"The Horror, the horror..."

[Javaman]

"Haditha was shockingly different - a feral place where the marines hardly washed; a number had abandoned the official living quarters to set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out; and a daily routine punctured by the emergency alarm of the dam itself with its antiquated and crumbling machinery."

<snip>

"Instead, a number had moved into small encampments around the dam's entrances that resembled something from Lord of the Flies. Entering one, a marine was pulling apart planks of wood with his dirt-encrusted hands to feed a fire."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/20...

Sounds like loose description from Joseph Conrad's, Heart of Darkness" but in this case, a line from the story gives a better title, "heart of the insurgency".

This whole situation reminds me of a scene from the movie "Apocalypse Now", when Martin Sheens character confronts the soldier in the trench near a bridge and asks for the commanding officer, the soldier replied, "you ain't him?"

This whole war is ripe for metaphor, but that one line in that movie sums up this whole fucked up exercise in human futility, who is leading? Who is in charge? who is giving the orders? It appears from the way the taking heads in the WH always paint it, it's as if various "rogue" marines are the ones taking matters into their own hands and are always responsible for the various atrocities we keep hearing about coming from Iraq and Afghanistan. It's never the senior officers. However, this is a double edged situation. The soldiers are given sole blame for the various "war" crimes and it's always some no name scape goat junior officer that gets the brunt of the punishment. Like Rumspuke has said, "who knows?" exactly, who does know? One one edge, if we have this military that is full of these various rouge soldiers out to make us look bad by their various fucked up field decisions, wouldn't that beg the ultimate question: (the other edge) who is training and commanding them? It's apparent, that those senior officers are completely incompetent.

No one wants to ask the ultimate question: how come discipline is breaking down at such an accelerated rate that these crimes are being committed? And why isn't something being done, other than "values" training?

We will see another cover up as we did with Abu Garib. A few token soldiers, a few scapegoated officers, but no real investigation into the senior officers or WH officials that are looking the other way on these crimes.

We all know where these crimes come from: from the top down.

But no one wants to tread into that dark place full of true horrors. No one has the courage to ask the un-askable questions. If there ever was a character that needs to be revived, Martin Sheens character, Capt Willard, we need him now. To do the dirty work, to take the slings and arrows of public humiliation from the MSM speed machine when speaking the truth.

This fictitious Capt Willard needs to pull back the curtain on the evils that lurk in these peoples very hearts and to expose that terrible horror. To flay open their very souls and display the lie that has been perpetrated upon the American public.

This war is wholesale immorality.

The horror, the horror...

(edited for spelling)

[Greyskye]

1. Interesting and shocking...

...but you might want to change the 'rouge' marines to 'rogue' marines. I doubt many of them are wearing make-up. :evilgrin:

[mmonk]

2. .

:rofl:

[Javaman]

3. Thanks :) Spell check is great, just need a logic check. LOL