Tom Edgar.

I940, Dorset. Southern England. Parachuting German from destroyed bomber. Victory rolling Hurricane, with machine guns blazing, riddled the man to pieces.

Atrocities in War are far from new. When you are indoctrinated to be brutal it doesn't come with an on/off switch.

The day will come when we will know how the Germans felt when finding out the people who were blamed were not the guilty as the leader claimed. 9/11-our Reichstag out of the hate from within 10 years ago that led to the wars in Afghnistan, Iraq, and now Obama continues in Iran. Israel has a part in this one.

Wikileaks has many more stories like this. We will see a pictures of Afghanistan under the US military very soon, as long as Wikileaks isn't shut down or all it's operators are not arrested on false charges.

stories like this need to be seen and remembered when the suits in washington, and the generals talk about war. or national security. because this is what it is. with the red white and blue bunting stripped away,
the people who were once the guys down the block have been flim flamed by recruiters into joining the armed forces, then trained to kill without remorse and become what they have been trained to be: psycho killers. They get crazier with each new tour. Why then are the suits allowed to continue talking bs and smiling as if any of what they are doing is normal and reasonable? or even remotely sane? or in any moral way different from what these guys do? there is a difference: the suits and the generals are more guilty. if these guys go to trial, the people gave the orders that put them where they were need to be tied first.

War makes killers out of all of us, and that is why we must stop this madness , and find a way to regain our civility,

We are all guilty of murder, United We Stand!

Who is in charge here?

So what? What's the big deal? Give a guy (or girl/woman) a gun, teach him how to kill, fly him/her around the world & tell him, "Go kill those people!" Why not?

This is a militarist/imperial country. This is what we pay taxes for. This is what Bush & Obomber give us. This is what 50 million people voted for.

I hope they got what they want.

Somehow this horrific story does not particularly surprise me. US soldiers have a morbid fascination for body parts - they collected Japanese heads during the Second World War and Vietnamese ears during the Vietnam war.

http://hnn.us/articles/1802.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead

Wasn't this sort of thing also done against the Native Indians?

It is by virtue of such atrocities as these young men are accused of that religions were born.

Though shalt NOT...

There exist military codes of conduct, and they seem to be ignored so much by the troops on the ground lately, while when the generals are asked, they abhor such misconduct.

There also exist codes of conduct for the United States---the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and all international treaties to which we are signatories. These codes of conduct have been violated so blatantly by recent administrations that they probably serve as a template for how to get ahead.

That these violations continue in the Obama administration kind of "seals the deal." We now have a "New Normal" when it comes to human relationships.

Someone here earlier observed that our young men who commit such atrocities in foreign lands will be coming home.

Those of us old enough to recall returning Viet vets will have some idea of what I am talking about when I suggest that this time it will be different. One small example: We now have a thriving Homeland Security apparatus at home as well as a massively profitable mercenary presence in the war zones, while most of the rest of our economy is pretty much dead in the water.

When these trained psychopaths, clever but ignorant of the old ways of mankind, return home, what will they do? Reinforce the Surveillance State while raising the ante?

Be careful with your cell phone.

-30-

every civilian killing is reported as an extreme brave battle with the enemy
since all the wars are witch civilians, you know what the game is
edweg

USA!
How low can you go? This is not a facetious question.
USA means the citizens who accept they owe allegiance; who pay taxes; who vote in the USA, or any any permutation of the above.
The USA is defunct; a corrupting cadaver of enormous size. For some time now millions have seen and suggested that the USA is an abortion but, to be brutally blunt, an abortion is fresh, while the USA is clearly more shocking than than that. It is a long dead smear of slime; a miscarriage as a consequence of infection and disease and genital defects.
This little cherry of a story about fingers will sit on top of the mess energetically pretending not only that it is on a really good cake (Apple Pie?) but that the story is NEW, exceptional and not the norm, and that the tried and trusted President/Pentagon/Judiciary/Great-God-Law will get to the bottom of it; that due process will take its course and the perpetrators will be punished, and most US citizens will accept such an explanation. After all they can do it very well after all the practise they have had throughout there education and thereafter over their entire lives. Most US citizens will still insist the stinking, slime-oozing cake/cadaver is a good one. The worm holes will be used to assert it is a fluffy and light cake and the slime to prove the existence of harmless, biodegradable, eco-friendly and recyclable hydrocarbons that do not kill the fish or the gulls.

My image is intuitively correct.

