So, thanks to Wikileaks.org, Americans now know that their soldiers often gun down civilians in occupied countries during reckless missions based on little or no intelligence (in every sense of the word). This will no doubt come as a great shock -- yea, a veritable political earthquake -- in a land where the top commander in what is now its chief war just recently confessed that his troops were slaughtering an "amazing" number of civilians who posed no threat whatsoever.

We all recall the vast hue and cry that greeted this astounding admission by Afghan top gun General Stanley McChrystal, who was hand-picked by the Nobel Peace Laureate himself to lead America's noble crusade to stamp out Muslim extremism in Central Asia by killing innocent Muslims all over Central Asia. No less than the New York Times its own self reported prominently on McChrystal's chilling candor. To be exact, the "Good War" general told his troops, by videoconference:

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."

Remember how the Democrats in control of Congress rushed to set up special committees to investigate the murderous facts behind this admission of atrocity? Remember how the media went 24/7 on wall-to-wall coverage of the Potomac-churning aftermath of McChrystal's unprecedented mea culpa? Remember how the president himself held a special news conference to offer "America's sincere and shamed apology to the innocent victims we have killed so tragically in such amazing numbers"?

And hey, remember how just this weekend, the purple mountain majesties and fruited plains rang with howls of righteous rage when it was confirmed that American Special Forces troops really did kill three innocent women (along with two officials of the American-installed Afghan government) during a savage night raid on a compound of sleeping civilians in February? Remember how all the weekend TV talk shows were filled with America's great and good lining up to denounce the weeks and weeks of outright lies that the Pentagon had told about the killings? Remember how the Democrats in Congress, once again, launched a special committee of investigation into the charges by American-backed Afghan officials that the U.S. Special Forces troops had actually dug their bullets out of the bodies of the slaughtered women in order to cover their tracks after the massacre?

While I am certainly no prophet, I think I am safe in saying we will see a similar reaction to the gut-wrenching footage unearthed by Wikileaks. The American people are simply too good, too just to let stand such a foul besmirching of their national honor. After all, didn't they rise up as one after the Abu Ghraib atrocities were revealed in 2004, and boldly oust the architects of these crimes in the ensuing presidential election? Didn't they take to the streets in their millions when first Bush and then Obama claimed the right to have any citizen put to death without charges or trial simply by declaring the victim a "suspected terrorist"? Didn't a great groundswell of public ire force Congress to open impeachment proceedings against George Bush and Dick Cheney for their Soviet-style gulag of concentration camps and systematic tortures -- and threaten similar justice for Barack Obama's continuation and cover-up of this system? Didn't the American people demand a national day of mourning and atonement when they realized that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis had been murdered in a war based on false pretenses and cynical manipulation?

So let us have faith in the American people. They have proven time and again in this last decade that they will not countenance crimes and atrocities being committed in their names. They will not abide leaders who unleash a war machine of blood money and blind fury against innocent people. When push comes to shove, when the truth is revealed to them, they will always -- always -- do the right thing.
 

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philip said:

... As always Chris, you nail it! As an ex marine who served in Viet Nam. I was more than sickened watching that video. So obviously a desire to kill regardless of anything else reeked from that video. But i know as a certainty from memory, the callous regard troops hold for whoever the enemy of the day happens to be. The thrill of the kill. Oh the power! My only consolation is that even though i had the opportunity and the desire i resisted and let live whoever it was in my sights that night. Thank god, even though i am an atheist.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +25

Neil McLachlan said:

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit... as Thomas Carlyle was supposed to have once said. Still, I guess after a certain length of time pointing out the same things over and over, there's not a lot left in the well. Having given up hope of any one of these incidents provoking the outrage it should, I'm now just hoping that sheer weight of numbers will eventually force people to wake up. The reaction to Abu Ghraib was pretty strong, but since then we have become inured to the government's capacity for betraying every positive thing that America supposedly stands for. What we need now is the full collection of torture porn to be leaked. That bunch of photos that Obama decided at the last minute to not release, containing far, far more revolting images than the Abu Ghraib stuff we have already seen. I think if those were released, based on what I have read about them, then we would see if the public has any capacity for revolt at all. If those photos don't do the job, nothing will. I'm not sure if it would.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +11

