While US Marines were acquitted for the 2005 murder of the 24 Iraqi civilians, THE BATTLE OF HADITHA has hit the theatres in England. The Times Online and Time Out London review UK documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield‘s dramatization of the rampage. It opens in NYC on May 7.
Everyone’s in an uproar about laughing US marines who videotaped themselves throwing an Iraqi pup off the edge of a cliff. I’m so embarrassed Americans can’t show similar alarm for the disposing of Iraqi children or babies. Hopefully this might lead some to be indignant at our soldiers’ equally well reported disrespect for human life.
Dear soldiers, keep the Youtube videos coming. Show us the children you are running over with your convoys, the women and infants you snipers are whacking like moles, the crowds you strafe indiscriminately, the families you bury with missile strikes, the detainees you torture. Put all that on video with your grinning psychopathic smiles. I mean, show us MORE of that. Eventually one of the videos will accidentally include a dog as collateral damage, or a dog losing its owner. Then Americans will empathize.
I just found this out a few minutes ago. It kind of dropped my jaw to the floor, the arrogance of it. Seems the Marines are E-mailing high school kids, the one in question is 15 years old. Offering 3 free music downloads, and in the fine print is, if they download them, a Marine Recruiter calls them.
That bullshit they’re using with the You made them strong, We’ll make them Army Strong and When your KID Talks To You About The Army…
You know, the only time your KID would need your permission to go into the military is if he actually is a KID, a minor, under 18.
There’s another, more sinister reason the Army wants to recruit kids straight out of high school. The pay.
The Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines don’t actually want your son or daughter to get a college education BEFORE going in, because They Would Be Promoted To The Pay Grade Of Sergeant Right Out Of Basic Training, And Would Be Sent To Officer Candidate School. In 3 months they would be commissioned and have the Rank, the Privileges and MOST IMPORTANTLY the PAY of Second Lieutenant, in the Navy it would be Ensign.
The Air Force and Navy and Marines will suck them in with pictures of Manly Men in Manly Flight Suits Striding Down the flight line in a Manly Manner to a Sleek Ultrapowerful Killing Machine….
But the only way you become a pilot is if you have a Bachelor’s Degree.
No way would you get in a plane if you only graduated High School, no matter what your GPA or how intelligent you are.
That’s how a Jackoff Agent like George W. Bush became a Lieutenant, even though he has no leadership ability, no physical courage and is dumb as a bag of hammers.
When they say that personal or family wealth doesn’t make a difference once you put on a Military Uniform they’re lying through their teeth.
Now, a job where you get to wear a flight suit on the flight line, without college, is the guys who stand out on the runways with the wand flashlights.
Of course, if they’re on the flight line when a plane makes a horribly wrong landing, they’re just as likely as the pilot to be killed.
More so, in fact. Because, you see, Pilots cost more to replace than mere enlisted men.
So the Medics will be forced, by Air Force rules, to save the Pilots first and enlisted men second.
And, the survivor’s benefits for the guy’s widow and orphans will depend on his pay grade. The Pilot’s widow and orphan will be paid more for Daddy being offed than the Flashlight Guy’s family will.
Fair enough, the Berkeley City Council is being asked to reconsider whether it really meant to tell US Marine Corps recruiters to go fuck themselves. I hope it’s just a chance to say it again.
Maybe the People’s Republic of Berkeley is due for a new honor. Keeper of the Flame of Freedom. The United States of Berkeley. It used to be the joke to send the Statue of Liberty back to the French, because America wasn’t using it. How about we install Lady Liberty off the shores of Berkeley? They’re showing the temerity to claim her. Berkeley is standing up for everything America used to. What do you make of the vociferous accusations of treason being leveled at Berkeley in the name of patriotism? What fault can you find with the clear headed resolutions being pronounced by their City Council?
The only thing which differentiates Berkley from the rest of the country is level of education. I wouldn’t want to be caught poking fun at, much less belittling, someone smarter than me, especially for taking a more principled stand than I -err- me. You can tease them about inarticulate athletic ability, but the last thing you’d want to do is to presume to correct a grammarian.
