Special Graphic Post:
For Two Fallen
On June 20, 2006, the bodies of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker were recovered. After being captured alive last Friday, their Iraqi captors executed them.
May God damn their killers, both those who dispatched them and those who sent them to die.
The Dark Wraith stands down.
Published 6/20/2006 12:28:00 PM
<< 26 Comments Total
Good afternoon, Dark Wraith.
I agree, this is horribly tragic. And the people who suggest that this nightmare should end, for Americans, anyway, are accused of wanting to "cut and run".
Well, for all those stupid dipshits may I suggest:
Go to a bar, find the meanest looking mother in it and slap him across the face, then stand there and just take it.
Sometimes it pays to get the you-know-what out of Dodge. Expecially with the reality of what's happening in Iraq.
May these men, and the countless thousands of other men, women, and children rest in peace.
And I agree completely, may the powers that created this mishap be damned eternally.
The party of lie and die has added two more Americans to Death List 2006, they must be so proud.
I'm really torqued. i started writing about it at 5 this morning, it was amazing the different spin the news organizations gave it. ABC has toned down their original report. The cover Bush's ass syndrom is already kicking in.
"Cut and run" is a Rovianesque one liner that must be turned on its ear! No! Not "run and cut", more like "Cowards stay the course and send other people to die for their own cowardly hubris!" Too long for a t-shirt and a sound bite but it's the best I could do in short notice! :>)
I already had a wingnut come to my site and say:
"Makes you wonder why we feed, cloth shelter and make allowances for religious practices for their prisoners when all they want to do is execute ours with rusty butter knives." - Vulture 6
It's funny how fast the wingnuts forget that we have tortured and killed Iraqis and that we are no better or different than them.
We've lost the moral high ground. This is something wingnuts don't get. You can't go around torturing, killing, and holding people without due process then feign outrage when insurgents have the audacity to do the same to our troops.
What the fuck did you think would happen?
Oh and BTW, Republicans are the cut and run party.
Democrats have never advocated cutting and running from any war. Republicans however, nearly always have.
Also, we are not in a War, we are in an occupation. We won the war. We deposed Saddam.
Now we are colonizing Iraq.
That's the damned truth, Polishifter. It's been a long while since the Congress declared War on anyone, and yet how many times have our executive idiots sent troops into the fray?
The constitution has been eroded to the point that it may now be past the point of no return.
I'd better not say anymore.
Look out Puerto Rico! If the Conservatives get their way with amnesty for the insurgents, the next logical move would be to petition Iraq for statehood! What better way to get all that oil adn keep it from the rest of the world?
How about it, DW? What are the odds of Iraq becoming number 51?
I know the benefits. Maybe that was their idea all along.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
That graphic is quite magnificent. The news about the two being executed was terribly sad.
Pardon my crass words but do you guys think that these were the only two brave soldiers to be slain in this manner? Happens all the time from what I gather. Sad part about it is, Iraqis do it to us and while it's very sad the media usually comes around to the "hell of war" routine and attempt to console the victims' families while casting disapproving frowns at Congress for putting our Military "In Harm's Way." We frag a few of them and its "murder" which gets national media attention magnified by 1000 and we lose again. Go figure....
We reap what we have sown.
"The bodies of two missing U.S. soldiers showed signs of "barbaric torture" when they were found by American and Iraqi troops on Monday, a senior Iraqi general told Reuters on Tuesday."
Good evening, Clay.
It seems to me that this incident involving those two soldiers' deaths has touched a nerve among progressive bloggers. I'm not altogether sure the short-term result is particularly palatable to some of us.
On Big Brass Blog, my invocation of God to damn the perpetrators was met by a Leftist atheist who described my way of thinking as "moronic."
Perhaps if I had used the more standard terminology, typing "fuck" a half-dozen times in a post about some run-of-the-mill outrage, my invocation to the earthly and angered god of sex would have been met with more uniform praise.
On the other hand, I also received a feedback form message that was barely interpretable (and how someone could screw up such a simple communication interface is beyond me), but the gist of the message was to the end of foretelling my brutal destruction.
In answer to your question, Clay, no, I don't think those were the only two people who have died over there, and they are certainly not the only two who have died horribly. To my knowledge, I will never again see at least two of my former students, kids who wouldn't have been able to afford to go to college had it not been for the siren song of military recruiters and the candy they had to offer.
Clay, do you know what land mines do? Most people envision war death as very swift, almost instantaneous. It's not. A mortally wounded soldier can live for quite a while split right up the middle or absent everything below the torso.
IEDs can be a lot worse: the concussion tears the body into various pieces, leaving the part with sentience to stare in utter confusion at what's happened. It can take a number of seconds, if not minutes, to realize that the senses are not telling about places the mind understands but that the body can't find anymore. If, God forbid, consciousness lingers too long, the pain of the shrapnel and the sheered-off limb areas begins to hammer. That's maybe a little before the terrifying slip begins into the swallowing black well of never-again-alive. And although the optical screen fades quickly into a hazy light, the auditory sense hangs on, registering sounds of all kinds, like the worried voices, some footsteps, and maybe even some sounds beyond the immediate area and scene.
Then there's blackness, and that lasts forever.
One of the kids I knew—such a strapping young man, very bright, tough as nails with his flat-top and big arm muscles—was killed by an IED.
Others, I just don't know.
Yes, lots of soldiers have died; and more will do so in the grim years ahead; and someday, perhaps long into the future, a generation of leaders will erect another silly, fawning monument to all of them.
But it really won't matter. You see, Clay, not one of those thousands and thousands of dead soldiers will be able to see it from the eternal night.
