Post #324,062
4/5/10 3:39:06 PM
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Your tax dollars at work
Wikileaks has obtained footage from 2007 depicting the killing of about a dozen noncombatants (including two Reuters photographers, one of whose telephoto lenses is taken for an RPG) as seen from the death's eye. If you have eighteen minutes and a tolerance for the banality of evil, here's the video:
http://www.collateralmurder.com/
Over on John Cole's site someone posted a response to the effect that requiring our Teeming Millions to sit through the footage might have a salutary effect, rather like having the local Germans marched through their friendly neighborhood extermination camps in 1945. Alas, I fear a significant fraction would simply giggle like our Brave Boys in their helicopter watching one of the wounded photographers attempting to crawl off the street ("C'mon...reach for a weapon...just try it!"). They didn't finally kill the photog until someone arrived in a van and had the effrontery to pick him up.
I could almost see voting for Palin in 2012 on the grounds that this sorry ratfucking excuse for a republic, this savage, smirking, predatory empire deserves her. Bring on the Rapture, motherfuckers!
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Post #324,064
4/5/10 3:45:24 PM
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war is not a police action
the pilot/spotter misidentified a cameraman for an rpg because he is looking for weapons, not cameras and found what he wanted to see. Its what happens when you are in a war setting. The policy makers should be watching this shit as well as the people at home because that is what happens in a war.
If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
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Post #324,065
4/5/10 3:45:43 PM
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More tax dollars at work..when does it end?
Hat tip: Atrios.
http://thinkprogress...men-iraq-mistake/
[...]
"Moderator Grover Norquist then asked Rohrabacher to provide a Âguesstimate percentage of Republicans in Congress who would share that view  not that they opposed the President at the time, but today looking back. Rohrabacher replied that Âeverybody I know thinks it was a mistake to go in nowÂ:
ROHRABACHER: Well, now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars and all of these years and all of these lives and all of this blood, uh, I donÂt know manyÂ
NORQUIST: Looking for a number. Two-thirds? One-third?
ROHRABACHER: I, I canÂt. All I can say is the people, everybody I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now.
NORQUIST: ThatÂs 100 percent."
[...]
Oops. Our bad. 4,387 US fatalities.
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Post #324,068
4/5/10 4:15:28 PM
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MINE! Thou sayest. And.. +6: Concision
Haven't yet the stomach for viewing this atrocity; maybe after breakfast.
Thanks for the appropriately unlovely tag-line; I fear that my equivalent would have too-many adjectives -- where 3 is the statutory max per Messrs. Strunk, White et al.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
I could almost see voting for Palin in 2012 on the grounds that this sorry ratfucking excuse for a republic, this savage, smirking, predatory empire deserves her. Bring on the Rapture, motherfuckers!
-- via RC
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Post #324,086
4/5/10 8:47:03 PM
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I stopped it at 4:27
No shooting yet, but you know it's coming.
It's clear up to that point that they were seeing what they expected to see. I just see a bunch of guys ambling down the street. Surely if they were insurgents, the sound of the helicopters would have had them scatter. Those things are loud...
The transcript is here - http://www.collatera...n/transcript.html
Gadzooks. They treat it all like it's a fucking video game. :-(
I'm reminded of McChrystal's recent statements about Afghanistan - http://tpmmuckraker....eop.php?ref=fpblg
The general responded that, in the nine months he had been in charge, none of the cases in which "we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it."
In many cases, he added, families were in the vehicles that were fired on.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #324,135
4/6/10 2:44:29 PM
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Another quote from McChrystal
from the same link:
In a stark assessment of shootings of locals by US troops at checkpoints in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in little-noticed comments last month that during his time as commander there, "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from."
-- E.L. Doctorow
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Post #324,143
4/6/10 4:48:09 PM
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Almost like...
They are using TASER guns here in the US.
They use them rather than talk with the people and be nice. Its all about the rush of having a proven non-lethal weapon to convince someone to do your commandments.
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Post #324,088
4/5/10 9:05:49 PM
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It's on the front page of the NY Times now.
The Washington Post has a link to a buried story about it.
US Central Command is supposedly going to have a statement eventually - http://www.centcom.mil/
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #324,090
4/5/10 10:31:04 PM
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since the teabaggers have repealed Godwin's Law
This is, mutatis mutandis, indistinguishable from the casual atrocities committed in Russia by the Beastly Hun during the late unpleasantness of the 1940s. The figures on the Baghdad street were, plain and simple, untermenschen, negligible existences to be erased as casually, and with as much satisfaction, as you or I might squash a buzzing fly. Box says, "Hey, this is war." In that case, I respond that we ought to shrug and respond "it's just war" when the charbroiled corpses of US troops—or contract killers—are displayed hanging from bridges.
