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[solarbird]

Collateral Murder. Not worksafe. Via Sullivan, released by WikiLeaks. No wonder the Pentagon is trying to get them shut down. More on the newly released video here. See also a similar event in Afghanistan that the Pentagon lied about, and which lies the US media dutifully reported.

Glen Greenwald talks about why there's nothing exceptional to this at all; what's exceptional is that it actually came out:

As the video demonstrates, the soldiers in the Apache did not take a single step -- including killing those unarmed men who tried to rescue the wounded -- without first receiving formal permission from their superiors. Beyond that, the Pentagon yesterday -- once the video was released -- suddenly embraced the wisdom of transparency by posting online the reports of the so-called "investigations" it undertook into this incident (as a result of pressure from Reuters). Those formal investigations not only found that every action taken by those soldiers was completely justified -- including the firing on the unarmed civilian rescuers -- but also found that there's no need for any remedial steps to be taken to prevent future re-occurence. What we see on that video is what the U.S. does on a constant and regular basis in these countries, and it's what we've been doing for years. It's obviously consistent with our policies and practices for how we fight in these countries, which is exactly what those investigative reports concluded.

All of this is usually kept from us. ... We stay blissfully insulated from it, so that in those rare instances when we're graphically exposed to it, we can tell ourselves that it's all very unusual and rare. That's how we collectively dismissed the Abu Ghraib photos, and it's why the Obama administration took such extraordinary steps to suppress all the rest of the torture photos: because further disclosure would have revealed that behavior to be standard and common, not at all unusual or extraordinary.

I suggest you watch the video, because I know enough about these sorts of operations to have had a very similar reaction. Don't hide from it.

Oh, and apparently there's a lie going around that WikiLeaks edited the tape to make things look worse, and that the original video is different. In reality, WikiLeaks released the entire length of footage, which you can see on the front page of the release site they made for this footage. It's the one labelled "full version." They released it along with a shortened version labelled "short version."

In other abuse of power news:

A third judge has found Mr. Bush's illegal domestic spying programme to be, in fact, illegal.

Mr. Obama's press secretary has endorsed the same military commission pseudotrials that Mr. Obama spent so much time correctly condemning before taking office.

Moving Gitmo to Bagram may backfire badly for Gitmo and Gitmo-lite supporters.

On the other hand, let's give credit where credit is due, and this is a significant and material step forward on an issue a lot of people have stopped thinking about but shouldn't've:

The US 2010 Nuclear Posture Review Report has been posted online. (pdf) For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons except in "extreme circumstances", pledging not to develop new ones and limiting the use of those in storage -- even for self defense... This news comes just a week after the announcement of a new post-cold war strategic arms agreement which will be signed on Thursday (April 8th) between US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev. Both countries have agreed to reduce strategic nuclear weapons by almost one-third and halve the number of delivery vehicles, such as missiles and bombers.

This matters, tho' getting anything past the Senate is going to be an adventure; the rightists are predictably up in arms, with RightWingNews calling it "an invitation to the world to attack America with biological weapons... Obama's telling other nations, for the first time in American history, 'Yes, you may be able to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans with biological weapons and not only will there be no nuclear response, I may not do anything about it at all.'"

Oh, the meme that some are trying to get going - that this will make everybody shift to bioweapons, particularly since they're cheaper, easier, and harder to detect - kind of defeats itself right out of the gate, dunnit? Hello, they're cheaper, easier, and harder to detect. Dramatically so. Seriously, click on that link. What do you think rogue actors are going to try first?

And finally, yeah, the fake prom story is real. God damn that's petty.

Comments

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

The Potemkin Prom is just the saddest, meanest thing I can possibly imagine. It's bad enough that such a thing was dreamed up by teenagers -- but that their parents supported them in it? Shameful.

[lordperrin.livejournal.com]

At least they got their fake prom. I just wasn't even allowed to mine with my boyfriend. And that was in Connecticut in the year 2000. Im tired of commenters on this story making it sound like this kind of bullshit has something to do with the south. It doesnt. It happens everywhere, the north is just more weasily about it and it's hard to get reporters interested in bigotry in the north because it's not 'sexy' like southern bigotry.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

oooor it might be because there is a big difference between 2000 and 2010 in terms of social networks and the internet having an ability to generate interest in a story.

The north/south issue is a total boondoggle, though. the real issue is simply small town vs. larger town. And 'small town' can be 'school district on the edge of a big city', not necessarily a 2-horse town named 'dogpatch' or whatever.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

I was similarly ... disturbed by the footage. If interested, here's my entry on the topic: WikiLeaks Bombshell: Collateral Murder (http://sophrosyne.radical.r30.net/wordpress/?p=5017).

[harmfulguy.livejournal.com]

I'm from Mississippi. Born there, lived half my life there.

Two-thirds of anything I still gave a shit about there was washed out or chased out by Katrina.

Fuck Mississippi.

[pentane.livejournal.com]

I'm always reminded of the famous Jack Nicolson monologue when I see stuff like the footage above.

Plus the idea of putting 25 year olds in charge of 100 people with guns? Whoa.

[maellenkleth]

What the Apache crew, their controllers, and the Adjutant-General's staff did in the gunship case was reprehensible in the extreme, a violation of UCMJ several times over and, regrettably, symptomatic of ineffective command and control.

In Canada, under analogous circumstances, we disbanded an entire regiment: as for which vide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_Affair.

Putting 25-year-olds in charge of 100 people with guns? Can be bad, can be good; depends on the 25-year-old in question, and upon that person's training, command support, and the overall ethical setting of the armed service. Not an easy question, ever.

Col. [Maellenkleth], RCE/CME (Ret'd).