Vancouver has staged an opera about Fallujah. Not about the massacre of its people as the US invaded Iraq, where civilian refugees were forbidden to flee from the incoming assault, where entire families were shot from helicopters as they tried to escape across the river, but the human tragedy of what the genocidal US soldiers had to endure. PTSD. That’s apparently what’s commemorable about the war crime of Fallujah. That “Fallujah”.
So, what happens when we do WORSE than behead somebody? Say, for instance, gut-shoot a third-world person knowing full well that the only place in town which can treat an abdominal wound is a hospital associated with whatever torture regime we’re propping up, or a US Military Hospital who will patch the dude up and then turn him over to somebody like the Saigon Torture Regime? Which is what these rifles were designed for doing. Not for a humane quick kill.
The AR series, including the most infamous of all the M16A1 and its assorted A numbers derived therefrom, was designed specifically to gut-shoot. The bullet-barrel-powder combination was ordered so that it would cause massive rips inside the intestines with a very small entry wound. Until Dr Joseph Lister discovered a way to use antiseptic surgical techniques, a gut wound was an automatic death sentence. A slow, painful one that could last days. The theory behind the AR series is that in Third World countries, the Guerrilla Theater, (guerrilla is the Spanish word for “little war” not the fighter therein, A common misuse of the word) the fighters with a comrade so afflicted had a very few nasty choices. Take their wounded comrade with them, slowing them down so the Army would have an easier time capturing or exterminating them, killing him, or leaving him to be captured and his life saved long enough to be turned over to the Torture Regime.
We had a candidate for president in the last election, an Admiral’s Kid naviy pilot who was most famous for being a screwup, protected by his daddy’s rank.
Wrecked his third Very Expensive U.S. killer aircraft and the DRVN government took him prisoner. Technically, what he and his fellow pirates err Pilots were doing was an act of terrorism, not a war crime per se because nobody from either the Hanoi government, the Saigon government or the U.S. government had ever formally declared war. It was on the level of 9/11 only using more planes and the killers, instead of dying to accomplish their deeds, would fly back to their carriers or their bases in Thailand or Singapore, neither of which had ever declared war, have a steak dinner, get drunk at the O club and congratulate each other on what brave pirates err Pilots they were. The DRVN claimed to have shot him down, but with his flight record the notion that they were exaggerating sounds plausible.
He was given Prisoner Of War Status. The Viet Minh “cong” soldiers were not given such status. McCain bitches a whole lot about the treatment he received as a prisoner, but never once mentions that the prisoners in South VietNam were treated even worse. By the same legal traditions and conditions the U.S. Puppet government in Saigon used, the DRVN could have just as easily executed them as terrorists. Saigon did it routinely, with the help of the U.S.
The U.S. Army said they didn’t torture prisoners, which is bullshit, but let’s go with their Official Position. They merely turned them over to the ARVN forces who tortured and executed them.
The DRVN might not have had pure motives in declaring the Non-War criminals like McCain to be POWs. Probably didn’t. The double and treble and quadruple standards exercised in that non-“war” war were rife on all sides, The U.S. hasn’t had a pure, unbroken record for treating prisoners humanely, the term “Concentration Camp” was invented for US POW camps in the Spanish-American war. Just an observation.
So, yeah. Call me when WE behead somebody.
That’s a quote from a BBC report on the ongoing, and growing, number of birth defects in kids in Fallujah.“They were well aware that what they said went against the government version, and we were told privately that the Iraqi authorities are anxious not to embarrass the Americans over the issue. There are no official figures for the incidence of birth defects in Falluja. The US military authorities are absolutely correct when they say they are not aware of any official reports indicating an increase in birth defects in Fallujah – no official reports exist
With television viewers transfixed by the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, US Marines in Afghanistan are undertaking an explosive Fallujah-class opening ceremony in Helmand Province against the little town of Marjah, a so-called Taliban stronghold. Thousands of Afghans who couldn’t get out in time have been cast as burning stuntmen for this remote reenactment of western expansion via genocide; a nod, if not an acknowledgment of the remnants of Vancouver’s native resistance. Will Marjah be lit up on cue with the arrival of the Olympic torch, spectacle-wise?
I like this last picture of Shaniya Davis, taken it appears, on the ordinary occasion of a new cellphone camera. 
The five-year-old’s body was just recovered by North Carolina police. Her mother Antoinette Davis, 25, has been arrested on charges of selling her daughter into prostitution.
Shaniya had only recently come under her mother’s custody:
The girl had only been living with her mother since last month. Her father, Bradley Lockhart, had previously raised the child but had agreed to let her live with her mother after she found employment and a place to live.
A second photograph in keeping with the “hoping there is a special place in hell” theme is of little Fatima Ahmed, born in Fallujah with two heads, among other deformities she shares with other Iraqi newborn and stillborn, representing an alarming 15 fold increase in birth defects.
Doctors attribute the probable cause as the depleted uranium and other exotic munitions employed by the American forces, but US military spokesmen urge caution in making a hasty judgement. Apparently as with smoking, and toxins with important industrial purposes, no causal link has yet to be established between DU, white phosphorous, other undisclosed agents and risks to human health.