How are dumbfuck Americans like Move Forward America so easily goaded to speak derisively of their own who know better? It’s one thing to question authority, another even to be skeptical in general. But Berkeley isn’t filled with the social engineers who’ve got a boot on your throat, it’s full of students, your children, who you sent to acquire an education. Not your education in fact, a better education. A world view beyond your own, a comprehension you were not afforded. That’s Berkeley.
Berkeley is not unique, though perhaps it has the highest visibility. Regionally there are other college towns that fit the leftist stereotype. Boulder and Ann Arbor for example. These are home to progressive populations, teachers, students and alumni which color the demographics significantly to affect the local politics. Why are better educated people always leftists? A dolt could only hope to chance upon the inspiration to ask himself such a doozy.
This dolt would ask the reverse: AS left EQUALS education, SO less-left MUST EQUAL less-education.
Why aren’t more college campuses like Berkeley? What’s going on that our educational institutions are producing idiots to mock the product of real education? It’s a terrible portent.
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.
Here is the language for a press release about the dismissal of criminal charges against the remaining SPD7-5. Pick and choose to taste:
I’m very happy that the city has decided to drop the charges. It confirms, despite their statement to suggest the opposite, that they did not have cause to arrest us, and should not have interfered with our rights as citizens to freedom of expression unmolested by the city.
It appears the city does not welcome further scrutiny of how its police officers behaved toward us. It does not want the public to question whether they too might be treated with unwarranted brutality by those entrusted to enforce our laws and respect our civil liberties.
The city’s official statement is a coarse pronouncement that they reserve the right to a drag an infirm woman across the pavement and declare it “appropriate.” They are saying a citizen exercising his right to free speech can be probable cause for arrest.
By their arrogant official statement, they are practically daring us to sue them, aren’t they? Are we going to have to take the city to the mat before they will offer up assurances to Colorado Springs residents that their policemen don’t just beat on whoever they please?
And what about the parade organizer? Can he continue to pretend that he alone determines what messages are allowed and not allowed in a city parade. His parade is subsidized by the city. Has the city apologized for denying they were giving him a subsidy, which turned out to be untrue?
Was the peace message so inappropriate? What about the Junior Marines? In light of our criticism of African and Asian nations which recruit boy soldiers, is a young boy wearing a uniform something to celebrate in our country?
On the question of whether to bring a civil suit, with the hope of forcing our city to acknowledge the errors and excesses of its actions, I’d like to challenge the Gazette to poll its readers: do they feel secure about their rights to express themselves without fear that a police officer can be given the authority to beat them up? When more people march next year than last year is when I’ll know that their intimidation has been challenged.
I’m really impressed that
the Colorado Springs Philharmonic was able to attract a nearly full house for a screening of Sergei Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, the 1925 Soviet revolutionary call to arms that became even too subversive for Stalin’s taste.
The newly restored version adds more graphic pieces to the Odessa steps sequence, but my favorite scene remains aboard the battleship deck, when the rebellious sailors cower under a tarpaulin, awaiting the bullets of the firing squad.
It reminds me of my favorite story about the few proud Marines. The Marine Corps, now its own branch of the Defense Department, evolved from a very particular function in every nation’s navy. (Like MARINE biologists, their function has obviously to do with the sea.) On warships since the Napoleonic Wars, marines were the only enlisted men entrusted with guns. Their role, beside serving as landing parties, was to protect the officers from mutiny by the sailors; a function they were prepared to serve on the Potemkin until thankfully the revolutionary rhetoric held sway.
I wonder if our few proud US Marines will have brains enough to side with their families and comrades when Bush orders them to fire on his insurgents.
In promoting the Toons film collection, I’ve made a preoccupation with data mining for every poster incarnation of our diverse films. Since the Toons website has been down for a bit, I thought I’d represent here our gathering of Potemkin posters.
Kudos to the Pikes Peak Center team for delivering Eisenstein to the Rocky Mountain art Bourgeois. We showed up three generations deep, each age this evening running into others they knew. And everyone loved it.
