What pushes people to do this?

LikeAnOcean

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/15/iraq.slaying.ap/index.html

I mean, I can understand one person going over the edge and loosing their mind, but these fuckers all planned this!!! These animals!!! I would have risked my own life to stop these people from what they did had they been my fellow troops, but how the fuck to they all come to an agreement that its ok to rape and kill!!!

jlew24asu

I'm glad they got caught.

trappedinmyradio

people in the military cannot escape the bounds of statistics. if anything, they are facing situations which bring out those underlying mental disorders, whether they be acute or chronic, that lead to something like this. it's despicable that they did this. they deserve to be punished. you ask what pushes people to do this? underlying mental disorder which has not manifested itself as of a certain date and then environmental factors (such as those faced in the situation in Iraq) slowly, sometimes more quickly, cause those terrible things to surface. then, you have the act.

TheVoiceInside

War is hell

RainDog

Yet, you point stuff like this out and you're no better than John Kerry, you terrorist enabler, you!!

We have no right to even know this stuff happens, let alone discuss it.

Oh, wait. Sorry. I thought it was still campaign season.

This shit is just plain sick. I hope every single one of these guys rots in prision for the rest of their lives. Of course, it begs the question, how much of this stuff goes on that we don't know about?

sonicreducer

i read a book today called "Storm of Steel" about a german's reflection of WWI. it was pretty insane. 4 and a half years ducking and dodging in trenches getting fucked up by french and british mortars. the dude sustained 14 seperate wounds. he would get injured, sent to a hospital, and then back out to the trenches. pretty crazy,...



EDIT: and wtf? i hope people of other nations don't make assumptions about our people based on this isolated incident,...

aNiMaL

I hope they get ass raped in prison....then murdered.

sapperskunk

chiefojibwa wrote:

this is not war, it's murder. i hope you're not condoning that.

That was murder in a war. Sadly it's nothing new, I remember a Staff Sergeant raping and killing a little girl in Kosovo back in the late 90's or something I think. I remember I escorted a chaplain to the familys home on the anniversary a couple years after the fact. When the right amount of dipshits get together anywhere, something terrible happens. With any luck, these guys will fry.

callen

LikeAnOcean wrote:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/15/iraq.slaying.ap/index.html

I mean, I can understand one person going over the edge and loosing their mind, but these fuckers all planned this!!! These animals!!! I would have risked my own life to stop these people from what they did had they been my fellow troops, but how the fuck to they all come to an agreement that its ok to rape and kill!!!

and when you see your buddies getting blown to bits it has to affect you. I'm in no way marginalizing what these soldiers did...they need to pay for their actions...but one has to wonder if they never went to war...would they have committed this type of crime. I'm thinking probably not. So..put partial blame on the war and how it is truely evil and should be the very last option. Not like what happened with Iraq.....oh never mind the elections are over.....scrap the last sentence. (-;

LikeAnOcean

callen wrote:

and when you see your buddies getting blown to bits it has to affect you.

Thats nice, but I'd rather see my buddies blown to bits and be killed myself then live with the fact that I raped a girl and killed her and her family.

El_Kabong

when your military has to dig under the barrel just to get recruits you should expect some whacked ppl to be involved.

Eliot Rosewater

sapperskunk wrote:

When the right amount of dipshits get together anywhere, something terrible happens.

Couldn't agree more..... http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushmacho.htm

callen

LikeAnOcean wrote:

Thats nice, but I'd rather see my buddies blown to bits and be killed myself then live with the fact that I raped a girl and killed her and her family.

the correlation of my post and yours. My point again...maybe a little clearer...the human mind will be affected when it see's death and violence and this death and violence will have an affect on behavior. Again I in no way condone or justify this behavior.

sapperskunk

don't gimme no wrote:

Couldn't agree more..... http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushmacho.htm

Pretty funny, the upside down phones the best.

sapperskunk

El_Kabong wrote:

when your military has to dig under the barrel just to get recruits you should expect some whacked ppl to be involved.

Statistically compare the number of soldiers involved here and other cases to the amount of fucked up civilians out there. It's a high profile case, it's not the norm buddy.

Vedderlution_Baby

I've read multiple times that one of the soliders (forget his name...tired) said he only wanted to join to "kill something". This was a problem before he even went over there.

Scratchin a Letter

Vedderlution_Baby! wrote:

I've read multiple times that one of the soliders (forget his name...tired) said he only wanted to join to "kill something". This was a problem before he even went over there.

