Columnist – John Sammon
The U.S. Marines seen urinating on the corpses of Taliban enemies, and those posing with the body of a 10-year-old Afghan boy proudly as though they’re readying to mount him on the hood of their jeep like you would a deer after a hunting expedition, will eventually be expected to rejoin American society as peaceful, productive citizens.

Yeah right!

We invade small impoverished countries, only small countries, and where a majority of the American people can ignore it and go about their everyday lives.

We let these wars drag on for years and not once in all that time has the government told the American people what exactly the goal is, what we’re trying to do. We train thousands, some of them simpletons, some malcontented dysfunctional nincompoops, to kill, then send them overseas among impoverished people, many of whom don’t even have shoes on their feet, people we consider backward and subhuman.

These people are poor, bearded, and by our standards, dirty. They don’t have huge tiled showers to be cleaner. They’re easy to hate, and so it makes it easier to kill them. The Nazi guards at Auschwitz had the same experience. As their victims became more starved and filthy, they looked less like human beings and became easier to murder.

You’re an American soldier in Afghanistan. You’re a not-very-bright misfit who in civilian life had few options and little money, unlike a politician who spends all his time accumulating money by preying on faltering companies. You’re not that clever. But you are filled with vainglorious macho fantasies, fears, neurosis, and hate, both for yourself and your fellow man (even some women soldiers are like this too).

You’re placed as a god, with the power of life and death, over a bunch of stinking, bedraggled, bearded, turbaned, foreign-looking what-are-to-you sub-humans. You go wild. This is heaven. The danger. The power. The possibility of instant death is an adrenaline rush, the ultimate narcotic high. For the first time in your miserable, nondescript life, as nothing more than a local yokel hanging out around the Seven Eleven Store, you feel real power in the high-powered high-tech rifle America put in your hands.

But this is war. You need to kill somebody. You don’t want the war to end and go home without having killed somebody. You don’t want the war to end. You’ve got to kill somebody. You do. You kill somebody and maybe it wasn’t justified. Nevertheless, you’re proud because you actually did it. You’re a killer. You actually have someone else’s blood on your hands.

You feel superior.

Now your hitch is up and you’re supposed to return home and resume an average life struggling for money and become a veteran like millions of others, the numbers swelled because of the endless deployments from two wars that dragged on forever without attempts to end them.

You’re expected now to become a peaceful, law abiding citizen who respects the rights of other people.

How can you do that when you’ve been a false god? When you’ve had the power of life and death over other lesser people (Afghans)? You had that rush of danger and hate and triumph. Now your biggest challenge is not to survive and kill, but to fix the clothes washer that’s on the fritz.

You can’t stand it. You drink, you do drugs. You get a gun and kill your wife, or a pain-in-the-ass co-worker who mouthed off to you.

This is just the beginning.

If the American people think there isn’t going to be any fallout from the kind of behavior they saw in the Marines pissing film, they are mistaken. You can expect a variety of atrocities here at home from the myriads of malcontents we sent over there. Below is a partial list of domestic tragedies to expect from veterans who were dysfunctional before they went to war and who can’t adjust to peaceful life.

I mean fallout beyond the economic strain to the Veterans Administration (VA) from millions of new veterans requiring services and help. And remember, the war in Iraq was launched over false weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist.

A guy shoots his wife and seven party-goers at a function. Then he shoots himself.

A former vet makes a bomb and blows up the convenience store where he was unhappily employed killing 17 people.

A guy goes on a rampage at a school and then kills himself (the usual story). He had been awarded a Bronze Star.

A former vet doesn’t like a local politician and assassinates him and 12 others at a rally.

A vet drives a car under the influence of drugs into a crowd waiting to enter a theater, killing 17.

The message you get from the film clip of Marines pissing on corpses is that a portion of America has lost its soul.

There’s an old saying about war that says, “Even the victors are undone.” In other words, the winners lose too. This has always been the case. The ancient Greeks returning from burning Troy, (except for Ulysses), all eventually died or went mad.

Nothing has changed.

The video, which was posted on YouTube and other websites, shows four men in camouflage Marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: “Have a nice day, buddy.” Another makes a lewd joke.

At the Pentagon, Captain John Kirby said the defense department was “deeply troubled” by the video.

“Whoever it is, and whatever the circumstances – which we know is under investigation – it is egregious behavior and unacceptable for a member of the military,” said Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

US Troops Defile Dead Afghans on Camera

Videos Shows U.S. Marines Urinating On Dead Taliban Fighters

   A still image taken January 11, 2012 from an undated YouTube video shows what is believed to be US
   Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan.

