How a smooth faced kid of 15 was willfully blown away by the US Army

[JohnyCanuck]

in an unmitigated act of savagery.

The Kill Team

by Mark Boal, (Rolling Stone)
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses – and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon

snip


He was a smooth-faced kid, about 15 years old. Not much younger than they were: Morlock was 21, Holmes was 19. His name, they would later learn, was Gul Mudin, a common name in Afghanistan. He was wearing a little cap and a Western-style green jacket. He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. "He was not a threat," Morlock later confessed.

Morlock and Holmes called to him in Pashto as he walked toward them, ordering him to stop. The boy did as he was told. He stood still.

The soldiers knelt down behind a mud-brick wall. Then Morlock tossed a grenade toward Mudin, using the wall as cover. As the grenade exploded, he and Holmes opened fire, shooting the boy repeatedly at close range with an M4 carbine and a machine gun.

Mudin buckled, went down face first onto the ground. His cap toppled off. A pool of blood congealed by his head.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327?page=2

[villager]

1. "Support our troops," eh?

n/t

[SpiralHawk]

2. Support them by unplugging cable TV (R) with its mindrot propaganda (R)

and steady stream of crass violence & torture (R).

Starve the Beast (R). Cut the cable. But eat the cookie. Urp.

[Hawkowl]

9. They are all volunteers

I don't support them. If no one volunteered there would be no murdering or war profiteering.

[Angry Dragon]

3. How to make a country hate you.............

or how to create terrorists

[G_j]

4. K&R

:cry:

[spanone]

5. cue lee greenwood...'and i'm proud to be an american.....'

god help us

[Blue Owl]

6. Sounds like cold-blooded killing to me

not fighting for freedom.

:sad:

[kenny blankenship]

7. Are these "Cheney's Kids"? The Death Squads he directed?

[reggie the dog]

8. they killed this kid perhaps because he had no shovel

and he was supposed to be producing heroin for the cia and blackwater in the poppy field where the elder was working?

like in schindler's list when the kappo shoots a jew before having his morning piss just to get the rest of them working faster.



at any rate if this is true these 2 soldiers should be in the brig for a long long time.

[tblue37]

10. This sort of crime is the reason why I am not against the death penalty in all cases. nt

[JohnyCanuck]

11. kick n/t

[OwnedByFerrets]

12. I have no words, Only disgust and anger.

[malaise]

13. This is what their leadership wanted

a great crusade.

[bluethruandthru]

14. This entire story is mind boggling.

What the hell is going on? How could so many be involved in this? I'm just disgusted.

[Bonobo]

15. Just like I said, they all knew. It was business as usual for ALL of them.

"Rogue Kill Team" my ass, folks.

It is the tip of the iceberg and the a window into what are soldiers are doing there all the time.
--------------
After the killing, the soldiers involved in Mudin's death were not disciplined or punished in any way. Emboldened, the platoon went on a shooting spree over the next four months that claimed the lives of at least three more innocent civilians. When the killings finally became public last summer, the Army moved aggressively to frame the incidents as the work of a "rogue unit" operating completely on its own, without the knowledge of its superiors. Military prosecutors swiftly charged five low-ranking soldiers with murder, and the Pentagon clamped down on any information about the killings. Soldiers in Bravo Company were barred from giving interviews, and lawyers for the accused say their clients faced harsh treatment if they spoke to the press, including solitary confinement. No officers were charged.

But a review of internal Army records and investigative files obtained by Rolling Stone, including dozens of interviews with members of Bravo Company compiled by military investigators, indicates that the dozen infantrymen being portrayed as members of a secretive "kill team" were operating out in the open, in plain view of the rest of the company. Far from being clandestine, as the Pentagon has implied, the murders of civilians were common knowledge among the unit and understood to be illegal by "pretty much the whole platoon," according to one soldier who complained about them. Staged killings were an open topic of conversation, and at least one soldier from another battalion in the 3,800-man Stryker Brigade participated in attacks on unarmed civilians. "The platoon has a reputation," a whistle-blower named Pfc. Justin Stoner told the Army Criminal Investigation Command. "They have had a lot of practice staging killings and getting away with it."

[WinkyDink]

16. Democracy is messy.

Last paragraph:
http://www.fpa.org/newsletter_info2583/newsletter_info_sub_list.htm?section=Americans+Wonder%3A+Can+Iraq+be+saved%3F