Pillage

A pause from U.S. internal, political, narcissistic navel-gazing for a moment to image how we look to the world outside our borders.

Back in the good old days, I mean from the dawn of time until, maybe, the signing of the Geneva Conventions so desecrated by the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld Administration, soldier who fought on the winning side of a battle were rewarded with free reign to rape and pillage the vanquished foe's city or town or farmhouses as their rightful due, their pay.

In the 20th Century, some just took what they wanted without asking their commanding officer. Horrorshow experiences. Mercilessly treated victims.

So how horrible to have one of our soldiers -- I guess one troop no one will ever be bullied to say they support -- charged with a heinous rape and murder of a 15 year-old girl, the murder of her 5 year-old sister, mother and father. And there were 3 other soldiers involved as well.

Private first class Seth D. Green, a living advertisement for U.S. out of Iraq ASAP was discharged for mental problems, but not before he raped, murdered, and covered it all up for awhile by blaming "insurgents."

Hello, blowback.

Maybe he was just getting some for himself since, after all, the GOP operatives and enablers who came in as the Coalition Provisional Authority got their rape and pillage a more refined way. Can you say, "kleptocracy?"

Or maybe it's just part and parcel of this wildly unpopular Iraq War's effect on military recruitment, and subsequent gap-filling by the lowering of recruitment standards. You know, to allow convicted criminals to represent America over there.

Criminals in the U.S. military. Is that a cause for alarm?

Because it's not only confined to Iraq.

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UPDATE:

This just in from The New York Times: "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad..." Why, you ask?

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.

It's another Bush-Cheney Admin rollback of a Clinton Administration policy cracking down on extremists in the military after ex-Army gunner Timothy McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. In the words of one neo-Nazi American scribe:

"Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war," he wrote. "It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.'"

He concluded: "As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army with skinheads. As street brawlers, you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood."

You want to send your well-intentioned, patriotic son or daughter into that U.S. Army?