Debate: Marines Urinating on Taliban
Side: Horrible.

"The news isn't an accurate reflection of what actually goes on, which is your primary source of information." Ya, I agree, that's why I get most of my news from alternative sources. Most mainstream media stations paint the US military in a better light than even you probably would, aside from Iran's Press tv, Russia Today, CCTV etc., no western media outlet criticises the US, the best you'll get is an occasional op-ed in the guardian, or one from Robert Fisk in the Independent, but overall they lick your bootheels.Even Al Jazeera, the once widely renouced terrorist channel, is now regarded quite well by the US i.e.http://rt.com/news/changed-us-stance-aljazeera-077/ "Your view isn't antithetical to mine,"Well, maybe not antithetical, but they they're pretty far apart, I can assure you. Left of center in the US and left of center in Europe are two very different things, and I'm not left of center."but you seem to take every negative thing and then exaggerate it by tenfold."Not true, I may overshoot on some specific issues but I think when my views are taken holistically they are fairly accurate."Some of the things you say are true but it's so steeped in hyperbole"I admit to using flowery language that can sometimes be misconstrued as hyperbole, and maybe sometimes there is a little occasional hyperbole, but hyperbole implies extravagant exaggeration, I do not beleive I am guilty of this in most instances. My arguments cannot be characterised in that way."I wouldn't be a very reasonable person if I didn't object to it"You're completely neglecting the fact that you work for the US military, I mean, can't you admit that you are more likely to search for excuses, and try to justify and rationalise their actions rather than condemning them, because if that wasn't the case I would have thought you'd leave your post or quit.Therefore, accepting the above, you are quite simply biased, in fact, you're extremely biased, can you not admit that?"No when you say "this kind of behavior" it almost always includes the thing that you are using as an example."Almost ⊬ Certainty"It's sort of like saying "I want you to paint my walls a bold and bright color, like Red" and then screaming "No, you idiot, I meant colors LIKE red, why would I want my walls red?""Anyone who correctly contrasts this statement with mine will realise they are not logically consistent, in order for them to be logicically consistent, I would have had to have posted something like: *"This behaviour, and this kind of behaviour is institutional in the US army, of that I have very little doubt." Notice the first two words."Wouldn't be the first time."Example."Your link just shows a series of incidents, it doesn't support an institutionalized anything, and therefore does not support your conclusion."You're unbeleivable, you countries mililtary ruined Iraq, sent it back to the stone age, killed hundreds of thousand of innocent civilians in an illegal agressive invasion, broke God knows how many international laws, violated God knows how many UN resolutions or Articles of the Geneva convention.I mean think about for one second, the wikileaks cables on Afghanistan and Iraq documented a history of criminal behaviour, it isn't so much that they disclosed one large event, more a series of small events that have a cumulative effect i.e. beatings, woundings, killings, cover-upsAnd remember, these logs were written by U.S. military personnel—this means facts, descriptions of situations, justifications, rationalisations are very likely to be highly skewed, things were most likely left out if they made the miliatary look bad, they would've censored a lot of info, or covered it up which has already been proven to be a perfunctory practice for the US military. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/wiki-o25.shtml "In fact your link doesn't show anything that you wouldn't expect to see during wartime."The link was meant to provide access to the wikileaks cables, and yes they show a hell of lot that isn't supposed to happen when one country invades another."Sometimes there is confusion, sometimes soldiers (and Marines) do things they are not supposed to do, to paint this as being the norm for all servicemen and for the entire military, is what I object to. This is apparently something you have no problem doing, which is why we clash."I'm not tarnishing individuals here, I have no doubt there are many fine upstanding men and women in the US miiltary, over all though, I beleive the institution to be corrupt, and any fine upstanding person who joins will eventually be corrupted to some degree, even prior to the release of the cables the US and Brisitsh war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan were well known, all the cables did was expose the sheer depth and extent of those crimes.Here's a very interesting report released prior to the wikileaks revelations, I've skimmed through it, it documents the use of illegal military tactics, illegal weapons routinely used, the most egregious incidents of the war up to that point, its quite interesting actually.http://www.consumersforpeace.org/pdf/war_crimes_iraq_101006.pdf "Yes, soldiers (and marines) kill people......Duh! That is what war is."Yes, the SS and Gestapo were soldiers as well, they also killed people, and illegal invaded sovereign territories in order to further their nations hegemony, just like the US, please explain the moral difference between what they did, and what your honourable force does, or maybe we should take Saddam as an example, I think you supported him when he illegal invaded Kuwait, so why did you support your own country when they illegal invaded Iraq? I'll tell you why, because you are incapable of applying the same standard accross the board."Civilian casualties, again this is every war."Civilian casualities are a part of any intervention, i am well aware of that, but when the law is followed they are normally minimised, however when countries decide all on their own that they want to invade another, and the majority of the world disagree's, but they do it anyway in order to secure their own strategic interests, that usually results in in hell of lot more civilian casualties. When your media was beating the drums of war they loved comparing Saddam to Hitler, but the reality is, what you have done is more akin to what Hitler did than what the allies did to defend the free world."Most of this is more of a criticism of war in general than it is of how the U.S. armed forces operates."No, it's more of a criticism of your coutnries illegally wars of aggression, that were not only illegal but were conducted in an illegal fashion.No, I am not a pacifist. I oppose all violence when it is unnecessary, I could further explain by beliefs if you like."These things believe it or not all carry Penalties and are discouraged."I have never seen anything that convinced me that this is not just PR defense, and I've seen quite lot that indicated that's exactly what it is. But I am willing to admit that code of conduct of the US forces is drastically different than that followed by the taliban, but then again you can afford it, can't