Collateral Murder

The Crotch

The Crotch

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http://www.collateralmurder.com/en/index.html

It has just occurred to me that I do not post many threads here. In fact, unless there is a topic on which I can offer some specific insight in to, I generally just take potshots from the peanut gallery. I believe this is because in many cases, I have nothing of value to offer. Sure, sure, I can get angry at X and shake my fist impotently at Y, but that doesn't move the conversation along one fucking bit. This is one of those cases where not only can I not offer much, but I don't know if there's anything any of you can, either, aside from impotent anger. Perhaps a skeptical analysis of the video and the claims? Arguing about matters only tangentially related to the topic? I dunno. But... eh. Enough of a prelude. On with the fucking thread, Crotch!

Some time back, two employees of Reuters - a driver and a photojournalist - were killed during a firefight in Iraq. Reuters wanted an investigation. The military said there was no need, stating "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force," and that the journalists were caught in the crossfire.

Reuters wanted the cameras of their employees returned, as well as access to the cameras on board the helicopters involved in the fight. That was a couple years back.

Fast-forward to this morning, and...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

NSFW. Obviously. And, uh... I dunno, I guess not for the weak-of-stomach.
 
I thought the same thing - wtf is crotch making a thread for? He never makes threads.

I think they were a little trigger happy. I can see where they might be justified if they thought those people had weapons, but why'd they shoot on the van taking the wounded guy? What difference does that make?

And who had something resembling an RPG? They said they were firing and everything.
 
[quote name='SpazX']I thought the same thing - wtf is crotch making a thread for? He never makes threads.[/QUOTE]
I know, right?
 
Glenn Greenwald has a great story about this. How the media (ALL media, including the Obama loving media) ignored other versions of the story and reported the gov't's version exactly without any kind of investigation.
 
I think it said one of them had a shoulder mounted video camera, must have thought it was a rocket launcher. These guys really need people on the ground advising them of who they're about to fire at. From however many feet up they were i'm sure it's nearly impossible to see what someone is holding.

The fact that the military tried to cover it up isn't surprising.
 
Is it that surprising? The government already covered up Pat Tillman's murder by his own comrades and those three women who were killed in a raid in Afghanistan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman#Controversy_surrounding_Tillman.27s_death
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/asia/06afghan.html?src=mv

The co-founder of Wikileaks did a interview about the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sYXppiOteM

Funny how none of the main media in America are covering this. I guess Tiger Woods is more important.
 
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not to threadcrap but the wikileaks guy looks uncannily like Pete White from Venture Bros.

Anyway, I really am not surprised. The numbers of civilians killed is in the hundreds of thousands and this gets downplayed when not ignored outright and the media in the US is corrupt and lazy.
 
What really bothers me is the soliders involved in this felt absolutely no remorse for having killed. Yeah, har har, soldiers who have been trained to systematically kill having remorse. But, that's a huge problem--- I mean a lot of the time, this sounded like kids on Xbox Live. They were cracking jokes about killing, and the bodies, and then didn't give any shits whatsoever about the children who were harmed.
 
“Collateral Murder”

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So, I only watched the small video the Crotch posted.

This sort of thing is just par for the course. You have a country desperate to win against an invisible enemy. You have soldiers who don't want to be mocked like their Vietnam predecessors. I wish our leaders were adults who could stand to lose another game.

...

I was talking to a Combat Engineer heading back to Iraq for his third tour. "Third tour, huh?", I said shaking my head in a bit of disbelief, "Good luck and try not to get yourself killed." I didn't thank him for serving our country. I didn't thank him for protecting our freedoms.
 
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.
Click to expand...

Godfuckingdamnit.
 
Yay for the US Government! They're soooo awesome! Let's let them control more of our lives! What could possibly go wrong?

We so need to get the **** out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that even some of the most hard-core anti-war folks would disagree, but, honestly, if Obama announced today that every single troop was coming home on a boat or plane within 24 hours, I'd be thrilled.
 
[quote name='UncleBob']We so need to get the **** out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that even some of the most hard-core anti-war folks would disagree, but, honestly, if Obama announced today that every single troop was coming home on a boat or plane within 24 hours, I'd be thrilled.[/QUOTE]

Why would the people most opposed to these elective wars disagree?
 
NYT, that liberal bastion, implies that Wikileaks released only the 17 minute edited version, when in fact, they released from the very beginning the unedited 38 minute version. The Weekly Standard jumps on this only to issue a correction.

