Antiwar.com Blog

I really can’t think of anything to say about this that I haven’t said before.    The only thing I can point out is that apparently four unarmed, wounded people were executed rather than the one we saw on the tape.

The U.S. military has cleared a Marine who shot three unarmed insurgents in a mosque at the height of fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, in November, NBC News reported Wednesday.

Marine commander Lt. Gen. John Sattler has ruled the soldier involved fired his weapon in self-defense – and no charges will be filed against him, according to NBC.

  The shootings occurred at a mosque during an intense street-to-street battle for Fallujah. Caught on tape by an NBC camera, a squad of Marines entered the mosque to investigate reports of enemy gunfire. Inside, they found four enemy insurgents, wounded in a firefight the day before.

  A Marine corporal who noticed one of the insurgents was still breathing raised his rifle and fired a single shot into the man’s head. Military officials now report that same corporal shot three of the unarmed insurgents inside the mosque, NBC reported.

  But after an exhaustive five-month investigation, Sattler ruled the Marine had fired his weapon in self-defense, the network said.

  Sources told NBC News the decision was based on the fact the Marines had been warned that the enemy would feign death and booby-trap bodies as a tactic to lure Marines to their deaths. The sources said the corporal apparently feared
for his life when he fired the shots.

  NBC added that the investigation is not over. At least one other Marine remains under investigation for shooting a fourth unarmed insurgent in that same mosque.

       

Maybe this will help.

For public consumption, U.S. military officers – like their civilian
  bosses and American journalists – usually discuss this war in secular, even antiseptic terms. When the Times quoted Marine battalion commander Gary Brandl in another front-page story, on Nov. 6, the lieutenant colonel sounded straightforward: “We are going to rid the city of insurgents. If they do fight, we will kill them.”

However, on the same day, the Associated Press reported that the same Lt. Col. Brandl said: “The enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He’s in Fallujah, and we’re going to destroy him.”

That statement by Brandl – an officer with 800 soldiers under his command – caused a bit of stir in some Internet circles. But mainstream U.S. media outlets scarcely noted his holy-warrior declaration. Most news outlets ignored it entirely.

Providing a fuller, more revealing quote from Lt. Col. Brandl, the Sunday Times of London included a lead-in sentence: “The Marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan…”

In other words, Satan started this conflict. And we – the anti-Satan forces – fully intend to finish it by destroying him.

Sounds very fundamentalist.

Sounds a lot like Osama bin Laden.

Larry Anthony Franklin, 58, a Pentagon analyst whose specialty is Iran, was arrested by federal agents today when he turned himself. He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., later today.

Franklin was observed last year by federal agents revealing top secret information to two employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), longtime foreign policy director Steve Rosen, and his deputy Keith Weissman, at a restaurant in Arlington, Virginia. A raid on his home turned up 83 classified U.S. government documents [.pdf]. According to the indictment, “approximately 38 were classified ‘Top Secret.’ 37 were classified ‘Secret,'” and “approximately 8” were marked “Confidential.”

The real stunner: “The dates of these documents spanned three decades.”

This, I think, gives us some indication that Franklin’s arrest is about to dredge up something much larger than anyone now imagines. Remember, the FBI counterintelligence stumbled on Franklin in the course of a much more extensive investigation that has been going on for at least two years. According to the Washington Post:

“The counterintelligence probe, which is different from a criminal investigation, focuses on a possible transfer of intelligence more extensive than whether Franklin passed on a draft presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran, the sources said. The FBI is examining whether highly classified material from the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic intercepts of communications, was also forwarded to Israel, they said.”

So much for the preemptive attempts by Israel’s amen corner to deride the charges as much ado about nothing: a draft presidential directive, as David Frum claimed in National Review, that anyone who had the 35 cents to pay for a copy of the Washington Post could have access to. NSA intercepts are the crown jewels of our intelligence hoard, which could not only reveal specific and very sensitive information, but might also indicate U.S. sources and methods of intelligence-gathering.