Poor Ahmed Latif, killed in Fallujah this week for throwing his slipper at a US patrol. News reports are calling Latif a copycat of Muntadhar al-Zaidi, on the occasion of the Iraqi shoe thrower’s release from custody. Reporters are also suggesting Latif was “mentally disturbed,” instead of simply profoundly disturbed, by a development that might disturb you too.
First however, a disturbing aspect of this incident which reporters are downplaying and which Latif lived but only briefly to experience. The US soldiers fired on Latif because they thought he’d thrown a grenade. What he threw never exploded, and in fact we only know it was a slipper because bystanders saw it, and because Latif had only one slipper when he was taken to the hospital. The American soldiers couldn’t confirm the account themselves because they hadn’t even looked for whatever came at them that didn’t explode. When the soldiers fired on Latif, he ran. Eventually their bullets overtook him.
What disturbed the now late Latif, enough to prompt him to defy the US soldiers with his slipper, was seeing an American patrol drive down the streets of Fallujah.
Maybe we think that indignation at US occupiers is commonplace in Iraq, and that Iraqis should be practiced by now at repressing their proud urge to throw down insults at hair-trigger Americans. Why now? Why Latif?
The thirty two year-old Latif was so angry to see the American patrol in Fallujah, because he thought that Iraqi cities were no longer under the jurisdiction of American troops. You probably thought that too.
Yet here they were patrolling Ahmed Latif’s neighborhood. Have you been told the US soldiers are still patrolling Fallujah? If Latif’s death can count for something, it can at least serve to alert you that American in Iraq have not moved out of the cities. But the media telling of the late slipper-thrower’s deed, are not elaborating on that detail.
Pakistan pretty forcibly canceled a contract of the Blackwater Style Organized Thugs who are supposed to guard the Embassy and consulates in Pakistan. GOOD ON YE, Pakistan!
The murdering Thugs need to be slapped down and then slapped into prison where they belong.
Preferably in some third-world Hellhole where they’ll share a cell with some of the “Sand Niggers” they loathe so much, only, they won’t have their Wittle Pop Guns nor will they have the U.S. Air Force standing behind them ready to launch a Tactical Support Air Strike or the Marines to do a house-to-house Killing Spree like what happened when 4 of the Blackwater Thugs got their Murdering Coward Bitch Asses hanged from the bridge in Fallujah.
Yeah, the Mercenary Murder-for-hire punks hopefully won’t have the U.S. military backing them up.
Maybe the Minutemen ought to take notice as well.
Private Terrorist Armies are Private Terrorist Armies, no matter where they operate and what they call themselves.
NMT has obtained screenshots from Atomic Games ‘Six Days in Fallujah,’ traded p2p and remarketed as Six Hours in My Lai. There was no budget to modify the OIF coalition uniforms to resemble the Vietnam GIs, but who’s looking at the clothing? Nostalgic vets will find the rape reenactments unremarkably familar. In reality the mayhem of My Lai and My Khe lasted 28 hours, not six, but industry research indicates that cyber ejaculators rarely have more than a six hour window before a landlady looks in on them.
Gaming studies remain inconclusive about whether virtual sex stimulation augments with cumulative scorekeeping. It will require a scientific leap before computer health levels can fortify a real-world refractory period. Otherwise virtual serial binges cannot build on themselves like the longer pyramid games of Civilization or World Of Warcraft.
Japanese game publisher Konami, forced by civilian outcry to drop a distribution deal for Atomic’s Fallujah first person shooter, is pleased that the salient gangbang modules will find their way to end-user Marine Corps wannabes. Konami already has a bestselling Raper II title, an Okinawa schoolgirl adventure for American servicemen. Konami’s own one-handed programmers are set to adapt the Atomic code for the Japanese market. The human trafficking of Iraqi orphans into US contractor Army brothels becomes Korean Comfort Women; US combat depravity becomes The Rape of Nanking.
Deprived of being able to cash in on the Fallujah atrocity allure, Atomic Games is looking for sympathy from the Support the Troops crowd. Atomic laid off the soldiers on its staff, issuing this statement:
“We wish to assure the dozens of Marine veterans who have collectively invested hundreds of hours in this project that, while we have been badly wounded, we will fight on. The stories of your brothers’ courage and sacrifice in Fallujah must be shared with the world.”
By historical accounts, are they referring to the virtual sequences between the levels of action which act like silent movie inter-titles to link the running and jumping to a bigger story? Where the plot points are inviolate can be the only teaching moments in an otherwise chose-your-adventure killing spree. Where will there be opportunity for gamers to show courage and sacrifice with only a menu of rape and murder?
Let’s be clear. The Fallujah video game was not about soldiering. It did not mean to replicate the experience of 99.9% of the American soldiers who served in the battle for Fallujah. A first person shooter is not about following orders, falling in, or self-sacrifice. An FPS is about four wheeling a personal path of personal destruction. Atomic’s Six Days in Fallujah was a spring break for Grand Theft Auto sex tourists.
NMT is equally concerned about the lost Fallujah stories which may have been the narrative of the gameplay. The world should hear of the turning back all male refugees, of the White Phosphorous and sniper Free Fire Zones. The lost Fallujah action sequences no doubt exploited the armored vehicles crushing the Iraqi wounded, and the role of the helicopter gunships over the river, Red Bridge and the Fallujah hospital.