The always brilliant Glenn Greenwald goes into detail on this:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/06/myths/index.html

tl;dr (although the post isnt THAT long), establishment media PO'd that wikileaks is breaking stories they weren't.
 
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[quote name='fatherofcaitlyn']Why would the people most opposed to these elective wars disagree?[/QUOTE]
A lot of hard-core anti-war folks at least realize that we can't just drop everything and get out - we broke it and we should do *something* to help fix it.

While I understand where they're coming from, I'm pretty sure they were broken before we came along. ;)

[quote name='JolietJake']Real classy Bob, bring your hate for social programs into a thread about the murder of innocents.[/QUOTE]

You taking about class is about like Myke's earlier comment about how economic disparity doesn't equal racism.
 
When CCN reports the story they left out the part where the soldiers were told the children had to go to an Iraqi hospital
 
[quote name='UncleBob']A lot of hard-core anti-war folks at least realize that we can't just drop everything and get out - we broke it and we should do *something* to help fix it.

While I understand where they're coming from, I'm pretty sure they were broken before we came along. ;)
[/QUOTE]

We're on the same page.

We can't afford to be the world's policeman anymore. We ignore plenty of massacres and genocides that another one isn't going to matter much.

I've mentioned it a few times, but a Lunar Solar Power system costs 5/7ths of this year's outlays for Iraq and Afghanistan. Permanently removing ourselves from the oil game would benefit the Middle East.
 
Here's an interview with the Wikileaks.org founder by old faithful independent media outlet Democracy Now.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape_us_military
I thought this really sums up this and our military apparatus:
"These are not bad apples. This is standard practice. You can hear it from the tones of the voices of the pilots that this is in fact another day at the office. These pilots have evidently and gunners have evidently become so corrupted, morally corrupted, by the war that they are looking for excuses to kill. That is why you hear this segment, “Come on, buddy! Just pick up a weapon,” when Saeed, one of the Reuters employees, is crawling on the curb. They don’t want him for intelligence value to understand the situation. The man is clearly of no threat whatsoever. He’s prostate on the ground. Everyone else has been killed. They just want an excuse to kill. And it’s some kind of—appears to me to be some kind of video game mentality where they just want to get a high score, get their kill count up. And later on you’ll hear them proudly proclaiming how they killed twelve to fifteen people."

As someone pointed out above, this really sounds like some people have played too much COD4. Video games and all major media do a fantabulous job desensitizing us to the horrors of war. Its not just the soldiers, its us civilians too. We watch this shit like its a movie or game. Most of us don't want to puke or have any real gut reaction. That is desensitized. Then again, that is exactly what you need to maintain a highly militarized society.

Also, in today's broadcast is yet another example of our US military run amok...
After First Denying Involvement, US Forces Admit Killing Two Pregnant Afghan Women & Teenager
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/after_first_denying_involvement_us_forces
 
I don't buy media effects arguments for a fucking second.

But I do believe in military working personalities being socialized over time, just like I believe someone who spends 10 years in prison will likely develop a psychological profile that finds murdering another person a perfectly reasonable response to a conflict.

joeboo is right - this is not "an isolated incident" anymore than the racism from the Tea Party is. We cling to the *hope* that these are isolated incidents because when we accept that they are not, our worldview and concepts of "good guys" and "bad guys" ends up all fucked up.
 
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Ok, now tell me, if a teabagger makes a racist comment and it isn't captured on video, did it actually happen?
 
[quote name='joeboosauce']They just want an excuse to kill. And it’s some kind of—appears to me to be some kind of video game mentality where they just want to get a high score, get their kill count up. And later on you’ll hear them proudly proclaiming how they killed twelve to fifteen people."

As someone pointed out above, this really sounds like some people have played too much COD4. Video games and all major media do a fantabulous job desensitizing us to the horrors of war. Its not just the soldiers, its us civilians too. We watch this shit like its a movie or game. Most of us don't want to puke or have any real gut reaction. That is desensitized. Then again, that is exactly what you need to maintain a highly militarized society.[/QUOTE]

Holy fuck. I just put two and two together.

Metal Gear Solid 4.
Chapter 3. Big Mama's speech just before she gets on her motorcycle about how the proxy wars are just a cool game to the kids in her PMC and other PMCs.

Ahead of the fucking curve again, Kojima, and it took me two years to realize it. Holy fuck. I want to find this man and shake his hand.

Getting MGS nerdiness out of the way...

I don't even want to watch the video. If it's really like listening to XBOX Live chatter, I'll throw up.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']America needs to be stopped man, I can't stand myself for being a part of this country.[/QUOTE]

I'll help you pack and drive you to the airport.
 