I have written about this case extensively, and will surely be writing more. The trial should be interesting, to say the least. Suffice to say now that Franklin’s treason is just the tip of the iceberg: what we are looking at is a longstanding conspiracy by Israeli agents inside the U.S. government to not only funnel classified materials to Tel Aviv, but to manipulate and bend U.S. foreign policy to serve Israeli interests.

The indictment also states that Franklin handed over classified materials to “a foreign official and to members of the news media on other occasions.”

Which “foreign official”? Gee, I wonder if anyone in the Israeli embassy is packing his or her bags and hightailing it back home.

Guess which “members of the news media” — now that‘s a fun game to play.

This is one trial that is going to be very interesting. Get out the popcorn, and the dip-and-chips: maybe they’ll run it on Court TV….

CORRECTION: Franklin has not been indicted. The arrest warrant was generated by the complaint, which was backed up by an affidavit setting forth probable cause.

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Serbia-Montenegro Ambassador Ivan Vujacic has gone and done it again. Responding this time to the arrogant blowhard Richard Holbrooke, Vujacic does a splendid job of translating Holbrokese into English:

“In other words, the aspirant members of the European Union need not strive to fulfill the requirements stemming from European values. Instead, they can simply trade in a part of their territory. This is poor advice. The evaluation of standards in Kosovo should be based on facts, not political wishful thinking, let alone blackmail.”

Of course, Holbrooke’s “advice” is actually a threat, and it isn’t “poor,” it’s criminal. But a diplomat can hardly say that out loud.
Last month I wondered whether Vujacic’s reaction to a Post editorial was a fluke, or the beginning of a new pattern. This second reaction suggests the latter – and not a moment too soon.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you egged on your younger siblings to do something really stupid, like skateboard down the bannister or play with matches in the garage, and as the whole catastrophe unfolded, and Mom started screaming, and Dad hurtled toward meltdown, and your little brothers and sisters wailed away, and the ambulance or fire engine whipped into the driveway, you just stood there saying, “Well, I didn’t make them do it!”? Remember anything like that?

If you do, then there’s no need for you to read “What the Brits Thought” by Andrew Sullivan. Or pretty much any other Iraq-war-in-retrospect piece he’s written.

With 80,000 unique visitors on Monday, Antiwar.com is clearly the web center of the new American realignment. Featuring a couple of hundred or so most important news stories of the day in real time, and the best commentary from libertarians, the old right and the progressive left, we provide easy access to the best information about, and dissent against, the neocons‘ imperial juggernaut.

As the most totalitarian tendencies of some of our neighbors coalesce around the “Global War on Terror” and “protecting the Homeland,” those of us who love liberty are finding ways to bypass the old artificial constraints of our cultural differences in all of our last ditch attempts to save the liberty that once distinguished America from the rest of the world.

Short of all out nuclear warfare, this country could never be destroyed by foreign enemies. We have a 10 trillion dollar economy, two friendly neighbors, two mountain ranges, and a population of three hundred million with five hundred million firearms. The danger to this country instead comes from our own government while at war abroad. As Americans are divided into “wimps and warriors,” dissent is equated with treason, incredible deficits are added to an already crippling national debt, the national police power undergoes wholesale restructuring and their authority over the states and our lives is extended, America is being destroyed from the inside out. As Randolph Bourne said, “War is the Health of the State.” And when the state is healthy, individual liberty is in danger. As James Madison pointed out, War is,

“the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

We can’t repeal the PATRIOT act and dismantle the Department of Homeland Security until we stop this self destructive foreign policy. And since the wars in question have absolutely nothing to do with protecting the American people, we ought to be able to get it done.

Those of you who take this as your responsibility, and rely on Antiwar.com to keep up to date in your own fight (how many months before the rest of the country did you learn about the Office of Special Plans and the real purpose of those scary aluminum tubes?), owe it to yourselves to chip in and keep this magnificent tool running smooth.

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