All American 42541 Posts user info edit post |
yeah here is one [example of courageous and moral american soldiers giving freedom to iraqi women]:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5253160.stm
Quote : | "A US military hearing has examined testimony of how three soldiers took it in turns to try to rape an Iraqi girl aged 14 in Mahmudiya in March.
The girl and three family members were allegedly killed by four US soldiers.
On the day of the attack the soldiers had been drinking Iraqi whisky mixed with an energy drink and practising golf strokes at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, Mr Barker's statement said.
One of the soldiers, Steven Green, said he "wanted to go to a house and kill some Iraqis," it alleged.
The four eventually went to a house about 200 metres (yards) away and put the parents and their five-year old daughter in the bedroom, but kept the older girl in the living room.
According to Mr Barker's statement, he and Mr Cortez took it in turns to rape or attempt to rape her.
Mr Barker heard shots from the bedroom, and Steven Green emerged with an AK-47 in his hand saying "They're all dead. I just killed them."
Steven Green, who has pleaded not guilty, is being tried separately
According to the testimony, Mr Green then also raped the girl and shot her dead.
Her body was doused in kerosene and set alight.
The first day of the hearing on Sunday saw an Iraqi army medic describe how he found the bodies of the four Iraqis.
He told prosecutors he was ill for weeks after witnessing the crime scene. " |
10/20/2006 10:40:00 PM |
hcnguyen Suspended 4297 Posts user info edit post |
Quote : | "Steven Green emerged with an AK-47 in his hand " |
10/20/2006 10:42:53 PM |
0EPII1 All American 42541 Posts user info edit post |
Hey, what to expect from people who rape and assault their own fellow female soldiers?
A year in jail for rape! That must be the American Way (TM)! See more examples:
> 60% of enlisted females harassed/assaulted/raped.
> 10% raped.
Only 2-3% of cases reach court-martial.
And a year in jail for those who are convicted.
http://www.alternet.org/story/38942/
Quote : | "Female Soldiers Treated 'Lower Than Dirt' By Rose Aguilar, AlterNet. Posted July 14, 2006.
The case of Suzanne Swift reveals that women deployed in the Middle East are facing rape, abuse and sexual harassment -- from their own comrades-in-arms.
U.S. Army Specialist Suzanne Swift will spend her 22nd birthday tomorrow confined to the Fort Lewis base in Washington, where she is awaiting the outcome of an investigation into allegations that she was sexually harassed and assaulted by three sergeants in Iraq.
Swift says the sergeants propositioned her for sex shortly after arriving for her first tour of duty in February 2004. She remained in Iraq until February 2005. "When you are over there, you are lower than dirt; you are expendable as a soldier in general, and as a woman, it's worse," said Swift in a recent interview with the Guardian.
When Swift's unit redeployed to Iraq in January 2006, she refused to go and instead stayed with her mother in Eugene, Ore. She was eventually listed as AWOL, arrested at her mother's home on June 11, sent to county jail and transferred to Fort Lewis.
"She's miserable and isolated," says Sara Rich, Swift's mother. "It's not good to have an idle mind while you're dealing with PTSD and sexual trauma. I want them to release her so I can get her the care she needs. I'm tired of waiting."
A colonel outside of Swift's chain of command is investigating the case, but Rich says she has been given little information with no time frame. "I believe they're trying to break her down using fear and intimidation."
Midnight phone calls
While Swift's case has gotten a fair amount of national and international attention, the overall issue of sexual assault committed by military personnel in the Middle East has been largely ignored.
"Regrettably, Suzanne Swift is not the first," says Anita Sanchez, communications director of the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides services to victims of military violence. "There have been several young women who have been declared AWOL for seeking treatment due to sexual assault, but most of them are too scared to speak out."
Since the fall of 2003, the Miles Foundation has documented 518 cases of sexual assault on women who have served or are serving in Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain and Qatar. The foundation has counselors on staff around the clock and often receives midnight phone calls from service members or their family members. After counselors and attorneys help the women access medical care and explain the reporting process, they try to transport them to a safe place for care and treatment.