A group of “hippies” including a retired Judge get beaten by the CSPD at a parade where the entrance fees and requirements are fulfilled, the Gag-Zette and all it’s Sieg Heil readership say “well, Free Speech, yes, but there have to recognitions of Consequences of that Speech (In other words, we’re “Free” to say whatever we want as long as the Local Gestapo isn’t offended in any way) Ward Churchill…
Sues because a Government Agency, (state college) machs mit der Sieg Heil and obeys the orders of UnterFuhrer Bill Owens and fires him on made-up charges…
The jury agrees but only awards him a dollar.
One Juror says the same thing, “Free speech, yes, but there has to be recognition of Consequences of Free Speech”
Meaning, once again, that the Local Gestapo can crack down on Free speech…
An American journalist gets arrested in Iraq and it’s a “Hostage Situation” according to the Same Right Wing Freaks who think we should be beaten, impoverished or imprisoned for “free” speech.
The Right Wing FigPuckers like our Regular ChickenHawk Trolls say WE should be docile and accept punishment for Free Speech but not their Right Wing Accomplices.
They say WE should be punished for Civil Disobedience but that THEIR War Criminal “heroes” should go unpunished for THEIR murders and Tortures and other Violent Crimes.
Like the Blackwater Goon Squads.
I’m not for the death penalty, but the four Blackwater Goons who got hacked up and hanged on the Fallujah bridge, while nobody deserves death, they DID get exactly what they and their Comrades in and out of the Official Military dish out routinely.
But again, we should be punished for objecting.
Some of the Right Wing Freaks have suggested that I should be beaten up or even murdered for pointing out these things.
Since they have no MORAL objections to those suggested actions, and their Leaders say that there’s no LEGAL objections, and the Local Gestapo like the EPCSD and the CSPD would look the other way or perhaps even participate in such actions, I guess the only REAL reason they haven’t comes down to Simple Cowardice.
As virtual-gaming distributer Konami reconsiders its release of SIX DAYS IN FALLUJAH, gaming pundits ask “Is it too early to role-play the Second Battle of Fallujah?” To non-US-vets it’s known simply as “Fallujah,” as one would denote Lidice or Srebrenica, by name alone. I don’t know, when will it be appropriate to satiate the nostalgic veteran gamer’s appetite to reenact war crime?
The obvious sarcastic question would be to ponder if White Phosphorous is among the player’s arsenal. Likewise, in “free fire zones” where US rules of engagement permitted the shooting of anything that moved, do you accumulate points for killing the civilians or running them over with your tank?
It would be interesting to see how Atomic Games, neighbor of Blackwater, reenacts the raid on the Fallujah hospital, or the strafing of refuges trying to cross the river when US forces had blocked the infamous Blue Bridge. Are key episodes actionable, or do you sit by as the game cycles through the script, where women and very young children were let to pass to safety, but men and boys were forced to back to the city to be dispatched automatically as combatants.
Is there a game version of My Lai? Perhaps the entire manslaughter safari of the Tiger Force Unit in Vietnam. My guess is there would be plenty of takers. How about the Russian destruction of Chechnya, or the assault on the Warsaw Ghetto? Why not?
Until it becomes okay to blend hypothetical roleplay with real human tragedy, gamers will have to be satisfied with fictional scenarios like Grand Theft Auto and Chainsaw Massacre. I wonder if Amazon already has preorders for customers salivating at the first chance to replay the Manson LaBianca-Tate escapades, Ted Bundy’s cross-country trek, or if they’re jonesing over Iraq, the Haditha tea party and barbecue.
Israel blew up a lot of schools in Gaza and destroyed the Gaza Zoo killing many of the animals there with gratuitous gunfire and not just gratuitous bombs. Here is what the Israeli military told the Jewish State back home about why they did this. See Hamas Booby Trapped School and Zoo …As one can see, it is essentially a variation of the old time worn out excuse by both the US and Israeli militaries, that the opposition forces were cowardly and hiding themselves behind children, and in this case of the Israeli Gaza Zoo rampage hiding themselves behind even zoo animals!
In the Vietnam War, the US government used this as its excuse for why they bombed villagers in Vietnamese held areas with napalm. They didn’t mean to hurt anyone that was innocent they always said, but the bad guys were hiding themselves behind women and children and using poor folk as screens! In Iraq, the excuse for destroying places like Fallujah was much the same and now the Israeli military is using the same rationale behind its recent rampages of destruction through Lebanon and Gaza. Same lies, just new uses for them in new places.
Here is another video about this wanton destruction by the Israeli military. IDF kills Gaza Zoo animals ~ destroys children’s theatre… Whose video explanation do you buy? Perhaps the Israeli military version of the Zoo massacre? It certainly has been seen by a lot more people than has the video of the Palestinian zoo keeper.
But let’s go back and think about the Israeli version of events some, shall we? What did the military spokesman tell and show us in the beginning of the video? He showed us a detonator (in the zoo) and started walking alongside some wires. He mentioned that each and every animal in the zoo was booby trapped to kill Israeli soldiers, as the camera pointed to some birds! He claimed that the detonator led out of the zoo and across to a school, one only of 67 destroyed by Israel in Gaza. He didn’t show us the wires leading to the other 66 schools but I guess that was certainly implied as to why it was also so seemingly necessary to destroy all those other 66 schools, too. Soldier safety issues! Good ol’ Israel. They don’t want to do it, but they have to!
