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Army’s Death-Squad Inquiry
Why is it important to bring these extremely destructive acts, and yes criminal, into the light of day? First, if proven true, they've already killed and maimed brother and sister soldiers serving in theater in the blowback as these are only hidden incidents outside of an occupied country, they enhance the already growing international criminal terrorist ranks from the extremely failed policies followed and give proof to their once propaganda used against us, and will continue to do so if nothing is done! Second, a country that touts Law, National and International, and Condemns others must uphold their standards they preach and lead by example not words! Third, and very important, is the chain of command in theater must be investigated as well, these tragic incidents, any with proof that occurred, are carried out under a cloud of extremely poor leadership the soldiers are serving under and brings tragic results on them!
September 20, 2010 - According to Army investigators at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, soldiers in the 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment of what’s now the 2nd Stryker Brigade hunted and killed Afghan civilians for sport. If this gruesome tale turns out to be true, then it means American soldiers in Afghanistan became something we associate with the worst of all war crimes, something that we’d like to believe simply doesn’t exist among our troops: a death squad.A small group of soldiers in the platoon, report the Washington Post and the Army Times before it, hatched a plot to target Afghan civilians for death. Three alleged murders occurred between January and May in Kandahar at the hands of the self-described “Kill Team” headed by a staff sergeant in the platoon who apparently boasted of getting away with abuse in Iraq. The motives of the “Kill Team” are unknown at this point, but they appear to be indistinguishable from sadism: we only know about the plot because a private came forward to investigators after “Kill Team” members beat him up — ironically, on suspicion that he was a snitch. This is going to get even uglier: apparently there are photographs of some of the team posing with the corpses they created.
Details surrounding the alleged death squad are subject to dispute and counter-accusation as the Army’s investigation proceeds. But what little is known so far suggests a path for investigators to determine how these alleged war crimes could have occurred — and how observers can spot a whitewash if they don’t follow it. Short answer: look at how their commanders behaved.
1. What did the chain of command know? {read rest}
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"Video: Did U.S. Soldiers Create Afghan Killing Club?
US soldiers charged with targeting Afghan civilians; Army ignored pleas by soldier's father" (9:27)
The Real News Network, Sept. 20th, 2010
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m69966
That page provides the embedded Youtube video along with a bio. for Hal Bernton, who's the guest and "has been a staff reporter at The Seattle Times for the past 10 years". The rest of the page is a transcript and the following link is the direct one for the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6fpUWLgOQ
There's a link with the text for the clip at Youtube and it's for the "multi-part episode". Presently, there are only two clips, but at the end of the above clip Paul Jay says there'll be another episode, which is surely the second clip; but maybe there'll be more on this story, so I'll include the direct link for the "multi-part episode" page.
http://www.therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=...
Here's the link for the second episode.
"Drugs and Murder in Afghanistan" (9:13), Sept. 21st
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y0vwjDZI7M
There's a long history of this and when it comes to the historical events in Latin or Central America, people can certainly refer to the excellent documentary by John Pilger and which is entitled, "The War on Democracy"; and that is what we do have for reality. It's still available at Google in what I think is a full copy.
"War on Democracy" (1:33:36)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3739500579629840148
Salvador Option in Iraq, and possibly Afghanistan:
For the present wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, I've repeated a recommendation to read through an index or section of articles at www.BRusselsTribunal.org several times here, so this'll be redundant for some readers; but I'll repeat it again for people who still haven't noticed the recommendation. The index is linked in the home page and is entitled, "The Salvador Option and Death Squads", which is about today's war on Iraq and starting when the war was first launched, or very shortly after the start.
The following is short, but still a good and important interview.
"Latin death squads invade Iraq" (6:46)
RTAmerica, Aug. 24th, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW6b2iAGfCY
It's not only some Latin American death squad people in Iraq. It's also covert black and murder ops of the U.S. leadership. Prof. Chossudovsky says that there are or certainly have been Kurdish milita involved in these acts and this is one part I hadn't previously read or heard about, for I had read about Shi'ites forming the or some members of the armed forces of the puppet regime of the U.S. in Iraq, as well as foreigners.
