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Title: Killing America's Kids (AP photo of Marine)
Source:
LRC
URL Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed166.html
Published: Sep 8, 2009
Author: Fred Reed
Post Date: 2009-09-08 13:03:49 by TooConservative
Keywords: WOT, Afghanistan
Views: 659
Comments: 50
by Fred Reed The web is covered in stink today because of a reporter for the Associated Press, Julie Jacobson, who photographed the death of a Marine whose legs had just been blown off. The kid was Joshua Bernard, a Lance Corporal of 21 years. When the photo appeared, Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense [sic] furiously tried to get the AP to quash the photo. It didn’t, to its everlasting credit. To quote one of many accounts on the web: Joshua Bernard “Gates followed up with a scathing letter to Curley [of AP] yesterday afternoon. The letter says Gates cannot imagine the pain Bernard's family is feeling right now, and that Curley's ‘lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put out this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.’” I thought a long time before writing about this matter, and was not pleasant to be around. The photo resonated with me, as we say. You see, long ago, in another pointless war, promoted by another conscienceless Secretary, I too was a Marine Lance Corporal of twenty-one years. I too got shot, though not nearly as badly as this kid, and spent a year at Bethesda Naval Hospital. At this point I am legally blind following my (I think) thirteenth trip to eye surgery as a result of an identical foreign policy. Big f**king deal. s**t happens. At this point I’m comfortable and doing fine. Don’t cry for me, Argentina. The other kid is dead. But that bothers me. And all of this perhaps gives me a certain insight into the matter that not all reporters have, nor all editors. It also makes me poisonously, bottle-throwing angry to think about another chilly professional bureaucrat, the Second Coming of McNamara, with less combat experience than Tinkerbell, sending kids to croak in weird places having nothing to do with the US. But Gates. The words “decency” and “unconscionable” coming from him are fetid with hypocrisy. Gates was director of the CIA. “Intelligence” agencies are moral dirt, hated the world over for torture, murder, and destabilization of countries leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths. The KGB, Mossad, CIA, STASI, SAVAK – they’re all the same. A man who presides over torture and murder should not speak of decency. He has none. Nor is it easy to believe that Gates feels the slightest sympathy for the dead kid or for his family. If you don’t want kids to die in Afghanistan, don’t send them there. He does. How sorry can he be? It could almost make you turn against the war. Some 6,000 American kids have died like this, the photographs carefully hidden by the press. The Pentagon has killed many, many more Afghan and Iraqi civilians, and the number of permanently disabled Americans is far higher. Today I find a column on Antiwar.com by Joe Galloway, whom I remember from UPI Saigon, entitled The War in Afghanistan is Not Worth Another American Life. I agree. Nor another Afghan life. They did nothing. Another headline notes that the Kondor Legion, the USAF, killed ninety-five Afghans in another witless air strike. These days, we are the Nazis. Why then is he so angry at having the war photographed? Easy: Spin control. Spin is so very important in war these days. While America is only barely a democracy, still, if the public, the great sleeping acquiescent ignorant beast, ever gets really upset, the war ends. The Pentagon is acutely aware of this. It remembers its disaster in Asia. The generals of today learned nothing military from Vietnam – they are fighting the same kind of war as stupidly as before – but they learned something more important: Their most dangerous enemy is the America public. You. Me. Defeating the Taliban isn’t particularly important, or even desirable. (No war means fewer promotions and fewer contracts). But while the Taliban cannot possibly defeat the Pentagon, the American public can. Photographs are death to a war, boys and girls. They can asphyxiate a war faster than roadside bombs can even dream. Gates does not want the sprawling somnolent inattentive beast, the public, to see what his wars really are. In wars, there are many enlightening things to see. For example, the Marine with a third of his face and half a lung, going ku-kuk-kuk as red gunk rolls out of his mouth and he drowns in his blood. Ruined or dying teenagers whimpering the trinity of the badly wounded, Mother, wife, and water. The brain-shot guy jerking like an epileptic as he tries not to die. Ever see brain tissue from gunshot? I have. It makes a pink spew across the ground. Like strawberry chiffon. Gates does not want you to see this. You would puke, buy a bottle of bourbon, and take to the streets. He knows it. CBS could end these wars in a week if it aired what really happens. Gates cannot afford to let the dam break. PR is all. Thus Bush forbade the photographing of coffins coming home, and the CIA ferociously resists the publication of photographs of torture. Professional sadists do things to people that would make you gag. Then there are the enlisted men. In these hobbyist wars, and to an extent even in peacetime, it is crucial to keep