If it was possible to give a standing ovation to someone via Hacker News, I would. This is perhaps the most sincere, mature, well-thought out commentary I've ever read on anything to do with the Iraq war. Spoken like a true soldier.
edit: to clarify what I mean, I grew up shortly after there was a civil war in my country - and as such I really appreciate soldiers who, having fought on soil that was not their own, are able to recognize the tragedy that occurs on both sides, regardless of politics.
I think it came across quite clearly in the video that the guys on the ground were a lot more attached to the situation. You could here it in their voices. An important part of this story that sadly won't get much attention is how badly the soldiers are treated. The sergeant could potentially have saved this guy a lot of trouble by letting him see a "mental health person".
The commentary of this soldier, and possibly others, would have provided some context to this incident. He supports the initial engagement, but criticizes the secondary attack on the van and a later firing of a Hellfire missile into a building.
A context the Wikileaks' "Collateral Murder" campaign was sorely lacking.
Yes; I lost a lot of respect for Wikileaks after that. It seemed as if they'd branched out into the propaganda business. I wonder what made them change direction after so long.
We wouldn't ever have heard of this soldier if it weren't for the WikiLeaks video - and if they hadn't sensationalized it, nobody would ever have seen the video.
They did exactly what they were supposed to do: get the raw info out there, so that we can now all go through digesting it and picking it apart. This was the whole point in the first place.
agree, I support their release of the video, but as the Solider discusses, exposing the average human to the terribleness of War is all you need to do, not overblow with commentary.
My wife and I had a baby girl 5 weeks ago; I never imagined I could feel as much love for someone or something as I feel for her. I easily would give my life for her.
Having just experience my daughter’s birth, the soldier’s description in this article of the young girl in the shot up van and the sound of her cry cut me to the core. I can’t imagine what he is going through and the torment he must feel when that memory flashes through his mind.
The journalists will write, the commentators will comment, and the analysts will analyze. There are so many angles to consider, this point and that point. I realize that. But in the end, all I can think to do is to simply grieve for this situation and for the many others just like it that I am sure exist. I am also profoundly thankful that I was born where I was, and live where I do. Peace is truly priceless.
Were you born in America? Because America did this. They went to Iraq and did this.
all I can think to do is to simply grieve for this situation
No, you can ask that America leaves Iraq. If it was your daughter, you wouldn't just say, "I guess all I can do is grieve". Right? Look at her. I have a daughter too. You can do a fuck lot more than that.
I was in Iraq when this happened. It is a fairly representative incident -- the only remarkable thing is that Reuters people were involved. There have been plenty of within-rules shootings which led to the deaths of civilians, but there were also plenty of situations where the rules hindered successful operations or even self-defense. It's a balancing act, and it's war, so it's choosing among least-bad options, with imperfect information.
It's fair to criticize the Rules of Engagement as being overly hostile to civilians, and counter to the goal of winning and leaving. In Afghanistan, GEN McChrystal actually stopped a lot of effective tactics (night raids, airstikes, etc.) because they were counter to the strategy of winning the war by winning the populace. In Iraq, there were periods of intense kinetic violence (such as going into Baquba, Sadr city, Fallujah) combined with periods of reconstruction and trying to win the populace.
I actually knew Julian Assange from running a remailer long before wikileaks, and he seemed like a pretty decent guy. I'm not sure what happened. I'm betting he/they felt marginalized and were trying to use this to raise their own profile. I support the general idea of transparency through third parties publishing information, but I can't support wikileaks.
Here is a solid collection of reactions to the video from military blogs. They were a bit after the actual WikiLeaks video hit HN so I never posted the link here, but it might be interesting to those looking for the insightful view of people with relevant knowledge and experience.
The innocent people who were killed will never get to talk to the media or their family and friends. Imagine if a foreign military had been flying around your city with high powered weapons looking for insurgents among civilians and were making deadly assumptions and saying things like they did in that video
If this video had not come to light, we'd keep thinking that war was cut and dry. Why are people attacking Wikileaks when the guilty had months to put together a calm, cooling anti-story for the media in hindsight?