I remember that. Hey, whatever turns you on. I guess when you have such an amount of hatred for something, it makes it a lot easier when you're in uniform, eh.

sponger

El_Kabong wrote:

when your military has to dig under the barrel just to get recruits you should expect some whacked ppl to be involved.

That depends on what you mean by "under the barrel". Our military does not hire convicted felons. So, what then would you mean by "under the barrel"?

El_Kabong

sapperskunk wrote:

Statistically compare the number of soldiers involved here and other cases to the amount of fucked up civilians out there. It's a high profile case, it's not the norm buddy.

i didn't say it was the norm...

El_Kabong

sponger wrote:

That depends on what you mean by "under the barrel". Our military does not hire convicted felons. So, what then would you mean by "under the barrel"?

i mean ppl they wouldn't normally let in, at least not let in until they had such trouble getting their enlistment quotas.

what i meant by under the barel was from the saying 'they sure scraped the bottom of the barrel for that guy' meaning he was not a good choice, it was a play on that

they may not take 'felons' but...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/10/01/ING42LCIGK1.DTL

In February, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was "a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms 'serious criminal misconduct' in their background" -- a category that included "aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats." From 2004 to 2005, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent.

In June, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, under pressure to fill the ranks, the Army had been allowing into its ranks increasing numbers of "recruits convicted of misdemeanor crimes, according to experts and military records." In fact, as the military's own data indicated, "the percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001."

"We're looking for high school graduates with no more than one felony on their record," one recruiter said.

The Army has even looked behind prison bars for fill-in recruits -- in one reported case, they went to a "youth prison" in Ogden, Utah.

Law enforcement officials report that the military is now "allowing more applicants with gang tattoos," the Chicago Sun-Times reports, "because they are under the gun to keep enlistment up." They also note that "gang activity maybe rising among soldiers." The paper was provided with "photos of military buildings and equipment in Iraq that were vandalized with graffiti of gangs based in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities."

In July, a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, found that because of pressing manpower concerns, "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" are now serving in the military. "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator quoted in the report.

The New York Times noted that the neo-Nazi magazine Resistance is actually recruiting for the U.S. military, urging "skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units." As the magazine explained, "The coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war. ... It will be house-to-house ... until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.' "

Little wonder that Aryan Nation graffiti is now apparently competing for space with American inner-city gang graffiti in Iraq.

that is what i mean by 'digging under the barrel'

as for the felony thing...that is untrue

from the army's own website:
http://www.army.com/resources/item/2150

Can I Join the Army with a Felony?

All branches of the military are different when it comes to recruiting standards, but they all have regulations regarding felonies. The military maintains a high "moral" standard for recruits and is the basis for not allowing most felonies. If the felony occurred when you were a juvenile you have a better chance of getting in the military but if the felony occurred as an adult you may have a hard time getting in, if at all. In either case it all comes down to the type of offense and how long ago it was.

...the Army has its own list of what it considers to be a felony.

there's also been articles about the use of waivers for felons, even ppl convicted of drug charges, to allow them into the military.

in fact:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/7381
According to statistics provided to Salon by the office of the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, the Army said that 17 percent (21,880 new soldiers) of its 2005 recruits were admitted under waivers. Put another way, more soldiers than are in an entire infantry division entered the Army in 2005 without meeting normal standards. This use of waivers represents a 42 percent increase since the pre-Iraq year of 2000. (All annual figures used in this article are based on the government's fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. So fiscal year 2006 began Oct. 1, 2005.)

In fact, even the already high rate of 17 percent underestimates the use of waivers, as the Pentagon combined the Army's figures with the lower ones for reserve forces to dilute the apparent percentage. Equally significant is the Army's currently liberal use of "moral waivers," loosely defined as criminal offenses. Officially, the Pentagon states that most waivers issued on moral grounds are for minor infractions like traffic tickets. Yet documents obtained by Salon show that many of the offenses are more serious and include drunken driving and domestic abuse.

and who'd think 2 cons would make my point?
"The more of those people you take, the more problems you are going to have and the less effective they are going to be," said Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan and a senior fellow at the progressive Center for American Progress. "This is another way you are lowering your standards to meet your goals." Retired Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, who was the Army's chief intelligence officer from 1981 to 1985, also called the increase in waivers "disturbing."

AngelofIndifference

Makes you wonder how many have yet to have been caught.