"Because they're in a combat situation, we've had to develop protocols. We can't just send a chopper in there for them. We have to get their permission to contact military authorities to get them moved," says Sanchez. "If you were at Fort Drum, we wouldn't have to tell anybody, but if we need to move you out of Baghdad or Kuwait, then we have to get your permission to contact the military and say, 'We need to move Joanna Jones because this has transpired.'"
Sanchez says a counselor recently received a call in the middle of the night from a young woman who was raped in the Green Zone in Baghdad. "She said, 'I was raped, and I've only got 10 minutes on my phone card. What do I do?'" The woman was helicoptered out of the Green Zone, sent to Kuwait and then Germany, and eventually returned to the United States.
Another recent case involved a young American woman who was raped by a coalition partner in a rural area. Sanchez says it took two weeks to get to a one-room medical facility in Kabul. "They had no facilities to do a rape testing, so they couldn't test for pregnancy or HIV. An American doctor literally handed her high-dose antibiotics and told her, 'This will kill anything you've come in contact with.'" The young woman is now recovering in the states.
Sanchez says another woman was told she would receive the morning-after pill a few days after she was raped, but received birth control pills instead.
No official documentation
While these cases aren't officially documented with the government, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense both conduct general studies of sexual assault, but the findings can be difficult to obtain.
Last year, Rep. Lane Evans, D-Ill., the ranking Democratic Member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, criticized the Bush administration for failing to release a Veterans Affairs study on military sexual trauma among the National Guard and Reserve. It found sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape is 60 percent among females and 27 percent among males. The estimated prevalence for rape among females is 11 percent and 1.2 percent among males.
The report, which was originally due by March 2001, was released last September. In a statement, Evans said, "The women and men who have suffered military sexual trauma deserve our respect, compassion and commitment to provide them with ready access to counseling and treatment. I am releasing the report, which I have obtained through other sources, to shine a light on a serious problem that the White House wants to hide in the shadows."
In 2003, Congress began requiring the Department of Defense to report the number of sexual assault cases on file. In 2005, military criminal investigators received 2,374 allegations of sexual assault involving members of the armed forces worldwide. "That number is a 40 percent increase from 2004. The '04 number is a 25 percent increase from 2003, so that's a 65 percent increase in two years. That's substantial," says Sanchez.
While there has been an increase in sexual assault in reports, Sanchez says there hasn't been an escalation in the number of prosecutions. Of those cases, only two to three percent go to court-martial, and those who are convicted get only a year in jail.
Former victims turned advocates
The majority of people working as advocates for women who've been assaulted in the military are former victims themselves. Colleen Mussolino, co-founder of Women Veterans of America (WVA), an advocacy group for women veterans, served as a cook at Women's Army Corps headquarters in Fort McClellan, Ala., from 1965 to 1967. "I was gang raped, beaten and left for dead," she says. "I was taken by the criminal investigation team and treated like a prisoner of war for six weeks, with threats. I finally signed a paper promising that I wouldn't prosecute, so I know how the system works."
WVA estimates that nine out of 10 women in the military have been either harassed or assaulted. "Look at the numbers that have been presented. You have to realize there are far more that have not come forward," Mussolino says. "When I counsel women and help them with medical benefits, I find most were too scared to report the assault. It's such a horrible thing that you just keep it to yourself for years."
"The military is closing its eyes," she adds. "They don't want to deal with it. They may be battle-ready, but when it comes to assaults on women, they don't know how to handle it."
Rev. Dorothy Mackey, executive director of Survivors Take Action Against Abuse by Military Personnel (STAAMP), was raped and assaulted while serving as a U.S. Air Force Captain and Commander from 1983 to 1992. Her cases were never prosecuted after a Justice Department attorney said they "could not bring this case to trial for national security reasons; to do so would be contrary to good order, morale and discipline in the military."