But look again! Those wires are just lying out in the open, aren’t they? So is the detonator! How convenient that must be for the Israeli soldiers! Certainly convenient for the Israeli propagandist, that is.
Those stupid idiotic Hamas! They forgot to hide the detonator and wiring away from camera view! Amazing! I thought it was a booby trap, didn’t you? But it’s just sitting there underneath a picnic table in full view!
Check that video out again! Maybe the wires and detonator are NOW out in the open simply because they were uncovered by some strenuous digging by alert Israeli military men? See anything there? No? No digging? No rubble? All out in the open and no obvious areas from where these wires and detonator were dug out? Remarkable!
The Hamas people are evidently soo, soo stupid, that they forgot to hide away their booby trap, their detonator and the wires that led away from it from under the picnic table going down some totally clear passageways all undisturbed by any shovel, and now seen by our so vigilant and alert IDF soldier propaganda guy in uniform! They left all this in plain view for us all now to discover? How nice of them!
So why does the Israeli propaganda team make up such an easy to see fiction? ANSWER- They were selling it merely to a group of fans for the Home Team, that’s why. They know that these folk are not going to question it, and not going to question even such an obvious fiction and pretense by the Israeli military. So they just laid out heir own detonator fully in the open, laid out their own wires lying fully in the open, and began to talk away! No need for anybody to excavate any earth to make it seem plausible to all of us. We’re True believers We Are! We’re for the Home Team, The Jewish State! Who’s amongst us is going to question ‘our troops’? Nobody!
Well, here we are actually questioning this video right now? It just does not add up all that well, does it?
‘Honey, have another falafel with the kids, and I’ll just lay my detonator down underneath the picnic table in case??? Oh, and let me walk down through the wild bird section with the wire and over to the school. I’ll be back in a second. Insha’Allah’ Those dumb Hamas people! Or is it actually the other way around? You decide? Can it just be another Jewish State lie to help hide their meaningful and wanton destruction of other people’s lives? The military lies a lot, you know? I hope so by now….
The estimates of the property damage being done to the primarily refugee population of Gaza (75% of the 1.4 million enslaved in Israel’s Gaza ghetto for the Palestinians) are now running into the Billions of Dollars, and this is an area that has an annual per capita income of less than $500/ year. The Israeli Vandals continued to destroy by dropping White Phosphorus bombs on the United Nations Headquarters there, blowing up the UN buildings and thousands of pounds of food supplies for those refugees.
The people responsible for this vandalism said that the bombing of the UN was all a big mistake and that is exactly the same excuse the US government used when it once bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. I guess it was also ‘a mistake’, too that they used White Phosphorus as a chemical weapon on civilians once again, this time at the Gaza UN HQ? Hey Saddam, your spirit lives on inside The Jewish State! UN accuses Israel over phosphorus
Oh, by the way, the photo used was of a victim of the illegal US Pentagon use of White Phosphorus on civilians in Fallujah, Iraq back in 2004, but the White Phosphorus Israel used on the United Nations HQ is most likely actually produced in Pine Bluff, Arkansas for the Joint Munitions Command. Be sure to check out their video there on that link ( by just punching on ‘JMC stands for’) about what a wonderful job they do, producing and using White Phosphorus on civilians around the world. Pentagon terrorist troops, both US and Israeli, just love the stuff, and I hear that the benefits for working there are fantastic! Wonderful people! Wonderful Americans! These Americans working for the Joint Munitions Command are believers in torture and terrorism like would make Adolph Hitler feel proud!
An Italian director has a film about military use of White Phosphorus called The Hidden Massacre on youtube well worth watching to get an idea of what Israel’s use in Gaza of this chemical weapon is likely producing now. The US used this weapon against Fallujah in Iraq and Israel has used it already previously in Lebanon. Israel Using White Phosphorus In Gaza Nothing much in our country has changed since US use of napalm against the Vietnamese.
A bumper sticker ahead of me read ONCE A MARINE, ALWAYS A MARINE. Next to it was LESS MEAN, LESS LEAN, STILL A MARINE. It got me thinking about the soldiers who come back from war, in light of later revelations of their true brutality. A suppressed investigation in the Mekong Delta 1968-1969, resurfaced in this month’s Nation: “A My Lai a Month.” Operation Speedy Express produced a casualty ration of 40:1, with Vietnamese civilians accounting for an estimated 92%. In view of atrocities which turn out to have been pervasive, what are we to conclude about our veterans? These men are still what? are always what?
The preponderance of our dehumanized ex-soldiers are not in the street committing serial murder and rape, at least not in American streets. The Vietnam vets who suffered are now antiwar. The others unrepentant have been perpetrating the wars that followed –should we be surprised– with the same ferocity and collateral damage? Suppressing the crimes committed in Vietnam, out of concern for the fragile consciences of our vets, has only served to grant license to the war-fueled sadists who still command our inhuman arsenal.
