British soldiers beat up Iraqi teens video

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Fletchette

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A week or so old, but I got around to watching the video that caused such controversy. Typically, I am suspicious of police/government, but I have to admit that in this instance I am non-plussed.

The news media hyped this event up to be some sort of war crime, but I just can't get too upset at soldiers that beat up (and not all that severely) a few rioters that were throwing rocks and at least one grenade at the Brits.

The media seemed to gloss over the grenade; isn't that "lethal force"?

I have seen people get beat up much worse on "gang initiation" videos.

Did anyone else have the same reaction?
 
Reminds me of the Israeli soldiers beating up rock-throwing Palestinian kids. I wonder how many of those kids have lost parents and siblings due to the US-UK occupation? I wonder if we will be stupid enough to try to impose an occupation without end on Iraq. We're building at least 14 permanent bases in Iraq, so it appears that we.

The other partners in the "coalition of the willing" either have left or are planning to pull out. Soon we will be all alone there. We've suffered 25,000 casualties to date, and even William F. Buckley, Jr., recognizes that the mission in Iraq is a failure. Will we suffer another 25,000 before we finally leave?
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I support the torturers.:barf:
 
I never cease to be amazed that people are shocked and surprized to discover that war is really violent.....

Jeff
 
Good thing the news media did not hang around my high school years ago or they would have been overwhelmed by the violence.

I doubt it though, it was mostly white on white violence and that is not news worthy.
 
Imagine that....of all things....casualties and violence in a war. We should call someone.:rolleyes:
 
I never cease to be amazed that people are shocked and surprized to discover that war is really violent.....

Jeff
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I could have sworn that we officially announced that the war was over and that we were now "rebuilding". I dont think its unreasonable to be suprised that "rebuilding" involves violence.
 
Somebody must have thought it looked bad considering those old Abu Grave (sp?) prison photos resurfaced the next day to deflect any potential Muslim anger toward us instead.
 
I've watched the video. It has been widely misinterpreted with the usual result of gross overreaction by people who don't understand sportsmanship.

The Iraqi teenagers were merely engaged in the ancient sport of Rock Hurling, an activity that allows them to sharpen their eyesight, develop hand/eye coordination, and maintain muscular tone. The soldiers were simply playing according to the rules of the sport. It was their turn at bat.

This game was played in 2004 according to the narrator on the clip I watched.
 
I've watched the video. It has been widely misinterpreted with the usual result of gross overreaction by people who don't understand sportsmanship.

The Iraqi teenagers were merely engaged in the ancient sport of Rock Hurling, an activity that allows them to sharpen their eyesight, develop hand/eye coordination, and maintain muscular tone. The soldiers were simply playing according to the rules of the sport. It was their turn at bat.

This game was played in 2004 according to the narrator on the clip I watched.
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Nice one!

So what qualifies as a 'foul'? :D
 
You mean that video where the soldiers are covered up, never show their faces to camera, beat with sticks, on background there's unidentified "ooh-ooh"? Looks similar to these photos about the brits&trucks that were proved to be fake later. This is war, this is most probably a cheap propaganda trick to lay some crap on brits. I have a hard time believing anything that comes from that area.
 
fair play to the BBC, while they did show with disapproval the beating they did also show what came before that - ie: groups of youths throwing bricks and petrol bombs at the squaddies before they charged them, causing the youths to run off. the ones that got caught ran into an enclosed yard where (from the camera position) it looked like the squaddie FIT team was holed up with the resulting handing out of reminders.

sadly they did not link the beatings to the other events in the middle east recently - egyptian riot police beating and using APCs to deal with the families of the dead in that ferry disaster, iranian police beating students and executing rape victims, saudi police routinely torturing suspects etc. in the context of the area, hell in the context of british soldiering that was a spectacularly minor affair.

the same goes for the cartoons "row". twelve guys and a paper draw some cartoons and you have people marching down whitehall and most other capital cities of europe demanding anything from heavy censorship of cartoonists to death to everyone who doesnt dress their kid in an "i (heart) al-Qaeda" bonnet; meanwhile someone blows up some co-religionists most holy places and noone marches anywhere outside of iraq. i think some people desperately need to get some perspective.
 
TequilaMockingbird said:
Reminds me of the Israeli soldiers beating up rock-throwing Palestinian kids. I wonder how many of those kids have lost parents and siblings due to the US-UK occupation? I wonder if we will be stupid enough to try to impose an occupation without end on Iraq. We're building at least 14 permanent bases in Iraq, so it appears that we.

The other partners in the "coalition of the willing" either have left or are planning to pull out. Soon we will be all alone there. We've suffered 25,000 casualties to date, and even William F. Buckley, Jr., recognizes that the mission in Iraq is a failure. Will we suffer another 25,000 before we finally leave?
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What I wonder is when will we end our endless occupation of Germany. 61 years, and we are still defending that ungrateful Eurotrash? Ditto Korea.

