Creating and Undo-ing the Psychopaths We Send to War (Greenwald)
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: Creating and Undo-ing the Psychopaths We Send to War
(Greenwald)
Date: Apr 6, 2010 11:03 AM
ARTICLE BELOW
==========================
Well, the Army creates psychopaths, and then
when the paths come home, they have PTSD or
Reality Syndrome, for which they are blamed.
American Psychiatry says nothing about either
phenomenon because from whichever end you
attack this truth, it exposes all truisms
about psychiatry. They know what Evil is
and they know they're entirely about masking it.
A third way to counter check these facts is to
ask how that Manchurian Candidate experiment,
MKUltra, went: They were unable to reliably
predict the outcomes of such hypnotism/demonic
possession efforts. (And this, too, is never
discussed by psychiatry, despite their authorship
of it.)
It's a bloody-fun game, but the world is
beginning to see clearly that America relishes
every blood-and-tissue-splattering second of it.
Every putrifying aspect of death and destruction;
we love it and we wallow in it, whether it is
the Arrogance of IDSA re the Blumenthal lawsuit
http://www.actionlyme.org/BLUMENTHAL_IDSA_FEB_2010.pdf
the Cowardice of CDC officer Larry Altman and the
New York Times, the Constitutional *LIES* of Stanley
Fish, the Groveling of that finest of 5 star fairies,
McChrystal:
http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2010/04/05/mccrackers/
or the Sextuple Thrill of murdering three
pregnant women and calling it a honor killing, LOL.
Ha, ha, ha.
Hilarious.
It's great.
We love it.
KMDickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
================================
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/05-2
Published on Monday, April 5, 2010 by Salon.com
How Americans Are Propagandized About Afghanistan
by Glenn Greenwald
On February 12 of this year, U.S. forces entered a village in the
Paktia Province in Afghanistan and, after surrounding a home where a
celebration of a new birth was taking place, shot dead two male
civilians (government officials) who exited the house in order to
inquire why they had been surrounded. The Pentagon then issued a
statement claiming that (a) the dead were all "insurgents" or
terrorists, (b) the bodies of three women had been found bound and
gagged inside the home (including two pregnant women, one a mother of
10 children and the other a mother of six children, and a teenage
girl), and (c) suggested that the women had already been killed by the
time the U.S. had arrived, likely the victim of "honor killings" by
the Taliban militants killed in the attack.
Although numerous witnesses on the scene as well as local
investigators vehemently disputed the Pentagon's version, and insisted
that all of the dead (including the women) were civilians and were
killed by U.S. forces, the American media largely adopted the
Pentagon's version, often without any questions. But enough evidence
has now emerged disproving those claims such that the Pentagon was
forced yesterday to admit that their original version was totally
false and that it was U.S. troops who killed the women:
After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths
of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special
Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in
Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the
women during the nighttime raid.
One NATO official said that there was likely an effort to cover-up
what happened by U.S. troops via evidence tampering on the scene
(though other NATO officials deny this claim). The Times of London
actually reported yesterday that, at least according to Afghan
investigators, "US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their
victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then
washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about
what happened."
What is clear -- yet again -- is how completely misinformed and
propagandized Americans continue to be by the American media, which
constantly "reports" on crucial events in Afghanistan by doing nothing
more than mindlessly and unquestioningly passing along U.S. government
claims as though they are fact. Here, for instance, is how the Paktia
incident was "reported" by CNN on February 12:
Note how the headline states as fact that the women were dead as the
result of an "honor killing." The entire CNN article does nothing but
repeat what an "unnamed senior military official said" about the
incident, and it even helpfully explained:
An honor killing is a murder carried out by a family or community
member against someone thought to have brought dishonor onto them.
The U.S. official said it isn't clear whether the dishonor in this
case stemmed from accusations of acts such as adultery or even
cooperating with NATO forces.
"It has the earmarks of a traditional honor killing," said the
official, who added the Taliban could be responsible. . .
The operation unfolded when Afghan and international forces went
to the compound, which was thought to be a site of militant activity.
A firefight ensued and several insurgents died, several people left
the compound, and eight others were detained.
