“…I think the level of activity that we see today [in Iraq], from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
Dick Cheney Memorial Day five years ago.
Frontline - The Wounded Platoon (5min excerpt)
Since the Iraq War began, soldier arrests in the city of Colorado Springs, Colo., have tripled. At least 36 servicemen based at the nearby Army post of Fort Carson have committed suicide, and 14 Fort Carson soldiers have been charged or convicted in at least 11 killings. Many of the most violent crimes involved men who had served in the same battalion in Iraq. Three of them came from a single platoon of infantrymen. FRONTLINE tells the dark tale of the men of 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion of the 506th Infantry, and how the war followed them home. It is a story of heroism, grief, vicious combat, depression, drugs, alcohol and brutal murder; an investigation into the Army’s mental health services; and a powerful portrait of what multiple tours and post-traumatic stress are doing to a generation of young American soldiers.
watch tonight online or on PBS
Remember the wikileaks video? Two members of the company depicted in it have written an open letter of apology to Iraqis.
…There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.
We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.
We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of “god and country”. The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn’t have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us…
via maddowblog
Full version of Wikileaks video of atrocities in Iraq.
WikiLeaks editor interviewed about Collateral Murder tape
Video depicting US military indiscriminate slaying over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff leaked today. Watch here.
Collateral Murder
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
continue reading… wikileaks
Richard Engel explains the Iraq election clearly
Maddow’s enthusiasm is contagious. luv
“I don’t think
Iraq spokesman: Ex-Blackwater employees not wanted in Iraq
dc via cnn
“A dead stop: 4,300 Americans have died in Iraq - but zero in Dec.: Not a single member of the U.S. military was killed in action in Iraq for first time since war started in March 2003.”
Fed Judge Gives Blackwater Huge New Year’s Gift, Dismisses All Charges In Iraq Massacre
By Jeremy Scahill
A federal judge in Washington DC has given Erik Prince’s Blackwater mercenaries a huge New Year’s gift. Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed all charges against the five Blackwater operatives accused of gunning down 14 innocent Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in September 2007. Judge Urbina’s order, issued late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve is a stunning blow for the Iraqi victims’ families and sends a clear message that US-funded mercenaries are above all systems of law—US and international.
In a memo defending his opinion, Urbina cited a similar rationale used in the dismissal of charges against Iran-Contra figure Oliver North—namely that the government violated the rights of the Blackwater men by using statements they made to investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting to build a case against the guards, which Urbina said qualified for “derivative use immunity.” Urbina wrote that he agreed that “the government violated [the Blackwater guards’] constitutional rights by utilizing statements they made to Department of State investigators, which were compelled under a threat of job loss.” He added that the “government is prohibited from using such compelled statements or any evidence obtained as a result of those statements” to bring indictments.
Urbina concluded: “the government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants’ statements or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, the court must dismiss the indictment against all of the defendants.”
The Nisour Square massacre was the single deadliest incident involving private US forces in Iraq. Seventeen iraqis were killed and more than twenty wounded.
For those interested, here are the judges order and the 90 page memo defending the order.
An Iraqi taxi driver may have been the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed yesterday.
oh Sarah, poor thing.
“Remember how only losers, paranoids thought the attack on Iraq might have something to do with oil?”
glenngreenwald - tinyrevolution -
Dennis Kucinich on Meet the Press, February 23, 2003:
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, you made a very strong charge against the administration and let me show you what you said on January 19. “Why is the Administration targeting Iraq? Oil.” What do you base that on?REP. KUCINICH: I base that on the fact that there is $5 trillion worth of oil above and in the ground in Iraq, that individuals involved in the administration have been involved in the oil industry, that the oil industry certainly would benefit from having the administration control Iraq, and that the fact is that, since no other case has been made to go to war against Iraq, for this nation to go to war against Iraq, oil represents the strongest incentive…
MR. PERLE: It is a lie, Congressman. It is an out and out lie.
