You thought death squads were only for banana republics? Meet covert US Task Force 373 which circulates in Afghanistan with a 2,058 name “Kill or Capture List” killing all witnesses, even policemen, who get in their way. The sudden transparency is due the AFGHANISTAN WAR LOGS, courtesy at last from Wikileaks. While dodging US DHS agents, Wikileak’s Julian Assange was able to coordinate a clever self-checking joint release of the documents via the Guardian UK, Der Spiegel, and the New York Times. The events reported aren’t accusations, they’re the soldiers’ own records.
This leak of over 90,000 files represents the US military’s account of the Afghanistan conflict virtually in its entirety. The news outlets have attempted the present the data in manageable articles, while also providing the raw material for download. The Guardian even offers a tutorial.
The coordinated release ensures that no one can alter the information, and Assange’s choice of outlets was also clever: all three of them are/were pro-war.
There will be lots of revelations from these leaked document, including underestimates of civilian casualties, and acknowledgment of casualties not admitted to the media, CIA hits, and another Black Ops SF squad called Scorpion 26, but let’s get back to the death squad.
We don’t have to allege that TF 373 is an extrajudicial, fully-illegal assassination team, we have their own logs. Who they killed, tried to kill, killed instead, killed trying to get there, killed covering their tracks. Men, women and children. The logs cover up to November 2009, but we have no reason to think they’re not killing still.
Task Force 373 operates out of Kabul, Kandahar and Khost, comprised of soldiers of the 7th Special Forces Group of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. They are transported by Chinook and Cobra helicopters flown by 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, of Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia. Special Forces Airborne death squads.
Or is America inured by our armed drones which assassinate from up high. Whether the trigger man wears a mask in Afghanistan, or sits at a console in Nevada, the hit is a war crime. Outside of a field of battle, it’s simply murder.
And lookey here, the 7th Special Forces have a patch for their record in El Salvador in 1984…
Addressed by their commander in 2001: “From Fort Bragg to Colombia to Venezuela to Peru to Ecuador to Bolivia to Nicaragua to Argentina, you have been instrumental in forging deeper bonds with the democracies of Latin America,”
So before I let the banana republic slur go. Let’s recall that Latin American death squads were often trained at the US School of the Americas, when they or their governments weren’t being directed by Americans outright. Or the 7th, the “Devil’s Brigade.”
The usual rebuttal to such revelations or excuse for their crimes is that Hitler wasn’t a nice person either, nor Attila the Hun, Vlad the Impaler, Caligula the Insane, the fictional Ming the Merciless from Buck Rogers or any of the Klingons from the original Star Trek series.
And that those of us who aren’t professional murderers should STFU and MYOFB about it, much like having any jury in a Murder Trial empaneled solely with Mafia Hit-men.
I suppose this would be a good place for that quote by Orwell about rough men but you wouldn’t get it would you?
War is not clean or good or victimless but sometimes it still beats the alternative.
Except Orwell didn’t say it. You’re confusing anti-imperialist George with imperialist Rudyard.
I don’t sleep better at night knowing “rough men” are wreaking their havoc.
And then, which less favorable alternative did you have in mind? Peace?
Perhaps you don’t “get” the notion of war crimes, deliberately targeting civilians, or for that matter making war on false pretexts?
Murder is murder. Excusing it by quoting Eric Blair doesn’t make it not so. The “rough men” in question murdered civilians. For Fun.
Not for any of the noble Lies told to them and to the American people supposedly justifying their individual murders committed during an unlawful war of conquest, a war started by Rich Cowards who would not themselves take the risks of their own lives to gain the wealth of foreign nations.
Maybe you’re angry at the victims of these “rough men” because they didn’t bow down and lick their PIG Jackboots, eh?
Yes, we should all worship these brave young Murderers for spreading Corporate Slavery to places that have consistently refused the generous offer of the status of Permanent Vassal State, and extremely low paid employment as servants of the Corporate Empire!
Alle Seig Heil am das WunderVolken ÜberMenschen!! Heil! Heil! Heil!
Maybe the Worse Alternative is if the Aristocracy actually supported themselves by their own labor rather than taking the wealth of others through conquest.
Couldn’t have that happen, no, we most certainly can not.
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See there’s some factual errors. The Cobra gunship is a Marine helicopter, Army doesn’t touch them. Also they are called the Cobra gunship, gunship because it’s not a transport helicopter and unless somebody holds onto the skids, it has no transporting capabilities. Also your argument about the use of drones, labeling it murder is just outright garbage. Why risk American lives taking down a target when you can simply send up a UNMANNED drone armed with a few hellfire missiles and eliminate the target without friendly, or civilian casualties. (That is not however an excuse for the amount of civilian casualties and collateral damage.
Oh, “targets” instead of “fellow human beings” in countries the U.S. is occupying. 800 bases in non-american nations compared to 77 “offshore” or “extra-territorial” bases of the entire world’s OTHER nations. And if you can’t tell us exactly WHO got killed in your undeclared unconstitutional occupations (but not “war”) how exactly do you KNOW that everybody killed is actually an enemy? And did their nations actually attack America? Was Bishop Oscar Romero, murde… um… assassi… ummm… “executed” by foreign (salvadoran) Death Squads in the pay of the United States Mili.. umm… “un-named governmental agencies”, while he was saying the Mass, was he a real enemy of the U.S., do you have some informatio n on what exact attacks he ordered against the U.S.? How many children were killed in the Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Hanoi or the unauthorized villages in South Vietnam? Were all or most of the people bombed by the U.S. government actual combatants? Oh that’s right… you don’t know. But you hit us with your propaganda provided war-profiteer “superiors” with the stale old rotted platitudes. By the way, if you have “superiors” then you are, by default, an “inferior”. Once you leave the military and maybe a decade or more time to decompress you might be able to think for yourself again. Your training is done along the lines and, hell, it’s EXACTLY Pavlovian Conditioning, aka Stockholm Syndrome aka Brainwashing. It’s only called ‘training’ when THEY do it, whoever ‘they’ are. If you survive your State-Sponsored killing spree and, you know, start thinking independently again,, maybe you’ll understand.