The US military has been prosecuting soldiers from the Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade on charges of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians while deployed in Kandahar province in 2010.

On January 15th, 2010, U.S. soldiers in Bravo Company stationed near Kandahar executed an unarmed Afghan boy named Gul Mudin in the village of La Mohammad Kalay. Reports by soldiers at the scene indicate that Mudin was about 15 years old. According to sworn statements, two soldiers – Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes ? staged the killing to make it look like they had been under attack. Ordering the boy to stand still, they crouched behind a mud wall, tossed a grenade at him and opened fire from close range.

These soldiers routinely collected errant weapons and planted them on the bodies of unarmed civilians they killed, in order to frame their victim as enemy combatants. The presence of a “drop weapon” virtually guaranteed that a shooting would be considered a legitimate kill.

Photographs published in March by two magazines – Der Spiegel and Rolling Stone – showed soldiers posing with the bloodied corpse of the Afghan boy they had just killed. The images can be seen below:

Following the routine Army procedure required after every battlefield death, the soldiers cut off the dead boy’s clothes and stripped him naked to check for identifying tattoos. Here they are shown scanning his iris and fingerprints, using a portable biometric scanner.

The soldiers also took photographs of themselves celebrating their kill. In the photos, Morlock grins and gives a thumbs-up sign as he poses with Mudin’s body. Note that the boy’s right pinky finger appears to have been severed. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs reportedly used a pair of razor-sharp medic’s shears to cut off the finger, which he presented to Holmes as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.

Holmes poses with Mudin’s body. According to a fellow soldier, Holmes took to carrying Mudin’s severed finger with him in a zip-lock bag. “He wanted to keep the finger forever and wanted to dry it out,” one of his friends would later report. “He was proud of his finger.”

Before the military found itself short of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Capt. Jeremy Morlock was the kind of bad-news kid who the Army might have passed on. He grew up not far from Sarah Palin in Wasilla, Alaska; his sister hung out with Bristol, and Morlock played hockey against Track. Back in those days, it seemed like he was constantly in trouble: getting drunk and into fights, driving without a license, leaving the scene of a serious car accident.

Even after he joined the Army, Morlock continued to get into trouble. In 2009, a month before he deployed to Afghanistan, he was charged with disorderly conduct after burning his wife with a cigarette. After he arrived in Afghanistan, he did any drug he could get his hands on: opium, hash, Ambien, amitriptyline, flexeril, phenergan, codeine, trazodone.

The photos collected by soldiers included many shots of local children, often filed alongside images of bloody casualties. At one point, soldiers in 3rd Platoon talked about throwing candy out of a Stryker vehicle as they drove through a village and shooting the children who came running to pick up the sweets.

According to one soldier, members of 3rd Platoon also talked about a scenario in which they “would throw candy out in front and in the rear of the Stryker; the Stryker would then run the children over.”

Gibbs allegedly used a pair of medic’s shears to cut off the finger of at least two Afghan civilians murdered by members of his platoon.

In the process of suppressing the photographs, the Army may also have been trying to keep secret evidence that the killings of civilians went beyond a few men in 3rd Platoon. In this image, the bodies of two Afghan men have been tied together, their hands bound, and placed alongside a road.

MORE WAR CRIMES COMMITTED BY U.S. SOLDIERS

1. Pictures & Videos: ‘Death Zone’ — How U.S. soldiers turned a night-time airstrike into a chilling ‘music video’
2. The Haditha Killings — U.S. Marines committed WAR CRIMES of unfathomable proportions!
3. American soldiers torturing (Lynching) Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison
4. Mr. President Bush — ‘You are a War Criminal who belongs in Guantanamo Prison’

5. War Crimes Committed by the United States in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability

   Sohel Ajani
From the day, the Ottoman Empire collapsed after the World War I, things are not so good in the Middle East region. Creation of countries based on tribes & families was general rule for British.

Things never stopped over here. Immediately after the end of World War II, creation of Zionist state (Israel) on the Arab soil of Palestine was the biggest crime the west has ever done. As a result, millions migrated from their mother land, scores killed including kids, women & elders.

This was followed by the era of Cold war for the supremacy over the world. Soviet Russia’s invasion on most of the Muslim region and American plan to defeat its archrival through various evil strategies includes creation of Taliban & several terrorist organizations across the globe. Although, things were seems to be haphazard, but the situation was in control of The USA.

Coincidently, President Jimmy Carter visited Iran in 1978 and called Iran as “an island of stability” in his speech. It seems that the title was not liked much by the masses of Iran. Late in the year and early 1979 the deposed Shah of Iran flew into exile on his private jet, while the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from expatriation to lead the country. Suddenly, the Island of Stability changed to ‘Axis of Evil‘ for The USA.