Things like this video probably happened dozens if not hundreds of times over there, so you want to find an excuse for this one? What about all the others?
"There’s no easy way to kill somebody. You don’t just take somebody’s life and then go on about your business for the rest of the day. That stays with you. And cracking jokes is a way of pushing that stuff down. That’s why so many soldiers come back home and they’re no longer in the situations where they have other things to think about or other people to joke about what happened … and they explode."
I think a lot of people who jumped to conclusions about this video should take these words to heart.
If you are an American taxpayer, you also pay for their psychiatry and medication for the rest of their lives too when they come back, even if they don't "explode".
I have a friend who was drafted into Vietnam, whose airport was overrun and he had to defend himself with a handgun. To this day he still has serious mental issues from being put in a position to have to kill people face-to-face.
Many soldiers in Iraq were just ignorant kids who rushed to sign up after 9/11 with their misguided thinking they'd go to war against those who did that. Instead they were sent to a manufactured war in Iraq. Doesn't justify this behavior in the least but it does give some insight.
"I doubt that they were a part of that firefight. However, when I did come up on the scene, there was an RPG as well as AK-47s there. … You just don’t walk around with an RPG in Iraq, especially three blocks away from a firefight. …"
"And where the soldier said [in the video], “Well, you shouldn’t take your kids to battle.” Well in all actuality, we brought the battle to your kids. There’s no front lines here. This is urban combat and we’re taking the war to children and women and innocents."
and "I don’t think that [the] big picture is whether or not [the Iraqis who were killed] had weapons. I think that the bigger picture is what are we doing there? We’ve been there for so long now and it seems like nothing is being accomplished whatsoever, except for we’re making more people hate us."
I admire this guy. He seems to take responsibility vs ducking it or explaining it away.
You know what I find most depressing? That Gizmodo got 20 Million page views in a day for their iPhone 4G scoop. I somehow doubt this will get as much coverage.
Psychologically, it's very difficult to question a war you're fighting. Believing it's worthwhile is a coping mechanism. If this fellow can be strong enough to question it, what excuse do the rest of us have?
Quote: I think that the bigger picture is what are we doing there? We’ve been there for so long now and it seems like nothing is being accomplished whatsoever, except for we’re making more people hate us.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for the argument that the video was released without context that would justify the American military action. If the American military had wanted context, they should have released the video themselves with additional context. Instead, the American military suppressed the video. They should not complain that the video is now being released without context.
Americans are in Iraq as foreign occupiers. Americans invaded under false pretenses a country that had not attacked them first. The burden of proof is on the Americans, not Wikileaks, to justify American killing of Iraqi innocents.
Aside from the larger issue being debated here, I think you're guilty of operating under an outdated assumption. The US forces in Iraq have not been 'foreign occupiers' for quite some time. They are there at the will of the democratically elected Iraqi government in a deployment sanctioned by the UN Security Council. It should be possible to acknowledge this fact even while disagreeing with the presence of US forces in Iraq.
Nor do I believe the US military had an obligation to release the video, although they did have an obligation to conduct a serious and thorough investigation and make the results and key aspects of it public. I think it's clear this didn't happen, but it did not justify Wikileaks's heavily edited and flawed version of the video.
Weapons of Mass Destruction were never found. That was the causus belli. That was the reason for the invasion, and they don't exist.
Someone, anyone, tell me why the U.S. is still there and under what legal basis. Anyone. I dare you.
The problem is that you can't. And so now we're talking about kids with glass in their eyes and bullets in their bodies, and soldiers with psychological scars that won't heal. Yet not a single person can give a valid, legal reason for it all. Yet no one will take two minutes to email their representative and say, "Stop it."
