deficient brain

They just got a different tool to use than we do: They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives. That's what they do. And they're good. They get on the TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, you know, this, that or the other. I mean, they're able to kind of say to people: Don't come and bother us, because we will kill you. Bush - Joint News Conference with Blair - 28 July '06

Thursday, September 06, 2007

US strikes in Baghdad kill 14 sleeping civilians

US combat helicopters and tanks bombarded a Baghdad neighbourhood in pre-dawn strikes on Thursday, killing 14 sleeping civilians and destroying houses, angry residents and Iraqi officials said.

... raqi defence and interior ministry officials said US helicopters fired on houses in the Al-Washash neighbourhood of Mansour district in west Baghdad between 2.00 am and 3.00 am.
"The attacks on the houses took place while people were sleeping. There were no clashes. The area had been quiet," said an interior ministry official who did not want to be named.
At least 10 people were wounded and were admitted to the nearby Al-Yarmuk hospital.
"Two to five houses were destroyed. Among the wounded are several women," the official said.
Abu Ali Saad, a resident of the mainly Shiite Al-Washash enclave in the middle of the Sunni-majority Mansour neighbourhood, said US military vehicles had arrived in large numbers during the night.
"There were tanks and armoured vehicles and many troops," 35-year-old Saad told AFP while surveying the rubble of his neighbour's house.
"The tanks started firing then the helicopters came. Missiles were fired from the air. Houses were destroyed. A family of five were killed in this house," he said, referring to his neighbours.
"We are a peaceful neighbourhood. There are no militia here. There were no exchanges of fire. We were all sleeping."
An AFP photographer on the scene said three houses were destroyed and two damaged.
Amid the rubble of one house was a mattress covered in blood with human body parts scattered around. Neighbours said a family of six had been killed in the house, including a 12-year-old girl.
Bloodstains could also be seen amid the wreckage of the other houses, where angry residents gathered to denounce the US military.
"They prevented me from trying to get two of my wounded neighbours to hospital," said Ammar Assem. "They fired on my car when I tried to leave the area. I had to go back."
A US military statement said Iraqi and US forces had engaged Shiite extremists militants who were part of a "terrorist cell" operating in Al-Washash. Link

posted by exoplanet at 12:37 PM

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"War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent."
George Orwell
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
George Orwell
The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honour, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished know the essence of war - death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity. But the words of the vanquished come later, sometimes long after the war, when grown men and women unpack the suffering they endured as children, what it was like to see their mother or father killed or taken away, or what it was like to lose their homes, their community, their security, and be discarded as human refuse. But by then few listen. The truth about war comes out, but usually too late. We are assured by the war-makers that these stories have no bearing on the glorious violent enterprise the nation is about to inaugurate. And, lapping up the myth of war and its sense of empowerment, we prefer not to look.
Chris Hedges
Armaments bring only disasters. When one accumulates them, this damages the economy, and if one puts them to use, then they destroy people on both sides. Consequently, only a madman can believe that armaments are the principal means in the life of society. No, they are an enforced loss of human energy, and what is more are for the destruction of man himself. If people do not show wisdom, then in the final analysis they will come to a clash, like blind moles, and then reciprocal extermination will begin.
Khrushchev to Kennedy

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Disobedience is the foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. [Henry David Thoreau]