US soldiers crush Iraqi vehicle with a tank

This is why they hate us. For stupid stuff like this. I mean that just really makes us look bad whether they were looting or not.

Nice way to make friends. For crying out loud, the guy was stealing wood, probably to heat up his house. Sheesh.

Wow… now that’s bad. It’s what happens when people don’t get training to handle things like this.

This was from the PBS Documentary series Frontline.

It’s from the Frontline documentary series. The episode is entitled “Truth, War and consequences”. You can see the entire episode here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/

What!!??

They didn’t remove the wood from the roof of the car that these men stole before running over it with the tank?

“That’ll teach them a lesson!”

This is old. I’m talking over 3 years old.

I promise you they would not have done all that in front of the journalists if not authorized to do so. They journalists are ALWAYS accompanied by a PR officer.

You people need to understand that the rules over here don’t apply over there. Not when that footage was shot and the war had just ended, anyways.

You might think stealing wood is just an innocence offense. It’s not over there. There are no policeman, no tickets, no courts, or anything else to maintain order.

Mark, remove the wood? Then what? leave the car so they can do it again. pick up the wood that was “removed” and put it back on their car and leave? I was in the military and no more then you ever will about it.

Regarding the car being his lively hood because he is a taxi driver… his car wasn’t destroyed for being a taxi, it was destroyed because it was being used to steal and to make matters worse then enlisted a minor to help them do it.

I remember seeing this on the pbs.org site a few years ago. This was filmed during the very beggining of the occupation. None the less… it is shocking.

Wow. This is very sad. These people weren’t stealing arms or manufactured goods, they were (allegedly) stealing wood(sic!). Probably from some debris from US missiles or something.

Go US Soldiers, no wonder they have bad rep in IRAQ. Next thing you kow, this Taxi driver will duck tape these soldiers in a car and run them over with the tank. We’ll see who’s laughing then…

All right jackasses. You did the American flag real proud. Idiots!!!!! I was down in hurricane Katrina when your “bruthas” were looting big screen TVs. I’m sure you would have laughed and looked the other way. Total A**holes!

as MackMack said… The rules that apply in the states don’t apply in war. If you have not served in the military I don’t see how you can question the tactics and actions of the military. They set the example. You don’t steal from a US Base. Period. If you do, you must be prepared to face the consequences. Just like in the US… if you use your car in a bank robbery or drug deal… the police take it. The Iraqis are lucky the journalist were there. I would have been less understanding. You do not bite the hand that feeds you.

~Alfie

In my opinion, it looked like a few young American soldiers abusing the power that they had – flexing their military muscle, so to speak.

I can question the actions of the military because I pay for them to be there, and if I’m footing the bill and don’t like what I see, then I’m not gonna just sit there quietly. Now, please, show me when in the video they say they took the wood from a US base. They didn’t, they just said they were looting, which, i mean, when you’re taking busted up wood, you can just barely call it looting. That said, I can certainly question the tactics of a military being placed on a peace-keeping mission. This is not the job of the military, and none of those men have the slightest training in keeping the peace. They are trained to root out the enemy and kill the enemy, not to deal with maintaining order in a civilian population. And this video shows it. Thats not how you keep peace, thats not how you get a foriegn population to trust you and in turn, maintain self order. Thats how you piss it off and get it to degrade to its current point, which is a total cluster-f**k.

Now, for the reference to what goes on in the US, they take your car, but they don’t bust it up. Its impounded, and after a fair and just trial, you receive punishment. No man has right to play the cops, judge, and jury, especially not any of those buffoons.

The comment that “I was in the military and no more then you ever will about it.” is completely pretentious, and so wrongly so. This is not a war, this is a peace-keeping mission. We’ve won the war, and now, our goal was supposedly to win the peace. And actions such as these never, ever, helped in that goal. Those men didn’t have their crappy wood any more, but you fostered a hate for Americans in each and every one of them. And thats why we’ll never win in Iraq; you just don’t get them, you have no understanding. You were never educated to a level where you would have understood the dynamics of peace-keeping, and so you went in, and completely turned that nation. Its worse off now than it ever was before, and you’re the ones to blame. So don’t hark on about how you know more than I ever will, because clearly, you either didn’t care, or you didn’t know jack about how to keep the peace.

lol… you foot the bill huh? That’s not too much of an exaggeration. Good to know your left wing wacko ass speaks for 250 million people though. I bet you have contributed a whole spoon to use in a mess hall with your generously taxed contributions.

