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News Media Is Encouraging Attrocities In Iraq: Use Of Nazi Terms Like Subhuman Now Common
In the last week, many right-wing newspapers (and even the Wall Street Journal) have started to openly condone war crimes. Here is a sample that the rest of the world needs to see to understand how dangerous the US has become and how important it is to build alternative power structures to stop what is is comming.
In Iraq, we are dealing with a species of subhuman lower than a rabid animal. They are not warriors. They are not even men. They are poisonous vermin that have relinquished all rights as human beings.
With their beheadings and butchery, they have earned the right to be exterminated.
http://www.timescommunity.com/site/tab2.cfm?newsid=13419041&BRD=2553&PAG=461&dept_id=506071&rfi=6
U.S. troops and combat aircraft unleashed artillery and precision strikes yesterday on terrorist hide-outs in Fallujah, shaping the battle space for what is designed as a final ground assault to cleanse the renegade city of foreign and Iraqi insurgents.
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041105-114300-5466r.htm
Note the use of the word "cleanse". In Serbia seperating fighting age men from women and children and gunning them down was called ethnic cleansing and considered a war crime but in Falluja the US took a city of 350,000, only let women and children leave, defined everyone of fighting age to be "terrororists" and gunned down thousands. Yet most US media from Fox News to the WSJ to NPR to Air America cheered on the war crime as merely "cleansing".
Sadly, this investigation -- whether the Marine is disciplined or not -- has set a devastating precedent. Soldiers and Marines are trained to react and they shouldn't have to think if there's a cameraman or reporter nearby before they pull the trigger. That split-second hesitation is the difference between a U.S. troop dying and a terrorist dying. And, that's unacceptable. The Abu Ghraib scandal has forced everyone to take a second look. Was that use of force okay? Was that necessary? Those questions don't solve anything and they actually make things worse.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/9_47/commentary/32187-1.html
So, while the military tells the international media that this type of killing was wrong one can see from this (and many other military responses) that most in the military dont see the killing of a prisoner as a "big deal" since "terrorists" are somehow not like "us"
U.S. Marines rallied round a comrade under investigation for killing a wounded Iraqi during the offensive in Falluja, saying he was probably under combat stress in unpredictable, hair-trigger circumstances. "Marines interviewed on Tuesday said they didn't see the shooting as a scandal, rather the act of a comrade who faced intense pressure during the effort to quell the insurgency in the city. "I can see why he would do it. He was probably running around being shot at for days on end in Falluja. There should be an investigation but they should look into the circumstances," said Lance Corporal Christopher Hanson. "I would have shot the insurgent too. Two shots to the head," said Sergeant Nicholas Graham, 24, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "You can't trust these people. He should not be investigated. He did nothing wrong.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6828512
Kevin Sites, the man who filed the shooting of the wounded man in a mosque has been subject to death threats on hundreds of blogs (and the WSJ also condemned him since unlike human rights abuses in other countries Americans have no right to condemn abuses by the US military):
While the journalist’s images revived criticism of the Iraq war abroad, they drew scorn and even death threats at home. Internet writers blasted him as a member of a liberal media bent on undermining a nation at war. One advised him to sleep "with one eye open". The Wall Street Journal said no one had the standing to judge the Marine from the "safety of his Manhattan sofa". In an editorial, the newspaper asked if the world had "lost all sense of moral proportion" by focussing on the death of a single Iraqi after 40 Marines had been killed in a "terror den" where the enemy booby-traps dead bodies, disembowels Iraqi women and opens fire as it surrenders.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1370611,00.html
as soon as Sites' video aired Monday, many people were shouting to ban the embeds ---- or worse. When I got to my Oceanside office Wednesday, the first phone message I retrieved was from an angry reader who said she was disturbed that ---- in a follow-up article on Sites' Fallujah report ---- I had called the slain Iraqi man a "fighter," and not a "chicken fighter."
More important, she called for an end to the military's embedding program, and demanded that Sites be arrested for "causing more problems" and charged with "sedition" and "treason." She said the Marine who shot the Iraqi on the floor "should get a Medal of Honor," echoing several prominent radio commentators Wednesday.
That was kid stuff.
Others sounded like members of a lynch mob or a McCarthy hearing committee. One columnist said that "Sites' broadcast makes him an accomplice to al-Qaida and Saddam," and that "Sites deserves to be shipped back to America in shackles and tried for treason."