Yesterday, a memorial was held in Missouri for William Doyle, of the infamous Tiger Force unit of the 101st Airborne, who went to his grave bragging about the civilians he’d killed, wishing he’d killed more. The 1965-67 atrocities of the Tiger Force were only revealed in 2004. They were not aberrations but results of the orders the soldiers had been given. This was true about the Free Fire Zones of Operation Speedy Express of the 9th Infantry Division, and for the My Lai raid by the Charlie Company. Few were prosecuted, and fewer punished. Lieutenant Calley served only four months for presiding over the murder of 400 Vietnamese villagers in 1968.
To be fair, each of these examples involved the US Army. The Marines have their own rap-sheet of war crimes that span more engagements than just America’s declared wars, especially in Central and South America. Already Iraq War veterans are trying to confess their deeds in Operation Iraqi Freedom. How many years before journalists are able to report the true crimes of the battle of Fallujah?
I received a well written letter yesterday from an American Soldier. It was addressed to me, but I thought I’d post his arguments for general comment.
Mr. Verlo,
I stumbled upon your website by a pure stroke of accidental misfortune while searching for current news on the Fort Carson Installation.. My wife, my son and I are from Colorado, and I am an American Soldier. I am college educated and studied Middle-Eastern history, and I am well versed as it pertains to Mesopotamia, global-terror and global insurgencies.
I have deployed to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. In 2003-2004 I served in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi in the Al-Anbar province, and in 2005-2006 in Tal’afar in the western Ninewah province with the 3d Armored Cavalry from Fort Carson (maybe you heard about the letter that Najim Abdullah wrote to George Bush about my unit?).
I spent seven months in Afghanistan training Afghani Security Forces, and would go back again to either country to serve for one reason only: to support my Soldiers. Although I am career-military, I do not now, nor did I ever support the Bush Administration or the pretenses under which we invaded Iraq. But, unfortunately, our elected officials thrust us into this mess, and we (Americans and American Military alike) are essentially left to deal with it. I am writing to you to comment on a few articles that you have authored, and provide my own opinions and citations.
First, in your article titled: “It’s in the Percentages”, you note that “apparently” 30% of Soldiers don’t have a high school education, 30% are returning with PTSD and 25% percent of their children are considered “special needs”. These are very interesting statistics, yet, you provided no citations. You go on to state that (and I quote): “I find it an absolute nightmare to imagine soldiers in positions of authority, making life and death decisions over others, who don’t know right from wrong, history from high stakes poker, or intelligence from drunken stupor. How do you reason with someone whose only motivation is their next beer?” and “It’s a war crime to subject civilian populations to rule by incompetents”. Again, very interesting. Here are some solid statistics for you, as well as citations. I chose to contrast military service members to college students in this case, but the same could be applied to any demographic (i.e., individuals who were recently laid off nation-wide, or illegal immigrants).
– 40% of college students who come from middle to upper class families engage in binge drinking on a regular (weekly) basis, as opposed to 26% of military personnel who have recently returned from combat tours overseas, where they suffered some sort of physical and/or emotional trauma (ABC news poll, 2007/2008). In addition, over 22,000 service members have called suicide hotlines in an attempt to get help (VA poll, 2008).
– 20% of college students engage in heavy drug use, as opposed to less than 5% of military personnel (ABC News Poll, 2007).
Here’s my favorite one:
3% of all college women report sexual assault at some point in their college career. In 2007, there were 2,212 reported cases of sexual assault on military installations by service members. In a military that exceeds roughly 2,000,000 people, that’s less than 1%.
Second, in your article titled: “Turning out to support fewer Troops”, you allude to Soldiers “riding in on a black cloud”. Hmmm, I’m not quite sure I understand that one. Is this a reference to the environmental damage we do with our vehicles, or the perceived “evil” that we bring with us because we are all, in fact, rapists, murderers and psychopaths?
Third, in your article titled: “Colorado Springs Military Community”, you state that (and I quote) “FIVE MAJOR MILITARY INSTALLATIONS ALREADY AND THE CITY AND COUNTY ARE BROKE”. El Paso County is broke? Since when? I would love to see a citation in reference to this one, because I have “Googled” it to no end and have found nothing that would lead me to believe anything but the contrary. The Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation reports that: “Colorado Springs has a 3.1 million labor force within an hour radius, a Fast track permitting and planning program (30-60 days), 27 Fortune 500 Companies and a quality of life which is 70% the cost of coastal communities” (CSEDC 2008).
Sir, I have read your opinions on the media (many of which I share with you, by the way), so I would presume that you think this is a fabrication. Here’s the bottom line; the military presence in Colorado (the big, scary war-machine that we are) boosts the economy of the area due to its service members buying cars, houses (and paying taxes on their properties), shopping at local businesses, applying for and receiving loans from local banks, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that if the military left Colorado Springs, the city would continue to thrive, but the economy would noticeably decline anywhere that 30,000 people leave, military or not.
Fourth and final, in your article titled: “On Jan 14 let us not expand Fort Carson”, you state that more military in the area would make (and I quote) “Colorado Springs even more dependent on poor paying jobs, predatory businesses, and skyrocketing social problems. Only developers, car-dealers, pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores, social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit from a higher soldier population”. Wow, seriously? These are only issues tied to the influx of more military in the area? So, if 3,000 recently released convicted felons chose Colorado Springs as their new home, it would have less of an impact? Or how about 3,000 illegal immigrants, or 3,000 pregnant teenagers?