Technically, WMDs was only one of a number of casus belli stated officially by the US prior to the war, which included Iraq's non-compliance with the terms of the 1991 ceasefire, its continued hampering of UNMOVIC weapons inspection teams, its repression of its civilian population, its attempted assassination of a former US president, its continued firing on US aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone and its harbouring of international terrorists. I don't believe the US and UK should have launched that war in the first place and I personally thought the rationale was a little shaky, but the historical record does show that it wasn't only about WMDs.
The legal basis for the continued US presence is well-established and widely known, so I'm surprised you feel confident enough to dare anybody to explain it to you. Subsequent to the invasion, the presence of US and other coalition forces in Iraq was legitimised by, in turn, UNSC Resolution 1483 (2003), 1546 (2004), 1637 (2005) and 1723 (2006), IIRC. The last action taken by the UNSC with regards to multinational forces in Iraq was to extend the mandate authorising their presence till December 2008. Thereafter, the continued presence of US forces in Iraq has been legally authorised by the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, which calls for US forces to leave the country by December 31, 2011. Whatever the moral case for a continued US presence in Iraq may be, the legal basis is sound.
Something else that's worth noting is that the Wikileaks video dates from 2007, during the height of combat operations surrounding the surge. At the time those sorts of engagements were a daily occurrence. This is no longer the case; these days the remaining US forces in Iraq are involved in relatively few direct combat operations and the overall level of violence in the country has dropped to a level where a slow US withdrawal is now possible without causing a security vacuum. From a US perspective Iraq is now a solved problem and the war is just about over. I must give credit to General Petraeus and his sane and unorthodox counter-insurgency strategy for that, for what it's worth.
So the stuff shown in the Wikileaks footage seldom happens in Iraq anymore. I would suggest that your time is better spent not impotently demanding that US forces leave now based on your reaction to a three year old video, but rather applying pressure on your representatives to ensure the planned withdrawal from Iraq happens on time and that US combat operations in that country end as scheduled on 31 August. I see no reason why it won't though, and in my opinion Afghanistan is a far more pressing concern on which to focus at the moment.
They are still there because, very simply, it has gone too far now.
Pulling out would be carnage - and I suspect, sadly, it has got to the stage where the US will have to see it through to conclusion (probably years away).
>We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.
>We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of "god and country". The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn't have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.
>More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.
>Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the values of our nation's leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won't lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation's importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.
You acknowledge that it's minor, then draw major conclusions from it (sloppy journalism).
It's worth keeping in mind that the hospital's record of her age may be a guess from whoever admitted her. But it doesn't change the point anyone is making, on either side.
[EDIT: The following comment is off-topic; therefore I wish I hadn't posted it. I didn't delete it, though, so that you could make sense of the comment responses to it. My apologies for being off-topic.]
I'm about to express an unpopular opinion, so I'm expecting lots of downvotes, but at least I believe that what I'm expressing is rational and from the heart.
Regarding this whole WikiLeaks incident, I felt bad for both the Iraqi casualties and the soldiers. If the soldiers had full knowledge that they were firing on a family that was simply trying to help the wounded, you know that they wouldn't have fired. They fired because they assumed there were insurgents in the van. They made a mistake.
What really bothers me is that so many people get outraged over the soldiers' mistake, but so many people gladly eat factory-farmed meat. Animals in factory farms are subject to a very painful existence before their lives are cut short. Yet most people don't care. It's hard for me to stomach the criticism that the soldiers get knowing that many of the people who criticize these soldiers will then go eat a burger, fully and willfully participating in a system that creates unnecessary suffering and carnage to innocent beings.
In other words, our priorities as a society are out of whack. If we really cared about violence, there is something that each of us can do right away: go vegetarian. It's easier to criticize the violence of soldiers than take action ourselves to live a less violent life.
I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but you really cannot expect us to hold the lives of children in Iraq anywhere near that of Cattle. It's hardly hypocrisy to eat a burger after calling out the soldiers, as people and animals really are, according to almost every person as well as almost every religion/philosophy, on completely different planes of existence.
