Okay, back to Obama's War and the current counterpoint to Vietnam's My Lai Massacre, last entry. I posted the above atrocity back in April (DM #219-220), and I'll repeat it here, again courtesy of WikiLeaks, which gave it the headline "Collateral Murder." Scroll down to read, view, hear the whole abhorrent story of wanton civilian killage, including terminal child abuse by 30 mm aerial cannon fire.
Light 'em all up. Come on fire ... Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.
BECAUSE ... Wikileaks is in the news again TODAY, big time, as they have pulled a back-to-the-future "Pentagon Papers"-style coup of massive proportions, exposing over a period of a half-dozen years the blood-drenched futility of our doomed AfPak Adventure. The so-called "Afghan War Diary" is a compilation of 90,000 U.S. military records that "give a blow by blow account of unreported civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures"--what the British press has already characterized as "a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan." (See full AP story here.)
The earlier Wiki-"leak" above had its Keystone-Cop-esque consequences of its own--a la Vietnam Whistleblower Dr. Daniel "Pentagon Papers" Ellsberg forty years ago--early on as the alleged Leaker, one Army Spec. Bradley Manning, 22, was chased down and arrested in early June, and now faces 52 years in a military prison.
Meanwhile, the FOUNDER of WikiLeaks, an Australian bloke exotically named Julian Assange, has faced a virtual fatwa put on him by the Pentagon, ever since the "Collateral Murder" video surfaced. He's in virtual hiding. After Bradley's arrest, Ellsberg, himself a Vietnam Marine veteran who saw the light, recommended in an interview he'd best stay that way (here).
(Should it be at all surprising that events will continue to prove the incontrovertible parallels of the Middle East Wars with Vietnam?--as those in the know have known to be there all along.)
NOW, after Mr. Assange somehow got hold of an unbelievable 90,000 Pentagon documents and released them on WikiLeaks today, he'd best head for the wastes of the Outback. And find a Hussein Hole somewhere. For their content is altogether rather bad P.R. for the U.S. of A. Among other disclosures:
The leaked records include detailed descriptions of raids carried out by a secretive U.S. special operations unit called Task Force 373 against what the U.S. officials considered high-value insurgents and terrorist targets. Some of these raids resulted in unintentional killings of AFGHAN CIVILIANS, according to the documents. (AP)
For example: the AP cites one operation in June 2007 which "resulted in a death tally [!] that the U.S. military document said include SIX enemy fighters and SEVEN noncombatants--ALL CHILDREN." Shirts and skins ... the innocents win.
And the White House response to all this? The usual. It condemned the document disclosure, saying it "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk."
Good. The more the better in the righteous cause of getting us the hell out of there.
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