Footage above: Wikileaks classified US military video showing the killings of civilians in Iraq

Reports have surfaced that the U.S. military have lied about the killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan including the killing of two pregnant Afghan women and a girl in February.

Numerous war crimes have been committed in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. troops as well as other troops from the coalition forces against innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians. Crimes that has been covered up by the military and not reported in the mainstream media.

According to Stephen Soldz,  a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, the U.S. military has lied about two incidents, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, where they have killed innocent civilians and then proceeded to cover up those killings.

In Afghanistan the U.S. military just admitted after months of denial that Special Forces killed two pregnant Afghan women and a girl when they previously claimed that they shot ‘terrorists’ in a February raid.

Not only did they retrieve the bullets from their victims in an attempt to cover their crimes they also washed the wounds with alcohol and lied to their superiors about the incident.

In another report by Wikileaks, classified video footage shows a U.S. helicopter crew  firing on innocent Iraqi civilians on the streets and a van which stopped to pick up the wounded on July 27, near Baghdad. Two children were seriously injured and two Reuters reporters were killed. Again, the U.S. military and media covered up the incident referring to it as a clash between U.S. forces and militias.

These are not the only accounts of U.S. military war crimes either. Between March 13-16, 2008 Veterans Against War held a national four-day conference titled, “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan”, outside Washington, D.C., where veterans from all over the country testified to their experiences in those countries.

In an article by Dahr Jamail, on the Inter Press Service (IPS) website, on October 20 titled, “We have to share this pain”, he describes how a crowd of 300 people gathered inside the Unitarian Church, in Portland Oregon, to hear soldiers recall their disturbing memories of the conflict at a five-hour event.

Iraq war veteran Chanan Suarez Diaz told the audience, “War is very numbing…it comes to a point that you see so much destruction you become numb. This bullshit about bringing democracy or liberation is nonsense — we’ve killed over one million Iraqis.”

Evan Knappenberger was with the Army 4th Infantry Division working as an intelligence analyst, and served one year in Iraq. He said, “We are responsible as soldiers, we are murderers of over one million Iraqis. I participated in burglary, trespassing, knowledgeable negligence, criminal assault and battery, rape by association, and gangsterism, I am standing here today as a criminal — in a sense of the word that only someone who has worn the uniform can understand.”

David Mann was an Army Specialist in Nasiriyah, Iraq in 2003, and returned to Balad, Iraq in 2005, and what he had to say was disturbing. He said, “We were told not to stop when children ran in front of our vehicles as we invaded Iraq

Mann was forced to return to Iraq despite threatening to kill himself if he was forced to return, but his pleas fell on death ears. He said, “…every man, woman and child who has died in this war has died in vain, because it was a war based on lies and profits.”

Twenty-three year-old former marine and Iraq war veteran, Benjamin David Lewis spoke about how he witnessed war crimes in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, in 2004.

Speaking to IPS, he said, “My battalion in spring 2004 was operating in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions (GC). During the spring siege we sent military-age males back into the city, and were ordered to kill them.”

Lewis added, “The intention of the military was to take over and occupy the main hospital in Fallujah, which violates the GC’s, as well as our being ordered to target all ‘military age males‘.”

These crimes are truly barbaric and the lack of justice regarding these crimes only serves to question the legitimacy of international bodies such as the United Nations. In a world where the powerful create the law the powerless will resort to desperate measures.

When will the powerful governments be held accountable for their crimes?

For further research:

http://www.zcommunications.org/us-military-covering-up-civilian-killings-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-by-stephen-soldzhttp://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44359

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One thought on “U.S. military lied about war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan”
  1. The whole Iraq War was merely a massive lie. Or rather, it had its foundations in lies. These so-called WMDs were just a scare-tactic to change public opinion into believing that this illegal war was actually right, and also right in the eyes of God Himself. George Bush et al. truly were serious about their goal of removing what they saw as a menace to their own wholesome, american identity. They concluded that brute force was the only means by which to respond, given that the ‘islamists’ (or more accurately a very small minority of muslims ) had used force in the first instance. Responding to violence with yet more violence is something the teachings of christianity do not condone.

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