I support the troops who did this, but I don't think people who don't and who eat non-organic meats are hypocrites for it.
I'm downvoting you because there's absolutely no reason to bring up your opinion on factory farming in this particular thread. In a discussion of factory farming, the harm done to animals, or even a basic food/vegitarianism thread, I would gladly upvote you for sharing from the heart, even as I disagreed with you. But really, this is not the place.
> Animals in factory farms are subject to a very painful existence before their lives are cut short
Well, as someone with family members in farming - AND a cynic who dislikes causing animals to suffer unnecessarily - for the most part this is utter bullshit. Slaughtering is highly regulated (at least here in the UK) and is designed to cause very little suffering to the animal.
You raise an interesting point about the difference between intent and outcome. Making the factory farm analogy makes it appear that you are hijacking an issue to push your own agenda.
To paraphrase you:
The soldiers weren't out there with the express intent of killing civilians, but farms do have the express intent of killing animals. It's not that you equate human loss of life with animal loss of life. It's that you equate accidental loss of human life with intentional destruction of animal life.
In response I would say that we all draw that line somewhere. Humans don't tolerate unlimited cruelty to animals, even if it is beneficial to us.
Jeez dude... Do you really equate human and animal life? I have lots of sympathy with your position in general, and I don't have a good answer for why I don't go vegetarian, but this seems extreme to me.
Ya dude, that's taking it too far. You can't compare the loss of human life to ANYTHING else. I understand your position, but stating it detracts from what's really important - the unnecessary loss of human life.
[+] [-] TallGuyShort|16 years ago|reply
edit: to clarify what I mean, I grew up shortly after there was a civil war in my country - and as such I really appreciate soldiers who, having fought on soil that was not their own, are able to recognize the tragedy that occurs on both sides, regardless of politics.
[+] [-] stse|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roboneal|16 years ago|reply
A context the Wikileaks' "Collateral Murder" campaign was sorely lacking.
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caffeine|16 years ago|reply
They did exactly what they were supposed to do: get the raw info out there, so that we can now all go through digesting it and picking it apart. This was the whole point in the first place.
[+] [-] pquerna|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakarta|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sattsinnova|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] F_J_H|16 years ago|reply
Having just experience my daughter’s birth, the soldier’s description in this article of the young girl in the shot up van and the sound of her cry cut me to the core. I can’t imagine what he is going through and the torment he must feel when that memory flashes through his mind.
The journalists will write, the commentators will comment, and the analysts will analyze. There are so many angles to consider, this point and that point. I realize that. But in the end, all I can think to do is to simply grieve for this situation and for the many others just like it that I am sure exist. I am also profoundly thankful that I was born where I was, and live where I do. Peace is truly priceless.
[+] [-] david927|16 years ago|reply
all I can think to do is to simply grieve for this situation
No, you can ask that America leaves Iraq. If it was your daughter, you wouldn't just say, "I guess all I can do is grieve". Right? Look at her. I have a daughter too. You can do a fuck lot more than that.
Let's get the US out of Iraq and back home. NOW.
[+] [-] rdl|16 years ago|reply
It's fair to criticize the Rules of Engagement as being overly hostile to civilians, and counter to the goal of winning and leaving. In Afghanistan, GEN McChrystal actually stopped a lot of effective tactics (night raids, airstikes, etc.) because they were counter to the strategy of winning the war by winning the populace. In Iraq, there were periods of intense kinetic violence (such as going into Baquba, Sadr city, Fallujah) combined with periods of reconstruction and trying to win the populace.
I actually knew Julian Assange from running a remailer long before wikileaks, and he seemed like a pretty decent guy. I'm not sure what happened. I'm betting he/they felt marginalized and were trying to use this to raise their own profile. I support the general idea of transparency through third parties publishing information, but I can't support wikileaks.
[+] [-] jacquesm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krschultz|16 years ago|reply
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/reaction-on-milita...