Well, let’s go ahead and analyze this a bit further. Developers and car-dealers will benefit from ANY new arrivals to the area, not just military. In reference to pawn shops and strip clubs, the owners of these businesses know exactly what they are doing by placing them outside of military installations. Service members are targeted by these establishments. That’s why they are placed where they are in the community. The same can be said for pay-day loan houses and used car dealerships on Powers and Academy blvd. But if you placed strip clubs next to colleges, would it still be the military that held the higher attendance record? It’s all about business strategy my friend, not the assumption that all military service members are sex-crazed, alcoholic lunatics.
Social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit wherever there are people with problems, criminals and people who have died. I suppose that again, it’s only military who fall into these categories. Ah yes, and our children are even more screwed up than we are. The fact that you said (and I quote): “The rest of us suffer increased crime and their children’s behavioral problems in our schools” vividly displays your utter incompetence and lack of any compassionate notion. You realize that less than 30% of military children who have been separated from a parent experience behavioral issues (USA Today poll, 2008)? The percentage of non-military children who experience behavioral issues as a result of a parent’s incarceration, or divorce, or even domestic abuse is almost twice as high.
Sir, I will be the first to admit that military service members are not perfect. But we are human beings, who are susceptible to the same things that civilians are. We are an easy target, because so many of us are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe problems, after having served in a war that has lost most of it’s public support (and rightly so).
What I have a hard time understanding is why people such as you exercise your freedoms of speech, protest, religion, etc, and then malign the very people who provide, protect and preserve those liberties? I am as anti-Bush as the average American left-wing protestor, but to blame service members for the actions of their elected leadership is immoral. You are essentially grouping us with Nazi’s, which is absolutely ridiculous. The Nazis’ goal was global domination, and they had no clearly defined rule of engagement. They knew that what they were doing was wrong, and did it anyway.
Does the US Military have people who behave in this manner? Absolutely, and they are dealt with within the justice system for their actions. We are in fact “just following orders” with our presence in the Middle-East. As I realize that this was also the defense of Nazi war criminals at Nurnberg, allow me to elaborate. The US military has clearly defined Rules of Engagement, and our greater mission is to stabilize an unstable region, not global control as conspiracy theorists would have everyone believe. Unless you have a solid understanding of counter-terror and counterinsurgency doctrine, you are in no position to presume anything about the US Military in the Middle-East (unless YOU have been there) other than the fact that we invaded Iraq under false pretenses. I’ll give you that one, and take it for myself as well.
Sir, have you ever held a young Iraqi child in your arms, returning him to his parents as they kiss you and your Soldiers’ cheeks, after he had been treated at a US facility because terrorists sodomized him and cut out his tongue? Have you ever looked straight into the eyes of a terrorist, who swore allegiance to Zarqawi and proclaimed himself a “holy warrior”, and seen pure evil? And while your medical personnel treated him for burns (which were sustained when he poured kerosene on a child and his father and attempted to set them on fire publicly, only succeeding to set himself on fire) he spoke perfect English and vowed to remember your name and kill your family? I presume you would view this as our fault, correct?
But here’s the difference between the American Soldier and everyone else: when it is our fault, we acknowledge it, and DO something about it. We help people, good and bad, bottom line. Do bad things happen? Of course. Are all Soldiers and Marines upright citizens? Of course not.. That’s why one Marine out of 30,000 threw a puppy off of a cliff, and four Soldiers out of 121,000 raped a 14-year old girl and killed her family. These actions were inexcusable and tragic, and the individuals in question were/are being dealt with. To generalize every American service member based on these isolated incidents vividly shows your lack of any rational thought.
So in closing, allow me to say that whether you care to acknowledge it or not, it is the MILITARY who grant and preserve liberties and who TRULY make a difference, not politicians, protestors, or half-minded anti-war bloggers. And understand (or don’t) why we are involved in the Global War on Terror, it is because it doesn’t matter whether or not you are white, black, Canadian, American, gay, straight, blind, deaf, or how many anti-Bush websites you manage or protests you attend, there are fundamentalist extremists who want to murder you and your family because you represent western culture.
I want this war to be over so badly that it consumes me at times. I do not want my son to have to see what I have seen as a result of a failed administration. Sir, we are human beings also, and I gladly serve to protect the liberty and freedom of individuals like you who don’t support me at all. So at your next rally, or the next article you write which slanders US service members, take a moment to reflect on your freedoms, and understand who it is that truly grants them. I wish you all continued health and happiness.
Sincerely,
[D.]
A few words about the changing NMT masthead. This is a partial listing of what we are not. Themes include war, environmental devastation, and the soulless invasion of man’s spirit. Special attention to riot police, Chinese repression, offshore drilling, and Las Vegas.