A highlight of the event for me occurred when the battleship fired its salvo into the city. After the sailors had rebelled, the city populace had risen in support. To subdue the masses, Tsarist Cossacks marched down the Odessa steps, shooting into the crowd. In angry response, the crew of the Potemkin aimed its big guns at the headquarters of their Tsarist oppressors, or so explained the inter-title cards, further specified in the text as the Opera House! We were Colorado Springs symphony-goers, at the town’s premiere performing arts center, rooting for the Russian workers as they united against their ruling class.
It’s just been reported that the children of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to suffer child abuse. Is this finding not terrible enough for their parents to take heed and refuse to to be ordered there?
All soldiers going to Iraq and Afghanistan doom themselves to exposure to Depleted Uranium. Does it give anyone pause that they are dooming themselves and their families to certain ill-health? They’re not making a selfless sacrifice, they’re sacrificing their kids.
By the VA’s own report, over 11,600 Gulf War vets have died since 1991. A third of the soldiers involved in that 100 hour engagement are now on disability. The health problems have been called Gulf War Syndrome because the military won’t admit responsibility, like it long denied the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. But doctors are now certain the many common symptoms are due to DU. Already we are seeing birth defects from Iraq War veterans.
Of course the media is not addressing the problem, but why aren’t soldiers figuring out the cause and effect for themselves? Do they still think the Department of Defense is looking out for them? After the Walter Reed scandals? After the failures to deal with PTSD?
Remember an unusual report early in the Iraq occupation when Dutch troops were to replace a US Marines encampment? The Dutch commanders instantly forbade their soldiers to inhabit the American barracks due to DU contamination. They deemed it better to bivouac outside the camp, exposed to attack outside the fortifications, than to suffer the certain DU exposure about which the American soldiers had been told nothing.
I have an idea of how to bring this message home to our soldiers. It involves the soldiers’ families because they are already impacted negatively, and stand to bear the brunt of losing their father or mother, of having to cope with a bitter, violent veteran, or having to care for the eventually terminally ill invalid. Here’s my plan:
I live in a neighborhood that houses the families of officers posted to Fort Carson. Usually they’re newcomers, usually just the families, the fathers being away in Iraq. Kids know these families from talking amongst each other at school.
The next time this or that house is pointed out to me, I’m going to tell the kids to be nice to those children because their father is dying of cancer. Never mind succumbing to IEDs, or to mental illness, the veteran will more likely than not, die a slow death of cancer or leukemia or whatever mysterious debilitating fate, owing to the DU he inhaled over there. Imagine the talk at the school reaching the soldier’s children. They’d bring their fears home. It’s a heartless rumor to spread to kids, but maybe their alarm could prompt an awakening and ultimately save their dad’s life.
This subversive message can be directed toward soldiers at other opportunities. Be it a panhandler with PTSD, or a proud veteran in a parade, treat them both with a sincere gentleness because of their pending struggle with cancer. Thank them for their service, apologize that their sacrifice will turn out to be so tragic.
Bring the message home.
What exactly is commemorated in this moment? Apparently it’s iconic enough to merit a stamp. NYC firefighters raise a flag amid the ruins of the WTC, meaning what exactly?
The photographer recounted recognizing this Iwo Jima moment in the making. Does it give you a lump in your throat as well? The Marines at Iwo Jima had just captured the island after suffering some of the heaviest casualties in the Pacific Theater.
These firemen guys are announcing what? A building complex down and 3,000 lives lost, but America, 230 million strong, the bad-ass superpower, is not out for the count? Is this bad WWWF theater? We re-claim this rumble in the name of the USA? It gives me an idea…
How about we raise flags, and take the requisite pictures, upon scraps of ruin to which it would be more relevant to assert American ownership. A garbage barge for example. Or a toxic dump. Dried up wetlands, urban sprawl. Everyone can participate. Are you alone? Hold a toothpick American flag over your failed grade report card. It says you’re resilient. Send it in!
We’ve sentenced our soldiers to death, why not condemn them too?
At the supermarket this evening I ran across an unusual number of Fort Carson soldiers doing their shopping in their OIF camo and buzzed heads. I deliberated with making eye contact, but they seemed like condemned men in what we know now to be death-row uniforms, being led by their girlfriends or mothers through the aisles to buy their last meals.
