Inquiry finds GIs plotted to slay civilians for sport

[Forkboy]

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — The US soldiers floated a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it.

For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, hatched the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The “kill team’’ activated the plan.

One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire.

According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the US invasion began in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/09/26/inquiry_finds_gis_plotted_to_slay_civilians_for_sport/

Winning hearts and minds....and collecting heads! Go USA!

[smalll]

1. As they always tell us, war is hell --

It causes death and injury, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; it breaks up families, etc. etc. And it brutalizes; it brutalizes some more than others.

Is this an argument against going to war at all? I guess to an extent it is.

But it's brain-dead (and we will see enough zombies here and elsewhere) to seize on this and contend that 1) this kind of thing was all planned from the top and/or that 2) it is unique to the Armed Forces of the United States, and just shows how extra-evil America is.

[Jumping John]

5. Well maybe but it was the military that lied about

the murder of Pat Tillman and shamed that down the throats of the U.S. and then promoted the general that covered up the crimes that led to his death. And all this as the officers got away free as the soaring eagle with their orders for their subordinates to shut their mouths about what happened to that hero. Same can be said for the crimes at Abu Ghraib. Same can be said for the officers that tried to cover up the rape in Iraq of a 14 year old teenager and the murders of her family and her murder too.

I think some are very fast to offer insulting name tags to people who may have unfounded opinions about orders from the top or the deduction that the U.S. and her Armed Forces are extra-evil, with no evidence to support their own unfounded opinions about people who have not posted about the futility of war and the self defeating actions on the society that chooses to use war as an economic boost or an employment enhancing institution that fails miserably on both of those endeavors.

It is an example of being defensive, isn't it?

[Radical Activist]

2. A reminder that there's no such thing as a "good" war.

This is what happens in any war, no matter why it was started.

[sabrina 1]

3. Omg, they are savages!

We need to get OUT of other people's countries.

Cowards, and we wonder why 'they hate us'! I wish there was a way to apologize to those poor people in that country and Iraq for the evil that has been unleashed on them ... but there are no words or deeds that could ever make it right ... :cry:

[Obamanaut]

4. These two, and other, earlier threads have several additional responses

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9164873

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4545694