Iraq

Collateral Murder Deconstructed

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Best investigation done on this incident linked via above graphic)

The below video supposedly showing U.S. military Apache helicopter pilots killing innocent persons in 2007 (Iraq) elicited comments from me a while ago. It has come up again in discussion and this time I will post it here at RPT in order to reference it in the future.

Conservative Refocus News Blog has this about the above video:

….However, the Web site does not slow down the video to show that at least one man in that group was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a clearly visible weapon that runs nearly two-thirds the length of his body. 

WikiLeaks also does not point out that at least one man was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG. 

“It gives you a limited perspective,” said Capt. Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. “The video only tells you a portion of the activity that was happening that day. Just from watching that video, people cannot understand the complex battles that occurred. You are seeing only a very narrow picture of the events.” 

Hanzlik said images gathered during a military investigation of the incident show multiple weapons around the dead bodies in the courtyard, including at least three RPGs. 

“Our forces were engaged in combat all that day with individuals that fit the description of the men in that video. Their age, their weapons, and the fact that they were within the distance of the forces that had been engaged made it apparent these guys were potentially a threat,” Hanzlik said. 

Military officials have also pointed out that the men in the video are the only people visible on those streets. That indicated something was going on and that these individuals still felt they could walk freely, one official told Fox News. 

Julian Assange, a WikiLeaks editor, [the guy who leaked the video] acknowledged to Fox News in an interview Tuesday evening that “it’s likely some of the individuals seen in the video were carrying weapons.”….

…read more…

This frame grab image, taken from a video posted at Wikileaks.org, shows a group of men in the streets of the New Baghdad with weapons just prior to being fired upon by a U.S. Army Apache helicopter July 12, 2007. (FNC)
Of course, you will hear the critics of this military action say the military is at fault, and not the guys carrying the RPGs and AK-47s, but you didn’t hear them complain that between March and September 1991, the Iraqi Army and security services killed as many as 300,000 Shiites. One mass grave near the city of Hillah is said to hold 30,000 bodies alone. These Iraqi military officials that carried this out received medals, mansions, and $$ for their service. In cases when the military purposefully targets innocent lives (which is almost never), court-marshals abound! But, the most important thing to know is that children were not killed. Some adults were killed in the situation were, innocents and terrorists, but the children survived!

“The watching helicopter crews requested permission to engage, stating “…looks like [the men] possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons” from the scene,[31] and upon receiving permission opened fire on the van and its occupants.[18][24][30] Two children sitting in the front seat were wounded but survived.[18][24][30] Chmagh was killed[18][24][30] along with the father of the children.[32]“ (Wiki)

Some good audio of Julian Assange can be found at Science and Technology’s post titled, The Internet Springs a Leak:

…That may be, but some critics say Wikileak’s posting of some documents in and of itself may be in error.

“To my way of thinking, their approach is quite wrong,” says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy and publisher of the Secrecy News blog.  “Not every act of editorial judgment is censorship, and not every act of withholding information is censorship.”

[….]

Aftergood has plenty of experience receiving, vetting, and publishing secrets.  He has praise for Wikileak’s posting of the Baghdad video.  “It’s useful for all of us to be reminded from time to time that war is genuinely, unspeakably horrible.  And I think this video did the service of reminding all of us of that.”

But Aftergood says, “There are also problems with the video and the way it was released.”   He says the video appears to show the presence of weapons such as a rocket propelled grenade (RPG), something not noted in the Wikileaks on-screen graphics.  Assange says the video was classified, a claim Aftergood cannot verify.  And the titling of the video itself – Wikileaks calls it “Collateral Murder” – is something Aftergood calls “a heavy-handed, propagandistic exercise.”

…read more…

Just another example of weapons found at the scene as viewed from the helicopter as well as on the ground investigators:

View from the ground:

View From the Apache:

So, all being said, this video making new rounds on FaceBook is a big flop for the anti-military crowd.

(Giggady) `O.W.S. is a Quagmire!` What a Great Post by Gateway Pundit! (Update: 7 Dead So far)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is with thanks to Gateway Pundit... what a great post!