[+] [-] ck2|16 years ago|reply
If this video had not come to light, we'd keep thinking that war was cut and dry. Why are people attacking Wikileaks when the guilty had months to put together a calm, cooling anti-story for the media in hindsight?
Things like this video probably happened dozens if not hundreds of times over there, so you want to find an excuse for this one? What about all the others?
[+] [-] kscaldef|16 years ago|reply
I'm not sure why you say that. I didn't think "war was cut and dry" prior to this video being released. Did you?
[+] [-] sunchild|16 years ago|reply
I think a lot of people who jumped to conclusions about this video should take these words to heart.
[+] [-] ck2|16 years ago|reply
I have a friend who was drafted into Vietnam, whose airport was overrun and he had to defend himself with a handgun. To this day he still has serious mental issues from being put in a position to have to kill people face-to-face.
Many soldiers in Iraq were just ignorant kids who rushed to sign up after 9/11 with their misguided thinking they'd go to war against those who did that. Instead they were sent to a manufactured war in Iraq. Doesn't justify this behavior in the least but it does give some insight.
[+] [-] jacquesm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adame944|16 years ago|reply
"I doubt that they were a part of that firefight. However, when I did come up on the scene, there was an RPG as well as AK-47s there. … You just don’t walk around with an RPG in Iraq, especially three blocks away from a firefight. …"
[+] [-] plinkplonk|16 years ago|reply
"And where the soldier said [in the video], “Well, you shouldn’t take your kids to battle.” Well in all actuality, we brought the battle to your kids. There’s no front lines here. This is urban combat and we’re taking the war to children and women and innocents."
and "I don’t think that [the] big picture is whether or not [the Iraqis who were killed] had weapons. I think that the bigger picture is what are we doing there? We’ve been there for so long now and it seems like nothing is being accomplished whatsoever, except for we’re making more people hate us."
I admire this guy. He seems to take responsibility vs ducking it or explaining it away.
[+] [-] ErrantX|16 years ago|reply
Shame.
[+] [-] brlewis|16 years ago|reply
Quote: I think that the bigger picture is what are we doing there? We’ve been there for so long now and it seems like nothing is being accomplished whatsoever, except for we’re making more people hate us.
[+] [-] dpatru|16 years ago|reply
Americans are in Iraq as foreign occupiers. Americans invaded under false pretenses a country that had not attacked them first. The burden of proof is on the Americans, not Wikileaks, to justify American killing of Iraqi innocents.
[+] [-] Maktab|16 years ago|reply
Nor do I believe the US military had an obligation to release the video, although they did have an obligation to conduct a serious and thorough investigation and make the results and key aspects of it public. I think it's clear this didn't happen, but it did not justify Wikileaks's heavily edited and flawed version of the video.
[+] [-] david927|16 years ago|reply
Someone, anyone, tell me why the U.S. is still there and under what legal basis. Anyone. I dare you.
The problem is that you can't. And so now we're talking about kids with glass in their eyes and bullets in their bodies, and soldiers with psychological scars that won't heal. Yet not a single person can give a valid, legal reason for it all. Yet no one will take two minutes to email their representative and say, "Stop it."
[+] [-] Maktab|16 years ago|reply
The legal basis for the continued US presence is well-established and widely known, so I'm surprised you feel confident enough to dare anybody to explain it to you. Subsequent to the invasion, the presence of US and other coalition forces in Iraq was legitimised by, in turn, UNSC Resolution 1483 (2003), 1546 (2004), 1637 (2005) and 1723 (2006), IIRC. The last action taken by the UNSC with regards to multinational forces in Iraq was to extend the mandate authorising their presence till December 2008. Thereafter, the continued presence of US forces in Iraq has been legally authorised by the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, which calls for US forces to leave the country by December 31, 2011. Whatever the moral case for a continued US presence in Iraq may be, the legal basis is sound.