I wanted to look at those young men with condemnation. Poor lads, but pawns for a murderous agenda. Please don’t kill anyone I wanted to say.
At the checkout I looked from the side into the pale blue eyes of a shaved-bald, sunburned junior-security-guard-in-training, and pitied the Iraqis for whom our uneducated underclass are making on-the-spot decisions about life and death. These are boys you do not imagine should be entrusted with an ounce of authority, much less guns. (In fact, critical operations such as protection of our politicians or of the Ministry of Oil are not entrusted to these boys, but rather to professional private contractor mercenaries.)
Hang the soldiers’ commanders of course, but brand these poor soldiers too for what they are. Brand them lest others, their children for example, follow their apparently patriotic path. Shit happens, that’s the soldier’s apology for killing the undeserving Iraqi, let it be the mantra over the soldier’s condemnation as well. Your leaders were bad men, but you followed them. Let no one imagine that your complicity was laudable, even acceptable. Shit happens Bro, now you IT.
I’d just been thinking about the necessity of confronting war-doers head-on instead of letting the opportunity pass for the sake of civility. Political aids to President Bush, for example, retiring at age 36 to spend their loot on their children, averting being confronted with their critics. We need to punish these people. A newscaster who characterizes the Haditha episode by saying “the marines were attacked by an IED” should meet the fate of a propagandist.
Let no war-supporter go un-criticized, and why not start now? Perhaps it will prompt some to think about why they are being condemned with such ferocity? Perhaps our scolding can lay the groundwork to effect eventual introspection and reform. How could anyone begin to think they might actually be guilty of war crimes if their accusers are always so civil? Certainly such accusations must be merely academic, otherwise would they not come with a noose? By waiting politely our turn to intone, by not calling urgently for each miscreant’s apprehension, are we not misleading the soldiers about the reprehensibility of their role?
We can talk about forgiveness later. Right now we have to stop the unthinking manslaughterers.
Protesting at the side of the street does seem futile at times, it certainly seems so just thinking about it. But out there catching each others eyes, you’re reminded of its mysterious power, particularly when you’re shown to what extent those against you are willing to go to keep you from being there.
When we first turned up Monday at the Broadmoor Space Symposium Arms Bazaar, we were quickly moved from a section sidewalk declared off limits to us. The police could not explain exactly what ordinance or why, except that they had orders to keep us off the Lake Circle sidewalk. We complied the way reasonable people do, because the area to which we were confined seemed at first glance perfectly suitable. We occupied the corner of Lake and Lake Circle, where we could hand fliers to symposium attendees crossing to the Convention Center. But this gave us contact with only a fraction of the participants in attendance. The majority of the weapons dealers stayed inside the center, whose windows faced the sidewalk area forbidden to us.
We decided to accept the “free speech zone” given us until we could research the new restriction, mindful of the recent Appeals Court verdict which upheld the Broadmoor’s discretion to cordon off its entire neighborhood as a security zone for the NATO conference some years back. Citizens for Peace In Space lost that appeal.
It took Bill Sulzman until 10pm Wednesday to get someone at the CSPD to speak to the issue of the exclusive use permit granted to the Broadmoor. That representative, a Commander Overton, agreed to meet Bill the next morning to negotiate where protesters would or would not be restricted.
Was this a victory of discourse and civility? It certainly was a victory for the Space Arms Symposium. They effectively kept us off their turf until the last day, then thwarted a legal challenge by deciding to give in. We got to stand on the contested sidewalk for a snowy hour of the last day of the conference.
This is where less confrontational pacifists hinder their protest efforts. It might be well to resolve your differences by arbitration, meanwhile the bad guys hold the real estate. In the end our message does not get out, the war rages on, we are entangled in bureaucratic battles until our rights are upheld. This was the tactic used at the DNC, RNC, FTAA, WTO, and indeed our own St Patrick’s Day: detain the dissidents until their opportunity to be heard has passed. It’s an abridgment of our civil liberties, and the government factors into its budget the liability of likely legal judgments.