Confirmed. The Odds of You Surviving a Tour in Iraq Is Greater Than Your Odds of Surviving a Night in Pup Tent at an Occupy Protest

Thanks to the successful Bush Surge in 2007-2008, that Obama and democrats opposed, the number of US fatalities in Iraq has gone from over 100 a month down to a handful or less a month.

In October 5 heroes were killed while serving their country in Iraq.
In September 3 heroes were killed while serving their country in Iraq.

Gateway Continues:

Currently, 45,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq.

Last month there were 2,000?… 3,000?… Possibly 5,000 far left protesters setting up Occupy squatter camps in city parks across the country. In the 10 days at least 4 of these protesters were found dead in pup tents.

Police say one person died at the Vancouver Occupy tent city on Saturday. (The Province)

From these figures we can confirm that your odds of surviving a tour in Iraq is now greater than the odds of you surviving a night in a pup tent at an Occupy protest.

It’s a quagmire.

A Jury of 12 Dismissed Jamie Leigh Jones Rape Allegations Against Military Contractor (even Mother Jones Agrees!?)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Gateway Pundit alerted me to the recent rejection by a jury of rape allegations that were front page news a few years back. It fueled — of course — the hatred of Halliburton by the Left (even though Johnson and Clinton both used them to build up places of devastation).

After four years of accusations and liberal hysteria, Jamie Leigh Jones lost her rape and sexual harassment lawsuit against military contractor KBR. After a day and a half of deliberations, a federal jury in Houston answered “no” to the question of whether Jones was raped by former firefighter Charles Bortz while working in Iraq in 2005. It also found that KBR did not engage in fraud in inducing Jones to sign her employment contract to go overseas.

Now KBR wants her to pay the legal fees. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The skirmishing has not yet subsided in the high-profile suit brought by Jamie Leigh Jones, the Houston woman who claimed that she was raped while working in Iraq for defense contractor KBR.

Jones had sought $145 million in damages against KBR, claiming it condoned a hostile sexual climate in Iraq, but a jury last month rejected her claims.

Now, KBR wants Jones to pay for its legal fees and court costs. Here’s a report on the filing by the Disputing blog.

In its motion seeking to recover more than $2 million in fees, KBR alleged that Jones’ rape and hostile work environment claims were fabricated and frivolous. The company has also requested that she cover its court costs of $145,000.

I am still disturbed by the marks she had on her body!? That being said, when Mother Jones (a liberal magazine) editorializes that your case is full of holes… it must be full of holes:

…Jones’ trial, which started on June 13, is highlighting significant holes and discrepancies in her story. Not only has the federal trial judge already thrown out large portions of her case, evidence introduced in the trial raises the question of whether Jones has exaggerated and embellished key aspects of her story.

None of this means that Jones was not raped in Iraq. But the evidence does undermine her credibility and could create serious doubts in jurors’ minds.

“Oftentimes the truth is in between,” says Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. “The truth may be that this wasn’t rape as we come to understand it in the law, but it wasn’t something that was appropriate. It doesn’t mean that something didn’t happen.” However, if Jones hasn’t been entirely truthful and the jury rules against her, it could be a major setback for sexual assault victims, particularly women serving in war zones. “The problem with cases like this is, if it turns out that she’s making it up, it really does a disservice to the many women who really are raped who have trouble coming forward,” Levenson says…

[….]

The media (me included) largely wrote this off as a sign that KBR was headed to the gutter to disparage a rape victim. But now that the case has gone to trial, it’s clear that KBR wasn’t just trying to scare Jones into settling. The court filings portray a very different version of the story. Here are some of the most sensational claims Jones has made, contrasted with the evidence that has emerged at trial:

Roofies: Jones claims that she was dosed with the date rape drug Rohypnol, which she believed was slipped into her drink by one of the KBR firefighters she was partying with in the Green Zone. In one of her congressional appearances, Jones said a contractor handed her a mixed drink and that “I took two sips from the drink, and don’t remember anything after that.” She testified before Congress in 2009 that “[w]hen I awoke in my room the next morning, I was naked, I was sore, I was bruised, and I was bleeding. I was groggy and confused and didn’t know why.”

