Friday, June 14, 2002

US War Crimes?

Following the revelations of possible war crimes from infantryman Matt Guckenheimer in the Ithaca Journal (which he somewhat tried to retract), comes this elaboration from Chris Floyd of the Moscow Times:

Let that sink in for a moment: American soldiers were told to kill women and children. "Specifically." To kill a child. To put a bullet in the brain of, let's say, a 2-year old girl. To hold the barrel of a rifle to her tiny temple and pull the trigger. To watch as the tender plate of her skull, the delicate bones of her face, her large bright inquisitive eyes were all obliterated in a burst of red mist. "We were told specifically to kill them." "Women and children." "To kill them."

So that's the kind of warfare being waged by those notorious two cowards, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. When their own generation was on the firing line, in Vietnam, both men ardently supported the war -- but disdained to fight in it. For his part, Cheney was too busy with his long bootlicking rise to power: "I had other priorities," he has loftily proclaimed.
You can check out a different version of Floyd's remarks at Counterpunch (the Moscow Times link is already in their pay-to-access archive).

Speaking of war crimes, there is a documentary film in Europe accusing the US of perpetrating large numbers of them in Afghanistan. Check out the story at the Guardian or South Africa's IOL. Apparently, the film seems to base much of its accusations on activity surrounding the Mazar-i-Sharif prison revolt/massacre, which Danny Schechter, Geov Parrish, and Jerry White analyzed back in late November and early December. The WSWS has also recently done an article on the film, as well as an interview with the director.