>When Wikileaks leaked a video of American soldiers firing at innocent civilians from an Apache, the veterans from the US Military go into Damage Control Mode. However, in their attempt to justify the horrific and blatant massacre of innocents, these veterans unwittingly confirm that such killings are common and are even taught by the US Military themselves!
Apache helicopter gunners talk good game ‘so the people don’t seem real’
WASHINGTON: US military veterans have spoken out about a video released this week of a US Apache helicopter crew gunning down people in a Baghdad street in 2007, in an attempt to explain why the soldiers joked and jeered as they carried out the killings.
A report yesterday said many people found the cockpit chatter in the Apache the most disturbing detail about the video, released this week by the advocacy group WikiLeaks.org.
The video shows the US military killing a Reuters photographer and his driver on a Baghdad street in 2007. The video, confirmed as authentic by the US military, shows repeated fire by two US Apache helicopter crews on a group of men including two Reuters employees, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh.
The soldiers joke and jeer as they shoot: “Look at those dead bastards,” one helicopter pilot says. Another replies: “Nice . . . good shootin’.”
Reports yesterday said many veterans who viewed the footage made the point that soldiers cannot do their jobs without creating psychological distance from the enemy. One reason that the soldiers seemed as if they were playing a video game is that, in a morbid but necessary sense, they were, experts told The New York Times.
“You don’t want combat soldiers to be foolish or to jump the gun, but their job is to destroy the enemy, and one way they’re able to do that is to see it as a game, so that the people don’t seem real,” Bret A. Moore, a former US army psychologist and co-author of the forthcoming book Wheels Down: Adjusting to Life After Deployment, told the newspaper.
Military training is fundamentally an exercise in overcoming a fear of killing another human, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, author of the book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, told the paper.
Now wait a minute. Aren’t terrorists trained in the exact same manner? That they are trained to be emotionless? Such that they distance themselves from their targets? So much so that all innocents, be it men, women, children will all be killed?
So has not the video that has been leaked, a real eye-opener on how US trains its soldiers to be like terrorists?
Well, that has to be, if you want to buy the “explanation” by those vets, who are only unwittingly incriminating the US Military further.
Oh well, if you are a hardcore supporter of US Military Terror Machinery, maybe the above damage control explanation sux. Howabout another damage control explanation from yet another vet?
Iraq War Vet: “We Were Told To Just Shoot People, And The Officers Would Take Care of Us”
Excerpts:
Truthout has spoken with several soldiers who shared equally horrific stories of the slaughtering of innocent Iraqis by US occupation forces
“I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the US Marines who served three tours in Iraq. He told the audience at the Winter Soldier hearings that took place March 13-16, 2008, in Silver Spring, Maryland, “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”……..
Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, told of taking orders over the radio.
“One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation…. One of the snipers replied back, ‘Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?’ The lieutenant colonel responded, ‘You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.’ After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment.”……
Brian Casler, a corporal in the Marines, spoke of witnessing the prevalent dehumanizing outlook soldiers took toward Iraqis during the invasion of Iraq.
“… on these convoys, I saw Marines defecate into MRE bags or urinate in bottles and throw them at children on the side of the road,” he stated.
Scott Ewing, who served in Iraq from 2005-2006, admitted on one panel that units intentionally gave candy to Iraqi children for reasons other than “winning hearts and minds.
“There was also another motive,” Ewing said. “If the kids were around our vehicles, the bad guys wouldn’t attack. We used the kids as human shields.“…..
The article is quite long. You can read it at your own leisure and see how this killing of innocents is prevalent in the US Military.
So, all the characteristics of terror training are there in the US Military. From de-sensitizing and removing human emotions so as to facilitate killings, to using innocent children as human shields.
Isn’t the US Military the Number One Terror Agency of the World?