Guernica
Crazed warriors
AU peacekeepers
Pershing cavalry
CSPD tear gas 2003
Reenlistment Iraq
Fallujah offensive
Navy Seal divers
National Guard Kent State
Black Hawk helicopters
Helmeted riot police
Mexican riot police
Miami riot police
NYPD blue
Monster truck airborne
Lurking crocodile
Gestapo dead-checking
Chinese riot police
Debutante prom dresses
Cog wheels
Reef bleaching
Traffic exhaust
Mall of America
Gridlock on 405
Excavation
Chinese oil field
Landfill dump
Critical Mass vs NYPD
Mexican city
Tract housing sprawl
Chinese recruits
Shanghai cityscape
Chinese police
Beijing police exercises
Beijing Olympic security
Beijing riot police
Chinese Segway assault
Beijing smog
Forbidden City
Tiananmen Square standoff
Canadian oil rigs
Offshore oil rigs
Chinese oil platforms
Oil rig sunset
Irish offshore rigs
Three offshore oil rigs
Santa Barbara rig spill
Aerial view of spill
Four offshore oil rigs
More offshore platforms
Offshore oil spill
Oil tanker spill
Oil spill close-up
Oil spill clean-up
Oil rigs illuminated
Motorcycles in motorcade
Open pit mining
Long Beach oil derricks
Signal Hill oil
Early industrial pollution
Vegas circa 1950
Vegas downtown
Vegas circa 1980
Vegas neon
Vegas strip
Blackjack table
Neon cityscape
Los Angeles smog
Southern Cal suburb
Mall
Hazmat fire
Iraq salute
Redeployment
Enlistment oath
Police funeral motorcade
Tiananmen soldiers
Factory hog farming
Cattle feed lot
Caged chickens
Poultry processing
RNC riot sticks
Riot gas
DNC Denver
DNC Denver
DNC mounted
DNC Denver
DNC Denver
DNC Denver
DNC Denver
RNC Minneapolis
Army pledge
Junior Marines
Junior Marines
Junior Marines
Junior Marines
Vacant parking
Hi-tech border patrol
Bishops
Boxing
DNC beating
Military academy
Military fitness
Marching
Church and Tank
Bomber
Chinese soldiers
Putin between 41 and 43
President
Zionists
Roadside harassment
Food processing plant
Cheerleaders
National anthem
Boots
Shorts
Conference table
Food packing
Streetwalkers
Tanning bed
Theater seating
Lonely reef
Monster truck
Motorization
Coral bleaching
The US media was not permitted to depict fallen soldiers, in or out of the coffin. Next military censors forbade photos of US wounded. Most recently US soldiers have been under orders to prohibit the press from photographing them at all, to promote the illusion that our Iraqi surrogates alone are handling security. How infuriated our officials must have been to see this photograph in the international press.
Do Americans not want to see their fallen boys? In my recent experience with death, I most certainly wanted to see what happened straight up. Do the families of soldiers really not want to see how their loved one met his/her fate? What utter bullshit! If they don’t I do. Someone should care enough for the poor lost life!
Hopefully the total control our military has been asserting over media images will result in more outright mutiny on the part of international photo journalists.
Not long ago, a sequence of photos which documented the aftermath of an IED led the DoD to forbid all depictions of even wounded soldiers. The picture below shows a victim trying vainly to join his comrades who made it to cover. He didn’t die. But this image most certainly is dispiriting to Americans watching safely from their homes, who are losing their stamina for an ugly war.
Before coverage of operations in Iraq were safely controlled by only embedded reporters, freelance photographers were able to record images reminiscent of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. These GIs fell in the assault on Fallujah. Fortunately for the Pentagon, Iraq is now too dangerous for journalist who don’t have American minders.
A recent so-called breach of an embed contract yielded images of the aftermath of a suicide-bomb attack. The American photographer incurred heavy criticism for publishing the pictures which his Marine unit had ordered him to erase. But they were published in B&W, which invokes the famous WWII Pacific Theater dead, but it does lessen the realism, doesn’t it? These casualties seem more distant than our losses in Vietnam. And how do you reconcile that the simultaneous photos of the Iraqi casualties were printed adjacent in color? We can handle seeing the red of their blood, but not ours?
There’s a War-drum-beating propaganda special coming on this evening on one of the cable history channels… The teaser says “When four Blackwater private security contractors were brutally murdered and their bodies hung up for everybody to see” BULLSHIT…
They went into Fallujah to pick a fight, knowing that neither the Iraqi government nor the United States Government would prosecute them for their CRIMES, …but the Sunni Militia DID, under THEIR laws.
Our newly moderated Troll said the Private Contractors were “doing security work (at Pete Field) so American Troops could be freed up to fight for your rights in Iraq”…
Except Air Force SP’s aren’t exactly a combat unit. Of course, sending cops over there to enforce Imperial Martial Law is really really fighting FOR freedom.
And of course, sending mercenaries over there to back up those cops, who only truly want to imprison, torture or kill ONLY those naughty Iraqi people who object to the Invasion Liberation of their country… and fail to greet their liberators with flowers… and fail to bow before the Natural Superior Culture of the Empire Liberation Forces… and fail to lick their goddamned jackboots…
Let’s face it, Republican US President, George W. Bush, and Republican Texas State Governor, Rick Perry, are simply in total cahoots in coordinating the incredible police state witch hunt going on in Eldorado, Texas. The US police state is running amok and this is a test case for how much the government can get away with in denying US citizens their constitutional rights.