Similarly, The New York Times, while noting that there were "varying
accounts of what happened" among U.S. forces and Afghan police, also
passed along the Pentagon's false version of events with no
questioning. Here's the NYT's February 12 article in its entirety:
Several civilians were killed in Paktia Province on Friday when a
joint Afghan-NATO force went to investigate a report of militant
activity, but NATO and the Afghan police gave varying accounts of what
happened. A NATO statement said the joint force went to a compound in
the village of Khatabeh, in the Gardez district, where insurgents
opened fire on them from a residential compound. Several insurgents
were killed and a large number of men, women and children fled and
were detained by the NATO force. Inside the compound, soldiers "found
the bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed,"
the NATO statement said. The Paktia Province police chief, Aziz Ahmad
Wardak, confirmed the episode but said the dead in the house were two
men and three women, who he said were killed by Taliban militants. He
said the killings took place while the residents were celebrating the
birth of a baby.
CNN conveyed its version of events without the slightest contradiction
or doubt, and the NYT simply ignored entirely the claims of the
residents of the village -- notwithstanding the fact that serious
conflicts about what actually took place were known from the very
beginning. Consider, for instance, this February 12 article by Amir
Shah of the Associated Press, who actually bothered to pick up a phone
to determine if the Pentagon's claims were true before "reporting"
them as fact; this is what Shah found:
However, relatives of the dead accused American forces of being
responsible for the deaths of all five people when contacted by The
Associated Press by phone.
A man who identified himself as Hamidullah said he had been in the
home as some 20 people gathered to celebrate the birth of a son when a
group of men he described as "U.S. special forces" surrounded the
compound.
When one man came out into the courtyard to ask why, Hamidullah
said he watched U.S. forces gun him down.
"Daoud was coming out of the house to ask what was going on. And
then they shot him," he said.
Then they killed a second man, Hamidullah said. The rest of the
group were forced out into the yard, made to kneel and had their hands
bound behind their back, he said, breaking off crying without giving
any further details.
A deputy provincial council member in Gardez, Shahyesta Jan Ahadi,
said news of the operation has inflamed the local community that
believes the Americans were responsible for the deaths.
"Last night, the Americans conducted an operation in a house and
killed five innocent people, including three women. The people are so
angry," he said.
The Pentagon's version of events was vehemently disputed from the
start. But there was not a hint of any of that in the CNN or NYT
"reporting," which simply adopted the press release claims of NATO
forces. That Press Release, false from start to finish, claimed that
"a combined force of Afghan and international troops last night found
the bound and gagged bodies of two women and the bodies of two men
during an operation in the province's Gardez district," and "members
of the combined force found the bodies inside." Ironically, the
Pentagon Press Release ended this way: "'ISAF continually works with
our Afghan partners to fight criminals and terrorists who do not care
about the life of civilians,' ISAF spokesman Canadian army Brig. Gen.
Eric Tremblay said." On March 16 -- more than a month later -- the
NYT ran a story detailing the gruesome claims of residents about what
really happened; click that link for the horrific details and to get a
sense for how false were the Pentagon and U.S. media's original claims
about what took place.
Contrast the pure propaganda dissemination of the American media with
the immediate reporting of the Pajhwok Afghan News, an independent
news agency created in Afghanistan to enable war reporting by
Afghans. Here is how they reported the Pakita incident from the
beginning, on Febraury 12 (via NEXIS):
US Special Forces have shot dead a district intelligence chief
along with four family members in the volatile southeastern province
of Paktia, a senior police officer claimed on Friday. Brig. Gen.
Ghulam Dastagir Rustamyar explained that Daud and his family were
celebrating the birth of his son. But acting on a misleading tip-off,
foreign troops raided the intelligence official's residence. . . . He
said the dead included Daud, his brother Zahir, an employee of the
attorney's office, and three women. . . .
But the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) claimed
Afghan and international forces found the bound and gagged bodies of
three women during the operation in Gardez late Thursday night. "The
joint force went to a compound near the village of Khatabeh, after
intelligence confirmed militant activity. Several insurgents engaged
the joint force in a firefight and were killed," the ISAF press office
in Kabul said.
As a result of the raid, the multinational force added, a large
number of men, women, and children exited the compound. They were
detained by the joint force.