"If a woman is raped overseas, she better pray she has a good commander who has the clout to get her medical treatment and then get her out," she says.
STAAMP's toll-free number for sexual assault victims in the military has received 5,200 calls since 1997, including many from women and men now serving in the Middle East. "These kids are trying to figure out how to survive. The system is shutting down on them and putting them at risk," Mackey says. "We've been able to get some of them out of the military by going directly to the Pentagon and saying, 'We are telling you about a criminal incident. Here are the people who are raping and abusing. We are now putting you on notice that if anything else happens to this person, we will expose you,'" she says.
Mackey says Specialist Suzanne Swift should be commended for speaking out, knowing what the consequences would be. "It's not easy because you're either told to keep your mouth shut or threatened," she says. "This administration justified going to war because we said we wanted to stop Saddam's rape rooms. This administration said we can't afford to have priests raping, and yet in the same breath and lack of action, our own military leadership are free to rape at absolute carte blanche. This has been going on for too long. We must hold the government accountable for refusing to deal with this issue."
Saturday, July 15 marks a national day of action to call for Suzanne Swift's honorable discharge. Protests will occur at the gates of Fort Lewis at noon, followed by a press conference at 3 p.m. A separate protest will be held at the Federal Building in Eugene, Ore., at noon. Supporters are also encouraged to sign a petition calling for an honorable discharge.
Rose Aguilar is a San Francisco-based journalist who is writing a book about her road trip through the "red states."" |
[Edited on October 20, 2006 at 10:55 PM. Reason : ]10/20/2006 10:46:08 PM |
1337 b4k4 All American 10033 Posts user info edit post |
If your friend didn't report these to his CO, he's just as guilty as the rest of them and should be court martialed. 10/20/2006 11:18:12 PM |
moron All American 34142 Posts user info edit post |
I would like to remind everyone that Cathocutie sympathizes with Westboro Baptist church nut jobs.
[Edited on October 20, 2006 at 11:23 PM. Reason : and might also be an alias] 10/20/2006 11:23:34 PM |
Excoriator Suspended 10214 Posts user info edit post |
obviously an alias 10/20/2006 11:30:33 PM |
Shrapnel All American 3971 Posts user info edit post |
Quote : | "Steven Green emerged with an AK-47 in his hand " |
AK47s are easy to get. we had a few in the platoon we would take out and shoot out in the desert. and this was in 2004
[Edited on October 20, 2006 at 11:33 PM. Reason : asdf]10/20/2006 11:31:59 PM |
A Tanzarian drip drip boom 10995 Posts user info edit post |
Quote : | "I mean have you noticed the character of most the guys that join the military these today? Guys who are down and out and have 4 options. Fast food, prison, death or military." |
Is this how you feel about your "great friend"?10/21/2006 7:55:01 AM |
Excoriator Suspended 10214 Posts user info edit post |
pretty sure her great friend is a liberal blog 10/21/2006 7:56:12 AM |
BobbyDigital Thots and Prayers 41777 Posts user info edit post |
^ yep, the writing style is completely different than 'her' other posts.
just another TWW copy and paste activist.] 10/21/2006 9:37:54 AM |
jwb9984 All American 14039 Posts user info edit post |
cxmai
definitely another blog copy and paste. NOTHING TO SEE HERE as per usual 10/21/2006 9:59:22 AM |
Dentaldamn All American 9974 Posts user info edit post |
RAPE OF NANKING!!!!!!!! 10/21/2006 10:54:56 AM |
bgmims All American 5895 Posts user info edit post |
Quote : | "pretty sure her great friend is a liberal blog" |
ahahah, that's funny shit right there. ___
For my take on the whole military issue:
It needs to be cleaned up. When you find people who do something decidedly evil like four of them, they should be tried and, if found guilty, imprisoned or executed (I lean towards the latter).
