Marjorie Cohn
Global Research

[Wikileaks: Collateral Murder (VIDEO). This video shows men gathering on a Baghdad street on July 12, 2007, shortly before they were fired upon. View related photos wikileaks.org]

"The charges against Bradley Manning end with the language, “such conduct being prejudicial to good order and discipline in the armed forces and being of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.” "

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused of leaking military secrets to the public. This week, his supporters are holding rallies in 21 cities, seeking Manning’s release from military custody. Manning is in the brig for allegedly disclosing a classified video depicting U.S. troops shooting civilians from an Apache helicopter in Iraq in July 2007. The video, available at www.collateralmurder.com, was published by WikiLeaks on April 5, 2010. Manning faces 52 years in prison. No charges have been filed against the soldiers in the video.

In October 1969, the most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, smuggled out of his office and made public a 7,000 page top secret study of decision making during the Vietnam War. It became known as the Pentagon Papers. Dan risked his future, knowing that he would likely spend life in prison for his exposé.

The release of the Pentagon Papers ultimately helped end not only the Nixon presidency, but also the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 Americans and three million Indochinese were killed. Dan’s courageous act was essential to holding accountable our leaders who had betrayed American values by starting and perpetuating an illegal and deadly war. Manning’s alleged crimes follow in this tradition.

The 2007 video, called “Collateral Murder,” has been viewed by millions of people on the Internet. On it, U.S. military Apache helicopter soldiers from Bravo Company 2nd Battalion 16th Infantry Regiment can be seen killing 12 civilians and wounding two children in Iraq. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency.

The video shows U.S. forces watching as a van pulled up to evacuate the wounded. They again opened fire from the helicopter, killing more people. During the radio chatter between the helicopter crew members and their supervisors, one crew member gloated after the first shooting, saying, “Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.”

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Ghali Hassan

Afghanistan dead children, women and men killed by Western
governments, UK, Canada, US NATO attack, dropping bombs on
innocent people. The deadliest incident occurred while several
dozens defenseless villagers including children and women,
fearing the US savage invaders’ air strikes, gathered in Hajji Mo-
hammad Husain house. The US inhumane terrorists’ helicopters
dropped bombs on the house and surrounding areas, taking merci-
lessly the lives of scores of innocents civilians. Photo: RAWA/
[The WE!]

"We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a real threat to our force." ~ General Stanley McChrystal, former U.S.-NATO commander in Afghanistan

The U.S.-led war on Afghanistan is like the U.S.-led war on Iraq; to destroy the country and to indiscriminately kill large numbers of Afghan civilians. The aim is to terrorise the civilian population into submission using the so-called “War on Terrorism” as a cover-up for a U.S.-led war of terror.

According to media reports, the number of Afghan civilians killed by U.S.-NATO troops has more than doubled this year. U.S.-NATO forces killed seventy-two civilians in the first three months of 2010, compared to twenty-nine during the same period in 2009. At least 6000 civilians were killed in 2009. While Western media often blames the “Taliban”, Afghan media sources and few Western media outlets continue to report crimes committed by U.S.-led NATO forces. The following are selected cases as part of an ongoing bloodbath in Afghanistan.

On 27 December 2009, “American Special Forces” with helicopters landed at Ghazi Khan Village in Narang district of the eastern Province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them were school students in grades six, nine and ten, and one of them was a guest, the rest from the same family. They handcuffed them before murdering them in cold blood, according to a statement on U.S.-installed “President” Hamed Karzai’s website. According to Jerome Starkey of The Times (31 December 2009):

“At around 1 am, three nights ago, some American troops with helicopters left Kabul and landed around 2km away from the village. [...] The troops walked from the helicopters to the houses and, according to my investigation, they gathered all the students from two rooms, into one room, and opened fire.” (See also, Nieman Watchdog).

As always, U.S.-NATO officials have denied civilians were killed, but Afghan investigators said nearly all those killed were school-age boys. A statement released by Hamid Karzai’s office said that a unit of U.S.-NATO forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan Village and took ten people from three homes shot them dead.

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David Ray Griffin

I wish to thank Tod Fletcher and Elizabeth Woodworth for considerable help with this essay.

There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be "Obama's Vietnam."1 This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.

Although there are many similarities between these two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft. If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes, or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we learn any of the "lessons of Vietnam"? The US government learned one: If you're going to fight unpopular wars, don't have a draft hire mercenaries!

There are many other questions that have been, and should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one: Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?

This question has thus far been considered off-limits, not to be raised in polite company, and certainly not in the mainstream media. It has been permissible, to be sure, to ask whether the war during the past several years has been justified by those attacks so many years ago. But one has not been allowed to ask whether the original invasion was justified by the 9/11 attacks.

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Stephen Lendman

[This article follows from this writer's Monday one, accessed through this link.]

On May 31, under cover of darkness, Israeli commandos conducted a premeditated act of state terrorism against civilian aid activists trying to deliver thousands of tons of essential to life aid to besieged Gazans. Israeli radio reported that 19 were slaughtered, dozens more injured, and according to Earth Times.org:

"About 480 foreign activists who were stopped by Israel on the high seas while sailing to Gaza were transfered overnight to a prison in the southern city of Beersheba, Israeli Radio reported (June 1)." About 48 others were deported. Other reports had over 600 arrested and an Israeli-imposed news blackout.

Those held now face grueling interrogations, followed either by deportation or detainment ahead of prosecution, Israel's customary practice - blaming victims, absolving state terrorism, repeatedly committed, claiming it's to safeguard national security.

Or by Israeli logic, its attack was self-defense. Linked to "global Jihad, Al Qaeda and Hamas," humanitarian activists were an "armada of hate and violence (engaging in a) premeditated and outrageous provocation," according to Israel's deputy defense minister, Danny Ayalon.

Not according to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Canceling scheduled military exercises with Israel and recalling his ambassador, Oguz Celikkol, he said:

"It is no longer possible to cover up or ignore Israel's lawlessness....This action, totally contrary to the principles of international law, is inhumane state terrorism. Nobody should think we will keep quiet in the face of this."

Nor should anyone let Israel get away with a crime this grave, its latest example of lawlessness, this time in international waters in violation of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas and 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

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Stephen Lendman

Its web site (thelawfareproject.org) calls Lawfare:

"The use of the law as a weapon of war."

Fact Check

Provided they contradict no others, laws are sacrosanct, especially fundamental international ones like the UN Charter, Four Geneva Conventions, their Common Article 3, the Rome Statute, Nuremberg Tribunal and judgment, Genocide Convention, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and many others - ones Israel and America are sworn to uphold but consistently violate with impunity.

Lawfare Project (LP) claim: "The abuse of the law and legal systems (is used) for strategic or military ends."

Fact Check

International law is clear and unequivocal. The UN Charter explains under what conditions violence and coercion by one state against another are justified. Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes. Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use, and Article 51 allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."

In other words, justifiable self-defense is permitted, and Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33(1) absolutely prohibit all unilateral threats or use of force not allowed under Article 51 or authorized by the Security Council. Even then, under Fourth Geneva, civilians are "protected persons" off-limits to attack. Doing it is a war crime.

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