Did U.S. troops in Iraq murder innocent civilians?

I've been sitting on this for a bit, because I needed to process it.

Dan Froomkin

Calling it a case of "collateral murder," the WikiLeaks Web site today released harrowing video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver -- and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon's initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.

Reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured.

In the video, which Reuters has been asking to see since 2007, crew members can be heard celebrating their kills.

"Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards," says one crewman after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street.

A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: "Come on, let us shoot!"

Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.

And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: "Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle."

The helicopter crew, which was patrolling an area that had been the scene of fierce fighting that morning, said they spotted weapons on members of the first group -- although the video shows one gun, at most. The crew also mistook a telephoto lens for a rocket-propelled grenade.

What's worse, the cavalier video game-like attitude, the pleas to kill an unarmed rescue party, the collateral damage, the coverup, or the fact that we're in Iraq illegally?

I don't know.

Oliver Willis via Cesca
In the case of the Wikileaks video, Greenwald characterizes it as “the plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men (with their children) carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety”. Except in the mindset of the soldiers shown, this wasn’t just some guy, but part of a group of insurgents. While it’s very clear that the military coverup of the activities was wrong, and possibly a crime, it galls me that it becomes so simple for people “over here” to Monday morning quarterback the decisions soldiers make in the field when they feel their lives and the lives of others are on the line.

What continues to trouble me is the cavalier manner in which they approached what should be the most deadly serious part of their jobs.

This was Gears of War for them. It was treated as XBox when it was human lives they were ending. If they can be so cavalier and, at times, excited to kill, well that leads to not taking the appropriate care to make sure that they're in fact targeting terrorists and not murdering civilians.

The attitude displayed is what really upsets me. I would think that taking a human life would be a little more serious and a lot less fun and funny.

Over at Andrew Sullivan, a reader writes:

I was a member of a unit that killed one and wounded two Americans during Operation Desert Storm. Nothing has awakened the feelings I had that night in 1991 ever, until I watched that video of the Apache attack on the journalists. I had forgotten how sick one can feel at knowing you participated in the death of innocents, and I am deeply saddened today.

I have two things to say: First, and most importantly, is that none of us is qualified to judge what that helicopter crew did that day. I want to judge them. But I don’t know what happened an hour before that, or six hours before, or six days before or six months. We have no idea how close those men have come to dying in an ambush, or being unable to help someone who was. The context of that aircrew matters as much as anything that happened on the ground that day.

But second, and what leads me to want to judge that aircraft crew so unfavorably, is that the ground targets are clearly uninterested in the presence of the aircraft.

The real lasting legacy of this is that this is another loss of the moral high ground for the U.S.. it's another reason for them to hate us.

Apparently, gun possession should be punished by immediate execution

The Weekly Standard advocates the immediate killing of anyone caught in possession of a gun. Or maybe it only counts if you have brown skin and a name that doesn't sound like Steve. Why are the rules different in different parts of our empire?

Conservative blogger calls for Obama assassination

via Jezebel

Did wingnut socialism outrage kill census worker?

Huff Post
The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery, and a law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word 'fed" was scrawled on the dead man's chest.

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky.

Investigators are still trying to determine whether the death was a killing or a suicide, and if a killing, whether the motive was related to his government job or to anti-government sentiment.

Lucindia Scurry-Johnson, assistant director of the Census Bureau's southern office in Charlotte, N.C., said law enforcement officers have told the agency the matter is "an apparent homicide" but nothing else.

Now, this might have nothing to do with anything.

BUT, is it beyond the realm of possibility that the anti-government rhetoric spouted by the far right - Fox News, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage - had something to do with this?

Or how about everyone's favorite wingnut from Minnesota, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who has been stirring anti-census fears for the last few months.

ThinkProgress
Next year, the 2010 Census will be sent to every American household, as required by the U.S. Constitution. The far right has issued dire warnings of the Census; on a May 29th episode of Bill Bennett’s radio show, RNC Chairman Michael Steele intoned, “Certainly the collection of this information is going to be part of an ongoing political campaign by this administration.”

