The Kill Team

[go west young man]

Source: Rolling Stone

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses.

It was an unlikely story: a lone Taliban fighter, armed with only a grenade, attempting to ambush a platoon in broad daylight, let alone in an area that offered no cover or concealment. Even the top officer on the scene, Capt. Patrick Mitchell, thought there was something strange about Morlock's story. "I just thought it was weird that someone would come up and throw a grenade at us," Mitchell later told investigators.
But Mitchell did not order his men to render aid to Mudin, whom he believed might still be alive, and possibly a threat. Instead, he ordered Staff Sgt. Kris Sprague to "make sure" the boy was dead. Sprague raised his rifle and fired twice.

As the soldiers milled around the body, a local elder who had been working in the poppy field came forward and accused Morlock and Holmes of murder. Pointing to Morlock, he said that the soldier, not the boy, had thrown the grenade. Morlock and the other soldiers ignored him.

To identify the body, the soldiers fetched the village elder who had been speaking to the officers that morning. But by tragic coincidence, the elder turned out to be the father of the slain boy. His moment of grief-stricken recognition, when he saw his son lying in a pool of blood, was later recounted in the flat prose of an official Army report. "The father was very upset," the report noted.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327?page=1

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The story also includes 17 disturbingly graphic photos of murdered civilians. Link here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/the-kill-team-photos-20110327

[Ed Suspicious]

1. We need to stop killing.

stop putting people in the position to kill. We need to embrace pacifism. Have we no empathy? Can you imagine soldiers from an invading country killing your child? How would you react?

[mwrguy]

2. Thousands of killers like this have returned from our wars

They are now your coworkers and neighbors.

[Keith Bee]

3. "Kill Team" not a good PR name

The K-Team (rhymes with A-Team) is vastly more marketable.

[avaistheone1]

4. Deja vu - Abu Ghraib

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370758/Shocking-video-shows-U-S-troops-cheering-airstrike-blows-Afghan-civilians.html

Disgusting!!



K&R

[libmom74]

5. They threw candy

out in front and in back of their Stryker tank and when children came running for the candy they would shoot them or run over them with the Stryker, and yet we call the Afghans the terrorists.