the enlisteds from thinking. In some three decades of covering the military, I saw this constantly. If I went to Afghanistan today as a correspondent, I could argue in private about the war with the colonel. If I suggested to the troops that they were being suckered, the colonel would go crazy. Next to keeping the public quiescent, keeping the troops (and potential recruits) bamboozled is vital. If a high-school kid saw what awaited, if he saw the cartilage glistening in wrecked joints, he wouldn’t sign. Do I think that the press should publish such photos? Not yes but hell yes on afterburner. Every time an editor covers for the Pentagon, every time papers refuse to show the charred bodies still…slowly…moving, the dead children, the…never mind. The effect is to ensure that more kids will die the same way. And the press almost always does exactly this. We are a trade of whores and shills. Except that whores give value for money. The press kills our children. Julie Jacobson sounds like that modern-day rarity, a reporter, as distinguished from a volunteer flack. Bless her. I used to wonder whether women could hack it as combat correspondents. I no longer do. (There are lots of them.) I used to refer to smarmy over-groomed bloodthirsty office warts as pussies, saying that they lacked balls. The anatomical reference no longer works. I note that Jacobson has more combat time than the aggregate for Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Obama, Biden, Gonzalez, Clinton, Perle, Abrams, Kristol, Feith, Podhoretz, Krauthammer, George Will, Dershowitz, and Gates. These men, if the word is appropriate, killed that kid. Jacobson just caught them in the act. September 8, 2009 Fred Reed is author of Nekkid in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well and A Brass Pole in Bangkok: A Thing I Aspire to Be. His latest book is Curmudgeing Through Paradise: Reports from a Fractal Dung Beetle. Visit his blog. Poster Comment: I posted this on TOS2, thought a few here might want to see the photo that caused the big stink.
Killing America's Kids
by Fred Reed
Recently by Fred Reed: TSA and Its Brethren
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#10. To: PSUSA, Hayek Fan (#5)
I wouldn't call them rats but they do have a certain pro-war agenda. They don't seem to grasp how these imperial wars and occupations help strengthen the hand of the Dim establishment in other policy matters. Of course, I'm probably tone-deaf. I'm for the same things or opposed to them regardless of which party holds Congress or the White House. So I'm either principled or, to some people, a scumbag and a traitor.
I'm not as forgiving and kindhearted as you are. If you can see it, and I can see it, and others can see it, then they can see it too. If they can see it, and refuse to acknowledge it, then they just don't give a damn. They are just as much an enemy to me as any other authoritarian. I think we've all been called traitor, or scumbag, or my favorite: potential terrorist. I dont want them to like me. Because I don't like them. .
Click for Privacy and Preparedness files
I grasp the strong feelings people have on this matter. I don't quite get how they think posting such an article on an obscure forum is a dire danger to national security or the war effort or whatever they're on about. The pro-war types never want to talk about what the kid died for, if anything. Or whether democracy is some magic cure for the evils of Islam which doesn't seem to be working out so well. Or even whether a deadbeat country like America should maybe bring its troops home instead of spending vast sums inflicting democracy on people who don't value it, don't want it, and are compelled by their religion to destroy it for the greater glory of Allah. It surprises me that more people don't question what we are still doing over there and exactly what we hope to gain. The pro-war types seem to have no answer to that, just a series of mantras that sound a lot like the justifications for getting another 10,000-20,000 killed in Vietnam for no good reason.
we're there for the oil and opium.
And an excuse to funnel a bazillion phony fiat dollars to the military-industrial complex. And for the eternal glory of our current emperor. Empires need wars and occupied territories. I begin to see why the ancient Romans held their gooberment in such low regard. Our empire has become too much like it. Probably it would be more accurate to compare it to the Greek empire who, like us, always denied they even had an empire even though everyone knew exactly what it was.
yeah, c’mon on all you big strong men _________________________________________________________________________ seems you really upset queen birther at the short-bus site and her just as brain dead twin maggie. can't have those photos depicting the product of baalzabush's lying out there for the public to see. from the sounds of it she fully fell for baalzabush's line 'they hate us for our freedoms'. the bushbots should be real pleased, they could not have gotten a better continuation of the chimp outside of obammy. the evil slime of the pratt house never expected it would be so easy to continue their deception of the nation. the duped minions prostrating themselves before the RNCFR and DNCFR enable perpetuation of the ruse. longnose gar-lic pie should be casting flowers at obammy's feet the way he mimics baalzabush's official deeds.