Debbie(aussie) said:

	... Snark! Wonderfully done. How else can we live with ourselves. Thanks Chris.
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April 07, 2010
Votes: +7

Sean O'Neil said:

... Who cares what Carlyle thought about sarcasm? "Low form of wit"? The point of "wit" is not to advance a scholarly argument with footnotes and polite deference to a liar. The point of "wit" is not to show immense respect for dissemblers, and thereby imagine the mendacious are magnificent but misled. Heaven forbid Chris Floyd should have a sarcastic moment, or several of them. If that causes discounting among the polite progressive puritans, what then is really lost? Good god, Chris! Who told you that you could have fun with words at your own blog? Don't you know that the Mandarins of Merit find sarcasm "low"? Now you've alienated them! Think of the fallout! Next time, be sure to praise McChrystal with appropriate reverence, and show the respect due those Well-Meaning Liberals who will "get it" when they finally pay attention to WikiLeaks! Oh... was that sarcastic? Forgive me. I'm a low-brow dirt-eater!

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +6

nina said:

... Heh, you must be an expat. If you lived in the US you'd be standing in line waiting to get your Ipad twittering your facebook friends that Jon and Kate are at it again. If we care, and we do, if we show it, and we can't, our fate is laid out before us here. Its the strangest thing, to cry in the closet and live a lie that everything is wonderful by the dawn's early light and the twilight's last gleaming. But, no matter how strange it gets, it will never compare to a cloudless day hanging laundry in Marja while something feverish and malodorous breathes down your neck as white eyeless birds soar overhead.

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April 07, 2010 | url
Votes: +8

charlie ehlen said:

... Chris, Thank you for your comments on this video. As a former Marine/Vietnam vet, I am totally disgusted by this video. I watched it three times. The first, just to see what it was. The other times I was looking for the weapons the "terrorists" were supposed to have had. As I said on my own blog, I never saw any weapons being carried by the people on the ground. A report on CBC news program "The National" this evening said that the US is doing more fighting from the sir, either gunships or drones. Hard to see for sure if people on the ground do have weapons from "on high". No, that is not to excuse this behavior. I see no use in cursing at this. It is just totally disgusting. These flyboys will live with this forever. War has a way of haunting those who are involved in it, for life. Words to describe this video are beyond me. Remember, it was our Congress critters who authorized these damn fool wars of choice. What sort of support, mental health, medical, or what ever will these troops get when they come home? Will it be any better than we got when we got back from Vietnam? At least we now recognize PTSD. When I came back in 1971, I don't think that term was used at the time. I recall it wasn't until some years later that I first heard of PTSD. Never got any government "help" with it either. Thanks loads there Uncle Sam.

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April 07, 2010 | url
Votes: +10

Geoffrey Transom said:

It's the flipside of "publicise the lies on TV, retract lies in the papers" From memory, it was Peter Teeley (former press aide to George H W Bush) that first made clear the dominant strategy that should be used to exploit the asymmetry in circulation between TV and the press. Put simply, the political class will put out whatever bullshit it feels like ("Our Heroic Heroes Kill 500 Evil Terrrrrrists in Display of Heroic American Heroism Against Apparently Overwhelming - and Evil - Odds, While Sparing [Nay, SAVING] Innocents") on the TV, to be mindlessly absorbed by tens of millions. Then, when the blogosphere discovers that it's all a lie and fifty hundred Afghan children where slaughtered by some overweight schlub driving a drone from a warehouse in the States... well, MAYBE the story gets read by a few thousand fringe folk that can be dismissed as 'conspiracy nuts'. If the error is particularly egregious and there's a columnist who is near retirement, MAYBE the retraction makes it into a mainswamp publication on page A5... but after all is said and done, the nett effect is that Joe Sixpack only sees the TV version - so he thinks that Jessica Lynch was a hero and that Pat Tillman died from withering enemy fire. And the corpses of the brown children keep piling up as Nascar audiences cheer the flyover of death machines. Thankfully the US is now so terminally in decline that we won't have to put up with it much longer. Hubris ALWAYS meets Nemesis. Cheerio GT