Something else that's worth noting is that the Wikileaks video dates from 2007, during the height of combat operations surrounding the surge. At the time those sorts of engagements were a daily occurrence. This is no longer the case; these days the remaining US forces in Iraq are involved in relatively few direct combat operations and the overall level of violence in the country has dropped to a level where a slow US withdrawal is now possible without causing a security vacuum. From a US perspective Iraq is now a solved problem and the war is just about over. I must give credit to General Petraeus and his sane and unorthodox counter-insurgency strategy for that, for what it's worth.
So the stuff shown in the Wikileaks footage seldom happens in Iraq anymore. I would suggest that your time is better spent not impotently demanding that US forces leave now based on your reaction to a three year old video, but rather applying pressure on your representatives to ensure the planned withdrawal from Iraq happens on time and that US combat operations in that country end as scheduled on 31 August. I see no reason why it won't though, and in my opinion Afghanistan is a far more pressing concern on which to focus at the moment.
[+] [-] ErrantX|16 years ago|reply
Pulling out would be carnage - and I suspect, sadly, it has got to the stage where the US will have to see it through to conclusion (probably years away).
[+] [-] mawhidby|16 years ago|reply
The HN thread on the original video can be found at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1241879
[+] [-] pauljonas|16 years ago|reply
>We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.
>We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of "god and country". The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn't have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.
>More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.
>Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the values of our nation's leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won't lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation's importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] parasctr|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] scott_s|16 years ago|reply
It's worth keeping in mind that the hospital's record of her age may be a guess from whoever admitted her. But it doesn't change the point anyone is making, on either side.
[+] [-] techiferous|16 years ago|reply
I'm about to express an unpopular opinion, so I'm expecting lots of downvotes, but at least I believe that what I'm expressing is rational and from the heart.
Regarding this whole WikiLeaks incident, I felt bad for both the Iraqi casualties and the soldiers. If the soldiers had full knowledge that they were firing on a family that was simply trying to help the wounded, you know that they wouldn't have fired. They fired because they assumed there were insurgents in the van. They made a mistake.
What really bothers me is that so many people get outraged over the soldiers' mistake, but so many people gladly eat factory-farmed meat. Animals in factory farms are subject to a very painful existence before their lives are cut short. Yet most people don't care. It's hard for me to stomach the criticism that the soldiers get knowing that many of the people who criticize these soldiers will then go eat a burger, fully and willfully participating in a system that creates unnecessary suffering and carnage to innocent beings.
In other words, our priorities as a society are out of whack. If we really cared about violence, there is something that each of us can do right away: go vegetarian. It's easier to criticize the violence of soldiers than take action ourselves to live a less violent life.
Let the downvoting begin. :/
[+] [-] alexgartrell|16 years ago|reply
I support the troops who did this, but I don't think people who don't and who eat non-organic meats are hypocrites for it.
[+] [-] lotharbot|16 years ago|reply
I'm downvoting you because there's absolutely no reason to bring up your opinion on factory farming in this particular thread. In a discussion of factory farming, the harm done to animals, or even a basic food/vegitarianism thread, I would gladly upvote you for sharing from the heart, even as I disagreed with you. But really, this is not the place.
[+] [-] ErrantX|16 years ago|reply
Well, as someone with family members in farming - AND a cynic who dislikes causing animals to suffer unnecessarily - for the most part this is utter bullshit. Slaughtering is highly regulated (at least here in the UK) and is designed to cause very little suffering to the animal.
[+] [-] johngalt|16 years ago|reply
To paraphrase you: The soldiers weren't out there with the express intent of killing civilians, but farms do have the express intent of killing animals. It's not that you equate human loss of life with animal loss of life. It's that you equate accidental loss of human life with intentional destruction of animal life.
In response I would say that we all draw that line somewhere. Humans don't tolerate unlimited cruelty to animals, even if it is beneficial to us.
[+] [-] microcentury|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonpaul|16 years ago|reply