But what price lost free speech? What cost for every day the war goes on? We know that number. What cost for each further contract for more WMDs? If protest could stop that, that’s the price the government owes us. Could street protest have that effect? Somebody thinks so.
Last year at the Broadmoor, the reaction to our protest was very telling. The first day we were nearly arrested for trying to walk along the edge of a cordoned area, the same contested sidewalk. The head of Broadmoor security was screaming for officers to arrest us. The next day I was assaulted by an overwrought Marines commander in jogging shorts. He circled right to me and flung his hands around my throat, pushing me back until policemen pulled him off. The next day we rode a bicycle up and down the bike path adjacent the blocked sidewalk, to relentless harassment and endangerment by the security vehicle. Somebody doesn’t like to have to gaze upon our message. We could see military brass last year watching from the windows with arms crossed.
Our banners, then and now, quote Henry Ford “Take the profit out of war and you’ll have peace tomorrow” and President Eisenhower “Beware the military industrial complex.” We also have this haunting question: “will your children survive your work?”
The arms manufacturers in attendance at the Broadmoor are normally well buffeted from the real world. They work in industrial complexes and high rises out of reach of humanist and spiritual voices of conscience. They certainly don’t have to see the results of their work, the suffering or the poverty. They ride high on the war gravy train.
The Broadmoor gathering for me is the rare chance to look these people in the eye, to examine the war profiteers in their insular habitat. They might be bellicose, or proud, or defensive, and they may deride us. If it seems their consciences are not keeping score, the symposium organizers seem to have more faith in them than we do.
On this occasion the military industrial complex beat us, they kept us out of sight for most of their event. But we won too. No we didn’t get to challenge their method in court, but we did get to stand in the forbidden zone of their periphery, if but for a morning, a cold snowy morning. Though I believe the increasing snow fall lent our message the credibility of determination. We got to aim this banner right at them: “Will your children survive your work?”
Brit Marines Update… New yet somewhat old twist, the British Marines are alleging coercion in their “confessions” and the Iranians are denying it, but the Iranians are also quietly (or just not as loudly reported as the British story) saying that their diplomats who were seized in Iraq were tortured by the CIA, and the CIA in typical pig fashion is saying “Yeah, that’s what they ALL say…”
Of course the CIA and other pigs in America have lobbied hard to keep torture “legal” for them under the TRAITOR ACT but still denying that torture would actually ever be used…
And of course, according to Guardian,Georgie Porgie offered the overstretched American military up for sacrifice to “take aggressive action” against Iran, like having US Air Force “peace” planes buzz Iranian bases,…
Cowboy “diplomacy” at it’s worst and the British for once stood up to him, told him to basically sod off… but in a nice kind of way.
Apparently he was hoping the Iranians would fire on “his” airplanes piloted by “his” troops (only he uses the Royal/Editorial “We” and “Our”), in order to spark the war “we” want so bad.
Nice job supporting the troops, there, Bushie Boy… get some pilots killed for YOUR purpose, which by a bizarre co-incidence happens to be getting even MORE AMERICANS and of course, Iranians, British, you know, insignificant people who don’t count because they’re people who don’t happen to be George Bush… KILLED.
Which is a good example of the power of being nice rather than bombing the living dogshit out of people.
A lot of the loudmouthed chickenhawks have been saying that the British should use force to 1) get the Marines and sailors KILLED, because it would 2) salvage their national honor or whatever… which shows that the chickens are 3) bloodthirsty as long it’s 4) somebody else’s blood that gets shed, and 5) they personally aren’t at risk of getting injured salvaging the British National pride, while and at the same time 6) showing that they basically didn’t give 3/4 of a fat rat’s ass about the lives of the sailors and marines to begin with.
Much the same way Bush and Blair obviously don’t give any thought to the lives of the 4 British soldiers who were killed today. It’s left up to us ‘hippie tree hugging peaceniks sitting around singing Kum Ba, Yah,” to mourn or even remember them.
Well looky here…These colors do run… straight to their mommies when they unload their weapons into civilians and for once get caught.
