And now they are using drones. If we, as ground troops, could make that kind of mistake from a few hundred yards away and helicopter gunships with all their abilities can make that mistake, how can you expect a soldier making those decisions from the other side of the world at Creech AFB in Nevada or Hancock Field in Syracuse, NY to be any clearer about who s/he is killing.
AND since when is it ok to assassinate suspects. Where is the outrage. (Hopefully people will show up at the demonstration at Hancock outside of Syracuse on April 25th.)
When soldiers stand up and refuse to do it anymore, not only do we take away their benefits for the time they have already served and for most of them, they have served overseas in these illegal wars, but we lock them up.
In the case of Marc Hall the Army not only locked him up last December when he demanded treatment for PTSD and refused to be stop-lossed, but they shackled him and shipped him off to stand court martial in Iraq on April 27th. They have extraordinary-renditioned one of our own soldiers to a hostile environment, and they have denied him the right to a fair trial. (You can Donate to his defense HERE)
I can't help going off when I see or hear of something like the outrageous event that took place in the following video.
Eight minutes after the attack, ground troops arrive on the scene."We pulled up and stopped and I could hear them over the intercom say they couldn’tdrive the Bradleys (tanks) in because there were too many bodies and didn’t want to drive over them.”-Captain James Hall, Army chaplain. (Washington Post)
The soldiers find two wounded children in the minivan.
The treating soldier eventually decides to evacuate the children to the medical center at the nearby US base of Tustamiyah. However, higher command orders are instead to be handed to Iraqi Police and be taken to an Iraqi hospital.
This could mean poorer standards of medical treatment and additional delay.“When we reached the spot where Mamir was killed, the people told us that two journalist had been killed in an air attack an hour earlier,”said Ahmad Sahib, The Agence France-Presse(AFP)photographer, who had been traveling in a car several blocks behind Mr.Noor-Eldeen but was delayed by the chaos in the area. He said he was in touch with Mr. Noor-Eldeen by cellphone until his colleague was killed...”
“They had arrived, got out of the car and started taking pictures, and people gathered,” Mr. Sahib said. “It looked like the American helicopters were firing against any gatherin in the area, because when I got out of my car and started taking pictures, people gathered and an American fired a few rounds, but they hit the houses nearby and we ran for cover.”
-Ahmad Sahib, AFP war photographer. (New York Times)“No innocent civilians were killed on our part deliberately. We took great pains to prevent that. I know that two children were hurt, and we did everything we could to help them. I don’t know how the children were hurt.”-Major Brent Cummings, executive officer 2-16, US Army (Washington Post)
-See also: Josh Stieber on Wikileaks
No comments:
Post a Comment