In an interview with the Washington Time’s right-wing radio show this morning, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) declared that she would break the law and refuse to answer the Census questions, beyond noting the number of people in her household:

BACHMANN: The mother lode of all data information will be from the Census. … Unfortunately, the Census data has become very intricate, very personal, a lot of the questions that are asked. I know for my family, the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won’t be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn’t require any information beyond that.

Where does this lunacy stop?

Shit: O'Reilly loses his big time; Hannity fails to give one

(Huff Post)
Wow. Joan Walsh went on the O'Reilly Factor tonight having publicly vowed to be well-prepared to defend the reproductive rights of women and the legality of Dr. George Tiller's clinical practice, and truly doled out some major ownage without raising her voice or raising the temperature at all. It was an artful performance of talking headery, and what can I say? By the end of their two segments, O'Reilly is reduced to a gibbering, shout-faced wreck. If you need to know how far Walsh pummeled O'Reilly into pure insipidity, wait for the moment where he says to her: "My constitutional rights say I can say what I say, you can say what you say, as vile as you say it, you can say it, and I would never condemn you for saying it. You are misguided, you have blood on your hands because you portrayed this man as a hero."

Right. Bill O'Reilly would never condemn you for speaking your mind, if you don't count the whole YOU ARE VILE and YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS condemnation part!

(UPDATE: Joan Walsh has a very amusing post up: "Why I Went On 'The O'Reilly Factor.'" Best riff: "It was a kaleidoscopic nightmare, a TV acid trip, and I don't do acid. It almost seems like O'Reilly does, but I don't think so. The man is driven by demons. God bless him and save him.")

The whole exchange called to mind a passage of Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii:

BRUTUS: You have done that you should be sorry for. There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, For I am arm'd so strong in honesty That they pass by me as the idle wind, Which I respect not.

Joan Walsh: spoken like a Stoic!

MEANWHILE:
(Huff Post) - click through for video

Fix News host Sean Hannity only devoted one sentence to discussing the shooting at the Holocaust Museum on his program this week, Media Matters reports. This comes after Hannity had criticized other networks for not giving significant coverage to the recent shooting at an Army recruiting center in Arkansas. Instead of discussing the shooting at the Holocaust museum, Hannity did, according to Media Matters, dedicate significant time on his show this week to "David Letterman's jokes about Sarah Palin, the firing of Miss California Carrie Prejean, and actor Craig T. Nelson's take on the proper role of government."

Mexico's Drug War

As a nation we're so (rightly) concerned with our own problems that we're not noticing the complete disintegration of our neighbor to the south. Mexico's drug war is literally tearing the country apart and overfilling the morgues with victims. The bodies of the dead bear clear marks of almost unspeakable torture.

(MSNBC)
Death froze his exhausted face.

The attackers lashed or punctured nearly every part of his body. Then they cut off the dead man's head, wrapped it in a plastic grocery bag and dumped it with his body between two tractor-trailers on a city street.

As with most murders in Ciudad Juarez, police found no witnesses, no weapons. Only the battered corpse on the steel coroner's table carries clues to who he was and how he died.

Bodies stacked in the morgues of Mexico's border cities tell the story of an escalating drug war. Drug violence claimed 6,290 people last year, double the previous year, and more than 1,000 in the first eight weeks of 2009.

(The pathologist's) assistant, Ivan Ramos, 20, matches the head to the body. He holds it in place as Molina shoots a photograph, using a paper identifying the man by number to cover the gap in his neck. That makes it easier for loved ones who have to see the picture.

The doctor notes the rest of his injuries: broken left tibia, broken right humerus, severely bruised and cut abdomen, bruised left thigh, stabbed right thigh, sliced chin, knife punctures on lower right calf, lashes on his back. He has no distinguishable traits — no moles, no scars, no tattoos.

Molina unwraps what appears to be a tourniquet on his left biceps. She speculates it was put there by the killers to stop the bleeding from a stab wound so he would not die before they finished their torture. His knees are bruised. He was forced to crawl at one point.