The website is called save the soldiers, sign their petition if you’re inclined. They want people who “support our troops no matter where they are or what their mission is…”
Their poster depicts GI Sebastian being pierced with arrows from the Left, from Murtha, and from the Mainstream [sic] Media. And look at the bull’s eye: “Haditha Propaganda.”
But looky in the news: more evidence of the atrocities committed in Haditha, even worse than had yet been reported, revealed by photos found traded among the soldiers themselves. Of women executed while cowering for mercy. Some of the pictures even set to music on somebody’s Playstation.
All along the soldiers were telling a different tale, crying that they were being falsely accused. The Iraqis meanwhile tried to get their story out, including the testimony of a young girl who survived by playing dead among her dying brothers and sisters. In Haditha twenty four civilians were shot at point-blank in retaliation for a nearby IED.
We’ve learned from returning soldiers that standard US practice after and IED detonation is to shoot every Iraqi within sight. In Haditha there were not enough to kill in the street so the Marines went house to house to execute local families.
We may hope these Marines were just bad apples. But as much as the military is defending these bad apples, it makes me think bad apples are the norm. And as we’ve learned from other episodes, bad-apple-hood is systemic and sanctioned by Rumsfeld himself.
Take a look at the pictures from the Marine training at Parris Island. There’s a mural depicting our enemies against which the soldiers discard their empty beer bottles. The Marine apple basket is likely rotten to the corps. Who’s gonna tell the mommies?
Marines are crazy as a rule. Or so, that’s been my experience with them. But crazy can sometimes be good,too. Al Jazeera online is one of my favorite sources of information, so it’s particularly interesting to see this particular ex-marine go to becoming a journalist working for Al Jazeera. If you get a chance, see the documentary mentioned in this article from Mother Jones. It’s all about how the Pentagon keeps assassinating reporters, from the Yugoslav television stations they bombed, to the hotel in Baghdad they blew away at. Remember when they bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade? So many ‘accidents’. Go get The Education
Tomorrow we’re meeting in front of William Palmer High School to urge students to fill out their opt-out forms.
The No-Child-Left-Behind Act had a provision that gave military recruiters access to all secondary school student records. The act also provided an opt-out clause which allowed individual students to exclude themselves from the information exchange. To do so, their parents have to file the proper request, each year, one copy with their school, a second copy with the Defense Department. Every school district in turn was expected to inform the students and their parents about this option.
In Palmer High School’s District 11, letters were recently sent to all families with the forms and instructions. Whether this qualifies as adequate notice, is subject to question. The letters were sent without fanfare two weeks before the deadline.
Other Colorado Springs districts have done nothing about notifying the parents. The deadline is October 13.
On October 13 every student record from every high school and junior high will be sent to the Pentagon. Not just name, address and phone number, but complete school records. Military recruiters want to be able to profile students to best tailor their approach. Certainly there are typical profiles for present enlistees and recruiters will be able to spot students susceptible to heading that way. Children getting into trouble perhaps, failing certain subjects, showing signs of problems at home, requiring certain medicines, are all green flags for recruiters. A recruiter’s tools could be special field trips, peer groups, free X-Boxes, access to the school premises and your telephone.
There are probably a good number of civil liberty reasons why you wouldn’t want the military to be handling your child’s school records. Right now what your school knows of your child’s medical record, or criminal justice record, or mental health record, or personal counseling, goes no further than the school yard. This information would now travel on laptops in the cars of Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines/Coast Guard recruiters as they court your children between stops at the pawn shop, the strip bar and their home on the wrong side of town.
Not to mention if they succeed with your child, they could get him killed.
BagNewsNotes drew my attention to the cover of a recent Time Magazine, a posterized image of Iranian President Mahmmud Ahmadinejad. The photo was manipulated reminiscent of OJ’s mug being darkened for sinister effect.
Readers commented on Ahmadinejad being made a cartoon, or a throwback to student movement political posters. I’d put it back further. I think the photo editors at Time are after a tin-type look, suggesting the Islamic Revolution is profoundly backward, belonging to the century before last perhaps.
