Posted on 09/09/2010 3:46:45 AM PDT by Cardhu
Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.
Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.
In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.
According to investigators and legal documents, discussion of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army's criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the things he got away with while serving in Iraq and said how easy it would be to "toss a grenade at someone and kill them".
One soldier said he believed Gibbs was "feeling out the platoon".
Investigators said Gibbs, 25, hatched a plan with another soldier, Jeremy Morlock, 22, and other members of the unit to form a "kill team". While on patrol over the following months they allegedly killed at least three Afghan civilians. According to the charge sheet, the first target was Gul Mudin, who was killed "by means of throwing a fragmentary grenade at him and shooting him with a rifle", when the patrol entered the village of La Mohammed Kalay in January.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.guardian.co.uk ...
This story sounds like bullshit
as an active soldier, ill be the first to say: if this is true, we need to punish these guys to the maximum extent possible.
this is a disgrace.
Hmmm..sounds like another Leftist military fantasy...just in time for the elections.
> Hmmm..sounds like another Leftist military fantasy...just in time for the elections.
Mo, I think you’ve nailed it.
The Guardian is the most left leaning newspaper in the UK.
Just another leftist antiwar fantasy wet dream put to paper without any corroboration or evidence.
Our leftist, socialist rags from the Ministry of Propaganda, laughing known as “the press” are pretty much as leftist as any in the world.
They would have been all over this.
The author’s been watching too many Oliver Stone war films.
What the hell?
Our soldiers only do this under republican presidents.
So you are claiming this news paper just made this whole story up?
The story cites the existence of a charge sheet which is a military indictment or affidavit of probable cause. Which I’m sure would be easy to confirm if it infact does not exist. And I’m sure the army would gladly go on record refuting this if infact it is all a lie.
Who uses this term in the military? It´s ¨weapon¨, or M-4, etc. This story deserves more scrutiny.
I bet the recruit fingered them.
When I was in the military, the “Times” - Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, etc., though a private enterprise, was pretty much a propaganda arm of the military establishment and everything published had to be taken with a large grain of salt. Is this still the case?
Considering what I overhead USMC in Iraq bragging about, no BS at all.
I hate to say it but if you google it, it’s everywhere.
That doesn’t mean it has one whit more validity. You can Google conspiracy theories all day long and it doesn’t make them any more true.
This has the whiff of Vietnam-era leftist fantasies.
There has been too much of this accuse and defame first and no one will notice the debunking of it all later.
Still an AP (Associated Propagandists) story, of you bother to look closely.
[The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Aug 27, 2010 8:20:10 EDT]
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