Doctor X

Exactly!!! Where are the stars around their heads!!!!

In all seriousness, on another forum there was this guy who not only believed Bush engineered 9/11, he did it with his families connections to remenants of the Third Reich and Mossad.

Yes . . . Nazis and Mossad work together all of the time . . . reading from this clown about how no plane actually hit the Pentagon--mass hypnosis? A large pissed-off pidgeon--and belief in anything seems possible.

I was skeptical until confirmation; I am sure the US "Guvment" does not want to have to deal with an "ooops! Actually it was someone else. . . ."

--J.D.

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, I don't know if any of you hurling insults of naivete back and forth have realized a basic fact about any military; their purpose is to be killed, at will, whenever and however we want them to die. They are, almost literally, cannon fodder.

Typically the "whenever" and "however" is during a war and preferrably in the act of killing the enemy, but that's not always the concern by a long shot. Just open a goddamned history book.

All of the bullshit pabulum you've been fed by Hollywood notwithstanding, ask just about any soldier and he or she will be the first to tell you that their primary purpose is to kill or be killed on orders from their commanders.

Sometimes that means storming a beach head; sometimes that means running to ground zero after an atomic explosion to see what the effects are; sometimes that means staying on point as the enemy overruns you; sometimes that means being used for medical experiments without your knowledge; sometimes that means going on covert missions; etc., etc., etc.

Soldiers are a government's death tool, plain and simple. Kill or be killed, it makes no difference as far as the mission (whatever it may be) is. The only question the military has is whether or not the objective justifies killing off some of their cannon fodder (to put it in the most cold-hearted, non-naive terminology to pierce through all this childish rhetoric).

Capturing, arguably two of the most knowledgeable enemy leaders beside the head honcho alive should be a top priority, if indeed (as others have cogently pointed out) there are questions remaining regarding the official purpose of the war to begin with; namely the whereabouts of WMD's. The second priority would be (again as others cogently pointed out) to try these men in a world court for their war crimes; thereby following and upholding the rule of law and demonstrating to the world why it was that Bush's war was necessary and justified (not to mention to break through the propaganda conditioning of remaining Iraqi loyalists).

Those two priorities alone justify the deaths of as many American soldiers as are/were necessary to capture them alive. I know it may offend your patriotic conditioning, but soldiers are not important compared to the magnitude of what should be going on, if we hadn't been repeatedly lied to by our government regarding the reasons we destroyed our allegiances with the world's most important governments to oust Saddam.

Not kill him, mind you. The official stated purpose was "regime change," based on the threat of the use of WMD's.

In other words, had we been told the truth about our "war" in Iraq, then our military would have and should have gone to every length possible to capture them alive at all costs.

The question isn't some stupid sob story about "how many soldiers are these bastards worth" and all of that childish, John Wayne pabulum all governments condition their citizens with; the question is two fold:

1. Was there a way to capture them alive?
2. Did we want to capture them alive?

Again, as others have already pointed out, they fled and hid out (but did not leave their country), which meant that they had no intention of committing suicide as some sort of noble out. Had survival not been a number one priority and fundamentalists beliefs were, then they would have stood on the capital steps with guns blazing to the very end. They did not. They ran, like cowards. Cowards do not last very long in interrogation, by the way. They also opened fire several times while surrounded, meaning they were going to fight to the bitter end once they got caught and knew they would be killed by the Americans.

So, why not just set fire to the building or send in reinforcements to simply starve them out? Why not continue with the firefight until they ran out of ammunition, regardless of how many American soldiers had to die in order to achieve that goal? That's their purpose; kill or be killed.

In other words, there were ways to capture them alive, they simply weren't employed, which means the military did not consider them important enough to take every measure possible to capture them alive.

The spin on that from a citizen's propaganda machine is that "they weren't worth the deaths of American soldiers," which, of course, is utter bullshit. If the military deemed them important enough, they would have sent in thousands of soldiers to die in order to get them; that is, after all, precisely what we did to begin with.

That's what it means to instigate a war; we send in thousands of troops to kill or be killed in order to achieve a desired result.

