Warfare 101: dealing with local populations

1) “…Despite claims of goodwill, infantry training left my comrades and I desensitized; how could we scream “ Kill them all, let God sort them out” on a regular basis and still believe that we were caring for the oppressed people of Iraq?…”

–Josh Stieber, “Iraq Vet to Congress: Don’t Cover Up Wikileaks’ Iraq Revelations,” Alternet, 10/22/10. Stieber is an Iraq war veteran whose company was featured in a Wikileaks video.

2) “Nuke ‘Em All–Let Allah Sort Them Out. — Bumper sticker seen on cab window of Ford F-150 pickup truck in Bozeman, Montana.”

–Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 261.

3) “Kill them all, the Lord will recognize His own.”

–Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux, 7/22/1209, leader of an attack on supposed heretics in Béziers (in southern France)

Ads to watch out for in PA

…the “pro-Israel” lobby … has abandoned bipartisanship by setting up front organizations like the so-called Emergency Committee for Israel, which is running ads across the country calling on voters to defeat Democratic members of the House and Senate for signing a letter urging President Obama to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

With all the problems average Americans are facing, the lobby is so out-of-touch that it thinks that hard-hit Pennsylvanian voters (the ads runs most often in the Keystone State) will actually cast their votes based on the lobby’s litmus test of who is and who isn’t hawkish enough on Israel. …

–from M. J. Rosenberg, “The Israel Lobby: Targeting Democrats for Election Day Defeat,” Huffington Post, 10/21/10.

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Daniel Ellsberg on de facto Official Secrets Act

…You know, for all that the admiral, Mullen, or for that matter Presidents Bush or Barack Obama, tell us of the good that they hoped to accomplish, we haven’t seen any evidence of that, I would say. And in terms of blood on their hands, I’m sorry to say, a lot of actual blood has been spilled, as opposed to this hypothetical possible blood, of which none has been reported, from the WikiLeaks.

Actually, the demands they’re making of the press to stay away from this story, or even readers not to read it—and they’re talking about returning the material—seems absurd on its face. Returning released material, released into cyberspace, seems rather absurd. They’re obviously threatening prosecution, because they’re using the words of the charges that were first used against me, the Espionage Act, which was not intended as an Official Secrets Act, but it uses language like “returning the information,” “d) and (e).” I was the first person to have the experience of having those charges made. In this case, there have some credibility of prosecution, because President Barack Obama has already brought as many prosecutions for leaks to the American public as all previous presidents put together. It’s a small number: it’s three. But since he didn’t have a really law intended to do that, no other president has brought one—more than one prosecution. He’s brought three. And clearly what he’s threatening here with the press, including you and even your readers, for not returning the information that they’re not authorized to receive, is a clear warning, I’d say, of prosecution, which means that I think this administration is moving toward really aggressively using the Espionage Act as an Official Secrets Act, in which case we’ll know even less than we do about the lies that prolong wars and get us into wrongful wars….

— Daniel Ellsberg on Democracy Now! 10/22/10, interviewed about the WikiLeaks Iraq documents released today. read the full interview at Democracy Now!