The best gun to have, is the gun you have, when you need a gun.
Poor kid. Joins, thinks he's being a patriot, going to have fun, go to exotic lands and get laid, bring freedom to oppressed people, and dies before he finds out the truth of "Rich man's war, poor man's fight." Kissinger said soldiers were stupid animals to be used by politicians.
Turtle... Do you know any of such???
Pretty much the story of American wars, most others too. Which is why states were reluctant to send their militias to fight for the feds.
:P They need a Country Joe and the Fish.
Wow. This article lights fires everywhere. LOL. I was surprised at the vehemence of some of the responses.
Do you know any of such??? I live in the Midwest. I meet these kids fairly often; they're excited to join the military. They think they're being patriotic and manly. I was on a college campus today, and two student in fatigues and berets were talking to a student with a military haircut -- shorn sides, some on top. One said to him, admiringly, "I like your hair." These kids are proud of being in the military, They really think they're defending the country, making the Iraqis and Afghanis into our friends, and as an added bonus, travel to foreign lands! Exotic foreign girls! Shooting guns and throwing grenades! Life-long job security. Only problem is, lots of times you get wounded or killed, and if you live, someday you wake up and realize it was all in vain.
Ok... We most likely could lump all of them into one overall category , the not too bright, gullible, and surely unsophisticated. That would encompass Americans view of our military. It is interesting to note that if the military needs 50,000 new men every year, that if the lowest class stopped volunteering, there just might be a need for others.
they have to defend baalzabush's BS, otherwise they have to admit they and all the other fools of the RNCFR/DNCFR cabal are gullible pawns; though some of them are out and out pratt house prostitutes more than willing to carry forth the CFR agenda.
The best gun to have, is the gun you have, when you need a gun.
1. Afghanistan is a country which has defeated a lot of Super Powers such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Persian forces, Moghul Forces, British Forces and Soviets. 2. A country that has never been defeated or conquered by any nation. 3. All of these wars and battles were not won by a regular Army. Almost all of these battles were fought by normal people.
These tribesmen aren't soft Westerners. Very harsh warrior society, unified in purpose. Of course, they'd return to their traditional clan blood feuds if we left; the only time they unite is when invaded.
I wouldn't phrase it quite so...um...directly but I don't disagree with you. You capture the gist of it.
I read an account from a soldier stationed there who said he witnessed toddler fights while out on patrol. Literally pitting two children under four from different tribes, against each other in a ring with the adults encouraging the kids to hit each other until one cries and gives up or worse, with the winning tribe getting bragging rights and some other compensation from the losing tribe. He said he didn't realize that kids that young could fight well enough to get the other quite bloody.
we have no damn business there. our own savages are bad enough.
no reason to beat around the bush when one can slice straight through it with a well balanced, honed to a razors edge bolo.
The best gun to have, is the gun you have, when you need a gun.
Have y'all seen the documentary Taxi To The Dark Side? You can watch it here. Taxi to the Dark Side is a gripping investigation into the reckless abuse of power by the Bush Administration. A documentary murder mystery that examines the death of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram Air Base, the film exposes a worldwide policy of detention and interrogation that condones torture and the abrogation of human rights. This disturbing and often brutal film is the most incisive examination to date of the Bush Administration’s willingness, in its prosecution of the “war on terror,” to undermine the essence of the rule of law. The film asks and answers a key question: what happens when a few men use the wartime powers of the executive to undermine the very principles on which the United States was founded?
I think this poster will be most prophetic in the years to come, seeing as how the Taliban needs our eternal attention.
_________________________________________________________________________ Eighteen years? I think Oceania will need a new enemy before that.
"There's always Iran..."
_________________________________________________________________________ That's like music to the neocon's ears. Really, they should write a snappy tune and set it to music. Maybe that would be too obvious though.
Robert Gates is a bloody butcher due to his eagerness to spill American blood in a foreign land for nothing.