you?"If you can show me anything within U.S. military policy where these things are encouraged I will personally launch myself into the San Andreas fault."We both know these things would never be officially encouraged, the point is that when they are not officially discouraged, and the people committing these crimes are not effectively disciplined, and I don't mean a slap non the wrist I'm talking about the thousands of civilians indiscriminately murdered by your forces. I tell you what show me how many marines are serving life sentences and lets see if it matches up with the number of civilians that were unlawfully executed by your military, I'll bet that would be an interesting fucking excercise, don't you?"Call me crazy but when someone is talking behavior like pissing on corpses, I don't immediately jump to torture."I suppose I was looking the whole incident as opposed to just the pissing, i was looking at three young men whose lives were snuffed out because they chose to resist foreign occupiers."This might be because pissing on corpses (or POC for short) is exactly nothing like torture,"No, but I beleive it highlights the kind of disrespect and disdain for the supposed enemy that seems to be encouraged in your country, and please don't try to tell me that elements within your mainstream media don't actively promote Islamophobia, they depict them in such a cartoonish manner, and they always seem to depict muslims (or unfriendly muslims countries) in an adversarial manner that bears very little relation to reality, so I figure if your media is like that the military is (at best) the same."You mean that little incident timeline you posted below? Yeah, so have I"Read the snippets from major worlds news papers presented above in the wolrd socialist website."The enthralling narrative that you believe is mostly hyperbole."If I beleived that to be the case I would change that narrative immediately."Mostly because what you've read, seen, and heard doesn't present an accurate picture of events"Again, I would argue the converse."but partly because you exaggerate the negative and ignore the positive. Makes for a better story."I will admit that I may on occsaion be guilty of this, but I think there would be a large discrepancy between our ideas of exactly what the "positives" are, and something tells me there'd be a hell of lot more "positive" on your side."....yes......because that's what happens in wars. People die."Let me straighten this out for you once and for all. When an intervention is legally and morally justifiable (BTW I don't beleive Libya, Gulf 1 or Afghanistan met these criteria) and it has the near unanimous backing of the worlds international community, and it fails to save life but instead causes even more loss of life, I would consider that a grave blunder, and it would require the examination of whole process of intervention.BUTWhen an intervention is illegal, not morally justifiable in any real tangible way, has relatively no international support, that is a war crime, it's just as much of a war crime as when Saddam invaded Kuwait, when Hitler invaded Poland, etc.,But when it results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, well then it ceases to simply be a war crime, in my eyes it becomes something far worse, what has been done in Iraq is nothing short of genocide."On another note: Why are we talking about Iraq, the topic is about an incident in Afghanistan?"Well, the topic broadened, I began discussing the general behaviour of the US military, i don't really view your adventure's in Iraq and Afghanistan separately, although Afghanistan did have more justification and international support."Because the Military has anything to do with international sanctions??? Oh, wait. Nope. It doesn't. Gary can't maintain a consistent argument."I can maintain a consistent argument, but usually when there is this much back and forth the topic broadens significantly into different areas, and I was always going to bring up Iraq, that is where you have committed your most egregious crimes against humanity over the past 20 years, so if i'm trying to paint the recent behaviour of the US military (and goevrnment) in bad light light, iraq is necessary to highlight the sheer scale of death, destruction and devastation you country is guilty of creating."the Iraq war logs don't support your argument."Yes, they most certainly do, the logs show clearly that instances of beating's, torture, killings, and subsequent cover-ups. and they also show that the scale and frequency of these events prevented them from being rationalised as merely a few bad apples."It's basically just a list of incident reportshow the hell is that evidence that disrespectful behavior is institutionalized? "15,000 unreported deaths is not just a list of incident reports. The military denied they were even recording deaths, then it was found out that they intentionally left out 15,000, and have been caught out in literally hundreds of individual instances were senior commanders were actively trying to cover up the truth about the death of an Iraqi civilian, that sounds like institutionalised criminal behavior to me my friend."It's like pointing to a crime report and saying "Hey look, crime must be institutionalized in Detroit, look at all these muggings!"Your analogies are quite inaccurate, do I really need to dress this one down?"When you have evidence that actually supports your argument then let me know."The evidence is quite clear, look thorugh the links, tell me why they are wrong and you are right."Saying you "could care less" means that do care. If you could care less that means there are levels of caring that are even less than what you are currently at."C'mon, you actually think I don't know the difference between couldn't and could? It's called a typographical error, I even realised it when i typed it, I just forgot to correct it, I have two masters degrees for Christ's sake, I know the difference between could and couldn't!!!!!!"And you're right, what does knowledge of how the military operates have to do with a debate over how the Military operates? How silly of me to think this was relevant."I don't need to be in the US military to interpret information that is freely available."Unfortunately the facts do not support your presumptions."That is your interpretation, and it's an extremely biased one."If your argument were that raids, friendly fire, civ casualties, and crime happen, then perhaps it would support your argument."Yes, raids that resutl in civilians being killed, and then the incident is covered up, or maybe just a beating or a little torture, and they didn't just happen they happened a lot i.e. daily basis"In fact you would be hard pressed to find any war in which these things did not happen"If those things happened in legal wars supported by teh international community, they would still be crimes, so can't you see why they are so much worse when the war is an illegal imperial agression by a strong coutrny agaisnt a much weaker one?"Like your other arguments you have only made vague allusions to non-specific events to support sweeping generalizations,"What, you want to talk specifics, I can talk specifics.