THE MORAL LOWGROUND

it was not long ago when our sons & daughters killed & captured in battle were put on TV by the iraqi army. when that was done our nation was outraged. our president invoked the geneva convention and threatened to capture and try those responsible for degrading our soldiers for war crimes. fast forward to today when our secretary of defense committed the same violation by releasing pictures of the dead iraqi leaders sons who were killed by US troops. claiming that it was our responsibility to prove that these wicked men were dead, secretary rumsfeld rebutted those claims by stating it was important for the iraqi people and in fact said that the iraqi people "have been waiting to see the sons dead".

first of all, the whole thing was gross and was on national TV during dinnertime.
if the iraqi people wanted to see the dead bodies, the military could have had some sort of private viewing for designated leaders who could then go out and verify to the masses that the dead men were indeed the sons of saddam that they fear so much.

second, the pictures werent even good. why didnt they get good clean shots of these whackos? with all the new technology and medical advances we've made, couldnt our government make the bodies look better? what i saw was not such great matches to the living photos that were used to show that the dead guys were the hussein brothers.

and why didnt they try to capture them??? military accounts of the "intense" battle sounded kind of silly. scores of 3rd infantry division soldiers with armored vehicles, tanks, and tomohawk missle carrying humvees were surrounding a residential home. there were four men inside with small arms fighting all this military power and it was "intense"? intense for the hussein boys but not for our troops. why not just wait them out? maybe they knew where saddam is? maybe they knew where the WMD's are hidden? unfortunately, we will never know, but at least we have a pair of aces to open with.

look, after all the stuff i've read and seen about these two psychopaths, courtesy of our great news-propaganda machine, they deserved to be killed and displayed. but we are definitelty doing some new things nowadays. this new war has changed many long held traditions of this country. we now accept pre-emptive war. we allow our government to openly solicit and participate in assasinations of our enemies. we now put our dead enemies on TV. all things we admonish when done by any other government. we are supposed to set the bar for morality. lately, we have lowered that bar quite a bit.

have a grateful day!

larry