http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8214.htm

Twisting the Minds of the American People

More War Crimes

By Brian Cloughley

Let me paint a word picture. An unarmed, wounded American soldier is
lying helpless, bleeding and barely conscious on the floor of a
church in a country with which the US is at war. An armed soldier of
that country walks up to the wounded American. It so happens that a
TV cameraman is present. He films the foreign soldier shouting, "He's
fucking faking he's dead!" One of his comrades says "And he's
breathing". The first soldier again yells "He's faking he's fucking
dead!" He then kills the helpless, wounded man with a burst of fire
that blows his head off and spatters the room with blood and tiny
bits of flesh and bone. One of the foreign soldiers says "He's dead,
now."

Question One: What do you think the reaction of most of the American
people would be to the murder of a wounded, unarmed US soldier lying
helpless and barely conscious on the floor of a church in a foreign
land?

Question Two: What was the reaction of most of the American people to
the murder of a wounded, unarmed Iraqi lying helpless and barely
conscious on the floor of a mosque in his own country?


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First Answer: Shrieking outrage and demands for the foreigner to be
tried and executed, whichever came first.

Second Answer: Unconcern.


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The dialogue about faking it came from a CBS tape of a US soldier
killing an Iraqi prisoner. The whole thing was recorded. It is
undeniable that the crime was committed. The clips of the murder were
played worldwide on television - except for the actual killing,
because that was thought too vile, even for a television audience
accustomed to the most explicitly horrible murder scenes. And nobody
has dared take a poll as to how many Americans approve of the murder.
Most TV reports called it "an incident", and it has dropped out of
sight because, to put it bluntly, an American life is considered to
be worth more than an Iraqi life. To many millions of Americans, the
marine who murdered the helpless man is a hero. If you doubt this,
please read on.


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Think about another 'incident', when a squad of US soldiers opened
fire on a car traveling along the Baghdad-Airport road on March 4,
killing an Italian official. The lies began at once, and there is no
point in describing what happened because the truth as told by
eyewitnesses has already been denied by the military, and the
official version will be accepted by much of the US media. It is not
surprising that the media will toe the official line, as most of
their readers and viewers automatically doubt what they are told by
foreign or independent US sources (not that there are many of the
latter, these days), and are uncomfortable with anything that smacks
of criticism of US soldiers. This is because such criticism is
considered unpatriotic and unforgivable, even if it is justified by
first-hand evidence of brutality or murder. And if audiences are
unhappy about what appears in the media, advertisers will be even
more unhappy and will withdraw their business. In short: mainstream
news cover in the US is directed by two major factors: advertising
revenue and its precursor, audience prejudice. And advertisers get
their financial messages from some very unpleasant bigots.

These are people like the beauty who commented on the killing of the
Italian official and the wounding of the Italian journalist he was
escorting to freedom (that's Bush freedom: it comes with free
shrapnel wounds) as follows:

"Too bad the US troops didn't shoot her in the head and been done
with trouble making people like her . . . Posted by bpb901 March 5."

We only have to look at the deranged outpourings on right wing blogs
to realize there are millions of Americans who feel exactly the same
way as bpb901. He or she is not in any way unusual. Unhinged and
demented, yes ; badly in need of urgent mental treatment, certainly ;
but out of the ordinary: no. (Bear in mind that The Economist of
March 5-11 noted the uncomfortable statistic that "about one in five
Americans now suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder".)

Think back to the 'incident' in January at Tal Afar in which US
soldiers killed the mother and father of six kids. Getty Images
photographer Chris Hondros was there. He described the shambles like
this:

"We have a car coming," someone called out as we entered an
intersection. We could see the car about a 100 meters away. The car
continued coming; I couldn't see it anymore from my perch but could
hear its engine now, a high whine that sounded more like acceleration
than slowing down. It was maybe 50 yards away now. "Stop that car!"
someone shouted out, seemingly simultaneously with someone firing
what sounded like warning shots -- a staccato, measured burst. The
car continued coming. And then, perhaps less than a second later, a
cacophony of fire, shots rattling off in a chaotic, overlapping
din . . . . From the sidewalk I could see into the bullet-mottled
windshield more clearly. The driver of the car, a man, was penetrated
by so many bullets that his skull had collapsed, leaving his body
grotesquely disfigured. A woman also lay dead in the front . . . the
children continued to wail and scream, huddled against a wall,
sandwiched between soldiers either binding their wounds or trying to
comfort them . . . the teenaged girl kept shouting, "Why did they
shoot us? We have no weapons! We were just going home!"

