They killed the person who could provide intelligence.

[peacetalksforall]

So we took the number 1 person who KNEW and we killed him.

If gathering intelligence by torment, torture, and inhumanity was so important...
If breaking long standing rules and treaties to get intelligence was so important...
If spending a fortune to fly prisoners around for the purpose of gaining intelligence by cruelty was so important ...
If contracting with countries like Poland to imprison humans to gain intelligence was so important ...

Then why did we kill the main person who was declared the number one source of intelligence?

Why is that?

How many dollars have been spent on gathering intelligence about insurgents and the 'military' in our war on terror?

How many lives have been lost in gathering intelligence in our war on terror?

How many limbs have been lost and families severely affected in gathering intelligence.

How many contracts have been signed with Halliburton, KBR, and Blackwater to carry out the war on terror with intelligence being a major part and how many dollars have we lost due to overpricing, losing funds, payolas?

WHY DID WE NOT TAKE OUR NUMBER ONE SOURCE OF INTELLIGENCE ALIVE?

Not taking him alive was another insult to the citizens of this country.

The true criminals in their war on terror are in the White House, the Pentagon, Congress and their entire support system.

A phony war plus phony propaganda equals massive deception, theft, loss of life.

All for profit by a few.

[Philosoraptor]

1. Lot of great points here.

It would have been so much fun torturing him first.

[Kagemusha]

2. Now this is just being silly.

- It would've been dangerous to US troops.
- Zarqawi is unlikely to have had any desire to be taken alive so would not cooperate.
- There'd be a chance he'd get away completely, especially if local forces had to be notified as part of the grab.

And so on and so forth.

Don't let dislike and worse of the administration foul up your basic logic circuits.

[jobycom]

5. I disagree with you on that

First, our troops are supposed to handle danger. That's what they are trained for. If the goal is important enough, it should be worth the risk. Also, I'm disgusted by the US attitude that we should drop bombs and kill lots of civilians to protect our troops. It's our problem, we should be risking our own lives, not innocent bystanders.

Second, maybe al-Zarqawi would have killed himself before we could get to him. But at least there would have been a chance. If only six people were killed along with him, he wasn't well protected.

Third, there was no reason to use local forces or any cumberson force at all. If planes could drop bombs, helicopters could drop commandos and pull them out just as quickly. Al-Zarqawi is no more likely to have escaped a commando raid than a bomb.

To me it shows that al-Zarqawi was of little importance. They've gone through more trouble to arrest and detain cab drivers for loitering than the did to capture a man who may have had knowledge, not just of plans in Iraq, but--if BushCo is telling the truth about his connectios--but plans against America. Maybe he knew about the next 9-11. It's more likely than that anyone in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib would know. That's not worth a little risk? Apparently not to Bush, but I thought we were over there to make US safer.

[Kagemusha]

8. You have read/seen Black Hawk Down, yes?

If not, take a good look at what happens to a helicopter snatch job gone very, very bad. I won't even begin about ground movement.

And that's all the people telling me I'm expressing 'war monger talk' deserve to hear from me today.

[Sparkman]

10. Typical, hut hut hut hut. The risks to U.S. troops grows daily, from bad

to worse. This operation to get yet another "high value target" shows the stupidity of the military mindset, when 100,000 civilians get cluster bombed, get shot in their beds, get subjected to years of U.S. OCCUPATION!! That means a life of misery and suffering and death at the hands of the United States "liberation".

[Kagemusha]

12. Look, the original poster asked WHY did we (sic) kill this man.

And I answered. And I did not go around saying that it was the right answer or the moral answer. I went saying it was THE answer. I have to really swallow my pride just to post in respond to this thread because I despise the fact that posters replying to my original reply seem to be even LESS concerned about the lives of American soldiers than the Bush administration. I do not, sitting at my computer, know what the odds would be of success with a snatch attempt. I do know that I do not regard US servicemen as toy soldiers whose deaths mean nothing and whose lives should be happily wasted in pursuit of a mission of unknown success rates in hostile territory with no regard for their well-being whatsoever.

And shame to those who do.

[Sparkman]

19. US soldiers are no more intitled than their innocent victims.

[jobycom]

31. I agree. That's my point, too.

We protect our soldiers by slaughtering their children. NOTHING justifies that, not one damn thing. If it is not worth the life of a soldier, it is not worth the life of an innocent civilian, so why are we there in the first place?

[Sparkman]

32. we r there because the war & oil industry machine runs the government.

