Replies

Take the captured driver and accomplice and find out who they are. If they are Iraqis, arrest their families, hang them upside down in front of them and proceed to beat the living crap out of one of them to demonstrate that you have the will to kill them even if the captured prisoners refuses to talk. After you beat the first to death, then start asking questions and threaten to beat the next family member. The information you get will lead to more arrests and more special treatment. That is how this war will be won. Shiite and Kurdish troops and ruthless methods. Welcome to counter insurgency Freepers.

Y'know...he's got a point there.
It is really frustrating playing by all these "rules", while they use ambulances as bombs, kill innocent civilians, and generally do ANYTHING they want on their side of the war. It's crazy how they say they're so religious, and they don't care how people die, if they're innocent babies...they'll bomb anything, and I'm sure they have no worries about spreading chemical, disease, and nuclear disaster the second they get their hands on it.
I'm sure we wont see our guys string up people in the town square (but thanks for that visual - it releases a little of my frustration!), but certainly we are going to have to thicken our skin a little (well, maybe not us, but many others in this country) and do more of what it takes to get information. It's all cool to take the "high ground", but if they got information they need to end this using some torture, intimidation, and do to them what they do to others (an appendage to the golden rule?) then I wouldn't lose any sleep over it - and if they did it in secret, well, neither would anybody else.

Welcome to counter insurgency Freepers.

"Welcome to Uday and Qusay's fun palace," is more like it.

The tactics you suggest would only make things worse, because they would reveal us to be both foreigners and Saddam's successors.

If we want to merely extract information, torturing a person's family might be useful but it is a tactic that Saddam used frequently and it inspired not just fear but also hatred and rightly so.

I would line up a suspect's family and ask them what Saddam would do to his family in order to get information--after he answered I would tell him that the people of the USA are not barbarians--that we do not torture and kill innocent people to achieve our goals--that we believe it is immoral to do so--I would then ask them if they wanted to continue to live by Saddam's rules or if they were willing to accept mercy for their family in exchange for cooperation--I guarantee that we'd not only get a lot of information but we'd also get a lot of positive responses from the Iraqi people.

Where there is hatred, sow love...that doesn't mean be a naive idiot...it can also mean display strength but see the big picture and be prepared to exhibit mercy...kindness need not be viewed as a weakness if the person wielding it uses it wisely.

No.
The goal is to defeat our enemy, not become them.
There are other, more effective, and much more honorable ways to achieve our goals than a straight descent into hellish barbarism.

At times in the past few years,I too temporarily forgot the reason why we do not make the entire middle east a glass factory, and end this series of military conflicts now.
Thank God for President Bush, and the incredibly professional and powerfull military forces of the USA and our allies.
As an old SAC trained Cold Warrior, I understand the concept of acceptable "attrition rates".I am also willing to accept the burden of kill ratios.I am not active duty now, but those who are, do so on my behalf, and have my full support and I freely accept and share the responcibility for their actions.
This is not about local criminal gangsters murdering each other.
This nation is at War.
It will be long, hard and painfull.
Such is the nature of a nation at War.