Posted on 03/21/2011 6:32:48 AM PDT by driftdiver
Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.
Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.
They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.
Some of the activities of the self-styled "kill team" are already public, with 12 men currently on trial in Seattle for their role in the killing of three civilians.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
And 0bama will be happy to order Holder to do the railroading.
When Afghanistan erupts over this, the Times isn’t going to have much of a choice, they’ll have to cover it. I’m sure they’ll blame Gates, putting maximum emphasis on the fact that he’s a Bush holdover.
Regardless of what the media does, these guys have pretty much sealed our fate in Afghanistan. Nothing was learned from Abu Ghraib. They’ve put every man in woman in-country in a hell of bad spot. Damn kids and their f***ing cell phone cameras.
Once the media declares them “innocent”, it’s nearly impossible to remove the label.
That’s why you don’t take trophy pictures. It’s way too easy for the enemy to make use of them.
That is how the whole thing came about. A new soldier arrived and was threatening to go to command about the hash use and they beat the crap out of him.
That’s where civilized society differs from the barbarians. We do not slaughter innocent civilians. Accordingly, our military forces are trained to avoid civilian casualties.
Of course, in modern warfare, “collateral damage” can scarcely be avoided. The operative word, in the Just War doctrine, is that innocents may not be DIRECTLY targeted. I.e., we do our very best to avoid civilians, but unfortunately by unforeseen circumstances they sometimes fall into harm’s way.
The situation is made particularly difficult when fighting Muslim extremists, who have no compunction against fighting from positions where civilians are present, even hiding behind women and children while in firefights. We rightly consider this despicable; they have few moral qualms about such behavior. Still, the hallmark of a noble people is that we maintain our convictions in the face of great adversity.
Let us not stoop to the perverted logic of Arab terrorists who, for example, justify the slaughter of Jewish women and children because “the women will only bear more Jews, and the children will only grow up to be Israeli soldiers...” By that inhuman reasoning random killing of anyone can be “justified.”
As a nation we are, and I hope we shall always remain, better than that. As President Bush once said (not an exact quote; he may have been quoting someone): “America is great because it is good; if we cease to be good we shall no longer be great.”
That’s where civilized society differs from the barbarians. We do not slaughter innocent civilians. Accordingly, our military forces are trained to avoid civilian casualties.
Of course, in modern warfare, “collateral damage” can scarcely be avoided. The operative word, in the Just War doctrine, is that innocents may not be DIRECTLY targeted. I.e., we do our very best to avoid civilians, but unfortunately by unforeseen circumstances they sometimes fall into harm’s way.
The situation is made particularly difficult when fighting Muslim extremists, who have no compunction against fighting from positions where civilians are present, even hiding behind women and children while in firefights. We rightly consider this despicable; they have few moral qualms about such behavior. Still, the hallmark of a noble people is that we maintain our convictions in the face of great adversity.
Let us not stoop to the perverted logic of Arab terrorists who, for example, justify the slaughter of Jewish women and children because “the women will only bear more Jews, and the children will only grow up to be Israeli soldiers...” By that inhuman reasoning random killing of anyone can be “justified.”
As a nation we are, and I hope we shall always remain, better than that. As President Bush once said (not an exact quote; he may have been quoting someone): “America is great because it is good; if we cease to be good we shall no longer be great.”
Apologies for the double post!
The enemy will most certainly make use of them. Remember most Afghans do not read so those pictures will be embelished to portray whatever the enemy says they are. My son is deploying where even the interpreters are useless as they speak their own language and over 90% of the adult population is illiterate.
Godspeed to your son. Our prayers are with him.
“....murdered civilians...”
“...dead bodies of DEFENSELESS civilians...”
No editorializing there, no.
Sorry M-Fkrs.
I hope the terrorists retailiate by blowing up THE GUARDIAN.
Bunch of treasonous sons of bitches.
Can any subscriber to Satan’s religion be “innocent”?
Does any journalist write and take pictures of captured soldiers since pre Ghengis Khan( okay painted maybe back then) of the Korenghal region and other regions ripping soldiers piece by piece by piece by piece? No So until some rag shows the OTHER sides horrors and serious barbarism this canot be formed as a true picture in journalistic perspective, fair and balanced and all that, nope one sided BS.
The krauts’ Spiegel published the pictures first. But your point about Guardian is right.
Der Spiegel is quite selective about what it publishes.
Germans have still not done any in depth on the atrocities their own German beasts committed in WWII. What they did back then makes this looks like a prank.
This is going to ripple for a while.........
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/02/20/1552232/everyone-is-an-enemy.html
I do not believe this for a hot nanosecond inside a black hole universe. There is absofreakinglutely no fracking way a person associated with a black squad would let anyone snap a photo, let alone get a shot of something that could identify dental records.
I CALL BS. complete and utter bs.
Other posters have said they have confessed. There was also evidently some drug use.
I have a hard time believing it as well.
Read this about another soldier that knew about the drug use and those involved.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/02/20/1552232/everyone-is-an-enemy.html
This article was written by a complete idiot.
They were not a Black Squad, they ranged in age from 19-24. It allegedly started after a new Sgt. came who told the guys he had done the same thing in Iraq. He supposedly made it seem like they were part of special group.
These kids have grown up in a world of FB, Youtube, camera phones and the internet, it is almost like they have no idea what privacy is. Broadcasting things is natural for them.
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