Possible new oil spill near deepwater horizon. 100 miles long.

[sgreger1]

Just being reported near the Deepwater Horizon accident a new oil spill spotted nearly 100 miles long and 10 miles wide. It is believed to be from the Matterhorn SeaStar oil rig, owned by W&T Offshore, Inc.

[GoVegan]

Drill, baby, drill!

[russki]

Drill, baby, drill!

Let's bomb Libya first

[sgreger1]

CONFIRMED - New crude oil from the reported 100 mile long sheen began washing ashore in Grand Isle, Louisiana this afternoon.

[c.nash]

Sweet, more problems. :/

[sgreger1]

Sweet, more problems. :/

You think that's bad, wait till this start gettig some media attention:




So some Stryker unit in Afghanistan decided to go crazy last year and kill a bunch of civilians or something. They took pictures of the whole thing of course and now those pictures have found their way out to the public, despite US attempts at suppressing them.

Everyone expects the backlash from this to be worse than Abu-Gharib and foreign contractors have warned all Americans working in their facilities in Afghanistan to stay inside and all facilities are on lock-down in anticipation of worldwide unrest and demonstrations due to the photos.

Story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...ered-civilians

More pics: http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fo...cke-65976.html



To clarify, this was a rogue unit who thought they were slick and would do shit like randomly flag people down in the street and kill them, then later they would try to make it look like these civilians were insurgents trying to kill them. These are the worst kind of soldiers. If you want to kill people there are plenty of legit ways to do it, plenty of insurgents out there waiting to take a bullet, I just don't see why they would target civilians on purpose, that makes them no better than any other terrorist in my book. Civilian deaths are an acceptable collateral damage in my personal opinion, but to seek out civilians to systematically execute them for the sport of it is one of the sickest endeavors a human being can partake of.

[Frosted]

Sorry about that.

[sgreger1]

Sorry about that.

I ****_ing knew it...

[heders]

Oh my f#cking god...

[c.nash]

You think that's bad, wait till this start gettig some media attention:




So some Stryker unit in Afghanistan decided to go crazy last year and kill a bunch of civilians or something. They took pictures of the whole thing of course and now those pictures have found their way out to the public, despite US attempts at suppressing them.

Everyone expects the backlash from this to be worse than Abu-Gharib and foreign contractors have warned all Americans working in their facilities in Afghanistan to stay inside and all facilities are on lock-down in anticipation of worldwide unrest and demonstrations due to the photos.

Story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...ered-civilians

More pics: http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fo...cke-65976.html



To clarify, this was a rogue unit who thought they were slick and would do shit like randomly flag people down in the street and kill them, then later they would try to make it look like these civilians were insurgents trying to kill them. These are the worst kind of soldiers. If you want to kill people there are plenty of legit ways to do it, plenty of insurgents out there waiting to take a bullet, I just don't see why they would target civilians on purpose, that makes them no better than any other terrorist in my book. Civilian deaths are an acceptable collateral damage in my personal opinion, but to seek out civilians to systematically execute them for the sport of it is one of the sickest endeavors a human being can partake of.

Hm... Quite interesting. Civilian casualties are always going to happen, but this kind of shit is just because some people are basically against everyone over in that country. And somehow those kind of people enlist just to kill anything and everything, as sport.
This kind of shit is always going to happen especially to places where people are taught to stereotype people in certain lights.
Nowadays it seems like everyone is stereotyping middle easterns as terrorists, regardless if they are actually connected to such acts.

[sgreger1]

Hm... Quite interesting. Civilian casualties are always going to happen, but this kind of shit is just because some people are basically against everyone over in that country. And somehow those kind of people enlist just to kill anything and everything, as sport.
This kind of shit is always going to happen especially to places where people are taught to stereotype people in certain lights.
Nowadays it seems like everyone is stereotyping middle easterns as terrorists, regardless if they are actually connected to such acts.

Naturally, professions like infantryman attract those who like to kill others, that should come as no surprise to anyone, so we are going to see a higher instance of these types of people in the military or police force unfortunately, there is no getting around that. Additionally, we are sending these guys on multiple deployments, sometimes almost consecutively, and this leads to a change in how soldiers look at things after a while. They spend years trying to avoid getting shot and start seeing every person in theatre as the enemy, even when they are clearly civilians. You start seing things in black and white, us-vs-them, allies and enemies, and eventually it devolves to a general "shoot first, deal wtih the paperwork later" mentality.

The whole culture from the day you enlist to the day you get on the plane to deploy revolves around learning to hate the people you are about to go fight, and accepting the fact that you are now going to be training every single day for only 1 purpose: to kill them. Not that they have trainings telling you muslims suck or anything, because the official stance of the army is the exact opposite (mosques on every military base etc), but the actual training and experience from the platoon level down pretty much boils down to "These people want to kill you, if you don't kill them first they will come here for your family". After enough time this blends into more of a "kill anyone in theatre that isn't American, they are all the enemy" mindset.

Naturally civilians aren't always happy that we are occupying their country, but to a soldier who's spend the last 15 months trying to stay alive, a protestor throwing a rock at your convoy as you drive by is the same as an insurgent chucking a grenade, there is simply no way to know, and you learn to just pull the trigger first because the platoon sgt is always reinforcing that "they got your back" and will handle the paperwork later. My unit had over 300 investigations into illegal acts on the behalf of it's soldiers, but in the end not a single person ever went to jail or got in trouble for anything. I don't know if anyone every actually DID do anythign illegal, but I would be more surprised to learn that they DIDN'T do anythign illegal. The military is an old boys club, they take care of their own.

I would caution those who pass judgement on these evil soldiers though, you would be surprised what even the people on this forum are capable of when it comes down to it. Good men turn into monsters like you see in these pictures, these are not the sociopath weirdo's that you hoped they would be but rather these are regular people who have adapted (poorly) to their circumstances, much like the insurgents. It is just US vs. them and everything on the road to victory is an acceptable casualty, don't think the other side doesn't do it to, it's just what happens when we have prolonged wars, you simply cannot send someone to fight a war in the desert for years and not expect them to start getting a little bit demented.

[AtreyuKun]

I would hand them all over to Afghanistan, say sorry, and let them do whatever they wanted to them.

[Frosted]

What thread am I in?

[sgreger1]

Honestly, I think the whole idea of "civilized warfare" is a bit silly. There's something to the "dogs of war" analogy.

We used to have to sit through yearly "law of armed conflict" classes and take little quizzes.

The whole time I'm thinking - this is fine, but I am totally going to shoot paratroopers on their way down, any idiot in a war zone with a weapon who isn't in my uniform gets shot first, etc.

Maybe it is good that I wasn't in the infantry.

At the same time - asses like these guys need to be in jail. It would be pretty screwed up if they were killing dogs and then posing like this - much less people. When killing people becomes a hobby - you're a criminal. But I give a lot of latitude to people who fear for their lives.

Sounds like you belonged in the infantry! We had all those stupid formal trainings about nonsense like escalation of force and rules of engagement, but once we got back to the platoon all the team leaders were like "Go ahead and forget all of that, just do what you have to do to stay alive, that's really the only rule."

[sgreger1]

What thread am I in?

Oh w were just talking about how the Irish never seen a good fight before and how they are mainly pacifist bastards who could never hold their own. Nothing you would be interested in....