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April 07, 2010 | url
Votes: +10

john kelley said:

	State Fair Legacy Ducks in a pond, whack-a-mole,... Such courage on the battlefield is... Careful John, sarcasm would be seditious...kinda like spitting.
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April 07, 2010
Votes: +3

Neil McLachlan said:

	@ Sean O Neil Jesus dude, calm down. You thought my comment about sarcasm was some sort of criticism? I think your irony detector is faulty. Besides, I think Mr Floyd is quite capable of defending himself, although I doubt he sheds a tear every time some internet moron like me says something nasty.
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April 07, 2010
Votes: +7

scott douglas said:

What "Battle"? One of the sad little fly-boy monsters in the video says something like, 'well, that's what they get for bringing their kids to a battle...'as the wounded children are trundled away from the decimated minivan -- that world renowned combat-vehicle of ultimate Ba'athist/Reuter's/Al-qa'ida defiance. The repeated exaggeration of the number of 'combatants' and the supposed weapons involved is a bit odd. Are the troopers really on Meth' now? Or do armed cells of nationalist/photo-journalist casually stand around on street corners with modern attack helicopters hoovering over their left shoulders as some matter of tactical elan indecipherable to the untrained observer? I hope so! No wonder we keep winning our little wars!

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +8

Michael B said:

There is nothing to be 'proven' about America For the petty fascist, patriot and apologist for what is unconscionable pesky details such as this latest video will always be a 'non issue.' "Just a few bad apples" in an otherwise glorious enterprise. To speak too harshly about this "latest event" or to draw any larger conclusions means that one will be accuses of "bashing" America. Of course the reality is only in that the critics fail to 'bash' hard enough to appropriately describe the real horror of the 'Death's Head' that is America. One must leave a subject so hideous to the poets and artists to render, as the dry and prosaic rhetoric of the political mindset is inadequate to the task. For example, read Cormac McCarthy's novel "Blood Meridian" for a more poetic or literary evocation of the heart of endless darkness that calls itself America. But please note in your perusal of the historical record that even that macabre 'cluster fuck' fails to do justice to what has been true from America's very inception.The truth always proves worse than any attendant fiction. There is nothing to be 'proven' about America, for it is all known. Nothing has been left to doubt. There is no need to argue or debate anything. The verdicts are all in. Except for the obtuse and the willfully ignorant– who instead of the blood spoor and the evil trail– see 'cotton candy and lollipops.' The 'truth' of the truth cannot be changed. As it continues unabated in the bright light and horror of the American day–a static and unchanged monolith of unrepentant barbarity. Thank you Chris Floyd for telling that truth.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +4

Wonka said:

	Americans Working Overhead... http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/30551-popup.html This will all end so very badly...
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April 07, 2010
Votes: +2

Jimmy Montague said:

	Who knows? Maybe there really isn't a birth certificate. Maybe he was actually hatched from a cuckoo's egg.
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April 07, 2010
Votes: -4

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James Ruhnke said:

... You need to ask a question: Why does something like this occur? The military purposely stocks its combat units with immature males because they require the "fighting machine" to obey orders without question or delay. You cannot get that if your army is composed of fathers and grandfathers. Military enlistment ads are targeted directly at the age group that is tired of computer-game violence and want to graduate to the real thing. Of course, the result is that the "gamers" tends to get out of control in any real combat situation. The "game" gets boring because there are not enough legitimate targets available. Knowing that they are not supposed to kill innocent civilians, they begin to "invent" circumstances which will allow them to use their weapons. You can plainly recognize it in this video we are discussing. You can hear the excitement building and the impatience of getting to the big moment when the triggers are pulled. Our military and our politicians are well aware of this behavior. They should know that this is apt to occur and, for that very reason, avoid using the military to fight political or unjust wars. That is the problem with some older adults. They let ambition and profit get in the way of common decency.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +5