A number of the US deaths in Iraq have been consequence of helicopters shot out of the air. If this crew had been among them, who among you is so wed to tribal loyalties that you would not agree that a rough justice was served?
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Post #324,109
4/6/10 8:09:03 AM
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reply
Box says, "Hey, this is war." In that case, I respond that we ought to shrug and respond "it's just war" when the charbroiled corpses of US troopsÂor contract killersÂare displayed hanging from bridges.
yes it is war, just like the metro bombings in russia.
Just like the canadians tying civillians with barbed wire on the front of their tanks in the northern salient after dday.
No different than using flamethrowers to bbq a few scared Nipponese crouching like fearful hobbits in a hole in an area so foreign that most americans wouldnt recognize it on a cruise ship going past.
Sorry that you have had such a delightful life that you have never had to contemplate such actions except when cheering on your favorite cinematic heroes from the comfort of your living room chair.
If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
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Post #324,144
4/6/10 4:50:16 PM
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that was harsh box.
Even for you.
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Post #324,148
4/6/10 7:00:43 PM
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war is not a game, its death and destruction unmatched
If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
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Post #324,158
4/6/10 9:01:36 PM
4/6/10 9:02:17 PM
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No I'm talking about the commentary you
put on the end there.
You can be a serious jack ass if you want to be. You are being a bit pretentious about assuming Rand's life.
War, I know its war.
Edited by folkert
April 6, 2010, 09:02:17 PM EDT
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Post #324,164
4/6/10 10:27:24 PM
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De nada
I don't watch TV in the living room and I don't cheer anyone on the tube, so if insult was intended (and if it was, well, we're all thick-skinned guys here) it landed wide of the mark. Kind of you to rise to my defense, though.
cordially,
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Post #324,093
4/5/10 11:05:05 PM
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CentCom FOIA links.
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Post #324,091
4/5/10 10:37:35 PM
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That was ugly
The helicopter crew was primed to mistake the camera for a weapon, and then jumped straight to engagement without doing to much checking. I'm not sure exactly what the helicopter crew saw, but I get the impression that video is a low res black and white recording of what they where looking at. And what I saw in the video would justify a closer look but not an engagement. That part is an ugly accident of war, if you support a war you have to accept that such accidents will happen.
The cover up after looks even uglier. The military investigators must have quickly realized there was no RPG and no planned attack. I would assume a Reuters photography team in Iraq had some bodyguards, so there probably where some small arms to find, but nothing to justify the attack. Plus, it must have been clear quickly that most, if not all, of the targets where unarmed civilians.
Looking at the video it was obvious they where not really preparing for an attack, they where all clustered around the cameraman when the helicopter crew decided they where preparing to open fire. And what would they be shooting at? The US forces where several streets away in the other direction and they didn't seem to notice the helicopter either. Given the time delay between when the crew seemed to pull the trigger and the shells hit the ground, the helicopter seems to have been some distance away.
Jay
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Post #324,110
4/6/10 8:17:49 AM
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look at the after action report
no coverup. The ground patrol was taking fire. Instead of unassing the area the reporters and unnamed others were moving towards the ground patrol. (reporters do that) what looked like a weapon was spotted.
Again this is not your local sherrif stopping a dodgy looking car. Their job was to remove ANY threats to the patrol. War is not policing. If you are uncomfortable about what happened do your best to have the troops removed from the warzone. Dont ask them to be killed on your behalf because it is fugly.
What coverup? I read the after action reports and they were a clear writeup of what you saw on the tape. Under the rules of engagement the actions were reasonable
If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
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Post #324,123
4/6/10 12:03:13 PM
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Not the soldiers
The guys in the helicopter made a mistake when the mistook the cameras for weapons, a tragic one but one that will happen in a war zone. They may have gone over the line when the opened fire on the van, since there where no visible threats at that point, but I don't know what the rules of engagement they where under says exactly.
The cover up was the military's claim that they didn't know what happened to the Reuters camera crew and that the attack made by the helicopter on that date was made on insurgents. Looking at the time line closer though, it does look like those two claims where made before the full military investigation was done. So it may be the case that the military took the helicopter crew's statements at full value before the investigation, and then after simply tried to say as little as possible once they realized the entire engagement was a mistake.
I've been trying to read the Centcom documents, but they seem jammed up today.
Jay
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Post #324,153
4/6/10 7:56:22 PM
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There's one way in which you're not quite right, Box
it's not a war any more... it's an occupation.
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Post #324,183
4/7/10 11:02:02 AM
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So quit tazering kaybeckers :-)
If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
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