For those that harass female soldiers, they should be tried, and court-martialed or imprisoned. The same for harassing soldiers that are victims into not coming forward.
I don't know that the problem is as wide spread as it might appear, because we always see "harassed" thrown in as the same category as assault and rape and quite frankly, harassment can be as gentle as telling her she's hot when she's not into you. I think we would get a better idea (it still is too high) of the problem if they categorized it differently10/21/2006 12:50:35 PM |
wolftrap All American 1260 Posts user info edit post |
Quote : | "Sanchez says another woman was told she would receive the morning-after pill a few days after she was raped, but received birth control pills instead." |
the morning-after pill is just a triple dose of birth control pills10/21/2006 3:59:22 PM |
Aficionado Suspended 22518 Posts user info edit post |
haha you said tip 10/21/2006 4:51:08 PM |
bigben1024 All American 7167 Posts user info edit post |
your friend sounds like a stand-up guy. 10/21/2006 11:26:36 PM |
GrumpyGOP yovo yovo bonsoir 18191 Posts user info edit post |
1) Anecdotal evidence. 2) What percent of the general female population is raped (by some or another standard) in their lifetime? Isn't it rather higher than 11%? 3) I'm still only seeing the one or two examples of this happening. Show me more. It's abominable, but given the number of people and the amount of time we're talking about, I'm not convinced, as yet, that it's any worse with the military than it is with the general population. 10/22/2006 2:31:11 PM |
TreeTwista10 minisoldr 148441 Posts user info edit post |
*** AMERICAN SOLDIER RAPING IRAQI INFANT - WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGE ***
10/23/2006 11:17:37 AM |
pwrstrkdf250 Suspended 60006 Posts user info edit post |
lol
god this chick sucks 10/23/2006 11:22:11 AM |
Str8BacardiL ************ 41754 Posts user info edit post |
lol you put
in the title
lol10/23/2006 11:34:25 AM |
bgmims All American 5895 Posts user info edit post |
Quote : | "3) I'm still only seeing the one or two examples of this happening. Show me more. It's abominable, but given the number of people and the amount of time we're talking about, I'm not convinced, as yet, that it's any worse with the military than it is with the general population. " |
Its like everywhere Grumpy. Every soldier is required to rape an Iraqi teenager on Tuesdays. They just don't report it because Jews control the media.10/23/2006 11:38:34 AM |
cathocutie Suspended 162 Posts user info edit post |
My friend is a stand up guy because he volunteered to go fight for his country and stood through things like this even if he didn't agree with the entire operation or the president at all. He loves country more than self. Too bad our leaders haven't done the same in 60 years. 11/2/2006 9:09:43 PM |
tmmercer All American 2290 Posts user info edit post |
cathocutie...are you really naive enough/uninformed to believe were an evil empire? 11/2/2006 9:25:11 PM |
cathocutie Suspended 162 Posts user info edit post |
by association... We aid/support an evil empire which makes us just as bad. 11/2/2006 10:32:59 PM |
synapse play so hard 60939 Posts user info edit post |
hahahahaha
i forgot she's this idiot.
http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=434371 11/3/2006 9:37:05 AM |
BobbyDigital Thots and Prayers 41777 Posts user info edit post |
are there any cathocutie rape stories?
I think i'd enjoy reading a few. 11/3/2006 9:37:57 AM |
Mr. Joshua Swimfanfan 43948 Posts user info edit post |
Quote : | "My friend is a stand up guy because he volunteered to go fight for his country and stood through things like this even if he didn't agree with the entire operation or the president at all." |
Actually, your friend is a total shitbag for not reporting it.11/3/2006 10:02:16 AM |
HUR All American 17732 Posts user info edit post |
at least everyone from iraq if free from the tyranny of Sadaam . 11/3/2006 10:11:55 AM |
AxlBonBach All American 45550 Posts user info edit post |
userblock ftw
this whore needs to die 11/3/2006 10:14:53 AM |