Conservative bloggers with names like "The Crusader" said it was Sites, not the insurgent, who should have been shot. "Kill all the reporters," one patriot said. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/11/21/opinion/commentary/14_23_1711_20_04.txt
Related Stories On US Coverage Of Falluja:
US media applauds destruction of Fallujah
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1705672.php
US media and liberal establishment: accomplices in the assault on Fallujah
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1705144.php
http://www.timescommunity.com/site/tab2.cfm?newsid=13419041&BRD=2553&PAG=461&dept_id=506071&rfi=6
U.S. troops and combat aircraft unleashed artillery and precision strikes yesterday on terrorist hide-outs in Fallujah, shaping the battle space for what is designed as a final ground assault to cleanse the renegade city of foreign and Iraqi insurgents.
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041105-114300-5466r.htm
Note the use of the word "cleanse". In Serbia seperating fighting age men from women and children and gunning them down was called ethnic cleansing and considered a war crime but in Falluja the US took a city of 350,000, only let women and children leave, defined everyone of fighting age to be "terrororists" and gunned down thousands. Yet most US media from Fox News to the WSJ to NPR to Air America cheered on the war crime as merely "cleansing".
Sadly, this investigation -- whether the Marine is disciplined or not -- has set a devastating precedent. Soldiers and Marines are trained to react and they shouldn't have to think if there's a cameraman or reporter nearby before they pull the trigger. That split-second hesitation is the difference between a U.S. troop dying and a terrorist dying. And, that's unacceptable. The Abu Ghraib scandal has forced everyone to take a second look. Was that use of force okay? Was that necessary? Those questions don't solve anything and they actually make things worse.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/9_47/commentary/32187-1.html
So, while the military tells the international media that this type of killing was wrong one can see from this (and many other military responses) that most in the military dont see the killing of a prisoner as a "big deal" since "terrorists" are somehow not like "us"
U.S. Marines rallied round a comrade under investigation for killing a wounded Iraqi during the offensive in Falluja, saying he was probably under combat stress in unpredictable, hair-trigger circumstances. "Marines interviewed on Tuesday said they didn't see the shooting as a scandal, rather the act of a comrade who faced intense pressure during the effort to quell the insurgency in the city. "I can see why he would do it. He was probably running around being shot at for days on end in Falluja. There should be an investigation but they should look into the circumstances," said Lance Corporal Christopher Hanson. "I would have shot the insurgent too. Two shots to the head," said Sergeant Nicholas Graham, 24, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "You can't trust these people. He should not be investigated. He did nothing wrong.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6828512
Kevin Sites, the man who filed the shooting of the wounded man in a mosque has been subject to death threats on hundreds of blogs (and the WSJ also condemned him since unlike human rights abuses in other countries Americans have no right to condemn abuses by the US military):
While the journalist’s images revived criticism of the Iraq war abroad, they drew scorn and even death threats at home. Internet writers blasted him as a member of a liberal media bent on undermining a nation at war. One advised him to sleep "with one eye open". The Wall Street Journal said no one had the standing to judge the Marine from the "safety of his Manhattan sofa". In an editorial, the newspaper asked if the world had "lost all sense of moral proportion" by focussing on the death of a single Iraqi after 40 Marines had been killed in a "terror den" where the enemy booby-traps dead bodies, disembowels Iraqi women and opens fire as it surrenders.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1370611,00.html
as soon as Sites' video aired Monday, many people were shouting to ban the embeds ---- or worse. When I got to my Oceanside office Wednesday, the first phone message I retrieved was from an angry reader who said she was disturbed that ---- in a follow-up article on Sites' Fallujah report ---- I had called the slain Iraqi man a "fighter," and not a "chicken fighter."
More important, she called for an end to the military's embedding program, and demanded that Sites be arrested for "causing more problems" and charged with "sedition" and "treason." She said the Marine who shot the Iraqi on the floor "should get a Medal of Honor," echoing several prominent radio commentators Wednesday.
That was kid stuff.
Others sounded like members of a lynch mob or a McCarthy hearing committee. One columnist said that "Sites' broadcast makes him an accomplice to al-Qaida and Saddam," and that "Sites deserves to be shipped back to America in shackles and tried for treason."
Conservative bloggers with names like "The Crusader" said it was Sites, not the insurgent, who should have been shot. "Kill all the reporters," one patriot said. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/11/21/opinion/commentary/14_23_1711_20_04.txt
Related Stories On US Coverage Of Falluja:
US media applauds destruction of Fallujah
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1705672.php
US media and liberal establishment: accomplices in the assault on Fallujah
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1705144.php
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