The composition of the picture, particularly the woodgrainish, oddly insufficient backdrop behind Ahmadinejad’s head, reminds me of the post-mortem photographs of dead outlaws in the American West. Pictures of the outlaws brought to justice, laid out semi-vertically against their wood-box coffins, were circulated in the old west to publicize their successful apprehension. This provided proof for everyone to see with their own eyes that a feared outlaw was dead.
Add to Ahmadinejad’s resemblance the dark hair and beard and I think this Time cover emulates a photograph made iconic in Latin America at least, spread around by our government as a warning to others: the Dead Che Guevara.
How do you suppose the Time editors excuse themselves for their art direction whim? Do they think readers will accept it as fair that one personage be accorded an intimate portrait on the cover of Time, and yet another receives a editorialized visage?
The editors at Time can’t expect their readers to remain naive for much longer. I’m encouraged by the trend in children’s TV cartoons to mock the manipulation toolbag of media artists. The cliche of Bambi Eyes for example is mocked from Spongebob to Jimmy Neutron. They make obvious the deliberate use of caricatured expressions when they are being manipulative. Our children’s media literacy will be greatly enhanced and Time’s techniques will have to become more sophisticated.
Haditha
I had a chance to peruse a copy of this issue at the dentist’s. Further inside is a profile of one of the marines, The Face of Haditha, on trial for a possible war crime in Haditha. Shooting 24 Iraqi civilians, some of them at point blank range. Sargeant Frank Wuterich speaks out, the headline reads, “for the very first time.” The layout features a large picture of Wuterich on the left and a brief bio and interview on the right. Let me cut to the meat of the article, Wuterich is not permitted by his lawyer to say anything about what happened at Haditha except that he believes with incredulity that the actions of he and his comrades were within their legal rules of engagement. Wuterich also ponders innocently why he has not been asked more by the military investigators about what happened at Haditha. Thus, Time Inc has slipped us two items: the suggestion of innocence, and the suggestion that the prosecutors are not after the truth.
Take a look at the photograph. Sargeant Frank Wuterich stands with his arms crossed in frank honesty. He’s got big brown eyes and he’s addressing us squarely, looking like our paperboy come to collect our subscription. He’s young, attractive as American Pie, with big doe eyes. He’s got a partially concealed tattoo on his forearm and in the article we read he has several. One tattoo he was reluctant to show the photographer, we’re told, is of a dagger skewering severed fingers and eyeballs, his wife “doesn’t like that one so much.”
Bloggers
On the issue’s back page is a whimsical article by book reviewer Lev Grossman defending himself against blogger Edward Champion who has been picking on him. Grossman’s piece is an honest rebuttal to a difference of opinion, but he ends it with the usual dismissal columnists use to trump their blogger counterparts, “at least I’m getting paid to write this.”
Paid by whom Mr. Grossman? By a media conglomerate which is distorting the news to an audience of readers less culturally savvy than a common child? Good for you.
This week 1,500 Army reservists from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division are being ordered from Kuwait to join the embattled Marines in Iraq’s Anbar province. Their commander General Casey assured us this deployment will be short-term. “Definitely short-term” he reiterated.
With casualty rates so high, is the general’s confidence based on the soldier’s probable life expectancy?
A letter has come to light, written by the American ambassador to Korea in 1950, which details the American intention to shoot Korean refugees should they approach American troops. This letter not only led to the next day’s massacre of hundreds of civilian at No Gun Ri, but documents what can now be understood as a systemic policy of shooting civilians. The US Army shrugged off such accusations at the time. This letter was declassified thirty years later, and was overlooked in the department review fifty years later.
Shall we extrapolate about the US military’s actions these days?
Most recently we’re learning about the US massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha: family members being executed at point-blank range by a handful of enraged marines. First there was a coverup, then a denial. Now the atrocity is being described as isolated. The press is even playing along -backhandedly- by asking if Haditha will become Iraq’s My Lai.
Such a comparison would be correct if we remember that My Lai was actually one among many US atrocities in South East Asia. Such massacres of civilians were policy in Vietnam. The Wintersoldiers tried to tell us about it then, we now know about Tiger Troop and their death squad missions.