This combination of rotten meat and worm eaten material, and the associated waste matter (it is called shit out here amongst those who use language meaningfully), this mother of all foetal corpse/cakes shows that the US culture, its citizen, is depraved; blissfully stupidly and idiotically depraved.
The overwhelming totality of all this is that there is no human choice for those good people who remain human amongst the US citizens but to reject the Nation; the USA.
And after all the USA is not necessary, but for the idiots who, 'seeing the light' in selfishness, have grown to use it for personal, group, or sectarian profit and personal safety at the expense of all others and in the name of their One God with any of multitude of names their wit inspires them to use( Progress, Democracy Profit, Jesus, God, Israel, Justice, Law, Empathy, Peace, Regime Change----sorry but I have a gagging problem and must stop) Such blithe spirits call it competition, survival of the fittest, virtue in selfishness; Jesus!

Fucking nuts!

Duplication. Soo many comments!

duplication

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/09/12-us-soldiers-charged-wi_n_710409.html

Was it just a typo, or was Jeremy Morlock's name misspelled intentionally in the above HuffPo article. They spelled it as Mortlock. Additionally, HuffPo is stomping on any comments about the close ties that Jeremy Morlock has to the Palins.

This is such a horrific story, there is no way to win "hearts and minds" with incidents like these. I cannot imagine how the families of the victims must feel to learn that their family member was dismembered for trophies.

I am particularly interested to watch if Jeremy Morlock receives any preferential treatment due to his connections. It’s a small world, isn’t it?

Track Palin and Jeremy Morlock played hockey on the same high school hockey league;

Willow was involved in the breaking & entering of the Morlock’s home;

Todd dated Jeremy Morlock’s aunt from 5th to 9th grade;

Jeremy’s sister April is one of Bristol’s closest friends.

http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/07/sarah-and-todd-palin-jeremy-morlocks.html

The kids in Wasilla smoking hashish:

http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/09/bristol-palins-prom-pregnancy-gaffe.html

Makes you wonder if the huge pile of bones outside Chuck Heath's house was an inspiration to these young soldiers - sick trophies.

so what will happen to them? do they also collect their fingers as punishment..
http://selfesteem-program.com

So, while atrocities like this are being committed by American soldiers, everyone's worried that burning Korans is going to offend Muslims and put our troops in danger???

The important point is that this is USA OFFICIALLY CONDONED POLICY !!! The big news story of the summer of 2010 was the military musical chairs. McChrystal replaced by Patreaus. Patreaus replaced by Mattis. This was a promotion for Mattis. Remember his comment that the Press conveniently ignored. Mattis said: "Killing is a hoot...its fun to shoot some people". Then he was promoted.

The sadistic slaughter of innocent civilians is an official US policy. Remember Magdeleine Albright's statement that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was worth it. The facts are the facts. This is who we are. Face it.....

Let me get this right ; if you kill a civilian in the field it is murder , if you wipe out his family with a drone from 3000 miles away it is "colatteral damage". What do we expect when even a General says " Killing is fun ! "

The accused platoon leader Sergeant Gibbs comes from a place with which I am intimately familiar, from an earlier phase of my life. I decided to check out the online version of the Billings Gazette to see how the story was being reported, and more tellingly, to see what sorts of remarks were being voiced in the story's "comments section."

Now of course, people who respond to a particular story with remarks in that story's "comments section" are a self-selecting group and are not necessarily a representative cross-section of any population (local, regional, national, or whatever). Keeping this caveat in mind, I would nonetheless argue that one can get some sense of mass sentiment, however distorted, by reading the full range of remarks that show up in a story's "comments section."

Anyway, with respect to the "kill team" story, the remarks are all over the place, but if there is one prevailing view in the story's "comments section," it is this: Our uniformed men and women are under tremendous stress, what with multiple rotating deployments and redeployments, and having their "hands tied behind their back" by "politically correct" rules of engagement that give every advantage to the enemy. Most of them are not inherently "bad apples," but a few of them are bound to snap and do terrible things. Regarding those who cross the line and perform unconscionable acts, we must reserve judgment and understand the unfair predicament they are in: when, under tremendous stress, they get a little overzealous in the noble defense of their country, they are thrown to the wolves by the public relations-sensitive top brass. In short, we must sympathize with and support our troops.

Yikes.

What is interesting about this discourse is that it shares more than a bit in common with the dominant view here at CD, but spins everything around and looks at it through a right-wing populist lens. It IS true that ordinary grunts in Af-Pak are less morally culpable than elected officials, generals, military contractors, war profiteers, etc for the crimes of US imperialism. It IS true that for the sake of political convenience, US imperial decision-makers will occasionally punish low-level grunts who have committed embarrassingly "excessive" atrocities that cannot be covered up, while saving their own hides of course.

