Tag Archive: U.S. Military


COLLATERAL MURDER

The U.S. rules of engagement state that the use of deadly force should only be used when a subject usually has a weapon and “will either kill or injure someone if he/she is not stopped immediately”.

From the shocking video obtained by Wikileaks it is obvious that the military on the ground in New Bagdad  interpret this to mean that anyone carrying a weapon is a legitimate target.

The men we see being  killed gave no indications that they were planning to launch any attack – from their position the soldiers even mistook cameras of the Reuters journalists for guns.

This being a hot zone of the city the level of tension has clearly reached a point that attack is routinely regarded as the best form of defence. The casual manner in which permission to engage was given indicates that this was far from being an isolated incident.

Even more inexcusable was the subsequent firing on those who came to the aid of the wounded. That act cannot be dismissed as the fog of war.

Wikileaks are doing an invaluable service in exposing such outrages – they present the material in a highly professional manner after investigating the circumstances fully leaving the powers that be no avenues to weasel out of responsibility.

The Pentagon are said to be angry about the leak of the video when a more noble response would be one of disgust that members of the U.S. military are carrying out acts of cold blooded murder.

But then again, they already know this yet continue to feed their lies to the media.

PSYCHIC SOLDIERS

The Men Who Stare At Goats’ is proof that truth is  stranger than fiction and another example that sanity and warfare do not go hand in hand.

The story is based on real life ‘psychic soldiers’ in the US military documented in the book by British journalist Jon Ronson. The screenwriter , Peter Straughan,  has made a valiant attempt to make a linear narrative here but it still ends up disjointed and sprawling.

Nevertheless, it provides a perfect vehicle for Jeff Bridges and George Clooney and it is worth seeing for their performances alone.

Bridges plays Bill Django, a character based on Jim Channon who founded the First Earth Battalion Channon instructs aspirant super-soldiers in how to harness their psychic powers and  introduced new age values for those “who dare to think the unthinkable”. He  advocates “warrior monks” and “visionary scouts” in place of conventional soldiers. A tour of Channon’s website is quite an eye opener and leaves you wondering how he managed to persuade the hawks in the military that these tactics could succeed.

Clooney’s character is mainly based on Guy Savelli who believes it is possible to kill goats(and so also human beings) by staring at them and also that you could gain knowledge of enemies through the practice of ‘remote viewing’.

The U.S. Federal Government poured $20m dollars of research money into The Stargate Project to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena.To no-one’s great surprise no such evidence was found and the project ended in 1995.