_________________________________________________________________________ Lots of tribal societies like that. The last of the West's societies like that, I believe, were the Gaels (Scots, Irish). As it turns out, good marksmanship and superior technology tends to beat down the total warrior culture most of the time. Ask the zulu. They made a nice show, tough warriors, ultimately took it tough at the hands of walls of .45 caliber lead delivered with devastating precision by soft Westerners, who then went and had some tea afterwards. :) As far as Iran, or Iraq, they lose the land war almost instantly. Sometimes CNN doesn't even get to announce the offensive has started, before they've surrendered or are gunned down. Partisan after fighting occurs afterwards, but that happens most everywhere. Of course, we have no business in the middle east whatsoever, and additionally, I'm totally sympathetic to the warrior code/culture generally speaking. Just making a note in passing.
MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
I think the Polish officers who charged Hitler's tanks on horseback deserve honorable mention. Of course, Britain and France to allow a deliberately provocative military dictatorship like Poland in 1939 to hold the tripwire over whether Europe went to war. The Poles were provoking the Germans regularly over the Danzig corridor where they had treaty rights and a considerable German population. Not to weep over Nazis or anything but weeping over the Poles is a little misdirected as well. Iran could float a lot of mines, use missiles to sink a fair number of tankers in the Straits of Hormuz or at Gulf ports. And I've no doubt they are ready to do so. Iran, being half Persian, is no pushover like the Arab nations. Turkey, also, are very tough warriors. Arabs are the weak sisters of the Mideast, hence their propensity for recruiting mentally ill people or drugging people or using religious appeals to the weak-minded to become suicide bombers.
I don't see the Poles being particularly warrior-esque. I do see them being particularly stupid (not in the same vein as the jokes of course) in attacking tanks with lances and horses. Brave, ok in a suicidal sense perhaps. They knew better, and it was an utter waste of human life. At least the zulus had the excuse that they were stone aged savages on their sides. The Poles, well, no not so much. With any luck Iran will never "happen", so to speak. Having seen "soft Westerners" discover the inner warrior personally, I don't put a lot of faith in very many other cultures. We tend to get brutally savage, real quick, and are armed to the teeth with weapons out of Star Trek and a mindset molded in logic, science, reason and math. That's hard to counter. Or to put it another way, a friend of mine twenty years ago told me that the reason white folks won the world is because we're nice and pleasant and polite to our neighbors and will not hesitate for even one second in wiping other civilizations off the planet, so that we can get back to barbeques and beer.
MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
148. To: tommythemadartist (#100) Then you will have to find the pictures of those who have fallen on some other site; a leftist site. Goldi-Lox posted on 2009-09-09 16:15:11 ET Source: http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi? ArtNum=272820&Disp=149#C149 Gee, Goldi, what do you say about all those Mathew Brady photo's of dead American's on the battlefields of the Civil War?? Anything leftist there???? _________________________________________________________________________ Or the countless pictures of war dead from all the wars? But, no, some people feel entitled to impose restrictions on speech and images if it tends to collapse the lies they tell themselves about one of the empire's garrison and extermination operations.
The Polish films of them charging the tanks were humorous because they always immediately after show the Nazi films of the Polish officers being marched into captivity. Of course, you have to have a rather wry sense of humor to appreciate it. Reminds me of the kind of mindless futility and complete idiocy displayed by nobles and knights during the age of chivalry. That was some truly disorganized stupidity.
Would the Hilda Beast allow this?
I've never managed to figure out why Jackie O crawled back on the trunk.
To pick up a piece of Kennedy's skull.
When a person is shot through the bottom of the throat, from behind, as Kennedy was, it is an instinct to bring the hands up to the throat, elbows out. This has been noticed many times in combant. That wound was not fatal. Since he was weating a back brace, he could not bend over to avoid the second shot, which blew his head up.
Woh, I can't believe you know that. Given the shock and awe this thread got over at TOS2 and also when I posted it here, apparently, this is a topic that attracts a lot of folks.
It's why I don't have any use for the Kennedy conspiracists and their "three shooters triangulating on him" (he would not have a head left, just a neck spouting blood). Or any use for those who claim his own driver turned around and shot him (it never occurs to them the blood and brains sprayed all over the driver and the inside of the windshield, so OF COURSE he turned around).