But in the right-wing populist mind, this is merely proof that the elites are fickle and self-serving, whereas the ordinary folks are self-sacrificing patriots, the true Americans. There of course is zero scrutiny or questioning of the actual motivations, objectives, and consequences of US imperialism -- that is, zero scrutiny or questioning of the mission for which the troops must be "supported." That's for those big shots in faraway Washington DC to decide. Yes, those big shots may be corrupt, but corruption (original sin?) has always been and will always be with us. Just don't second-guess us in the way we do the job you've given us.

We are not at war, this implies a fight w/ 2 combatants.

Rather we are invaders, occupiers.
More colonialism than imperialism or bi-national fighting.

That'll change if we attack Persia, who will sink every carrier we have in the Gulfs instantly. SS-N-22's.

Iran-War.

Time and again I read the posts and comments on Common Dreams and they amount to nothing more than a litany of complaints. This is a shameful childish wail that ineffectually asserts 'It is not me.'

This matter has to be fixed not complained.

So what is the matter?

Let us start with what this is all truly not.

Nots:

It is not 9/11
It is not weapons of mass destruction.
It is not the 'American' people.
It is not Israel.
It is not the Pentagon.
It is not the military Industrial Complex.
It is not regime change.
It is not the enemy.
It is not the generals.
It is not the soldiers.
It is not the war.
It is not the locality.
It is not oil.
It is not the 'American' culture.
It is not the Tea Party or any Party.
It is not Hollywood.
It is not Democracy.
It is not even Christianity or Islam, or China or the Bush family, or 'Americans', Afghans and bad breath.

They are all stupid to a lesser or greater degree, but it is not any one of them and it is useless to discuss them. To do so is nothing more than tea party gossip.

This makes it easy for us to see something clearly.

It is the USA.

This is a nightmarishly sick place that seeds and cultivates the monsters that fill its numbers, turns good into bad, gold into dust, and demolishes the potential for good within all the features listed above; and it must be demolished; split up into states or coalitions of such. The Americans who were former citizens of the USA' could conceivably kill many of each other in the process but, if unfortunately so, rather they do so than continue to systematically kill, in a businesslike way, others as their history proves to any but such as a bloody, blind, besotted, finger collecting fool they have done. Go Arizona!

This will open the 'American' cupboard to the skeleton there that sets a new standard for bones.

There is very much more life in America, but it will only be after the USA. The entity is an unmitigated disaster.

What more proof is required?

people including soldiers don't care

what crimes are being committed
in their name,
on their dime, and
with their blood,

as long as they are not victims of the crimes,
as long as they believe the crimes sustain and even enhance their way of life,

until they are forced to abandon their way of life,
one way or another.

I guess we will FINALLY have to let the German and Japanese people off the hook…

All my life I have heard about how it was right to hold the German and Japanese people en masse responsible for the atrocities of WWII because they did NOTHING to stop the criminals running their respective states.

Well, Americans, apparently NOW owe these people a massive apology for our self-righteous moralizing that has lasted for decades.

For even as we sit here American Military Personnel are performing the VERY acts for which we HANGED German and Japanese Military Personnel -- including torture; mass executions; reprisals, show trials kidnapping, assassinations, secret prisons, etc.

And what about the sanctimonious carping about how the German people should have known about the Nazi Death Camps???

How do YOU know that the Guantanamo “detention camp” is NOT an Auschwitz?? Or are you applying a double standard that holds the German people responsible for believing THEIR criminal government; but YOU can be forgiven for believing YOURS??

WELL????

Let's hear those apologies you self-righteous hypocrites – unless you are from the might-makes-right group that REALLY believes the ONLY German and Japanese real war crime was losing the war!

We are tainted with the blood of a million people, that we have murdered over the last ten years alone. America nolonger represents the great land of opportunity, hell the Mexicans don't even come here as much as they used to.
Many of these young soldiers are juvinile delinquents, the Judge gives them the choice of the military or jail, so they join. Plus we spew hate for those people all the time, even in the churches we preach that they are demons, and unless they change to Christianity they are lossed to hell. Crooks run our Country, and we let them. All over Europe there are protests against the wars, but here in America no one cares, we sit and watch our talent shows on T.V. and get fat, giving no worries to what our Country is doing in our name, with our money. We look back on Sept. 11th, and still we wage war on people that don't have enough weapons to attack anywhere or anyone,we are bullies, and brutes,the 19 highjackers were Packistany and Saudi Arabian,yet we are "friends" with them ! Believe me more crimes are going on everyday in that land , than what this little group is doing.We have lost our way, and we will pay for what we have done,history teaches us, that every Country that has ever used war as it's primary way of life, is it self, in the end destroyed !!

Just plain SICKENING!!!