Unfortunately, it's not unusual for people to blow themselves and each other up in that country, but this hits a new low...
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0...351923.htm
Brigadier General Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq's chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the women were mentally handicapped and may have been unaware they were on a suicide mission.
"We found the mobiles used to detonate the women," he said, referring to the remote detonated devices that were used in the attack.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7221639.stm
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/0...index.html
I had heard about it on NPR's morning edition. The above are just a few articles I found in a Google search.
I usually do not stand for violence
but I hope the people responsible for this are locked away for the rest of their life suffering every hour
as for human rights issues (excuse my language) but *** that these people do not deserve them.
[quote=flardox]
I usually do not stand for violence
but I hope the people responsible for this are locked away for the rest of their life suffering every hour
as for human rights issues (excuse my language) but *** that these people do not deserve them.
[/quote=flardox]
Thats the idea, destroy the moral of the suicide bombers, they deserve no mercy, but then again, neither do the Taliban!!
I don't think anything justifies these kinds of tactics. Suicide bombings have to be almost the most morally bankrupt acts there are.
People who do this kind of thing simply cannot be reasoned with. I don't know what you can do with them.
Well if you believe you're going to paradise to get a few virgins or a bowl of fruit (whatever translation you wish to apply)...
Christopher Hitchins wrote something along those lines too... "the faithful can always be relied on to blow up their churches, mosques"... can't remember the exact line (and can't be bothered going into my bedroom to get the book!).
I think what Aeolinne was trying to get at is that the actual act of self-termination requires a certain amount of inner resolve; not that the act of a suicide bombing, in the suicide element, requires courage. These people are brain-washed by twisted old cowards with tales of 'paradise' and other material desires i.e. sex. As an atheist it would be extremely easy for me to automatically blame religion - however I would wager it was more the behaviour of those that twist religious 'teachings' to suit their own anger. I once said in passing to someone it was pointless to offer someone some virgins when they'd blown themselves up and were dead, in bits, with no ability to have any form of sexual activity. A bit crude... but my point is that it is twisting the physical into some kind of 'higher power' weapon. Using current need (i.e. poverty from living in a war tor country, oppression of some form) and manipulating it into a killing tool in the name of some deity, with heavenly claps on the back for doing it.
I have no defence of suicide bombers whatsoever and I hope that no-one misinterprets what I have said. But for every suicide bomber there are a bunch of sick bastards behind them, manipulating oppression and frustration into living, breathing terror weapons with bomb belts. I do not sympathise with people that go into a crowded area and blow themselves up, taking out people going about their lives (my ex brother in law literally missed the Kings Cross train on July 7th; he had got married the year before and had a 3 month old so it is not something that hasn't touched on my life... I also was near Glasgow Airport on the day the failed car bomb attempt and saw all the emergency vehicles rushing down... it felt like I was caught in the filming of a movie, it didn't feel real, even watching it on TV). I am not saying they are innocent whatsoever. It is those who manipulate these people, show them how to make bombs, feed them propaganda, turn confusion and misplaced rage into a suicide bomber that I hate most. Because until we deal with the power these people wield, all we will keep getting are people who truly, honestly, and terrifyingly, believe what they are doing is right, and that death is nothing to fear, because there is something 'better' out there waiting for them and they are good martyrs who are something to be proud of.
Sam Harris' The End of Faith writes very well about suicide bombing as well.
I have to confess, I was so sickened by the Yezidi stoning video last year that I felt absolutely no sympathy for them a few weeks later when about 300 of them died in a series of truck-bombings.
I usually do not stand for violence
but I hope the people responsible for this are locked away for the rest of their life suffering every hour
as for human rights issues (excuse my language) but *** that these people do not deserve them.
I'm a Quaker, and we never support violence. In fact, I think those folks who did this, if they are caught, should be treated with respect and compassion. Those two things would have never been extended to the victims of the bombings--but that's exactly why I encourage that. We are to be better than those who commit such violent acts.
Yeah, I saw that on the news. It's really terrible
. People who do suicide bombings are usually cowards but these poor women probably didn't even know what they were doing.
You don't know that. I believe these women were Downs? People with Down's Syndrome are perfectly capable of making decisions. Thye may have known exactly what they were doing.
I suppose you could argue that everybody who gets talked into joining terrorist organisations is brainwashed, but even so...
They've used little kids before, too.
It's not so much that innocent people died that really makes us mad--they usually do, at these bombings--but that the innocent people in question are the sort of people we ought to protect, because they're weaker than other innocent people. They have less power; that makes us feel more protective; and when they're hurt, that makes us angrier than when they hurt non-disabled adults.
Same goes for animals. They also have less power, and can suffer just like human beings can.
The really sad thing? The lives these women might have had might have been so bad, with so much abuse, thanks to human rights violations in their home countries, that their deaths might have been almost a blessing... How horrible that it's possible to say that, and not be lying my face off, because it takes a lot to not make life worth living at all.
If I could do anything in the world, I think finding decent lives for people like these would be near the top of the list. They deserve so much better.
I usually do not stand for violence
but I hope the people responsible for this are locked away for the rest of their life suffering every hour
as for human rights issues (excuse my language) but *** that these people do not deserve them.
I'm a Quaker, and we never support violence. In fact, I think those folks who did this, if they are caught, should be treated with respect and compassion. Those two things would have never been extended to the victims of the bombings--but that's exactly why I encourage that. We are to be better than those who commit such violent acts.
sorry about that I lost it a bit there!
I suppose yeah you could treat them with respect and compassion but really the way they treat everyone else they don't even use human rights themselves !!
I really don't think they deserve any respect they don't deserv human rights because they have ignored them towards other people!
Just heard today that one of Baghdad's mental hospitals has been used as a recruiting center. Heard that on NPR's All Things Considered.
The planning of the invasion of Iraq was hurried up in 3 weeks... The number of downright stupid decisions they made when they had defeated the enemy and set up a temporary HQ in Bagdad are endless. They fired the whole army and they fired the people that made up the adminstration of the entire nation. If they attack Iran on top of this it will unleash the last WorldWar because it aint going to be anywhere left to unleash the 4th.
Wag The Dog
Can't abide military cowardice.