Corporate institutions INSULATE their CEO's and managers and employees, who don't participate in the dying and the killing and government, meant to keep excess in check, has no accountability when the same corporations own the mainstream media and filter news and propagandize the only check and balance...the voter.
THis is the point of Noam Chomsky, of Howard Zinn, of Arundati Roy, of Daniel and Tom Barrigan, of Niel Young, of Bob Dylan, of John Lennon of Dar Williams of Jesus of Nazarith.
Killing is wrong, and killing by deception for power and materialism is worse.
The US militarists have a choice, every day of their lives, to obey the robots who order the depleted uranium rounds and the cluster bombs and the "smart" rockets and the napalm and the operations into neighborhoods in Iraq, Iran, Afganistan, Panama, Nicaragua, Venezuela...OR TO JUST TELL THEIR COMMANDERS no.

[jobycom]

35. My question was rhetorical, but helluva an answer!

:toast: Any time someone can work Chomsky, Dylan and Jesus into the same sentence, they've got my vote!

[peacetalksforall]

11. Don't be theatrical. I guess you weren't being cynical. Why do we

have special forces and intelligence? Why include Israeli and British intelligence in gathering intelligence?

They are reporting he was with three women and three men and possibly a child. Do we know that they were surrounded by people who would take our soldiers out.

Do you acknowledge that there are people who are especially trained for capturing?

In you world of logic - why was Saddam taken alive?

I'm astounded by your reasoning. You don't give a good military and intelligence team any credit.

[Kagemusha]

14. Saddam was found unguarded in a hole thanks to a tip-off.

Alternatively it's said the Kurds handed him up on a silver platter. And it was in Kurdish controlled territory. The insurgency was far less advanced. The US had easy physical access to the site. There was no Rainbow Six-style operation to seize Saddam. There weren't any guards to kill. There weren't any sympathizers who shot at US forces. It was little more than a prisoner collection.

There's my logic. Go ahead, try to shoot holes in it.

[peacetalksforall]

16. By theatrical, I mean comparing to a film/book/event. I know that I am

being theatrical in presenting this because I despise this administration for killing him.

Why not compare the deaths, dismemberments, torment, torture, imprisonments and cost that have gone into intelligence gathering by us so far?

What were we doing by wasting these lives and spending this money for intelligence if we were not trying to find out what al-Zarqawi was planning and where their arms were coming from and where they were stored and their plans?

We had the kingpin - their number one leader who was our target - he was the leader this country identified as enemy number one - and we killed him.

Our country betrayed us by killing him.

[Kagemusha]

18. Forget film/book. Focus on EVENT. The Somalia incident was a

snatch job gone very, very bad. Many lessons can be learned from it for not wasting lives for nothing.

The bottom line is, though, any intelligence Zarqawi could provide is highly perishable and of little lasting use. His capture or death mainly deprives the insurgency of a political rallying cry and a very cruel motivator of violence and provides political points to the Bush administration. I can't believe I'm saying anything you're not already well aware of. You seem upset the administration is acting counter-intuitive to what you think its propaganda should be, US lives lost be damned because so many Iraqi lives have been lost.

Yeah, well, Zarqawi is responsible for a decent number of those Iraqi lives that have been lost, too, so I have a hard time agreeing with you today.

[Sparkman]

20. Militarist talk again! Why focus on and jump to military solutions?

Killing and weapons systems should be the LAST RESORT, of a civilized nation.
Problem is the U.S. is an IMPERIALIST nation, coveting world resources as our own, and that's what kills innocent victims around the world.
THREE HUNDRED MILITARY BASES ON FOREIGN LANDS!!!!!!!
PERMANENT base in Iraq, acres of embassy compound, can you even say MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?

[Kagemusha]

22. Even a last resort's justified in the case of this particular individual.

I may not think much of the Iraqi government's ability to make good on its desire to pacify the country but, they'd have done everything they could to take Zarqawi out too. Even most insurgents wanted this Jordanian murderer out of the way of their Iraqi nationalist insurgency.

So save it. There's better causes to spill words over.

[peacetalksforall]

23. Killing him was equivalent to an instant death penalty.

Except the death penalty is proceeded by discovery and a trial and always the benefits of intelligence, turning, pleaing in exchange.

Perhaps al-Zarqawi was only a Jordanian insurgent with a little more moxie and this administration blew him up and distorted the truth for propaganda purposes?
But felt it was necessary to drop two 500 pound bombs on what is reported as a small enclave. Then, find him alive, but didn't keep him alive - obviously because he wasn't really of value to them?

Then, we have the idiot Bo Diddle saying that the soldiers put bacon in his mouth meaning he wouldn't get his virgins - stupidity for good propaganda purposes.

How can you say we would not have been considered more honorable in capturing him and treating him humanely until we got the intelligence a number one enemy had?

Why not keep him alive - if not for intelligence, for trade, for negotiation to eventually end the war if he was the big man our administration said he was?

We're falling faster than Rome because of our indecency.

Over-kill is indecent.
Over-death for the purpose of gathering intelligence about him is absurd in comparison to the risk of some possible deaths to capture him alive.

I'm saying that we have already killed our own in addition to killing and torturing theirs for intelligence gathering purposes. We blew it.