40,000 American every year die in car accidents, and nobody bats an eye. I'm not cavalierly dismissing the sacrifice of the volunteers who go to fight in Iraq, but just making the point that, for America whole, the casualties in Iraq are not particularly significant. So if you think the casualties in Iraq are terrible, you should spend 40 times as much effort working to end traffic accidents, since they cause 40 times as many casualties.

The monetary cost is insignificant compared to what the government spend on welfare.

The only rational reason as to why we should pull out of Iraq is because it causes problems with our foreign policy, and to watch the fun on TV as the country tears itself apart after we leave. But if you added the cost in human lives to traffic accidents, and the cost in money to welfare, no one would even notice.
 
but just making the point that, for America whole, the casualties in Iraq are not particularly significant.
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Especially when it's somebody else's kin, eh? Nothing quite like Generation Chickenhawk.

(I guess we could mention the Iraqi casualties, wog life is of no importance, so why bother.)

What I wonder is when will we end our endless occupation of Germany. 61 years, and we are still defending that ungrateful Eurotrash? Ditto Korea.
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At least we aren't still at war with Germany. Our war in Iraq has only just begun.

The duration of our war in Afganistan has already exceeded our involvement in WWI - with no end in sight.
/shrug

And the winner is........the drug traffickers!

War is the health of the state, so let a thousand poppies bloom.

to watch the fun on TV as the country tears itself apart after we leave.
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"War is fun," said the member of the 101st Keyboard Commandos on his Lazy Boy in his secure location, watching it all unfold on TV. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
 
Did any of you guys notice one of the soldiers giving one of the iraqis a headbutt during the fighting? The video they showed on the Aussie news featured that, I laughed pretty loud at that. At least our media mentioned that the fighting was done at a riot, and showed some of the fighting rather than just the troops smashin the teenagers.
 
That clinches it, they must be Brits. The headbutt is a time tested, battle proven favored technique of many a European from the Isles....just pretend the enemy is a soccer ball and WHALLOP!!!
 
The headbutt is a time tested, battle proven favored technique of many a European from the Isles....just pretend the enemy is a soccer ball and WHALLOP!!!
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Yeah, ha ha ha, and the funniest headbutts of all are the ones that can kill Iraqi kids, there's a real laugh!

Seriously the tape is bad. I don't think it's fair to blame everyone involved in the war for what goes on in one tape, but these guys who were kicking unconscious youths (half their size it looks from the tape) and headbutting them deserve to be punished.

We're supposed to be the good guys, that's why (theoretically) the Iraqis are supposed to allow us to liberate them. If we're not going to expect that soldiers follow the rules, we might as well just empty the prisons and give them uniforms to fight in Iraq.
 
Uh...i haven't seen the video....but those guys chucking rocks? They're the same ones setting up IEDs and running road blocks with car bombs....whatcha' wanna bet?

I've got no qualms with dead terrorist A**holes of any age.

Again, I haven't seen the video...anyone got a link?
 
I've got no qualms with dead terrorist A**holes of any age.
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Terrorist: local armed irregular opposing occupation of his country by invaders.

Terror: what they do to us.

Counter-terror: what we do to them.

Sneak-attack: when they do it.

Pre-emptive retaliatory strike: when we do it.

Torture: what they do.

Freedom tickles: when we do it.
 
Tequila, you obviously missed the entire point of my post. I even wrote "I'm not cavalierly dismissing their sacrifice", and still you pulled the predictable "pretty easy when they are someone else's kin". The point I was making is--are you (and others) crusading for traffic safety as much as you want us out of Iraq? Tell me how Iraq is costing us more in material and human terms if 40 times more people die every year in traffic accidents. Answer the question, don't dodge with your predictable line .

We were at the brink of global annihlation for 40 years in Germany. It was a war, a cold war, one in which could have ended with the end of the world as we know it.

Regarding your latest post, you apprently can't tell the difference between good and evil. It is not bad to do bad things to bad people. It's called justice. If you put someone in jail because they are a criminal, it isn't the same as a thug who kidnaps someone and holds them illegally.
 
TequilaMockingbird

Oh stop it, you're making my heart bleed.:rolleyes:


Creeping...what you are dealing with here is a moral relativist....all morality is relative to one's point of view and whatnot.
 
IF someone was throwing petrol bombs at you because they couldn't get a job with the custom's service, would you be kicking a bit of ass perhaps?
:scrutiny:

From what I heard from various Brit soldiers over in the UK, they felt the retaliation of some kicking and beating was fair play in exchange for petrol bombs. It's far lighter than they'd have gotten from ANYONE else in the region.
 
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