US is beginning to turn over peace-keeping responsibilities to local Iraq Police and military officials. Here is an excerpt from a description on Yahoo of the turn-over ceremony at a stadium in Najaf, Iraq: About 1,500 police officers and soldiers paraded on a soccer field, and other officers drove shiny new patrol cars and motorcycles around a dusty track ringing the field. At one point, a small group of elite Iraqi special forces officers wearing dark green T-shirts stepped forward with a live rabbit and ripped it apart with their teeth. The leader chomped out the animal's heart with a yell, then passed around the blood-soaked carcass to his comrades, each of whom took a bite. The group also bit the heads off frogs. Elite Iraqi forces have demonstrated their toughness by chewing on live animals during military ceremonies since the time of Saddam Hussein's rule. Here's the full link to the Yahoo article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061220/ap_on_...aq_061220165442 These are the "good guys" that the people of Iraq will depend on for keeping peace and freedom alive and well after we depart. We fought and died to leave the country safe and in the charge of guys like this? Happy Holidays.
I blame all this on Florida, Katherian Harris, and the dangling chads. Think how many people on both sides would be alive today if the 2000 election had not been constitutionally hijacked. It is hard to think that it could have been worse. :angry:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(subarutoo @ Dec 20 2006, 12:23 PM) [snapback]364760[/snapback]</div> It's hard to see this ritual as any more gruesome than the modern warfare practice of dropping bombs onto areas where doing so guarantees that innocents, including children, will be blown up, all from the safety and comfort of a remote launching cockpit. Of the two, I regard the latter as an obscenity substantially more barbaric, more cowardly, and more morally indefensible than killing a rabbit. The rabbit ritual has at least the redeeming quality of forcing its practitioners to personally soil their hands and mouths with blood, which, admirable or not, does take some degree of courage. Dropping a bomb is a ritual any coward could perform without a tremor of conscience, laying waste to a hundred unseen, unfelt lives with the flick of a switch. Killing the rabbit only looks barbaric to us because we hide our eyes when we inflict far larger barbarities on fellow human beings. Mark Baird Alameda CA
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Dec 20 2006, 02:57 PM) [snapback]364831[/snapback]</div> You totally missed the point of all the sacrifice our prople have made to support a barbaric culture, actually replace one barbaric culture with one just as barbaric. Yes, innocents have died on both sides, and for what? The animal sacrifice is only a symbol of the 12th century mentality that we are supporting with 21st century warfare methods.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(subarutoo @ Dec 20 2006, 03:15 PM) [snapback]364836[/snapback]</div> No, I think I got your point the first time, as my paraphrasing of your reply shows. You find it ironic that our 21st century expertise winds up fostering what appears to be 12th century barbarism. My point is that our 21st century "expertise" is actually a level of barbarism so severe it makes 12th century "barbarism" look tame and harmless, should we care to open our eyes and see what we're doing. I do find it interesting that the "sacrifice OUR people have made" is thought to sanctify what we're doing, make it all righteous and noble, and is supposed to compel our respect and attention, while the very much LARGER sacrifice we've forced the Iraqis to make goes wholly unnoticed, except to say "Aw, too bad." That sanctimonious attitude only underscores how barbaric our conduct has been. Mark Baird Alameda CA
There actually may well be a local context to the animal sacrifice we don't understand. The New York Times notes it was popular with Saddam's Fedayeen: Each man reached into his right pocket, pulled out a frog and bit its head off. They threw the squirming legs to the ground as the group’s leader held aloft a live rabbit. He slit the belly and plunged his mouth into the gash. The carcass was then passed around to the rest of the soldiers, who took their own bites. It was explained later that this practice was especially popular among Saddam Hussein’s feared Fedayeen militia, whose members had done the same thing with live snakes and wolves. The Fedayeen were Baathists and, I assume, Sunni. Najaf is a Shia holy city, and I would expect its police are largely Shia. Thus, the animal sacriface may have been the Badr Brigade telling the former Fedayeen that they're just as tough. Of course that's guesswork. And as for barbarism, I refer you to Hostel and Saw I-III.
I don't think the word 'responsible' and our actions in Iraq have anything in common. It's like a headline in the local paper: "Bush may be re-thinking Iraq" ...this, of course, implies that he thought about it in the first place. Generally speaking, I don't think responsibility (or thought) had anything do to with our foreign policy.
Where is everyone's recognition of different cultures and standards? This is reportedly an honored tradition among Iraqis; who are we to say its "barbaric" or offensive? I'm shocked that all this talk of multi-culturalism hasn't done us any good! Are the Iraqis less human than the rock stars who have done similar things, and who we reward with adoration and millions of dollars? Rabbits and frogs are pets here, but in many parts of the world they are livestock for human consumption. I'll bet none of you carry a rabbits foot either. Can you still buy those?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Dec 20 2006, 11:10 PM) [snapback]364918[/snapback]</div> I'm sad to say...I have one hanging from the mirror in my Prius. You have to have some kind of luck out there. It's a jungle.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Dec 20 2006, 08:10 PM) [snapback]364918[/snapback]</div> fshagen Very good point BTW. [attachmentid=5957] They are only Multi-Cultural when it suits their agenda. It's funny that the death of rabbits and frogs seems to get their anger up more than the death of thousands and thousands through genocide and terrorism. Wildkow p.s. I wonder how many of the shocked and outraged here eat meat?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Dec 20 2006, 02:57 PM) [snapback]364831[/snapback]</div> Oh. Thanks for the explanation. Pass the hot sauce.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Dec 20 2006, 05:08 PM) [snapback]364866[/snapback]</div> Giving people freedom has always been a righteous and noble cause. The Iraqi people very much appreciate our efforts to rid them of the murderous Saddam regime. I suppose you have a different way to fight a war or some type of new tech that will ferret out the innocent and only kill the guilty? Wildkow p.s. If you had lived in Iraq prior to March 2003, what would you have done to gain your freedom?
I think the US should turn reponsiblity for Iraq over to the Vietnamese. They seem to be smart and competent. We could call it, I don't know, maybe "Vietnamization".
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Dec 21 2006, 09:54 AM) [snapback]365189[/snapback]</div> That's actually pretty funny. (I don't agree, of course, but it is funny).
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Dec 21 2006, 09:54 AM) [snapback]365189[/snapback]</div> Finally! The demoncrats have revealed their plan! Turn the Iraqi's over to a communist system that enslaves its citizens, murders dissenters, and has proven to be first class success! Stalin + demoncrats = two peas in a pod. :lol: Wildkow
