A real American hero.

This isn't about me, Ionus

Brave people are also honest people. Clearly, that's not what you are.

Brave people don't seek to help others by raining shock and awe upon them. Brave people don't sit miles high in bombers raining death and destruction upon people who they profess to help.

Brave people don't sit cocooned in a fortress promising the world and delivering nothing. Brave people don't spread depleted uranium, chemical weapons and cluster bombs around, nor do they plant mines, all in places where innocents live, work and play.

Brave people don't seek to help others by raining shock and awe upon them. Brave people don't sit miles high in bombers raining death and destruction upon people who they profess to help.

Brave people don't sit cocooned in a fortress promising the world and delivering nothing. Brave people don't spread depleted uranium, chemical weapons and cluster bombs around, nor do they plant mines, all in places where innocents live, work and play.

No one here in this thread (including Ionus) has made any claims that war isn't Hell. Or that atrocities don't happen in war.

Or that one side (the USA in particular) isn't a big bully with its detrimental and often errant military past.

Since when has there been agent orange been used in that particular campaign?!

I just believe the US had a legal right to occupy Afghanistan and remove the Taliban.

I finally bow out of this thread gracefully for whomever wants the last word(s) can have it.

Insult the brave men and women serving their country ...

It's more than a stretch to suggest that those willing to follow the most powerful gangster are brave.

Mr Agosto read of these lies and took a principled stand against the evil.

It's more than a stretch to suggest that those willing to follow the most powerful gangster are brave.

Bad Apples
by Jeff Huber, November 17, 2009

The Independent posted a Nov. 15 story regarding allegations of sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers. The Ministry of Defense is investigating 33 new torture cases. Human rights groups caution that the British army may face hundreds of claims of sexual and physical abuse.

The Independent outlined details more sordid than we need to repeat here, but suffice it to say that some sick British puppies pulled stunts that compare to what we know about our own shenanigans at Abu Ghraib and need to be put down.

How do these things happen in supposedly disciplined armed services of supposedly civilized, enlightened nations?

There is a depraved, bigoted, small-minded segment of every society, and any country’s military is bound to reflect that. Take a look at how successful right-wing hate radio and Fox News are in America. Lamentably, the people who fall for the fear-and-loathing media madness tend to be the people who line up to join our military.

Militaries also tend to foster a sense of moral irresponsibility. Decisions concerning life and death and war and peace get made "above my pay grade." Questioning ethically iffy policies isn’t good for one’s military career. A lot of congenital bullies achieve high rank (one might well argue that being a congenital bully is a requirement of achieving high rank). When the boss is a bully, being the bully’s accomplice becomes the key to success.

The military’s senior officer corps, by and large, is a moral morass. The Pentagon’s military analyst program is a perfect example. Retired senior officers with financial ties to the military-industrial complex teamed up with the Pentagon to sell the case for war on the major news networks.

One wants to say that the vast majority of the rank and file is on the up and up, and I believe that is the case. Ultimately, though, the rottenest apples are at the top of the barrel, and that’s certainly the case in the military. The men involved in the military analyst program were, by and large, retired generals, many of them retired four-stars. They were sending American kids into harm’s way to line their own pockets.

Where do we find such men?

We don’t so much find them as make them. ...

[read on at]

http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/11/16/bad-apples/

In his 1935 book, War Is a Racket, Butler presented an exposé and trenchant condemnation of the profit motive behind warfare. His views on the subject are well summarized in the following passage from a 1935 issue of "the non-Marxist, socialist" magazine, Common Sense " one of Butler's most widely quoted statements:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."[26]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

You dont know that..he could be a liar out for attention,

Considering your penchant for defending and apologizing for the ongoing murders of innocents and the rapacious greed of what amounts to a band of thieves