The Evidence: After reporting the alleged attack to a KBR co-worker, who drove Jones to the Army hospital at Camp Hope, she was examined by Dr. Jodi Schultz. Schultz took urine and blood samples, which tested negative for Rohypnol or any other date-rape drug. Jones’ legal team has challenged the lab work, arguing that it was never done properly, and also hired an expert to testify that just because the lab tests didn’t turn up the drugs doesn’t mean they weren’t there. But KBR has offered an alternate explanation for her memory loss: Jones was drunk….

Gang rape: Jones claimed in her lawsuit as well as in congressional testimony that she was the “subject of a brutal sexual attack by several attackers.”

The Evidence: There is no eyewitness testimony or other physical evidence in the case supporting the allegation that Jones was attacked by multiple people. A lab analysis of the rape kit shows DNA from a single man, firefighter Charles Boartz, the only person Jones has identified in her lawsuit as one of the assailants. (Boatz is no saint; since returning from Iraq, he has had run-ins with the law related to domestic violence.). Several witnesses have testified to seeing Bortz and Jones drinking, flirting, and heading to her barracks together the night of the alleged attack, and Bortz has testified that the sex was consensual. That testimony, along with the physical evidence, has reduced the case from a black-and-white national scandal to the gray area of a he-said she-said case of potential acquaintance rape. Todd Kelly, Jones’ lawyer, told Mother Jones that while he and Jones believe she was raped by multiple assailants, that issue will not be presented to the jury. “Although it is clear that she was raped by at least one person, we don’t have the evidence to prove she was gang raped,” he says.

[….]

The evidence in her medical records indicates that Jones has alleged rape before. The records, according to KBR experts who reviewed them, show that in 2002, she and her mother told a doctor that a boyfriend had raped her. Later, just a few months before going to Iraq, she told a doctor that her 40-year-old manager at KBR in Houston had sexually assaulted her. She asked about getting a rape kit but was told that too much time had passed to collect evidence. In her civil suit, Jones accused the KBR manager of sexually harassing her, a charge KBR planned to counter with evidence suggesting that Jones was having a consensual relationship with him. In any case, the judge dismissed all of Jones’ sexual harassment claims related to her employment in Houston, so these allegations were never presented to the jury.

…(read more)…

Zo on Matt Damon (take note I also take apart a mantra Matt Damon memes from the left)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Just a quick note on Matt Damon’s mantra about rich people not sending their kids to war. The first excerpt is a breakdown of racial diversity of death in Iraq:

The latest census, of Americans, shows the following distribution of American citizens, by Race:

1. European descent (White) ….. 69.12%
2. Hispanic ……………………..​…… 12.5%3.
3. Black…………………​……………. 12.3%
4. Asian ……………………..​………… 3.7%
5. Native American ……………….. 1.0%
6. Other ……………………..​………. 2.6%

Now… here are the fatalities by Race; over the past three years in Iraqi Freedom:

1. European descent (white) …74.31%
2. Hispanic ……………………..​… 10.74%
3. Black ……………………..​……… 9.67%
4. Asian ……………………..​……. . 1.81%
5. Native American ……………… 1.09%
6. Other ……………………..​……… .33%

You do the Math! These figures don’t lie… but, Media-liars figure then distort these numbers to try and sway public opinion!

(From: 4,000 Combat Deaths)

This is an also from my old blog (also a response to a liberal friend) responding to a Charilie Rangel video (Video Link) about him wanting a draft so more rich kids would be drafted and thusly, the war in Iraq wouldn’t happen (a non-sequitur by the way):

Another piece O’ information Rangel cannot see through the political forest is that most of the volunteers are from affluent neighborhoods, as the following Washington Times (November 8, 2005) article points out:

◆ The Heritage Foundation research paper found that a higher percentage of middle-class and upper-middle-class families have been providing enlistees for the war on Islamic militants since the September 11 attacks on the United States. Researchers matched the ZIP codes of recruits over the past five years with federal government estimates of household incomes in those neighborhoods. Contrary to complaints from some liberal lawmakers and pundits, the data show that the poor are not shouldering the bulk of the military’s need for new soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines. The poorest neighborhoods provided 18 percent of recruits in prewar 1999 and 14.6 percent in 2003. By contrast, areas where household incomes ranged from $30,000 to $200,000 provided more than 85 percent…. About 98 percent of all enlistees from 1999 to 2003 had a high school diploma, compared with 75 percent of nonrecruits nationwide.

