According to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, U.S. troops massacred an Iraqi family in the town of Ishaqi in 2006, handcuffing and then shooting 11 people in the head including a woman in her 70's and five children ages five and under.
McClatchy is reporting that the soldiers then called in an air strike on the house to cover up evidence of the killings.
This account differs sharply from an official version of the 2006 incident, according to Raw Story. The official version indicated that coalition forces captured an al Qaeda in Iraq operative in the house, which was destroyed in a firefight. The WikiLeaks cable, however, corroborates accounts by Ishaqi townspeople and includes questions about the incident by Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
The cable is dated twelve days after the incident, which took place March 15, 2006. In it, Alston says that autopsies performed in Tikrit on bodies pulled from the wreckage of the farmhouse indicated that all of the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head.
These troops must be part of the 50% who DON'T support Ron Paul. Sadly, the other 50% who do support him rhetorically, are they also complicit in the cover-up and hence equally guilty of war crimes as accessories after the fact by their silence?
ReplyDeleteOnward Christian Soldiers!
ReplyDeleteGee, I wonder if the Miller High Life guy will go hang out and watch a ball game with these "heroes."
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry. No matter what good it did, Wikileaks is tarnished in my eyes for publishing ANYTHING without discrimination, including, apparently, private medical files, illegally obtained.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Hackers-Hijack-Personal-Information.html
So much for the "right-to-information", extortion-is- a-market-transaction crowd.
I read the cable, and the article. There is no evidence other than witness testimony from citizens in the town who claim to have seen this. I also find it hard to believe that it would be easy to identify bodies left in a house that was hit by an airstrike to the point where you could conclude they were handcuffed and shot in the head.
ReplyDeleteNow, I will admit to being horrified to the speculative assertion in the article - so perhaps it is that I don't WANT to believe it so much that I am refusing to see any "Facts" here. I hope others can put that right.
If, indeed, it is a true account then I am speechless. I cannot imagine that soldiers of the United States Marines or Army could ever, in a million years, perform such an atrocity as shooting a child in the head.
If they can do it just 100,000,000 more times we can declare "Mission Accomplished".
ReplyDelete@ Ivanovich71, if the military can fight unconstitutional wars, then anything they do is an atrocity because they cannot tell right from wrong and did not choose to disregard unlawful orders. And are we not complicit by "allowing" these wars to continue?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 4:49:
ReplyDeletethe article doesnt say anything about wikileaks publishing private medical information. they just posted a note from some hackers who threatened to publish it. two independent groups of actors, from my understanding of the article.
@Ivanovich:
ReplyDeleteI have no idea about how reliable an autopsy is, but the article isn't about testimony from the townspeople. it's about assertions from a guy from the UN who says autopsies show they were handcuffed and shot in the head. how reliable those autopsies are, i have no idea, but just that you made a mistake about what the article said.
btw, i also cannot imagine soldiers of the US army shooting children in the head.
Ivanovich-
ReplyDelete10 years ago I would have agreed, but reading about (and talking with my childhood friend who just retired from 20 years in the Army) the everyday atrocities committed persuades me to believe this is most likely true.
The military mindset while at war is to dehumanize the enemy. Period. It is necessary for them to be able to kill and not be engulfed with grief and regret at the time. That's why PTSD is a growing problem.
My friend is now running a business, but is in counseling to come to grips with the things he did, and saw, while in Iraq. Watching a man that you've known 35 years cry like a baby while you hold him and he can't even tell you what he's crying about- out of shame, out of guilt, out of horror at his own actions- is a sobering reminder of the horror of war. I worry about him. His support for Ron Paul stems from this- he wants his friends and buddies out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW!
God, just writing about this has made ME cry. I need to call him.
@ anon 8:29 PM, isn't ironic that the people leading the war are turning soldiers into future Ron Paul voters?
ReplyDeleteIvanovich71:
ReplyDeleteWhy is it so hard to believe that U.S. soldiers murdered children? Remember My Lai. Or, more recently, the gang-rape and murder of a teenaged Iraqi girl and the killing of her entire family. Or the "kill squad" in Afghanistan that (among other crimes) murdered a boy on a farm, then planted a weapon on his corpse, cut off his finger as a "trophy" and posed for pictures with the body.
Never mind all the children killed by Air Force pilots and drone operators who drop bombs knowing full well there will be "collateral damage," but deeming the price to be "worth it," in the words of Madeleine Albright.