[cali]

26. LOL. A Jordanian insurgent with moxie.

And Dahmer was just a gourmet with a weakness for 'long pig'. I fall in the camp of those who think the military should have attempted to capture al-Z, but there's plenty of evidence- not coming from the admin- that al-Z was responsible for the deaths of hundreds and perhaps thousands of Iraqi civilians, mainly Shiites. How much intelligence could he have provided? Probably not all that much. Most experts think he was responsible for a fraction of the violence going on in Iraq, and more importantly that he was increasingly being squeezed out by al-Qaeda. Some theorize that it was al-Qaeda who tipped us off. He'd become a liability for them.

It's unlikely that al-Zarqawi was created by the US, but the admin is certainly responsible for building him up to mythic boogie man status. They needed an enemy with a face. He was convenient.

And as far as the fall of the American Empire goes, we're not there yet. We've reached our peak, but the decline doesn't happen over night. Or even over a decade.

[Kagemusha]

27. "How can you say we"... uh, I did not say that, sorry.

I'm saying that idealism aside, Zarqawi's intelligence value was never going to be very high. The value of removing him from the insurgency, while not even by itself, all that great as far as I'm concerned, was nonetheless much higher than his intelligence value. Given that, why go through the risks of trying to capture him? Or to play on a financial expression, why throw good lives after bad? Granted, I'm not happy about the women getting killed, but Zarqawi's killed lots of women and would have killed plenty more if not stopped.

As for trade and negotiation, you have GOT to be kidding me. On what earth would the insurgents want Zarqawi BACK? Why would they ever accept his being given back in exchange for surrendering Zarqawi's cause, anyway?

No, no, bombing him wasn't very noble, but car bombs killing women and kids isn't noble either. I cannot sit in good conscience and argue that going in with snatch teams would be "not blowing it". As I said, this wasn't the Saddam situation. It involved real risk. That at least should be a factor when deciding things.

[RaleighNCDUer]

24. This is apples and oranges --

In Somalia the snatch was by a couple dozen men, a team, backed by a few helicopters, meant to grab a warlord who had thousands of supporters in the immediate vicinity.

The lesson to be learned there was not to not do it, but to do it right.

Zarqawi was, by all accounts, lightly guarded. If he was as important as the government claims he was, it would have been worth the expense to take a couple hundred men, backed by attack helicopters and jets to suppress ground movement of the enemy, to capture him alive.

It seems obvious to me that he was not that important. He'd been demoted by the (what do they call it, the Resistance Council, or something like that) the month before. He claimed responsibilty for 250 attacks, over a 3 1/2 year period. At 25 to 50 attacks a day, that's about 10 days worth of attacks of the last 1200 days.

He was never more than a propaganda tool. The government could not afford to take him alive and reveal just how unimportant he really was.

[Kagemusha]

28. Your Somalia details are off but, it's not the point anyway...

The US government has never, ever claimed that Zarqawi was important to capture alive. Rather, the government claimed it was important to "bring him to justice". I don't like it when Bush uses those words to refer to killing people. I don't like it, but the fact is, Zarqawi was worth a lot more dead to us, Al-Qaeda, the native Iraqi insurgents, the native Iraqi government, etc etc, dead than alive. Given that, it may not be noble, but I have a hard time blaming the US for just sending a plane in to drop a couple of 500lb bombs. (Note for the record, the US does not employ air-dropped bombs lighter than 500lb.)

For the record, the snatch in Somalia was supported by a lot more than just a few helicopters, but a lot less than they really should've had. In particular, a ground force meant to truck prisoners back to the main base which got into an almost Greek tragedy level of trouble in the city itself. Also, the problem wasn't the warlord's OWN people. It was that a lot of people that WEREN'T his people joined in to fight the Americans because, well, it's their city and that's what everyone else was doing, and the hornet's nest that got kicked up just got bigger and bigger. The problem with Zarqawi is similar. It doesn't matter how lightly guarded HE was; his guards in no way accounted for all the hostiles in that area at that particular time. The more warning given, the worse it'd get. Besides, you wouldn't want a lucky RPG shooting down a Black Hawk in the middle of an Iraqi residential area. That'd be... problematic.

[jobycom]

30. Don't play victim with me, I didn't attack you

I politely disagreed, I don't understand why I didn't get a polite response in return.

As for Blackhawk Down, I didn't see it, but a close friend of mine flew helicopters in Special Services, so I've heard enough stories to know it's quite dangerous. I also know that's what they train for. America wants to fight an easy war, using our long-distance weapons and keeping our soldiers safe. As a result, we have slaughtered so many innocent people that we have earned the hatred of the entire populace (aside from a few of those on our payroll). If we had taken a few more precautions, and maybe lost a few more soldiers at the beginning, we might be in better shape with relation to the Iraqis. The insurgency would have more trouble finding recruits if people respected us, and they would respect us more if our soldiers took the risks instead of killing innocent civilians to avoid all risk.