Sorry Charlie, your “Bumper-Sticker Slogans” aren’t working out for you to well, at least those who can type into Google the words, “military record number middle-class”, which apparently your staff cannot.

(From: Democrats Calling for the Draft… AGAIN!)

This from the Heritage Foundation:

  1. U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officerswho do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Heritage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.
  2. Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
  3. American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor’s degree.
  4. Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of Southern military tradition.

 …(read more)…

 

And from the American Forces Press Service,

…. On the socioeconomic side, the military is strongly middle class, Gilroy said. More recruits are drawn from the middle class and fewer are coming from poorer and wealthier families. Recruits from poorer families are actually underrepresented in the military, Gilroy said.

Other trends are that the number of recruits from wealthier families is increasing, and the number of recruits from suburban areas has increased. This also tracks that young men and women from the middle class are serving in the military.

Young men and women from urban areas are not volunteering, Gilroy said. In fact, urban areas provide far fewer recruits as a percentage of the total population than small towns and rural areas.

…(read more)…

Who Has the Bigger Political Balls? Obama or Bush?

Published by Papa Giorgio

The Sage lays down the law! I have to admit, I am changing the way I think and speak of Obama’s choice to kill Osama. Great portion from his show! Can’t recommend it enough, or becoming an Eldorado: For more clear thinking like this from Larry Elder… I invite you to become an Eldorado: larryelder.com/​

Jared Loughner Opposed the Iraq and Afghanistan~Of Course (LR & Townhall.com h/t)

Published by Papa Giorgio


This from Libertarian Republican:

This from Lindgren’s article, “Jared Loughner’s Anti-War Views”:

On July 7, 2010, Loughner posted his assertion that the war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan “is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949”:

There was help with cleaning the uranium from the Iran and Iraq war in the 1980’s?

Summation of Jared's Beliefs:
As we all know, the Tea Party movement is teeming with Bush-hating, 9/11 truther, antiwar, Christian-hating, “Left-wing pothead” zealots

Article 33 of the Geneva Convention is the prohibit of pillage.

All military invasions with armed forces into a foreign country are war crimes in the Geneva Convention articles of 1949.

The Iraq and Afghanistan war of 2010 is a military invasion with armed forces into a foreign country.

Therefore, Iraq and Afghanistan war of 2010 is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949.

Ouch! For the thoughts of war.

Lindgren also discovered Loughner rejected free market economic principles. Loughner posted support for:

“the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.”

…(read more and see original links)…

At another source — TownHall.com — we find this:

As we all know, the Tea Party movement is teeming with Bush-hating, 9/11 truther, antiwar, Christian-hating, “Left-wing pothead” zealots:

On July 7, 2010, Loughner posted his assertion that the war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan “is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949”:

There was help with cleaning the uranium from the Iran and Iraq war in the 1980’s?

Article 33 of the Geneva Convention is the prohibit of pillage.

All military invasions with armed forces into a foreign country are war crimes in the Geneva Convention articles of 1949.

The Iraq and Afghanistan war of 2010 is a military invasion with armed forces into a foreign country.

Therefore, Iraq and Afghanistan war of 2010 is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949.

Ouch! For the thoughts of war.

In a thread on unemployment, Loughner quotes with seeming approval, portions of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserting “the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity” and “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.”

And then there are his frequent attacks on religion and Christianity, e.g.:

Crap on God!

Crap on God!

Crap on God!

Indeed, Loughner was so inspired by the (“overwhelmingly” right-wing) “climate of hate” that he didn’t vote in 2010, and is a registered independent.

…(read more)…