I must be misreading this
Earlier this week a U.S. airstrike in Mosul slaughtered over 200 innocent civilians.
Initially the Pentagon denied being responsible.
"We didn't have any reports internally where we thought we had killed any civilians. We saw the reports come out just like, I think, like everybody else," Thomas said.
Unfortunately for the Pentagon that denial didn't stand up for long. So today they switched tactics, and that's where it gets totally bizarre.
The U.S. military has acknowledged that the U.S.-led coalition probably had a role in the March 17 explosion, but said Islamic State also could be to blame.
Local officials and eyewitnesses have said as many as 240 people may have died in the Al-Jadida district when a blast made a building collapse, burying families inside.
...
The Pentagon does not regularly release images or videos from operations. However, it has had to do so once already this month after it denied striking a mosque in Syria, releasing an aerial image to show the mosque was intact. That incident is under investigation.
A spokesman for the U.S-led coalition fighting Islamic State told reporters on Thursday he was working to declassify a video showing militants hiding civilians in a building in west Mosul to "bait the coalition to attack."
Wait. What?
"Hiding civilians in a building" to "bait the coalition to attack."
That can't mean what I think it means.
Can it?
It sounds suspiciously like "the woman wore a skimpy dress because she wanted me to rape her. What choice did I have?"
Except this time we are talking about the mass murder of children.
But let's not stop there. Let's continue to break down this "defense".
While this is designed to shift some of the blame away from the Pentagon for bombing buildings full of civilians, it appears to actually do the exact opposite: it confirms that the Pentagon knew before the attacks that those buildings were full of civilians, and attacked them anyhow.
ISIS has long been criticized for pushing civilians around and forcing them into various areas, but the fact that civilians were being forced into buildings does not prove that the buildings were of any specific value as a target in the first place, and the Pentagon’s assertion appears to be that putting civilians in there amounted to making the buildings a more tempting target in and of itself.
I guess I understood all along. Holy Sheeet.
Fucking Monsters.
How is this not a war crime?
Going back to the other incident where the Pentagon "denied striking a mosque in Syria, releasing an aerial image to show the mosque was intact". It seems the Pentagon isn't very good at this declassify photos to prove innocence thingy.
Navy Captain Jeff Davis wrote in an email. “We deliberately did not target the mosque.”
He even unclassified and circulated a photo. And he pointed out that on the left, you can see a small mosque, still standing.
But to the people on the ground, the photo tells a different story.
Activists and first responders say the building that was targeted was a part of the mosque complex — and that the charred rubble shown in the photo was where 300 people were praying when the bombs began to hit.
So if denials don't work.
And photos and videos that are supposed to prove your innocence instead prove your guilt.
What do you do if you are the Pentagon?
Simple: Tell the press nothing. Don't even mention how many U.S. soldiers are fighting in a war zone.
Today, Centcom announced that they are going to end the lying about the number of US troops in those countries. They’re not going to start telling the truth, of course, but rather have decided to stop providing any numbers at all on the matter.
Centcom spokesman Col. John Thomas argued that people don’t need to know the number of US troops that are deployed in the countries, and that the important metric is “capabilities, not numbers.” Of course, the figures the Pentagon was giving were never particularly useful in the first place for reporters, since they were always clearly false.
Well, at least they are going to stop lying.
Which is good, because they are piss-poor liars.
That's something I guess.
Comments
There is always this one to add
PS as we all know Amnesty International is part of a Russian plot to make the US look bad
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deliberate civilian targets
They had no military value at all.
It's a long American tradition in warfare.
Fire bombing German cities was model for after-effects of A-bmb
The BBC censored documentary The War Game which had actors in it showed what an atomic bomb attack on England would look like. Released in 1960s'. The fire bombing of German cities had enough TNT per attack to equal the Japanese A-bombs so there was enough information to model the effects of an A-bomb and predict the fire storms, people dying of CO poisoning, etc.