And on top of that, the rewards were worth the risks. Al-Zarqawi or close enough to him to be in the same building may have yielded more intelligence than all of our torture camps combined, even if no one talked.

[peacetalksforall]

6. Now, Kagemusha, I'm assuming that you are being cynical since we

were able to take Saddam alive.

[Sparkman]

7. YOUR illogic is amusing...statements mimic war monger thinking, here's why

1.danger to us troops....
The idea that risking troops to do things ethically, not killing / risking innocents by 1000 pound bombs, overlooks the risk to our troops from the victims of our war attrocities.

2.Zarqawi won't be taken alive, not cooperating...
That's why more sophisticated tactics, tools not common in the militarists arsenol, like waiting for more opportune time, or not going for THE TROPHY FIGURE HEAD, like a juvenile hunter, until conditions optimal. FOLLOW THE GUY, it will pay off in the long run.

3. chance he'd get away completely.
Now turns out that GI's are accused of stomping his chest/stomach after removing him, alive, from an ambulance, accused by an Iraqi policeman witness. Autopsy not released. This means, in military mindset, he was a target, not a suspect, for kill on sight. THis is why the Iraqis, like any other victims of U.S. military attrocity, fight so long and so dedicated.

Why can't the obvious be stated, the U.S. is a war crimes country of the first order.
100,000 is a low estimate of civilian victims of U.S. "war to liberate"?

[Igel]

33. Plus it was apparently

half an hour after the bombing before US troops showed up in numbers.

The bombing, was, of course, after they'd played around for a while lining up a plane to bomb, getting authorization, etc., etc.

During that additional half hour, he could easily have left; perhaps he would have spent the night. But it's not like he hung around any one place for very long, and a near miss gets you little.

[jobycom]

3. Exactly, well said. To me it shows that BushCo didn't think al-Zarqawi

was all that important. I'll bet that if he had known the whereabouts of lost Iraqi money he'd have been taken alive.

[lpbk2713]

4. ..... and it wasn't a plane crash this time.

[Sparkman]

9. The all powerful neocons, like all tyrants, eventually make huge blunders.

This is axiomatic, to use a cute phrase from colleges and literature.
Problem is, real world operates on the laws of nature and random events. The Fascists can't control enough of the world to avoid disaterous results of bombs, of sending weapons to despots and war-lords around the world, to protect "our energy resources".

This morning, Pacifica Radio's Amy Goodman is exposing the DOCTORS who work for the U.S. military to assist TORTURE.
The oath that our civilized world demands of those priviledged ones given opportunity of medical school, is being ignored and violated by men and women military doctors at the American Gulags hospitals. This place is rotten.

[formercia]

15. and they have been doing it to US citizens for decades

Thanks to a program a long time ago called MK-Ultra. I won't bore you with the details but I know a number of US citizens that have been subjected to chemical and biological attacks and experimentation without their direct knowledge or permission. They have been used as experimental subjects for a large portion of their lives, kind of like the Truman Show but with a dark side.

[Sparkman]

21. Why is Busco the most SECRET GOV. SINCE THE NAZIS?! Maybe it's

because if it WALKS like a chicken, TALKS like a chicken, SMELLS like a chicken...IT's a pretend warrior president PLAYING at global domination without regard to life, liberty or innocent suffering

[formercia]

29. Funny you mention Nazis....

They did the original research on Concentration Camp inmates, then were brought to the US to experiment on US and Canadian citizens. Despite the protestations by the Government that these experiments were ended decades ago, the original methodology and materials remain in use to this day. Big Brother has been practicing on a small (less than 100,000 persons) level for a long time. It's just a matter of scale from now on.

[Minnesota Libra]

13. Yes, he could provide Intelligence against Us and Them, you really........

.....think the WH Idiots and his puppet masters want anyone talking?? In other words having information could be dangerous to your health and safety.:wtf:

[radwriter0555]

17. That wasn't zarqawi. THIS was zarqawi....

[LunaC]

25. They needed to make a martyr out of him

Now they can stage an attack against one of our ships in the Gulf, blame it on “insurgents” avenging his death, then wag a finger at Iran for “sponsoring, encouraging and harboring terrorists” and - bingo - they have a handy-dandy excuse for attacking the next country on the PNAC Hit List.

Bush Said To Be Seeking “Persian Gulf Incident"
http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/2006/05/839133.shtml

[leftofthedial]

34. Other than stealing money as fast as possible for the super wealthy

and destroying a smany civil liberties as possible,

EVERYTHING they do is pure PR. there is no policy, no plan, no method

they don't want intelligence, because they want the chaos to continue

they wanted headlines they could spin to suit their PR needs