Well, in fairness, not all Jews are pro-Israeli, and several like Jeff Rubin are in the forefront of trying to rein in the Israelis, their occupation of Palestine, the illegal settlements, the Apartheid wall, their assassinations and rocket attack on Palestinians, etc.

In an odd sort of way, these Jews are more courageous than the feckless non-Jews who pass on Middle East policy in US Congress, and essentially implement without question the AIPAC (American-Israel Political Action Committee) agenda.

Also...Names aren't always a sure pointer to the political tendencies of people. J.C. Hurwitz decades ago wrote a wonderful book on the Arab-Israeli conflict, replete with documents. Objective, calm and comprehensive, his was one of the few books that a student of the Middle East could genuinely rely on. THE STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINE, 1950. I still have it in my library.

And yes, Andrea and Duncan, the name 'David Horoqitz' is niggling at me too.

Back to writing!

Oceans

No you didn't!

I just have some fish frying right now that require my time. I'll be back and will post here.



Oceans

Hi, Daniel,

Many thanks for correcting me. I was basing my comments on what Armydoc4U was saying abpout his tour in Iraq in his earliest posts (including some alarming ones on the Connecting Singles site -- couldn't wait 'to get back there to kill more Hajjis', etc). What your are saying makes more sense. Again, my thanks. It is great to have first-hand knowledge shared here.

Question: with the new medical training that all US soldiers are going to have (as I understand it), might the lines between combat soldiers and unarmed non-combat medics become blurred?


Oceans

Good morning, everyone!

I'm here only briefly -- have a lot of writing to get done today.

Lots of good posts re Iraq, and lots of conviviality! Thanks, everyone....

Back later.


Oceans

Morning, all!

What is Newgrange?

Hi, everyone! Good to feel the bonhommie....

I do think that people whether they agree or not think better when they feel convivial, and I'm glad that these threads provide such an atmosphere.

I'm actually dashing out for dinner and will get back to Brenda's key question later.



Oceans

Eloquent posts, thoughtful tones. Thank you.

Sexisweeti -- great to see you joining in!

A follow-up question....

1. The US military is in internal disagreement about troop levels. Having opposed Pres. Bush's 'surge' escalation, some are now saying that to accomplish the 'mission' they have to have even more troops.

Bush's political weakness now is leading critics who formerly kept quiet to speak out more. There is also within the US military a sense that its leadership failed to accurately present to the President and the Vice-President Cheney its real thoughts and concerns with the Iraq invasion and occupation. Regarding this, General Pace was recently dismissed because he was viewed as weak and lost the support of the military leadership.

What do you think? Should the US put more troops in if Bush once again says that that will 'bring victory'?

Oceans

Kate and Chris!

My congratulations to you both!


Oceans

Fanta, many thanks for the research. Very interesting and pertinent.

One bit of info, and one question.

The decision to up the medical training of each soldier was made in the last four weeks or so. The reason to do so was given as the importance of the first four minutes of care given to a wounded soldier. It was found that the one-medic/platoon structure was inadequate to meet the four-minute goal. I do not recall seeing a comparison of the level of individual soldier training that will be given compared to what medics now receive, so the medic may retain a unique skill level and role. We can probably find out more about this....

The question: are the MOS extracts current, are they valid for combat today in Iraq?

There was toward the end of one of the extracts the following: "Generally, a medic holding his/her weapon is considered to be an armed, military threat." It seemed to me that this one sentance undermines the logic of the preceding statements about a medic only carrying weapons for defensive purposes. No?

I can well see how a medic, coming under fire while carrying out emergency medical care, would fire back, and how the next time around he might start shooting just a bit sooner, until int he end he is firing like any other soldier.

In Armydoc4U's earliest postings, he stated -- bragged -- about how many Iraqi 'rag-heads' he had killed, and how he would like 'to kill them all'. He didn't sound like a person fitting into or even wanting to fit into the MOS role that your extracts state.

One last note: We are familiar now with the torture of Iraqi detainees at Ab Ghraib and Bagram, to say nothing of their mistreatment in the field before they were delivered to those prisons. What we don't know as well is that Army medics were present while the MPs and MIs (Military Interrogators) and CIA and contract interrogatrs did the torture. I would have hoped that the medics, of all people, would have been the first to try and stop the torture, or report it up the chain of command.