Wonka said:

	Just gotta shoot something.... In Vietnam, a Cobra gunship came on station near my unit in the jungle, reported some movement, asked for our location so he wouldn't spray us - turned out the movement was a group of wild boars, Mr. Flyboy just couldn't resist and sprayed them into oblivion - just gotta shoot something...
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April 07, 2010
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derekmann said:

Stern Statement Or pious pronouncement, take your pick, Ladies and Gentlemen. Now let me be perfectly clear, quashing of evidence will not be tolerated under the "Bloody Barack" Obama regime. The more things change, the more they stay the same, you can say that again. The United States has never really come to terms with its collective self. Puritan Ethic and American Exceptionalism are woven so tight into the fabric that even our "progressive" party are a bunch of thugs. Extra-judicial assassinations, renditions, indefinite detainment, are not given a thought by the masses, only a few bloggers, only a few left-wing magazines. Oddly enough there is a fraction of the far-right that objects to the lawlessness of our government. The Constitution of the United States expressly states that Congress shall have the power to declare war, to my mind, the War Powers Act does not fill the bill. A legal Declaration of War opens the entire country to acknowledging responsibility for the act of waging war, it would force every U.S. citizen to face the reality of the carnage committed in our name, under our flag. Congress has abdicated their responsibility, the American people have abdicated their responsibility, and the President has abdicated his responsibilities. true enough, "Bloody Barack" Obama campaigned on the theme that Afghanistan was the "right" war, if he really believes this he should immediately call a joint session of Congress and ask for a Declaration of War against the nation of Afghanistan; to do otherwise is to fail in his obligation to "see that the laws be faithfully executed", last time I looked, the Constitution was supposed to be the supreme law of the land. I realize that this all may seem quaint to some people, kind of like the Geneva Convention did to some, but I really see no other way to stop a lawless war, other than appealing to the law. I also realize that we have more than one illegal war going on, and that war is a legal state obtained by an act of Congress; beyond that we are carrying out drone strikes in various countries, and other illegal acts, but the only hope is to set a precedent.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +3

Sean O'Neil said:

... The Constitution is neither a noble document nor the lodestone for the behavior of those who run the Federal Government. "Constitutionalists" seem to mis-understand the origins of the Constitution. Anyone who has bothered to compare the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution knows that the Constitution is the reason why we now have a fascist government that enjoys imperial militaristic adventure for private gain. The transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution can be traced indirectly by reading the Anti-Federalist essays and comparing them to Madison's Federalist Papers. The Anti-Federalist essays warned of the dangers of a "war department" and a powerful executive, they warned of the problems inherent in a plutocratic Senate, they warned of the problems of a powerful Federal government. Anyone who wants to know what original legal charters suggest a fairer America needs to go back further in history than the Constitution. I mean, let's be real: we didn't even get the Bill of Rights until a bunch of the anti-Federalists complained about the Bill's exclusion from the Constitution and sought the Amendment thereof to include that Bill's contents. Left to their own devices, the Federalists did NOT want to grant the "freedoms" that many present-day "Constitutionalists" think are the essence of our "Founding Fathers" wishes. Historical ignorance is understandable since many don't really look deeply into the origins of America. But making "Constitutionalist" arguments on a historically ignorant background, that's just a modern form of disinformation, spirited on by the ghost of James Madison and his love of empire, power, and greed.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +3

derekmann said:

sean i look at this page as primarily chris's forum, i am reluctant to answer any posts, i am simply stating my opinion. bandwidth is expensive, or so i hear. no matter the history behind the constitution, it is supposed to function as the law of the land, that is my point. you may also notice that i said i didn't know what else to suggest; and did not make an argument from historical precedent, but from a desire that the american people through their elected representatives take responsibility for what is being done in our name. of course i over generalized, and yes, i barely graduated high school, that is what happens when you sleep in class after working all night; so while you seem to be much better "educated" than i, i assure you my sentiments are sincere. do you have a better idea on how to rein in our out of control military spending, and to limit our military to actual defense rather than military adventurism?