The Dark Wraith has said his peace.
Good evening Dark Wraith:
Beautiful graphic. When we have our own torture machine at work, people held for no stated reason in Guantanamo, when we take over Abu Grahib and keep it open for business as usual, how can we then hold the enemy to any standards of conduct themselves? When we allow ourselves to forget who we are as a people, nation, and culture we have already lost. What happens on the field makes no difference. If we act like them, we are them. That was true when Pericles made his funeral oration in 431 BCE and warned the Athenians about ceasing to be democratic, artistic, and noble in order to defeat the Spartans. It's true now.
I hope more soldiers will now take a cue from Kipling
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
An' the women come out to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle an' blow out your brains
You go to your god like a Soldier!
The trolls are out in force today because Limbaugh got out his stick, whistled and said 'sikk 'em, boy!' The bastard lied, claiming progressive bloggers were cheering the murder of those two boys. And his single digit IQ crowd swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker - seeking out every blog they could find to insult and accuse. Am I suffused with moral outrage? You bet. But not at the troll babies. They only do as they are told. I’m pissed off at everyone I hold culpable for this outrage – the inhuman assholes who committed the slaughter, the US Administration that made it possible – even the Iraqi Government that won’t get off their collective asses long enough to do anything about the skyrocketing violence. But my outrage will not bring these soldiers back - nor will it shine any light into the morass of depravity that their killers currently occupy. I don’t have to point out the quid pro quo nature of the battle – its part and parcel of every evening’s news. You massacre me so I ambush you. Vietnam with sand and scorpions. I feel sick.
Good morning, Fat Lady Sings.
I agree that Limbaugh, et.al. are a plague upon this earth, but the curs that lap up the pablum set before them are the reason that talk radio has grown so much. I understand that most people don't have the time to follow all the slime tracks this Admin. has laid down, but I listened to Rush when he first tried TV, and it only took one and a half shows to realize,"Hey, this guy just throws out crap to get people riled up; he doesn't even believe it, himself!"
You bet he doesn't believe it! Years ago I used to watch a political show on the then newly formed CNBC. The show featured Phil Donohue and Soviet news commentator Vladimir Posner. They had Limbaugh on one night. Instead of defending his rhetoric - he admitted it was all for show; a character he had created out of whole cloth. Did he believe the swill he was dishing out? Not necessarily. It was all for ratings, he said - all for the money. He purposely made things up in order to get maximum reaction. Just like the rest of the hate-crowd - it’s all about the Benjamin’s.
good morning dw.
thank you for your apt commentary.
Greetings, DW. May I also add the "news" media to your list? The Today Show interviewed the Tucker family this morning. Normally I don't watch Today, but I had the local NBC affiliate on because there was severe weather in my area.
WHY does the media have to get in the faces of the families of the fallen? And WHY is it only those families whose loved one's deaths were well-publicized? If they absolutely need to make a spectacle of the deaths, maybe they should have a prime-time special with the families of ALL of our fallen members of the military.
Then they could have a prime-time special about all the innocents that were killed in Iraq.
I won't hold my breath.
Mixter
WHOA!
"SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Two California soldiers shot to death in Iraq were murdered by Iraqi civil-defense officers patrolling with them, military investigators have found."
Complete CNN story at
"Iraqi colleagues killed U.S. soldiers, military says"
Dear DW,
How we all struggle in this dream of separation (damnation) one from another and from God. We have yet to evolve in our collective and individual psychology to that understanding that there is but one thing, that which is.
That which is, is. Out side of which nothing can be. The perception of separation from what is is the acceptance of the seeming to be, that which cannot be.
When we spend all our "time", our awareness on the seeming all kinds of illusions rule the day.
We are not who we think we are and we try to prove it almost every minute of the day, or at least convince ourselves that we can, with all the most vile and destrucive imaginings we can conjure and hate and animosity to the perceived others who are the "evil ones."
This is our damnation as I see it. Not God who damns anything or any part of what IS.
(I'm not shouting just emphasising)
When will we lay down our weapons, our weapons of death, whether it is a gun or a thought, a word, when?
There is a long and painful demise waiting the mena nd women who sell their soul to greed. Limbaugh, Coulter, et al, are doomed to face a hell inside themselves that will make an IED explosion by comparison feel like a massage.
I don't know why, well maybe my motherly thing kicked in, but when I saw the pictures of the boys who were killed, it just brought the rage and outrage to the surface and I went off the bushistas and all who support them on my blog. I was viciously attacked by trolls who had absolutely 0 idea of what my point was.. .all they could say was that I support the terrorists for not condemning them too. I mean, duh, of course I don't support murderers and I especially don't support those who create murderers and those who put our children in harms way, goddammit.
I was clearly feeling pain for the families of these boys and I was attacked by Lush Bimbos attack dogs. How very sad.
More Government Laptops stolen with personal data
That's right, laptops! Plural...It worked so well the first time, they've decided to keep going with it...
Time to get off the grid.
Good Morning, Dark One.
The graphic is outstanding. It brought tears to Long Suffering eyes. That doesn't happen enough. After Vietnam he learned to stuff many emotions.
Good afternoon, Missouri Mule.
I've been looking high and low for your e-mail address. We need to talk about that project I proposed we tackle together.
The Dark Wraith gets worried when he doesn't hear from people.
Pardon my crass words but do you guys think that these were the only two brave soldiers to be slain in this manner?
No, there's been a hell of a lot of brave soldiers who have died in Iraq.
The vast majority of them doing so while trying to defend their homeland against the deadliest war machine the world has ever known.
Well put, Phoenician.
Well put.