The only curve Kojima is in front of is his hipster haircut. And he's actually behind it, spatially speaking.

Think about this.
 
[quote name='Strell']The only curve Kojima is in front of is his hipster haircut. And he's actually behind that, spatially speaking.

Think about this.[/QUOTE]

No way. Look at MGS2. I didn't play that game until like May 2004, and it was still ahead of the curve two and a half years later.
 
Kojima needs to not let George Lucas write the dialogue for his games. Srsly. C'est terrible.

Anyways, counting down the days till the neocons paint Glenn Greenwald and people who agree with him as 'anti-American', 'hates our troops', etc.
 
[quote name='jputahraptor']I'll help you pack and drive you to the airport.[/QUOTE]

Family and friends good sir. Running away from the problem doesn't really work either. Somehow I don't believe you'd actually follow through though.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']I don't buy media effects arguments for a fucking second.

But I do believe in military working personalities being socialized over time, just like I believe someone who spends 10 years in prison will likely develop a psychological profile that finds murdering another person a perfectly reasonable response to a conflict.

joeboo is right - this is not "an isolated incident" anymore than the racism from the Tea Party is. We cling to the *hope* that these are isolated incidents because when we accept that they are not, our worldview and concepts of "good guys" and "bad guys" ends up all fucked up.[/QUOTE]

With you myke on our need to keep with the clear cut good guy/bad guy paradigm. But, you don't think that a media affects our perceptions especially when we engage with that media for 10 years too? Any action for that matter? Its not a played COD and must pick up gun and shoot nearest person. Its more like "well if I am given a gun and told by an authority figure (in this case US military) to shoot people then I don't have too much of a problem with it and it has to be ok then." As opposed to someone who was barely exposed to this having more of an aversion, even revulsion to doing the same task. Have you ever read/seen anything on the Stanford prison/torture experiments? http://www.prisonexp.org/
Point being the margin between doing and not doing a deplorable act is not much and desensitizing people plays into that.

Here is a video for CBC - The Human Behavior Experiments (Sorry you have to cut and paste as this thing autoplays when you load this page if I post it straight in here.)
livevideo .com/video/ConspiracyCentral/7BA0DFC570AC4146A1102D93D00F217B/cbc-the-human-behavior-exper.aspx
 
[quote name='IRHari']Yeah Greenwald linked to that too. Sad but completely accurate portrayal of what Americans care about.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I got it from his article. Greenwald has truly come into his own as a damn good journalist with great analytical ability.
 
CNN is *so* fuckin' bad I switched to MSNBC a few weeks ago - it was on in my house for like 5 days before I saw any celebrity news (and even then it was that Jesse James dude, who I didn't even know was alive, let alone married to Sandra Bullock). That sealed the deal for me.

Al-Jazeera is really good as well, but I don't get that network.

But CNN is fucking ridiculous. When they are hemorrhaging viewers at an alarming rate, and their best idea is to hire Erik fucking Erikson, you know they're dead in the water.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']I listen to NPR only because I don't watch tv very often, can't complain since it's free I guess.[/QUOTO

It aint free.
 
I listen to NPR as well, I think they do a great job. A little off topic but I'm curious what people think about NPR being held to a higher standard regarding objectivity because of the fact that they receive some taxpayer dollars.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']America needs to be stopped man, I can't stand myself for being a part of this country.[/QUOTE]

what the fuck do you mean by stopped?

How you gunna get your NPR?
 
do any of you think that the soldiers set out to commit murder?

I realize that it happens in war (actual cold blodded murder), but I didn't see or hear any evidence of it here.

I couldn't tell from the video that the camera equipment weren't weapons, it seemed from the chatter that everyone was in agreement about what they saw.

The onus here IMO is on the government. We need to GTFO of there ASAP.
 
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[quote name='xxDOYLExx']what the fuck do you mean by stopped?

How you gunna get your NPR?[/QUOTE]

Stopped from killing civilians and violating the Geneva conventions with no fear of criminal repercussions?

Maybe I'm not as cool as the rest of you guys, but I get a little heated watching soldiers take out civilians even though I know it happens all the time.

[quote name='xxDOYLExx']
The onus here IMO is on the government. We need to GTFU of there ASAP.[/QUOTE]

I definitely agree with you there.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']Maybe I'm not as cool as the rest of you guys..[/QUOTE]

Trust me when I say your at least as cool as me.
 
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