Democracy for Vancouver

Why do U.S. forces shoot, repeatedly, almost everyone they come into contact with when they’re entering a home in Iraq to arrest someone? Isn’t this what Tazers were invented for?

And why is it they seem to kill everyone but the person they’ve come to arrest? Coincidence, or is it just for the operational simplicity? Take no prisoners, except the one(s) we want to detain, render and torture?

This is so fucking wrong it falls of the map:

BAGHDAD — American Special Operations forces shot to death the son and nephew of the governor of Salahuddin Province during a raid on Sunday in the northern city of Bayji, the latest in a series of operations that have resulted in the deaths of civilians or close associates of Iraqi government officials.

Iraqi and American officials offered sharply different accounts of the attack on Sunday in Bayji, 120 miles north of Baghdad… Aides to the governor said American Special Operations forces broke into a house at 3 a.m. and fatally shot the governor’s 17-year-old son, Hussam. Maj. Muthanna Ibrahim, a spokesman for the governor, said Hussam was shot in his head, stomach and shoulder while he slept.

Hussam’s 23-year-old cousin, Uday Khalaf, awoke and tried to push open the door to Hussam’s room, but he was also shot and killed by the American troops, Major Ibrahim said…
…
The governor’s son and nephew appeared not to have been the targets of the raid. The American military command in Baghdad said that the house had been raided to capture a “suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq operative” … That suspect, who was not identified, was taken to a military hospital, and another “suspected terrorist” was arrested, according to a military statement.

In a separate statement responding to specific questions about the attack, the military said one of the men who was killed had been armed with an AK-47 automatic rifle and the other had had a pistol.

Our “kill them all and let God sort them out” mentality is why we have become an international pariah.

And, please, don’t tell me they got what was coming to them because they were armed (if, in fact, they were).

Instead of turning Afghanistan into the U.S., we’ve turned Iraq into Afghanistan: a lawless hellhole where you never know who might kidnap or kill you at any given moment. And as often as not the kidnappers/murderers are wearing uniforms.

So what would you do if a bunch of armed, uniformed guys burst in to your house in the middle of the night? Go quietly and hope that someday your family finds your remains in a mass grave or at the bottom of a pile of DOAs at the morgue?

I have several nephews the same age as these young men who were killed, and I can’t say they wouldn’t, in similar circumstances, have tried to protect their families the same way. My nieces probably would as well. Who wouldn’t, under the circumstances, especially when you’re as likely to be killed cowering (or sleeping) as defending yourself?

We never should have been there in the first place and now we have given them reason to hate us far more than they ever did pre-9/11.

Congratulations, Dummy: You are Osama bin Laden’s wet dream.