They aren’t there to “win the peace”… they are there to keep it. You need to understand the difference.

Do you know why they were playing “cops, judge, and jury”? because none of those things exist.

For someone who was never been in the military you sure seem to know a lot about it… at least you think you do. We do receive training to deal with looters.

If they had a TV or generator on top would that have made things OK? It doesn’t matter, stealing is stealing.

For you to be so absolute in your descriptions of the current state of affairs over there is ignorant. There is no “peace time”/”war time”… it is a mess. One day they hold elections or build a hospital… the next they are hunting terrorists or being blown up.

I will say it again, you have no clue what you are talking about… you think you do, but you don’t. You certainly have a right to your opinion though and you can run your mouth over and over to your liberal friends about how you know everything, just know that you don’t actually have a clue about what’s going on over there.

This is why I hate Americans

You can see it was an act of stupidity, they shot the car just to be little kids playing with guns, theres no reason to empty 2 clips at a car if your going to run over it.
And what purpose does running it over do? It makes a mess on the road, could start gas fire, and the point about removing wood was, i that wood was so important that it was looting for someone to take it, why destroy it and not return it?

Punishment for a minor crime like the theft of 10$ of wood should not be handled by the destruction of years worth of investment in a car.

@ alfie, mackmack and other right wing fachists

You speak like brainwashed S.S. soldiers. Think, read, observe and don’t rely on what you where told at the army. They lie to you.

When you say: ” If you have not served in the military I don’t see how you can question the tactics and actions of the military.”
Does that mean not having served in the nazi troops, we can’t question their tactics and actions? Use your head!!

haha

I dont feel sorry for him at all his fault for stealing wood!

The point of the first statement wasn’t literal, you jerkoff. I pay taxes, every american that holds down a job does. The people are ultimately the government, long since forgotten by many in this country. We elect people to represent us, but ultimately, we are the government. And you know what, I’ll go through the whole metaphor for you, since its simplicity was apparently too much for you, Americans resoundingly voiced their displeasure with the status of Iraq (amongst other issues) when they voted the republicans out of office.

If you want to defend the actions of those idiots, thats fine. it just puts you out there as a downright fool. its not only what they did, but the asshole manner in which they do it. “We gonna show them what happens when they loot”. I’m sorry, if you take glee in screwing up someones life, something is wrong with you. And don’t go back to the wood, because thats just an insignificant detail at this point. They were looking for any reason to screw with those people, and they would have found it, wood or no wood.

Do I need to go fact check the number of times Bush and his administration has explicitly used the term “Win the Peace”, because I will, if you like. It doesn’t even matter, they’re not winning the peace and they aren’t keeping it, so it’s all the same to me. This is something that YOU need to realize. YOU aren’t helping anything. YOU are the ones that failed.

You are absolutely not trained as a peace keeping force. You are not United Nations impartial peace keeping forces. Its an entirely different skill set, and there would be no reason to have every troop go through such training.

The difference is between people taking food and wood are taking items that are used to sustain life, wood only has practical uses in either building a structure or in burning for heat. They need that to survive. And they don’t have a government or humanitarian aid to support the life of their people. So yeah, theres a great difference between looting a TV or generator, which is just purely motivated by greed, and looting something so that you don’t die.

You’re completely off you rocker. Don’t let Americans like this guy taint your views of Americans as a whole, with the house and senate now back in democratic control, slowly the neocons will have to fade back into the obscurity from which they emerged.

Well…. Last I checked… the soldiers let the Iraqis off easy. According to local custom and conservative interpretation of Islamic law, the traditional punishment for stealing is to chop off both hands. If the soldiers had given the Iraqis the choice, what do you think they would have chosen… to have their hands chopped off or to lose the car… He wouldn’t have been able to drive very well without hands, now would he.

~Alfie

This was an arranged stunt for the press. I was arranged and approved by CIVILIANS to make a point that civil unrest would not be tolerated.

Taken out of context…