So the question is narrowed down to whether or not we wanted them captured alive and clearly the answer is, "no, we did not," otherwise every step possible would have been employed to do so, including the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers to achieve that goal. Maybe they would have taken cyanide or the like, but that's not the point. They simply were not important enough to the military to take them alive at all costs, which, in turn means that either the military isn't concerned at all with WMD's or that they thought, for some reason, that the brothers would have no useful intelligence; a laughable conclusion if we hadn't been lied to regarding the actual threat and WMD concerns.

And as for the stupidity of "they wouldn't crack," everybody cracks. It is nearly impossible to withstand torture and interrogation. Ask McCain. And he was no coward. And if any of you think that we don't employ such measures, you're more hopelessly naive than anyone you might be hurling insults at. We train countries in how to torture and interrogate; indeed, chances are exceedingly good that we trained Iraqis in just such techniques back when they were our allies against Iran.

Why do you think we're so hated in the world outside our little borders? Because of McDonald's ?

Talk about naivete!

The very fact that we've placed multi-million dollar bounties on their heads is proof enough that we want them killed. Why? Because they know where all of our skeletons are burried, of course. Why didn't we just place these bounties on their heads instead of war to begin with?

They were surrounded; they opened fire; all we would have had to do is just burn them out or starve them out or force them to expend their ammunition (or a combination of all three) if we wanted them alive at all costs. Yes, soldiers would die (and did die and are dying there almost daily), but, again, that's what soldiers do; they die in order for a government to achieve their goal.

There can be only one reason we didn't want them alive at all costs; our military knew they were expendable and so didn't even attempt to employ the standard methods of flushing out live prey.

It ain't brain surgery.

So the focus (and the question) now becomes, how did the military know they were expendable and what does that tell you about the "war" to begin with?

JaeIsGod

I didnt really trust the pics myself. They rebuilded the heads so its kinda hard to see wheter or not they are real.

And I dont trust bush whatsoever =]

slept2long

:notworthy :notworthy

It should be criminal for Koy to make so much sense.

Kat_Somm_Faen

Bah!

The crazy Russian just filled their theatre full of gas and let everyone lose consciousness. Why could we have not shot off a container of sleep gas in there and walk in? Come on like it was a big deal hard to do that!

Arken

John Hancock,

I speak for no one here but myself, but my question as to why they were not brought in alive was more towards the Bush administration. Given that they were correct about WMDs being in Iraq and that this is now a 'police mission,' why were they not taken alive?

Of course, I don't believe either of the givens so...

livius drusus

This isn't much of a religious discussion so I am moving this to PD for a possible merge with the extant threads on the subject.

Morgan

Doctor X - Well, the Bush family did have long-term dealings with the Nazis in the Second World War. Of course, it's crap that he engineered September 11th.

There's no doubt in my mind that Saddam's sons are dead. The fact that they exhibited the bodies for journalists leaves me with no doubt that they have nothing to hide about these brutal murders.

The thing that catches me is, they killed Saddam's sons. I think killing is always wrong, but I can understand this. However, there was also a 13 year old boy (believed to be Saddam's grandson) in that building who was killed. Now it's my opinion that children of that age are not guilty, no matter what their parents have done.

Rational BAC

I think that the word down from the Bush administration is "take no prisoners" =-----------"Dead men tell no tales"

Of course they could have been taken alive (unless they decided to commit suicide).

And we would be able to retrieve valuable info about the supposed WMD's or lack thereof. And valuable info about Saddam Hussein and his whereabouts for the past few months.

Some say that the 2 brothers would not have cracked under intense interrogation/torture. I think they would have cracked very easily. The worst sadists are usually the biggest babies personally.

Look at the bright side. We may yet catch Saddam Hussein (again I think orders will be to make sure he is taken dead) We may yet find WMD even though we wasted this golden opportunity.

99Percent

Of course it would have been much better to have captured the sons alive because it would have meant an intelligence bonanza not to mention it would have meant bringing them to justice so its doubtful they were intentionally killed. As to the thirteen year old kid, its not the troops fault he was put in harms way by his father.