Anti-war veterans' group: War crimes are 'encouraged'

Anti-war veterans' group: War crimes are 'encouraged'

news10now.com

At an event in Watertown, New York on Saturday, members of Iraq Veterans Against War charged that war crimes against civilians were encouraged by unit commanders.

"The killing of innocent civilians is policy," said veteran Mike Blake. "It's unit policy and it's Army policy. It's not official policy, but it's what's happens on the ground everyday. It's what unit commanders individually encourage."

Veteran Matt Howard concurred: "These decisions are coming from the top down," Howard said.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This was discussed in some depth in a recent thread.

This, however is new - there have been indications before that western forces in Iraq simply didn't care about civilian casualties, but this is the first time I have come across allegations from ex-Iraq vets that civilians were deliberately targetted, rather than just being in the way.

There are many accounts and sources which state that casualties are anywhere from the 70,000 range to over 1 million.

My stance is that even 1 innocent death is too many.
I understand that sometimes it is unavoidable, but I feel that the greatest of care should be taken to ensure that innocents are protected, and this does not seem to be the case.

In fact, according to this article the opposite is true.


news10now.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 21/1/2008 by budski]

Well, add that to the list of charges against the current administrations.

I'm just wondering why the western peoples aren't doing something about this. Yes, these veterans are coming out and telling the truth, which is very commendable. They run the risk of being silenced by government agents now.

But it doesn't seem like the public is demanding retribution.


I knew that western military forces were taking a 'don't care' stance on civilians. Hence, it's why they feel they can indiscriminately destroy city blocks to take out a handful of insurgents in a small room, instead of rushing the room itself.
But the fact that they are deliberately gunning down civilians... thats attempted genocide.

Sooner or later, people will hang for this.


To the leaders : Creating apathy in your public so you can get away with things has a downside : When one of them finally assassinates you... nobody is going to care.

reply to post by budski


These are incredibly serious charges that, if more than just people talking, should be filed in court and would deserve a full investigation. Due to the implications if this were true, and my basic faith in people, if not the policymakers, I can only consider this allegations until that happens, very serious ones. I think if this news got out and was provable, the American people would stand up and do something. I certainly hope so.

The original link is not working for me, I am getting an empty template of their news page.

The impression I get from vets of this war is that the treatment of the Iraqis in general is very dependent on the individual in charge in a given situation: and some are good, some bad, some downright ugly.

[edit on 1/27/08 by xmotex]

What is crime? Who's laws are armies supposed to obey? Is crime sin? or Is the definition of "crime" relative?

reply to post by alittlehuman


maybe read this laws of war and perhaps understand that willful killing of civilians is a crime. in fact it's outright murder.

reply to post by johnsky


Three reasons.

1) They're brown
2) They're not Christian
3) We don't have to see them.

Most Americans are perfectly happy with the concept of killing as many "towelhead camel jockeys" as possible.

[edit on 27-1-2008 by TheWalkingFox]

This is ridiculous!!! Most people are not murders and don't have the stomach for murder. Our government goes out of its way to protect civilians. Most of our troops have a hard time after they have killed an enemy that was shooting at them. We are not some godless country like Russia or China. The troops making these claims have an agenda and they should be given the boot if an investigation finds them to be lier's.

You have got to be yanking me!! That has to be the biggest bunch of bull I've read in quite a while.

Yeah, right, "encourage" US Troops to commit war crimes. Horse-hockey!!

They being self labeled "anti-war" makes all their claims bunk. They are viewed as crackpots who graduated from the Jane Fonda school of treason.
Once labeled "ant-war" all these stupid claims are expected to come from them so when they do it is no suprise to average americans. They are just pissing in the wind.

just because there anti war does not mean that the accusations they have put forth dont matter or are irrelevent. i think personaly it should be investigated if there is truth in what they say then a war crime tribunal should be held and they should be made to pay for there crimes, on the other hand if there turns out to be no validity to what they say then they should be prosecuted for slander as these are serious accusations. either way it turns out a proper investigation by non military investigators would be called for after all its not like the military to admit to war crimes if they can bury it under the rug.

why isn't the link working?

mods plz don't delete this thread because of an invalid link

someone post a valid link