A [strongly] complementary interview is with Eva Golinger, who's in Venezuela.
"Obama's "secret war"" (8:14)
RTAmerica, Aug. 24th, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujbVlca6c2k
There's plenty about this in the articles at BRusselsTribunal.org and there might be some articles at a few other websites that don't appear at the former one.
Phantom Al Qaeda in Iraq:
And Al Qaeda in Iraq has been mostly or else entirely propaganda of mass deception and manipulation for trying to get us to support the supremely criminal U.S. leadership's and elites' war on Iraq and their occupation of it.
Al Qaeda in Iraq was such a fantastic (fantasy, the dark kind) that the U.S. leadership killed and resurrected one of the leaders multiple times and U.S. news media loyally kept reporting these non-credible stories. I forget what his name was, but first he was killed, then he resurrected, after which he was killed again, resurrected to be killed again, multiple times. And we were supposed to believe this sick and stupid bullshit.
Suicide car bombings in Iraq?
Suicide car bombings in Iraq? Bombings using cars, sure, but evidently not all of these involved suicides, for there were no bodies or body parts in some, if not many, of these cars or near them; well, unless some innocent people happened to be too close when the explosions occurred and some of these people lost some limbs. The authorities knew this, since they certainly had some people investigate and some take the cars away. Those people would've seen that there weren't any suicides in some or many of these bombings. But to drum up propaganda for making the "enemy" seem more dangerous, it was evidently decided that it was better to say or pretend that they went so far as to commit suicidal bombings; many serious ones in civilian areas, like one or more marketplaces and civilian neighborhoods.
Checkpoint guards planted bombs in civilian vehicles:
Some people may've possibly committed suicide car or vehicle bombings and died in the cars, and unwittingly so!
It was discovered, and extremely underreported, that security checkpoint guards sometimes planted explosives in vehicles of innocent Iraqis, who didn't realize this. I think it may've been Robert Fisk who had written a shocking article about this a few or several years ago; probably several. The piece described two incidents.
One incident was about an Iraqi farmer driving his harvest for sale at a market and his young 10-year-old son or grandson wanted to go along and did. The farmer was ordered at a checkpoint to get out and to head over to a nearby police station to get clearance, so he did, but the child didn't have to go to the station, so he got out of the truck and sat a short distance away, while still being able to see the truck. He saw checkpoint guards putting a sizable object in the back of the truck among the farmer's harvest or crops, melons I think, and when the farmer returned, he and the boy were allowed to pass through the checkpoint; with the truck, of course. The child told the farmer about what he saw the guards do, so the farmer got out to take a look and found the bomb.
The other incident was about a taxi driver. He was stopped at a checkpoint and ordered to get out to clearance at the nearby police station, so he went. When he returned, the guards let him get back in his car and pass through, but the taxi driver noticed that his car felt oddly heavier than before, so once he was far enough away from the checkpoint, enough for the guards to not be able to see him, I guess, he stopped his taxi to inspect it. He found plenty of explosives in the trunk, under the back seat, and inside the door panels of the back doors of the car. The car was [loaded] with explosives.
Warmongers' propaganda of deception:
There's been a hell of a lot of hellbent propaganda of deception during the war on Iraq and the same is true about the war in Afghanistan. And we can be certain of knowing that we've been repeatedly lied to by the leaderships of the U.S. and U.K.; and maybe the leaderships of other countries with governments allied in these wars.
"Salvador Option" is an M.O. of the leadership of the U.S., and the British SAS also has a serious history of covert black ops, including with respect to the IRA. It's true in Iraq and that is surely not something new for the leadership in England. With respect to the IRA, it seems that some of the attacks or bombings in England and which England blamed on the IRA were not by the IRA. Instead, they would've been covertly committed by SAS members or soldiers. That's from what I've read, but it's certainly credible.
And like Professor Chossudovsky says in the interview he gave to RTAmerica, the death squads consistute only one of the evils committed by the US, et alia, in these wars.
War is a very "dirty" thing; certainly the aggressor side, anyway.