More "freedom fighter" war crimes in Syria

"The video, which could not be authenticated independently, appeared to have been made in Saraqeb, a town in Idlib Province in northern Syria that has been the scene of particularly brutal fighting between rebels and loyalists in the 20-month-old conflict. In the video, 10 prisoners are shown being forced by their captors to lie next to or atop one another in what remained of a largely destroyed structure that may have been a military checkpoint. The antigovernment fighters, whose precise identities or affiliations were not clear, yell “Allah Akhbar!” or “God is great!” as they kick and herd the prisoners into a pile. Then they open fire. "  NY Times

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Savages.  Savages.  pl

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/56977/World/Region/Syria-rebels-tolerate-extremists-despite-Wests-fea.aspx

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/world/middleeast/un-says-syria-execution-video-shows-apparent-war-crime.html?_r=0

Comments

[jr786]

"The video, which could not be authenticated independently"

Have to love that qualification, considering that I must have missed all the independent authentications the Times ran alongside the rebels' videos when they were promoting them as the good guys to Assad's Iran-sponsored genocide, or whatever the phrase was.

[confusedponderer]

Don Rumsfeld has come out of retirement to comment:

“Stuff happens, I mean, the massacres are part of the price for freedom and democracy”. He blamed “pent-up feelings” from years of oppression under the rule of the Assad regime. “That it got that bad is only evidence for how brutal the Assad regime is.”

He added that the massacres are not as bad as some television and newspaper reports are trying to make it out to be. “Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

[confusedponderer]

Rumsfeld continued: "Massacres represent a unique opportunity to draw inferences about the real nature of peoples' grievances based on their concrete actions, that give fascinating clues about them as a factor in historical change."

Rumsfeld insisted that massacres are a natural outgrowth of recent events: "In every country, in my adult lifetime, that's had the wonderful opportunity to do that, to move from a repressed dictatorial regime to something that's freer, we've seen in that transition period there is untidiness, and there's no question but that that's not anyone's choice."

[Matthew]

Col: An object lesson on what will happen to the Syrian people if the Jihadi "liberators" overthrow the secular Assad dictatotship.

Question: What's worse than Assad?
Answer: The alternative.

[Cliffiord Kiracofe]

Well, it's all those "values" we share with the "freedom fighters", the Wahhabis, salafis, and so on. Takfiri values, so "democratic"....

[Fred]

Where was this said?

[rjj]

And that is why very large scale clusterfucks are measured in Rumsfeld units.

[VietnamVet]

Bloody Kansas, Wounded Knee, Fort Pillow… It is been over a century since war infested North America. True believers and money changers ignore the savagery that is war. Pushers of the Permanent War are insuring the havoc will blow back here.

[rjj]

or should be - as a fitting honor and memorial to the man for his services.

[mo]

Col,
You once told me that their Islam is not my Islam. Now I must insist otherwise. Their Islam is no Islam at all. They can title their beliefs as they wish. The can call themselves what they wish. But when their deeds go counter to every Islamic tenet and belief, then it is high time everyone, including the Islamic world, stopped referring to these scum as Muslims.

[Al Spafford]

Wan't it Rummy Dummy that said, "We massacre with the army we have..... ", or something to that effect?

[Walrus]

So Rumsfeld obviously believes Hitler was right in everything he did. The holocaust was a natural "untidiness" as a result of "pent up feelings" and the Jews deserved it according to Rumsfeldian logic.

[Medicine Man]

Colossal screw-ups measured in Rumsfeld units. Spineless foot dragging in Friedman units.

[turcopolier]

mo

I agree that it is a shame that such people call themselves muslims. That being the case it is the hope of mankind that real muslims will defeat them with ideas and arms. pl

[robt willmann]

Al Spafford,

A reporter from a small paper in North Carolina or Tennessee or one of the Southern states on the eastern seaboard was in Kuwait, if I remember correctly, and was hearing the soldiers complain about having to scrounge in landfills and garbage dumps for bullet proof glass and other metal to attach to their vehicles to make them more resistant. Some called it "hillbilly armor", as he NY Times story says. The reporter then got with the sergeant, I think it was, who was going to call on reporters or read questions to ask the Secretary of Defense, and set it up in advance so his question was used in a slick ambush of Rumsfeld, who, "after hesitating and asking for the question to be repeated," responded, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time...."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jPgljRvzQw

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/08/international/middleeast/08cnd-rumsfeld.html?_r=0

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec04/armor_12-9.html

I don't know if this link to the "Daily Show" with Jon Stewart still displays a segment on it--

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-december-9-2004/a-matter-of-physics

[confusedponderer]

He actually said pretty much that about the looting that destroyed Iraq, that 'stuff happens', and that it was 'untidy'. Yes, yes, these rumbunctious young societies on their path to FREEDOM (tm), so untidy ...

I merely changed Assad for Saddam and took a few other minor liberties.

http://tinyurl.com/3r99jbv

[watcher]

'We'll arm the Syrian rebels – but only those who share our values'

Famous last words. This doesn't end well for anybody.

[JMH]

"You went full retard, man. Never go full retard." -Robert Downey in Tropical Thunder

Rumsfeld just went full retard.

[Fred]

I'm well aware of the Iraq quote, however as much as I dislike the SOB he didn't say what you put into quotes above. A few minor liberties? It reads more like libel. Neither the US army nor the forces of any nation allied to it committed such atrocities as the savage murders as instruments of military policy and any such criminal acts that were found were punished - even by Secretary Rumsfeld.

[Al Spafford]

Thanks for the links on that.

[Al Spafford]

There has been no culture, religion, race, ethnicity, that has not held within it the blood thirsty desires for vengeance that erupts--whether My Lai, Bosnia, Rwanda, etc, etc, etc.......... When war is unleashed........

[Clifford Kiracofe]

"But trying to shape what comes next is another matter. Recent history indicates that usually eludes the grasp of America and its allies."
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2012/1102/War-crimes-and-the-fantasy-of-controlling-Syria-s-rebels

An understatement, I had to grin at that one. Good piece.

So it now seems that Hillary, Coinistus Maximus Petraeus, etal. are now on a quest to find Syrians who share our values to replace the ones who shared our values before.

If I have this right (???), according to news reports, the administration now wants to dump the Syria National Committee, brave freedom fighters all, who shared our values. The new US designated freedom fighters are now just going to materialize from nowhere and take over.

Right, magical thinking rules...so what about the jihadis, salafis, and takfiris trashing Syria? As smoke from the shishas on the seventh floor at State waft over the Potomac... (I like apple myself but that just me.)

[Abu Sinan]

"Real Muslims" must be as willing to go fight their co-religionists who espouse this doctrine as they willing to fight their dictators. Any real change in the Muslim world will have to come from the inside, and I dont see it happening any time soon. We have seen some rhetoric, but I dont think rhetoric is what will eventually turn the tide.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Any one who bears witness to Allah and his Prophet is a Muslim; regardless of his actions which may or may not be criminal or unlawful.

Certainly in Muslim societies, criminals (capital or property, or person) are considered to be Muslims - although deserving of punishment.

These men must be considered Muslim criminals and treated as such; just as there are Christian, Hindu, atheist, and other kinds of criminals.

[JohnH]

Judy Woodruff: "the rebels may commit atrocities, but the government commits more."

I know I've heard that line somewhere. Oh wait! I got it! Israel may be bad, but Palestinians are worse, much worse.

Translated: there is simply no moral equivalence between our atrocities and theirs.