American Military Sucks, Italians Fund Terrorism
Our troops are as myopic as our policies
Eyes On The Ball News has uncovered a disturbing story: despite the previous $81 billion in funding President Bush asked for, and the new upcoming $80 billion, our military forces could not hit the broadside of a barn. The point is proven when you look at the case of Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist recently released and fired upon by the US military.
According to Sgrena's account, the car was attacked without warning by several tanks, and 300-400 rounds were fired at her car. Yet, even after all that the car was barely damaged. Not only that, only one occupant of the car was even killed, an Italian secret service agent, who was shot in the head with a .50 caliber machine gun. Normally a .50 caliber round will completely obliterate a person's head, or sever a limb. But the pathetic US arms only made a small hole in the man's head. If he were a real terrorist, we'd be in big trouble.
When we asked Marine Corp General Butch Thunderbolt, about the training of Marine embassy guards and security forces, and how so much ordinance could have been expended and have the people in the car still walk away, and finally why didn't the guards wave down the car instead of just firing, he responded with the usual obfuscation and throwing up red herrings that you would expect from someone in the military or law enforcement.
He gave us the usual government runarounds, calling Sgrena an "unreliable eye witness" just because she has given several different accounts of the event. And tried to say that since by her own account they, including the driver, were talking and celebrating and on their phones, that she would not have seen what was going on outside. All of this is typical disgusting blaming the victim that we are used to from the US. He even went so far as to insinuate she is biased against the US, just because her paper broke away from the Communist Party of Italy because it did not believe in violence anymore.
He then defended his Marines' marksmanship with a litany of "successes" of the USMC which we will not bother to repeat. But they ranged from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. He covered battles fought in air, on land and sea. They spanned from saving Paris when the French army wanted to retreat on March 28, 1918, to Iwo Jima and every other island in the Pacific in WWII. Alarmingly, General Thunderbolt actually thinks the US won the Tet Offensive, just because we obliterated the NVA army. He must not have been reading the press releases, probably because he was over there instead of here. With men like that, so blind to their failures, leading our armed forces, how can we expect to win?
"Our forces are the best trained in the world," he said. Though we weren't sure if he was trying to convince us or himself. He seemed especially worried that a whole platoon of Marines and several tanks could run out of ammunition and still only kill one guard and let two journalists and a driver walk away with barely a scratch. General Thunderbolt's contention that her story is not true is just a smokescreen for the real problem: not only are our policies myopic, but our troops are as well. It is a small wonder we are losing this war on the ground and for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. Perhaps instead of imprisoning them, we should put some of our detainees to use running our sniper schools.
We then tackled the second problem. Sgrena said their car received no warning to slow down or stop. We ran a test of our own to test this. We wanted to see if US Army soldiers could even man a checkpoint. We went around asking the lyrics to "Stop, In the name of Love." They all performed admirably, until the word "stop", which many of them could not say. Some stuttered "s-s-st-s" one guy said "move along, in the name of love," a third said "no speekee sand talkee." How could these men man a checkpoint if they cannot say the word "stop"?
Was Eason Jordan right?
Sgrena is not bitter about her experience, saying, in the same interview, "But also a lack of information in this case is [the Americans'] responsibility because you are in a war field and [the Italians' had] the responsibility to pass immediately any information. [which obviously means it is America's fault]."
Always the responsible journalist and not quick to judge, Sgrena also said she "could not be sure" if she was deliberately targeted by the US or not. An irresponsible journalist would have said "no of course not, that would be ridiculous."
Italy laundering money through kidnapping rings
In other news, Italy paid over $10 million US to terrorists to release Sgrena.
"When it comes to terrorism, we deal with it," said Italian police spokesman Bernardo Patzadicio. "We do not just try to kill it like those rude smelly Americans. That is not dealing with it. Where is the dealing in that?
"Hopefully, the money will be used to buy many IEDs. Because unwanted pregnancy is a problem in Iraq, and the women need birth control, since Bush will probably make abortion illegal when he runs Iraq."
posted by Pluto's Dad @ 3/07/2005 12:10:00 AM
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