American Iraq War veterans are already telling us about the common military response to IEDs: shoot at everyone and everything in the vicinity. Unembedded reporters have been recording since the invasion began about American soldiers breaking into houses and shooting the men, women and children inside. As was done in Haditha.
DG3K could as easily have been my niece Elizabeth, or her husband Brandon, both recently discharged from the Marines. Or my nephew Nathan, strong as an ox and damned near as smart as one too… Re-enlisted in the army and about to graduate Ranger school. Then headed back to Iraq right into the swirling shit-storm brought about by Our Leader to distract attention away from the then pending DG3K story.
Oh and the Marines in particular have already instituted a finer point in the draft law, they are extending service obligations “for the duration” (of a national crisis which is designed to be perpetual) and even calling back Marines who have been discharged.
The War Department really fucked ‘em good in Korea with that one, the first waves of Sacrificial Sheep were National Guard and Reserve units, mostly world war 2 vets fulfilling the rest of their “service obligation”.
So Elizabeth, or Brandon, or Nathan, … could very well end up being DG4K when that time comes.
The crisis accelerated by making Saddam an unnecessary martyr will no doubt provoke a full reinstatement of the draft.
Several incoming congresscritters have already put it on the agenda.
Bipartisan too.
And leave us not be in error, friends.
Nobody is exempt from the draft, as set out in the Draft Act of 1863.
4F, you say? That only means you are classified as least likely to be drafted, a deferment rather than an exemption. “Hang on to your draft card, kid, we’ll find you when we want you”.
Already a discharged service member? female? homosexual… bedwetting… quadriplegic…. triple amputee? See above….
The way the Act is worded, They own Us. Every one of us.
If they need Steven Hawking’s special expertise, and he doesn’t want to give it to them, they can legally conscript him as well.
Before the Guernica that became Fallujah,
before our use of chemical weapons in Fallujah,
before there were civilians immolated in their beds by white phosphor in Fallujah,
before Napalm under the disguise of Mark-77 was used in Fallujah,
before our tanks were running over the injured Iraqis in the streets of Fallujah,
before our helicopters were killing every last family trying to wade across the Euphrates River to escape the blood bath that was Fallujah,
before we were turning back all able-bodied men from the age of 11 to 65 from the lines of refugees trying to leave Fallujah because we didn’t want insurgents to escape our pincer movement, forcing them back into the city to make a stand,
before we declared that anyone not evacuated from Fallujah would be treated as a combatant,
before we declared our determination to make an example of Fallujah.
2.
Before we tried to make an example of Fallujah the first time because the world saw what they did to the four contractor mercenaries,
but had to pull out because we hadn’t yet thought to cut off access to the hospitals from which were escaping horror stories of the atrocities we were committing against the civilians of Fallujah.
Before we had thought to ban Al-Jazeera from Iraq for reporting on Fallujah despite our restrictions,
before we killed the Al-Arabia reporter who dared to venture into Fallujah.
3.
Before the famous desecration of the bodies of the contractor-mercenaries by enraged Fallujah youth who’d often seen contractor-cowboys ride through their streets shooting indiscriminately out the window;
before our military tried to cordon off Fallujah with encampments.
4.
Before the killing of three unarmed Iraqi marchers, and the wounding of dozens more, who’d assembled to protest a massacre the day before, both times by nervous 82nd Airborne soldiers who thought they had been fired upon first.
3.
Before the massacre of schoolboys protesting the occupation of their school by American soldiers. The soldiers claimed to have been fired upon and yet the only bullet holes to be found after the killing of 17 unarmed Iraqi men and boys were from the American guns.
5.
Before that time Fallujah had not been occupied. Fallujah remained restful throughout America’s invasion of Iraq. It was not until the actions of the 82nd Airborne and the Marine Expeditionary Force that Fallujah erupted into a hotbed for the insurgency and, as a result of American anger, into American war crimes recalling Lidice and Guernica.
Throughout this period, and in between the disastrous actions by the 82nd and the Marines, Fallujah and the Anbar Provence were the responsibility of the 3rd Armored Cavalry of Fort Carson, Colorado Springs. To their credit, they were not party to the unfortunate American actions.