Oceans

Hello everybody!

It has been a while since we have focused on Iraq and couple of people have rightly complained that their non-Iraq threads were hijacked over Iraq.

What is your sense of what is going on over there? What should the US do now?

Oceans

Hi, Fanta,

Thanks for your thoughtful points....

I have no doubt that his platoon buddies will view him as you suggest, and well they should.

I wonder to what extent that may change as more and more soldiers receive the combat medical training that has been in the past given only to the medics?


Oceans

Good morning, everyone!


Oceans

adj!

And there are the Zimmerman telegram, and Gulf of Tonkin 'attacks'.

Less known but probably more important in shaping public opinion these days are the 'black' teams that seek to provoke suspicion and violence between segments of a population, in order to destabilize it.

Oceans

Good morning, y'all!

Missed your 'hello' yesterday, Zap. My apologies. How's the Grandpa doing?

Beautiful day here! Lots of end-of-weeks deadlines still before me though.....work, worky, worky!



Oceans

When you think about it, we are all of mixed race. Racial 'purity' was lost many millenia ago.


Oceans

Wow! This is an extraordinarily good piece of propaganda. I teach courses on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have seen a LOT of propaganda pieces by all sides. This has got to be among the best. Good music, great photographs, a clever script, with not too many internal contradictions, high-leverage factual mistakes, commissions and omissions.

Kudos to David Horowitz (the producer?). Good production values.

Useless, of course, in trying to understand what really happened. But great as a display of propaganda.


Oceans

It really would take only one person to set it up.

There is a well-known pattern in which people whose job it is to save others will actually start something and then dash in heroically to the rescue.

We had an instance of this with a wilderness fire-fighter in Colroado who set a huge forest fire a few years ago, and another of a local firefighter who turned out to be a serial arsonist.

But this is a far cry from a government plot to create further pliancy in an already-panicked civilian population.

Reichstag fire?

And we know that the Bush adminsitration fabricated 'evidence' in order to panic people into attacking Afghanistan and Iraq.

But have the British government engaged in this too?

I hope not.

A 65-35 probability is already a huge indictment....

We are in bad shape when we even have cause to start questioning the honesty of our government.


Oceans

No, no hate, Spider. Pity, yes. And I wish the Army wouldn't send him to Iraq, for everyone's good, including his own.

Perhaps next time you will be a little more careful reading my posts.

Red, I greatly appreciate your thoughts and point of view and wish I could agree with you on this one, but....

Army medics DO fight and kill. They do patch people up when they are are wounded, but only then. Some medics are highly skilled and I have a lot of admiration for those skills. But their first reason for being there is to engage in combat.

The US Army has decided to start giving all their soldiers medic training. If you were right, then none of them will fight Iraqis and kill.....hmmmmmmm! We may be on to something.

My main concern with people like army doc is that they bring disrepute to America. I have seen a handful of soldiers like him: extremely angry; ignorant; profoundly racist (you didn't see that here on JSH, but this is how he first presented himself on Connecting Singles); infused with an unthinking, sloganistic and testosterone-driven 'patriotism'; and a deep need to feel heroic. These are the ones who go nuts when they are in combat; and some of these go nuts when they return to the US and become human time-bombs.

I saw some data on the rate and types of mental problems our returning troops have, and will try and find it and post a bit here about it.

The vast majority of soldiers who go to Iraq are not like him at all. They are decent kids, some of whom, rightly or wrongly, really do want to do good, and they will return deeply saddened and reflective. They don't have the educational background to assess the validity of the government's assertions about the war on terror or Iraq; they simply trust our government to have told them the truth. These are the ones my concern goes out to.

It does this great majority of soldiers no honor to be compared with Armydoc4you.

Red, I think you are profoundly right in saying that Armydoc4u was doing what he had to do to get himself psyched for combat in Iraq. Everyone who goes there has to do something to prepare. So yes we can understand his personality and how it manifests itself. We can and should have pity for him, for he will face nothing but rage and disappointment for many years to come, and perhaps for his whole life.

But I don't want to romanticize or create excuses for him: he does NOT represent the best of America, and his brand of patriotism is nothing but a danger to the well-being and security of our country, to say nothing of that of the Iraqi people he will encounter.

Oceans

Same questions to you, adj4u!