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April 07, 2010
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derekmann said:

sitting here thinking, and it ain't doin no good have not been a member near five years, so i was kind of unsure what the decorum would be. i see that since wwII we have fomented quite a few coups around the world, which years later come back to haunt us... i see that our longest war, vietnam, was fought under a resolution, not a declaration of war. i see that our media is co-opted by corporate influence, and i am thinking how can we rein in our war machine? the only thing i can think of is going back to basics, the constitution, and start demanding of elected officials to exercise their power over the conduct of war. so, while i wouldn't know about the federalist papers, i do know what the constitution states, and that is that congress, and only congress, is supposed to have the power to declare war. we have seen these atrocities for a long time, in the phillipines, vietnam, irag, afghanistan, how do we stop it? can we stop it? maybe by not fighting undeclared wars?

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +4

Norwegian Shooter said:

	Always remember your Churchill quotes! "When push comes to shove, when the truth is revealed to them, they will always -- always -- do the right thing." Churchill: But only after they have tried everything else. Unfortunately, we still have a few options left before we run out.
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April 07, 2010 | url
Votes: +1

Mike Smith said:

	... Sean O'Neil Put another coat of paint on yourself! Where do you see attempts at "psychoanalysis" and accusations of "nefarious behavior." Derekmann makes reasonable points in a polite and thoughtful manner. Who gives a shit how long you've been reading Chris Floyd? Derekmann posts interesting comments and is hardly a troll. Why the chip?
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April 07, 2010
Votes: +5

Dan Stevenson III said:

Nice going Chris . . . It may be interesting to note that Wikilinks has a small stack of these videos which will be released in time. I’m afraid, Chris, that the American public and Congress didn’t immediately jump on this current murder video because the American news media found a much more important story to cover which trumped the American military murder video. That story, of course, was all about the significant details of Tiger Woods. Also by the time the media had sanitized the video for the viewer it look more like a video game rather than murder in action. And as the talking heads, in the name of balance, talked all around the significance of what was shown on the screen I didn't even have time to go make a sandwich because the Tiger Woods story filled the screen so rapidly! It is also rather interesting that while Wikilinks has a small stack of these video the U.S. military is attempting (according to them) to find their copy of this current video which somehow they have misplaced. James Ruhnke's post makes an excellent point about the "game" nature and age level of the modern military. The age issue has always been present but the new video game drone killing feature has placed killing into such an abstract act. Besides the horrific present moment results that is implemented upon the "target" an added cost of these actions by the solider will only appear years from now in their own personal lives and in most cases will be hidden from view. I am still, to this day, in New York City and San Francisco dropping money into cups of Vietnam Veterans who have never recovered their lives from their actions in that war.

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April 07, 2010 | url
Votes: +4

Mike Smith said:

	Dan Stevenson III Met a guy at my VA clinic recently who was off to a VA hospital for several months of intense PTSD therapy. He can't sleep and is visited by the faces of those he killed (83 by his count). He's in his 60's! Vietnam still haunts him. Another wave of damaged soldiers are being created as we speak.
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April 07, 2010
Votes: +4

Ilya Kuryakin said:

@Dan Stevenson Not to offend, but i would rather suffer sleepless nights than be the victim of your VA buddy - i.e. DEAD. Perhaps your friend should have thought twice about killing others for the Zionist-Corporate-Fascist-Banking system to which he plead his undying fealty? We all have a CHOICE: making the Wrong choice is NOT an excuse. Sorry. In the end we must all answer to OURSELVES. The decisions we make are ours and no one else's. Anyone with an ounce of gray matter would realize within minutes that an interlude of "patriotism" is quickly revealed as a lifetime of conformity and servitude. And all that that implies. Harrumphing the "achievements" and Plight of your "heroes" does no good but to RE-INFORCE the LIE on which such blind allegiance to a corporate-banking fascist system is based upon. Quite simply: they died or were dismembered for a cause that only one-thousandth of one percent of the world's population even fucking care about. They were fools for hegemony - just as the hundreds of thousands of slaves and dupes who died for Caesar's glory two thousand years ago - and who then were released from "glory" to abject decrepitude and poverty. Nothing has changed.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +2