It's the convoluted bullet path, the evil LBJ in waiting, the strange Warren Commission findings, the secrecy that still exists, etc. Yeah, people are too into conspiracy but the government didn't provide a really comprehensive and exhaustive investigation. Same goes for 9/11. It looked as much like a coverup as it did a proper investigation. You can't explain everything to everyone's satisfaction but a major event should be investigated so thoroughly that everyone becomes bored with the facts of it.
His head matter wound up on the trunk, which given the laws of elementary physics, indicates the shot came from the front. But lets not believe our lying eyes and instead nod our heads as we read Arlen Specter's report to the Warren commission.
That's not graphic. It just pisses off the rats that want to keep things like this hidden. You know, out of sight - out of mind.
#11. To: TooConservative (#10)
They don't seem to grasp how these imperial wars and occupations help strengthen the hand of the Dim establishment in other policy matters.
#12. To: PSUSA (#11)
#13. To: TooConservative (#12)
#14. To: christine (#13)
we're there for the oil and opium.
#15. To: TooConservative (#12)
Uncle Sam needs your help again
he’s got himself in a terrible jam
way down yonder in Ashcanistan
so put down your books and pick up a gun
we’re gonna have a whole lot of fun
and it’s 1, 2, 3, what’re we fighting for?
don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn
next stop is Ashcanistan
and it’s 5, 6, 7, open up the pearly gates
ah, ain’t no time to wonder why
whoopee! we’re all gonna die
"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#16. To: TooConservative (#0)
#17. To: TooConservative (#0)
There's no place better thanTurtle Island.
#18. To: Turtle (#17)
Poor kid. Joins, thinks he's being a patriot, going to have fun, go to exotic lands and get laid, bring freedom to oppressed people,
#19. To: Turtle (#17)
Poor kid. Joins, thinks he's being a patriot, going to have fun, go to exotic lands and get laid, bring freedom to oppressed people, and dies before he finds out the truth of "Rich man's war, poor man's fight."
#20. To: X-15 (#15)
way down yonder in Ashcanistan
#21. To: IRTorqued (#16)
#22. To: Cynicom (#18)
Turtle...
There's no place better thanTurtle Island.
#23. To: Turtle (#22)
These kids are proud of being in the military,
#24. To: TooConservative (#21)
#25. To: TooConservative (#0)
#26. To: TwentyTwelve (#25)
#27. To: IRTorqued (#24)
they have to defend baalzabush's BS, otherwise they have to admit they and all the other fools of the RNCFR/DNCFR cabal are gullible pawns; though some of them are out and out pratt house prostitutes more than willing to carry forth the CFR agenda.
#28. To: TooConservative (#26)
(Edited)
These tribesmen aren't soft Westerners. Very harsh warrior society, unified in purpose. Of course, they'd return to their traditional clan blood feuds if we left; the only time they unite is when invaded.
#29. To: mininggold (#28)
#30. To: TooConservative (#27)
#31. To: mininggold, TooConservative (#28)
#32. To: christine (#29)
"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#33. To: X-15 (#32)
#34. To: TooConservative (#33)
"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#35. To: X-15 (#34)
"There's always Iran..."
#36. To: TooConservative (#0)
"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#37. To: TooConservative (#26)
#38. To: SonOfLiberty (#37)
The last of the West's societies like that, I believe, were the Gaels (Scots, Irish).
As far as Iran, or Iraq, they lose the land war almost instantly. Sometimes CNN doesn't even get to announce the offensive has started, before they've surrendered or are gunned down. Partisan after fighting occurs afterwards, but that happens most everywhere.
#39. To: TooConservative (#38)
#40. To: TooConservative, TommyTheMadArtist (#38)
"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#41. To: X-15 (#40)
#42. To: SonOfLiberty (#39)
I do see them being particularly stupid (not in the same vein as the jokes of course) in attacking tanks with lances and horses.
#43. To: TooConservative (#42)
#44. To: 2big2fail (#43)
#45. To: TooConservative (#44)
I've never managed to figure out why Jackie O crawled back on the trunk.
There's no place better thanTurtle Island.
#46. To: 2big2fail (#43)
There's no place better thanTurtle Island.
#47. To: Turtle (#46)
#48. To: TooConservative (#47)
Woh, I can't believe you know that
There's no place better thanTurtle Island.
#49. To: Turtle (#48)
#50. To: Turtle (#46)
Since he was weating a back brace, he could not bend over to avoid the second shot, which blew his head up.
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