We know about the killing of the father and mother of six kids
because a photographer was there and we've seen his evidence. Same
for the murder of the wounded prisoner. And we know about the killing
of the Italian official because there is a high-profile former
hostage still alive to tell us what really happened. But if
these 'incidents' had not involved independent witnesses we would
have been told nothing about them. They would have gone unrecorded,
as have unknown numbers of similar atrocities in and around many
cities. The Washington Post of 7 March says US officials "have
declined to estimate how many civilians . . . have been killed
accidentally by US forces at checkpoints or elsewhere in Iraq" This
is no surprise, because although countless Iraqis have been killed by
being sprayed with bullets by delinquent troops, the stories
recounted by Iraqi witnesses of these terrible events are ignored.
There are many people with the mentality of the moron who wrote "Too
bad the US troops didn't shoot her in the head and been done with
trouble making people like her . . .", and none of them would for an
instant condemn the murder of a helpless prisoner by a heroic marine.
Neither would they be critical of the gallant troops who wiped out
the parents of six children. It is a terrible thing to say, but it
must be said: there are millions of Americans who would and do
applaud these murders. In the case of the Italian murder, however,
they seem to be a bit out of step with their hero, the deranged Bush.

Bush and Rumsfeld have grovelled to Italy's crooked prime minister,
Berlusconi, because their troops murdered an Italian citizen and
wounded another. There was a phone call of apology from Air Force One
to Rome the moment the news broke, and the Bush media machine trotted
out the usual garbage about the car being attacked "by coalition
forces". (This phrase is used by the Bush people to try to avoid
acknowledgement that US troops have been criminally incompetent yet
again.) Bush spoke to Berlusconi "to express his regret about the
incident that occurred earlier today," and to assure "prime minister
Berlusconi that the incident will be fully investigated." But there
is never an investigation of the murder of Iraqis. To the US military
and to millions of tragically disturbed Americans they are non-
persons.

Iraqi lives do not matter. Just as in Hitler's Germany the Nazis
referred to various sections of the population (Jews, gypsies and
other 'antisocial elements') as the "untermenschen" -- the sub-
humans -- so do US troops and the crazed bigots who bay for blood
refer to Iraqis as "ragheads" -- the sub-humans. The Nazi regime was
founded and fostered by people who thought along the lines of "Too
bad the US troops didn't shoot her in the head and been done with
trouble making people like her . . .". If people are trouble-makers,
well, don't try to live with them ; don't try to understand them ;
don't try to treat them as human beings: just shoot them. Or torture
them. Or both. What the hell? The reasoning is that they are
different to the superior people and therefore they should not be
allowed to exist.

The attitude of millions of Americans is exactly that of the German
supporters of fascism in the 1930s and early 1940s. They were
encouraged to think of themselves as the Master Race and there were
whole nations whose populations could be treated as inferiors, and
they took pride in doing just that. The present wave of hysterical
intolerance in the US makes the McCarthy years of persecution look
benign, because the idea has been planted by Bush and his people that
US citizens are superior in every possible way. There can be no
admission of frailty, and no acceptance of equality. International
law and treaties are ignored or treated with contempt, and human
dignity has become irrelevant. Hysterical ultra-nationalism is
thriving and gathering pace.

The director of the slippery slope to totalitarianism has beckoned
his citizens, and they are responding with enthusiasm to his
encouragement. War crimes are being committed by US troops and spooks
on an extraordinary scale all round the world, but the biggest war
crime is taking place in Washington: it is the twisting of the minds
of the American people.

Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. E-mail:
beecluff@...

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