And where are the damn Democrats? I thought that these great leaders were grand protectors of civil rights? Is everybody just going to remain totally silent and complicit with this government child abuse and disregard of all citizen rights? Right now, it certainly appears so, doesn’t it? This is a test case, and the report card for all so far, is FFF. Make that F- PLUS.
The number of kids removed from the Eldorado, Texas religious compound is now over 400, with 133 women taken away, too, as if they were mere children. This is the federal police state and their local henchmen posing themselves as grand and noble knights on white horses, saving the maidens and the children from bad men folk, we are all to suppose? Not hardly. And yet, nobody has been charged with any real crime! Talk about going fishing Texas sized. This is Dick Cheney out fishing! Feel that hook in America’s heart?
What is to be established here? That the federal government and/ or local and state governments can treat ordinary US citizens as if they were Afghan civilians in a war zone? Bombs away? What happened to due process of civilian law? We are now all presumed guilty until; we are proven innocent by government authorities, who meantime can do anything they want with our kids, our families, and everybody? Cooperate, or else! So?
Under normal law in a non-police state, if the police has charges against somebody, they arrest that person and charge them with a crime. They don’t go out and throw the lives of around 600 people into total turmoil, including traumatizing small kids. This America we have now is shameful and disgusting. It takes the complicity and apathy of all of us to allow this charade to continue as it is. Shame on the Democrats for not speaking out! Shame on them! And shame on all of us for simply tolerating the abuse of our fellow citizens by police thugs.
Someone in the UK has got hold of a video, lovely, showing British soldiers beating Iraqi boys whom they’d caught throwing stones. Have a look. The cameraman, American, does a voice-over mocking the kids, “please don’t hurt me,” as the soldiers bludgeon and kick them repeatedly.
Remember this scene from Fallujah 2004? Embed photographer Kevin Sites of NBC accidentally filmed an American GI dead- checking a wounded Iraqi at point blank range. The soldier accused the Iraqi of playing dead, and so shot him.
Why would a wounded Iraqi, captured by the Marines and medevac’d to a Mosque, need to pretend to be dead? That was the uglier story. This soldier examining the Iraqi wounded in the Mosque was actually making the second pass, verifying that all the captives in the Mosque had been killed. A squad before him had sought to save these wounded Iraqis, but a later order was issued to take no prisoners.
The IVAW are really pulling it together this year. And they’ve set upon an ambitious strategy that has precedent with Vietnam antiwar vets. Winter Soldier Redux, Washington DC, March 13-16, 2008.
In 1970 veterans of the Vietnam war convened in Detroit to share personal confessions of their part in atrocities perpetrated against the Vietnamese. The documentary made of these transcripts was kept from the US public and has only recently become available. Click here for some clips on YouTube.
Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch lost his eye in the assault on Fallujah. His new glass prosthetic features a holographic emblem of the US Marine Corps.
This Veterans Day, Sergeant Popaditch was awarded a medal for pioneering an innovative combat technique. Presuming an ambush, Popaditch called in an airstrike, then drove his tank forward under cover of the C-130 gunship before its firestorm had subsided. As a result Popaditch was injured, but in his words: “(We were) just inflicting a devastating number of casualties on the enemy, and we did it in a way that no one had ever done before.”
This is the same tank commander immortalized on magazine covers in 2003 smoking his cigar as he assisted in toppling Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square. Articles told later of Popaditch’s tank named “Carnivore” storming Fallujah in retaliation for the contractors killed by jubilant Iraqis. Now he’s grabbing attention with his Few-The-Proud cornea. When we recoil at WWII accounts of the Death’s Head Regiment and other unthinkably morose nomenclature and regalia of the enthusiastic Nazis, can we fathom the imaginative horrors of our own X-Box-born killers?
Popaditch acted courageously by venturing into an ordnance maelstrom to certain injury. But whose kind of hero?
Did Blackwater sneak silencers into Iraq? That’s a good question, because silencers are used mainly by snipers. Is this the true face of bringing ‘democracy’ to Iraq?
Is sniping using silencers done by a private Pentagon- contracted corporation of death squad personnel what Iraq is all about for the US government at this point? Yes, it is certainly so. What else can one expect from a government that loves ‘water-boarding’ its captives so?
That and rendering. Dictionary meaning of ‘to render’ is ‘to try out oil from fat, blubber, etc., by melting.’ ‘Rendering’, a favorite phrase for US government death squad work. Yes, the US government, Pentagon, and Blackwater would be using silencers, too. America’s face to the world.
The Washington Post, uncredited for being a chief jingoist newspaper behind Bush’s war making, weighed in on the General Petraeus Westmoreland testimony, indignant that of all things, the general’s credibility should be questioned.
General Petraeus had an exemplary record apparently, commanding the 101st Airborne. That division may still have cache in recollections of D-Day, but I remember those guys in the news in Iraq. In Fallujah, before we leveled it, the 101st initiated a gunfight with unarmed schoolboys who were protesting the requisition of their school for an American encampment. That was back in the days when individual atrocities, if they got past the media censors, seemed to draw outrage. Before Iraq became one single atrocity too dangerous for reporters to visit, a hand-basket already delivered which General Petraeus will testify, beyond reproach, is still well in hand.