Ilya Kuryakin said:

correction "and who then were released from "glory" to abject decrepitude and poverty." Obviously I meant the Survivors - of which there were very very few. And they paid in fucking spades for that unique "privilege" - those who managed to fight off the scourge of infection wound up with multiple mutilations - just as today - and a "pension" that amounted to little more than a week's worth of getting fucked by state-sponsored whores - who kicked back most of their earnings to to the cunts who hired them in the first fucking place: the POLITICIANS.... ...see the Eliot Spitzer file: he was going to take down Lehman, Chase and Goldman Sachs and, guess what, out of the fucking blue, he was caught up in a career-ending "scandal". Next year, the whole fucking Zionist banking system threatened to "take down" the system unless they got their cocks sucked. Coincidence. Coincidence. Coincidence. Coincidence. Coincidence.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: +1

Gregory C. O'Kelly said:

Federalism, confederalism, and the war machine Both O'Neil and Derekmann are correct in a sense. The war machine, with its standing army and the pressures to squeeze its trigger, could not have been assembled under a confederation. Lincoln, the great emancipator, in his vanity and lack of foresight, repeatedly violated the constitution (Derekmann's over-arching law allegedly designed to prevent this very thing) to protect federal organization needed for the growth of the war machine, and saw to the slaughter of over a half million Americans over a matter that should have been addressed by the justice department, not the war department. Derekmann just does not understand that laws can be easily surmounted or ignored, as Lincoln demonstrated, allowing things that could not happen otherwise because the organization necessary for the prosecution of imperialist aims would not be there in a confederation. Lincoln's assassination was justified, but came too late. If it had happened before the fighting began, the world would be a different place. There would not have been WORLD WARS and the on-going slaughter that we all, on this web page, abhor.

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April 07, 2010
Votes: -1

john kelley said:

	Conscientious Objector "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong" (Muhammad Ali) ....... Dan Stevenson III, Golf revenues are down 50%. You bet your ass they're gonna resuscitate Tiger Woods.
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April 07, 2010
Votes: +1

Bill Jones said:

	Sean O'Neil is dead rigt The Constitutional convention was a coup. The delegates were sent to Philadelphia to Amend the Articles of Confederation but as many of them were holders of government debt issued to finance the revolutionary war the temptation to construct a stronger central government was not to be resisted.
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April 08, 2010
Votes: +3

Dan Stevenson III said:

a response to Mike, Ilya, and John ....... Mike, PTSD has some powerful effects and I have seen those effects. A sad state of affairs to be sure. And one we as a country will see far more of in the coming years as we continue these wars of imperialism. As for you Ilya Kuryakin I agree that we all have choices but we should also have compassion for those who have been manipulated by that "corporate-banking fascist" system you speak about in your post. Some individuals don't "wake-up" to their choice until they are trapped in them. The young are extremely susceptible because their experiences are drawn from the controlled "Hollywood" style heroism which is supported by the military industrial complex. And finally, John Kelley, I am as shaken as you are about golf revenues being down by 50% but here may be a solution. From a drone a golf club (to the military) looks just like an AK47. Picture the new reality television show with Tiger on the links with his club and a military drone overhead controlled by his wife! Ahhh, sheer advertising genius! Peace to you all.

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April 08, 2010 | url
Votes: +4

outsider said:

	Sarcasm "Another wave of damaged soldiers are being created as we speak." I believe the preferred description is "battle-tested veterans", or "heroes". But however you describe the product you have to admit that this is one area of manufacture in which the USA is still number one!
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April 08, 2010
Votes: +2