So when I read about Obama dropping around 50,000 bombs in his last two years in office, I ask myself how many equivalent Hiroshima bombs did we just drop on other human beings.
Now of course we have thermonuclear bombs which will wipe out all of humanity.
True enough.
I usually tack Dresden onto that list. It was such a shocking and un-European thing to do. They knew their treasures and would, at the very least, remove them first. They still recoil from the thought of it.
Absolutely correct
The use of the atomic bombs was to send a political message to the world - "We are the most powerful force in the world. You will do as we bid." We have held that ideology ever since. It became the core of a renewed American exceptionalism that had been lost during the depression years.
Perhaps. But they went back
...and did it again just to see it go "boom" and blow stuff up.
They were pretty thrilled. Boys and their toys.
The first bombing failed
It did not kill as many people as the firebombing of Tokyo so they had to try again.
Not allowing civilians to flee a war zone is a war crime.
When the Marines attacked Fallujah, they did not allow civilians to flee because they thought the Iraqi fighters might secret their way out. Maybe some general might thinking of first finding paths into the city that allow civilians to flee. Otherwise, this is exactly what the Western powers were accusing the Russians of doing.
Dear Rummy -
Do you mean to suggest that they are NOT going to greet us with flowers and chocolates?
Thanks. Just one of the many ways that MILC/Trump/Duopoly
are hastening the end of all life. 'The Empire Strikes Back' and civilians do not count for jack. Striking back against actors who would not even be around had the policy of endless war been the guide for decades. Sickening.
That said, there are some within the ranks with this to share perhaps these days at their own peril :
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Does anyone here want to see craters in US soil?
That is where we are headed, I don't care if pix if the 9/11 Pentagon bombing were conveniently released today. Drip, drip is the worst thing I can hear in my house except for smoke alarms. The USA? Bully.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
They hate us for our
war crimes.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
@Steven D "Us" is based, I guess,
"Us" is based, I guess, solely on the payment of taxes. I certainly don't have any other connection to that pile of shit. They've never asked me what I thought, nor listened when I said it anyway. Generally that's when the jackboots come out.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The destruction of the Mosul mosque
during prayers with 200 dead martyrs will become an excellent recruitment marketing tool for converting 2000 moderate Islamist's to the ISIS cause.
When will we understand that we reap what we sow?
Don't hold your breath.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
That's a feature, not a bug
Wars are supposed to be endless now, that way the contracts and money keep flowing.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
None of this is making sense to me.
I would understand the sentence much better if it read that civilians (or local authorities) were hiding militants in various buildings to bait coalition forces to attack those buildings. Is the goal of the coalition really to attack civilians?
Assuming civilians are our targets, aren't civilians everywhere in every town anyway? Don't many of them go to mosques voluntarily every Friday evening anyway? Movie theaters? Supermarkets?
What could be more harmful to our national security than letting militants bait us into attacking civilians in a mosque? What could be a more stupid, dangerous tactic? Are we actively trying to prove that this is a war on Muslims and on Islam as the terrorists claim, and not a war on terrorists as we've been claiming? If so, why?
BTW, it's not all that hard to fake or doctor a video, is it? I mean, through the miracles of technologies, a young, live Marilyn Monroe is still making commercials and Princess Leia is slated to appear in future episodes of Star Wars, despite the unfortunate passing of Carrie Fisher.
Technology has advanced by leaps & bounds since “fat Osama”? n/t
I known that this is from RT but we are starting to get some s
but we are starting to get some shade thrown upon some sources.
https://www.rt.com/news/383020-germany-doubts-syrian-observatory-report/
They always spoke the Gospel when Aleppo was concerned
Then there is always the "White Helmets".
From the same article
It may be a little hard to deny this:
The US came up with a photo?
Hell, I'll take anything I can get.
I'm still waiting for one single photo of Russia invading Ukraine.
Not the US, the Syrians
The Syrians digging their murdered friends and neighbors from the rubble found the US missile parts. They photographed them to provide proof of who killed their people.