When the troops entered the compound, according to the press
release, they conducted a thorough search and found the bodies of
three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed. "The bodies had
been hidden in an adjacent room."
Note the crucial difference: the Afghan news service shaped its
report based on the statements of actual witnesses on the ground and
local investigators, while also including the Pentagon's version of
events. Put another way, anyone reading about what happened from
American news outlets would be completely misled and propagandized,
while anyone reading the Pajhowk Afghan News would have been informed,
because they treated official claims with skepticism rather than
uncritical reverence.
* * * * *
All of this is a chronic problem, not an isolated one, with war
reporting generally and events in Afghanistan specifically. Just
consider what happened when the U.S. military was forced in 2008 to
retract its claims about a brutal air raid in Azizabad. The Pentagon
had vehemently denied the villagers' claim that close to 100 civilians
had been killed and that no Taliban were in the vicinity: until a
video emerged proving the villagers' claims were true and the
Pentagon's false. Last week, TPM highlighted a recent, entirely
overlooked statement from Gen. McChrystal, where he admitted,
regarding U.S. killings of Afghans at check points: "to my knowledge,
in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we
have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has
it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it
and, in many cases, had families in it. . . . We've shot an amazing
number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has
proven to have been a real threat to the force." And as I documented
before, the U.S. media constantly repeats false Pentagon claims about
American air attacks around the world in order to create the false
impression that Key Terrorists were killed while no civilians were.
At the Nieman Watchdog Foundation, Jeremy Starkey, the Afghanistan war
reporter for The Times of London, has a crucial, must-read piece on
all of this. Amazingly, his piece was written three weeks ago, and
recounted in detail: (a) how clearly the U.S.-led forces had lied
about what happened in Paktia; and (b) the reasons why the U.S. media
continuously spews false government propaganda about the war. Starkey
wrote under this headline:
In this mid-March piece, Starkey explained how he had discovered that
NATO's claims about the Haktia incident were false (he recounted his
evidence in gruesome detail in the Times on March 13), and more
importantly, highlighted why the U.S. media so frequently disseminates
false NATO claims with no questioning:
The only way I found out NATO had lied -- deliberately or
otherwise -- was because I went to the scene of the raid, in Paktia
province, and spent three days interviewing the survivors. In
Afghanistan that is quite unusual.
NATO is rarely called to account. Their version of events, usually
originating from the soldiers involved, is rarely seriously
challenged. . . .
It's not the first time I've found NATO lying, but this is perhaps
the most harrowing instance, and every time I go through the same
gamut of emotions. I am shocked and appalled that brave men in uniform
misrepresent events. Then I feel naïve.
There are a handful of truly fearless reporters in Afghanistan
constantly trying to break the military's monopoly on access to the
front. But far too many of our colleagues accept the spin-laden press
releases churned out of the Kabul headquarters. Suicide bombers are
"cowards," NATO attacks on civilians are "tragic accidents,"
intelligence is foolproof and only militants get arrested.
Starkey describes the some of the understandable reasons so many
reporters do nothing more than regurgitate officials claims: resource
constraints, organizations limits, dangers of traveling around, and
the "embed culture." But he also recounts how NATO tries to
intimidate, censor and punish any reporters like him who report
adversely on official claims. Illustratively, in response to
Starkey's March 13 article detailing what really happened at Paktia
and the cover-up that ensued, NATO issued a formal statement naming
him and insisting that this article was "categorically false." As
recently as mid-March, NATO was still claiming -- falsely -- that the
women in Paktia were killed prior to the arrival of American troops.
There are some very courageous and intrepid reporters in Afghanistan,
including some who work for American media outlets. It was, for
instance, a superb and brave investigative report by the NYT's
Carlotta Gall in Afghanistan that uncovered what really happened in
that air attack Azizabad and documented the Pentagon's false claims.
But far more often, Americans are completely misled about events in
Afghanistan by the combination of false official claims and mindless
stenographic American "journalism." And no matter how many times this
process is exposed -- from Jessica Lynch's heroic firefight to Pat
Tillman's death by Al Qeada -- this propaganda process never
diminishes at all.
Copyright ©2010 Salon Media Group, Inc.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights
litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times
Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush
administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His
second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci