According to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, U.S. troops willfully massacred an Iraqi family in the town of Ishaqi in 2006, handcuffing and then shooting 11 people in the head including a woman in her 70′s and five children ages five and under.
McClatchy is reporting that the soldiers then called in an air strike on the house to cover up evidence of the killings.
This account differs sharply from an official version of the 2006 incident, which indicated that coalition forces captured an al Qaeda in Iraq operative in the house, which was destroyed in a firefight. The WikiLeaks cable, however, corroborates accounts by Ishaqi townspeople and includes questions about the incident by Philip Alston, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
The cable is dated twelve days after the incident, which took place March 15, 2006. In it, Alston says that autopsies performed in Tikrit on bodies pulled from the wreckage of the farmhouse indicated that all of the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head.
If true, this action, although not as egregious as the My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968, wherein 347-504 unarmed civilians were shot to death by U.S. forces during the Vietnam conflict, still speaks volumes about war and the atrocities committed for war’s sake.
Read the original article (warning: graphic images)
(Source: anticapitalist, via apofis)
Bodies lay in the road leading from the village of My Lai, South Vietnam, following the massacre of civilians on March 16,1968. Within four hours, 504 men, women and children were killed. (AP photo/FILE/Ronald L. Haeberle, Life Magazine)
(Source: satans-advocate)
To everyone so outraged about Trayvon Martin, please meet Abdul al-Awlaki. Notice his birth certificate, he’s an American, born in Colorado.
Abdul was a 16 year old American citizen that was murdered on orders of our very own President. His crime? That his father was a suspected Al Qaida member.
Unlike the Trayvon Martin situation there is no grey area here. This teenager was specifically targeted and killed because of his religious and ethnic background and who his family was.
He committed no crime, he was guilty of nothing yet he was murdered by a drone strike.
WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU PEOPLE WHEN THIS TEENAGER WAS MURDERED?
WHERE WERE YOU PEOPLE WHEN THE SAME PRESIDENT WHO SCORED POLITICAL POINTS COMMENTING ON ONE TEENAGERS DEATH ORDERED THE DEATH OF ANOTHER AMERICAN TEEN?
You look foolish. You look uniformed, you look ignorant because you are. In one situation we have
what appears to bean extremely unfortunate, tragicmistake[incident] and we have Congressmen on the house floor wearing hoodies and thousands protesting and screaming for justice.On the other hand you have a child who was intentionally targeted and assassinated on the orders of the President yet you turn a blind eye. This country makes my stomach turn.
Neither situation is more or less tragic than the other. However, as long as folk are going to be outraged by and demonstrate against racial profiling resulting in cold-blooded murder….
(via statehate)
ST. LOUIS • The mother of a man fatally shot by an undercover St. Louis police detective in 2010 has sued in federal court here, alleging the officer continued to fire as her son lay on the ground dying, then planted a gun on him to claim the use of deadly force was justified.
Normane Bennett, 23, was shot June 25, 2010, in an alley behind the 3900 block of Sherman Place after he fled from police who tried to arrest him and others for alleged drug activity.
[…]
Wasem’s actions were unanimously cleared by the police board. The department on Thursday declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
A Post-Dispatch review earlier this year found the department cleared all but four of 117 officer-involved shootings over the last five years. The reviews are done with little outside scrutiny, the newspaper found.
[…]
The federal lawsuit claims the police board “turns a blind eye to use of excessive force by its police officers.” It seeks an unspecified amount of damages.
(via agoristmike)
MOVE or the MOVE Organization is a Philadelphia-based black liberation group founded by John Africa. MOVE was described by CNN as “a loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a “back-to-nature” lifestyle and preached against technology.” The group lives communally and frequently engages in public demonstrations related to several issues. Since the 1970s, their activities have drawn the attention of the Philadelphia Police Department. A major incident occurred in 1978, when the police raided their Powelton Village home. This raid resulted in the death of one police officer and the imprisonment of nine group members, now known as “The MOVE 9.” After this, the group relocated further west to a house on Osage Ave. In 1981, MOVE relocated to a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia. On May 13, 1985, responding to months of complaints by neighbors that MOVE members broadcast political messages by bullhorn at all hours and also about the health hazards posed by the piles of compost, as well as indictments of various MOVE members for various crimes, including parole violation, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terrorist threats the police department attempted to clear the building and arrest the indicted MOVE members, which led to an armed standoff with police. The police lobbed tear gas canisters at the building and the fire department battered the roof of the house with two water cannons. MOVE members fired on the police, and the police responded by returning fire. A police helicopter then dropped a four-pound bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, adynamite substitute, onto the roof of the house. The resulting explosion caused incendiary materials listed in the police indictment, and stored by MOVE in the house, to catch fire, thus causing the house to catch fire. The resulting fire ignited a massive blaze which eventually destroyed 65 houses. Eleven people, including John Africa, five other adults and five children, died in the resulting fire.The firefighters were stopped from putting out the fire based on allegations that firefighters were being shot at, a claim that was contested by the lone adult survivor Ramona Africa, who says that the firefighters had earlier battered the house with two deluge pumps when there was no fire. Ramona Africa and one child, Birdie Africa, were the only survivors.
Poster for exhibit in support of Vietnamese women and children.
(Makoto Wada, 1968)
Never forget (but of course these are all isolated incidents):
- Tony Arambula
- Nick Christie
- Jose Guerena
- Joseph Erin Hamley
- Oscar Grant
- Kathryn Johnston
- Richard Rodriguez
- Sofia Salva and her child
- Kelly Thomas
And the hundreds of others who have been recorded, as well as the hundreds of others that have gone unrecorded, undocumented and unnoticed.