War is a business and corporations are people too my friend...
That pretty well sums up our military endeavors.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Selling munitions in a very lucrative business. And I guess if
corporate American doesn't have a market for it's wares, the military will be glad to start a war to help thes sales figures.
America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama's reign
Medea Benjamin
According to new figures, the US dropped nearly three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day. Dare we think how Donald Trump will continue this legacy?
While candidate Obama came to office pledging to end George W Bush’s wars, he leaves office having been at war longer than any president in US history. He is also the only president to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.
President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe. In 2016, US special operators could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration.
Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.
While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.
This is absolute insanity. And this is one reason that I don't believe for one second that Barack Obama is a 'good' man. He's basically a butcher.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
This is why
I am a one-issue person. All the other issues I care about, education, healthcare, children's rights, women's rights, men's rights, all of these issues are bunk if our political leadership is bombing children, men, and women overseas, destroying their homes, their livelihoods, their lives and their ability to survive without constant carnage and tyranny. The behavior of our political leadership tells me who they are, cold-blooded killers. That goes for the Democratic candidate for president in 2016, whose name I can't even type without throwing up, that goes for Barack, and it even goes for others in government I have respected. If they haven't brought this reign of terror to an end, which is totally doable, they are all mass murderers, and they give not one iota of a shit about the well being of the American people. They are exactly what Eisenhower called them, the Merchants of Death.
Merchants of Death
A while back I ran into this Salon interview with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.), former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson proclaims that, “We are the death merchant of the world.”
We need to stop war mongering
NATO has long since lost its validity in Europe.
So, I'm feeling really pissy about the Japanese today.
Unlike many folks in my subculture, I've never found much in Japanese culture to admire; conversely, most of what gets presented to us as (edited- to restore the rest of this sentence, which mysteriously disappeared) modern Japanese popular culture I find fairly repulsive. Yesterday they announced a "successful" Antarctic whale hunt, in which they killed over 300 whales, ostensibly for research purposes, an excuse that absolutely nobody in the world believes, and certainly not the Japanese themselves.
Back in the Cold War, I remember that one of the most odious aspects of the way the Russians and Chinese presented themselves to the west was their politicians' willingness to simply lie, straight-up and straight-faced, about things that everybody knew were lies, and then expect the western politicians to deal with them as if the truth were not known to both sides -- institutionalized disingenuousness.
It's sad that while I'm feeling pissy at the Japanese for their institutionalized disingenuousness with respect to the slaughter of 330 whales, the US government is doing the same thing with respect to an annual slaughter of 10-100 times as many human beings.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Whaling in Japan got its largest
impetus right after WWII when the Japanese population was literally starving. The 1945 crop was very poor and was severely compounded by the fact that the entire transportation and civilian infrastructure had been destroyed by US bombing.
The US military, under the direction of General MacArthur, gave the Japanese two huge navy tankers to be converted to whaling ships. Although there had been small communities along the coast that had consumed whale meat for centuries, the majority of the population had to be encouraged to consume it. Whale meat became a very important food source due to its high protein and caloric content.
Up until the mid 60's, whale meat was the single largest source of meat in Japan. It had became a staple in Japanese school children's lunches. In 1964, Japan consumed 24,000 whales. Since then, consumption has steadily declined.
Less than 5% of the population now eat whale meat - mostly the elder population who grew up eating it on a daily basis. Japanese tend to revere and respect their elders more than other nations so part of the continuation of whaling is rooted in this. The Japanese government had originally planned for 1000 whales this year but stopped at 333 due overstock of whale meat in their markets. Consumption of whale meat is now on a rapid decline and will peter out in less than a decade as the elders die (the Japanese have one of the longest life spans in the world).
Norway also hunts whales. Iceland too (meat is sold to Japan).
And at least one Native American tribe in the Pacific northwest, the Makah.
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2017/Norway-on-Saturday-kicked-off-its-annu...
http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1175