kansas reflections

mindfulness in trading the markets, futbol, teaching, learning, leading, managing

War is hell

Posted by Ken Long on November 3, 2009

From The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army

The book chronicles the careers of four different generals (GEN John Abizaid, GEN George Casey Jr, GEN Peter Chiarelli, and GEN David Petraeus).:

A few weeks before he was scheduled to depart, Abizaid was walking on a craggy ridgeline with a Peshmerga commander when he noticed three Iraqi corpses, their bodies covered with burn marks and their eyes gouged out.

“Why do you torture everybody?” he asked. “Why not just kill them?”

“Nobody fears death,” replied to commander, his rifle slung over his shoulder and a scarf wrapped around his head. The survivors, he explained, need to see mutilated bodies of their fellow soldiers so that they understood what could happen to them if they fought the Kurds.

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