After this, series of incidents followed in the Middle East region which aimed to destabilize the newly created government of Islamic Republic by Ayatollah Khomeini. The imposition of 8 years Iran ? Iraq war in which super powers of the world openly supported the Saddam Hussein Regime followed by extreme round of sanctions on Islamic Republic purely aims at weakening of the Islamic regime.

The war is on between The US & The Islamic Republic from the day one of the Islamic Revolution and US is making every effort to dismantle the regime through any means, legal or illegal. Hence they supported the terrorist organization, Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) (Although its black listed in US, but they supported it), invaded Iraq & Afghanistan to surround Islamic Republic, played the game of regime change in Pakistan from civilian to military and again back to civilian leaded by American puppets.

Currently, they are making scenario of Nuclear weapons to attack Iran. The question over here now is; will US attack Iran?

Let us analyze the scenario in Middle East in case The US attacks Iran. We first have to find the friends and foes of Iran in that region. The first and foremost open enemy of Iran is the Zionist regime of Israel while on the other hand open friends are the Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah, Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas and regime of Bashar Al-Assad of Syria. The friendship of Assad and Iran is majorly based on invasion of Israel on Golan Heights. In any case of attack on Iran, any of these three groups will attack Israel which is close ally of The US in Middle East.

Hence the first step of The US administration right now is to overthrow all these groups / governments and impose puppet regimes in these places. For Syria, there is full-fledge movement against Assad. The recent sanction from the Arab League against Syria is clear indication of pro-American stand. After Assad, US might plan to impose extremist regime which is Anti-Iran / Anti-Shia in nature in Syria. The current inclination of protestors shows the sign of Anti-Shia move. Similarly, Israel might attack Gaza to remove Hamas through any excuse. They have to design some other strategy to wipe out existence of Hezbollah, which is not in view currently.

Before elimination of these three forces surrounding Israel, US will not be in a position to plan regime change in Iran.

   Columnist – John Sammon
We committed what amounts to a genocide in Iraq. I’m ashamed of this country for its role in Iraq.

A foreign head of state participating with the president in laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?

Let me get this straight. We invade Iraq based on false weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there, destroy much of the country and kill a million Iraqis. And Obama has the puppet Iraqi leader we set up in power in Baghdad lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington. [ READ: THE WAR CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES IN IRAQ ] [ MORE CRIMES ]

How would you like to be the puppet? A country that invaded your country and killed a million of your citizens. You’re forced (or invited?) to come to that country and honor the soldiers of a foreign army that attacked your country and killed a million of your own citizens (bad citizens and innocent citizens for alleged reasons good and bad) based on false, concocted premises.

The leader of Iraq is a good puppet ruler.

America can hold its head high because it’s walking away from this fiasco with no remorse. We can do anything and it doesn’t matter because even if it’s wrong we’re still right. If there’s only one person left in this country who says morality is not determined by who wins or who’s powerful then I have to stand up and demand that the American people hear it.

Even if they never hear.

Asking a foreign ruler we set up in power by force after concocting false reasons for going to war to come to Washington D.C. and pay homage to the foreign power that invaded his country is wrong, immoral, and obscene.

Here are some suggested ways we can have the puppet ruler we set up in Iraq pay homage to the United States in a way that will remove even the slightest pretense of the sovereignty of Iraq.

1.   Have the puppet of Iraq serve as Obama’s chauffer complete with uniform.

2.   Have the puppet sweep out the Washington Monument.

3.   Have the puppet engage in campaigning for Obama during the 2012 election.

4.   Declare Iraq a new American state and down-grade the puppet to a governor with a foreign accent.

5.   We got their oil, we killed a million of their citizens based on falsehoods. It’s a win-win.

6.   Instead of “War,” we can re-label this a “Humanitarian Project.”

7.   Of course, other Arab countries overthrew their dictators without the help of U.S. troops.

8.   I think the Founding Fathers envisioned America only going to war when its national security was directly threatened and without the bogus weapons of mass destruction it wasn’t threatened, but the Founding Fathers were out of touch. They had no understanding of the new Roman Empire-style America and its “ends-justify-means” mentality.

9.   If Obama wants to promote good relations with Vietnam he could go to Hanoi and lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Vietcong.

I DO NOT ASK, I DEMAND, A COUNTRY THAT IS WILLING TO FACE THE TRUTH. A COUNTRY THAT IS HONEST. Once again, Obama disappoints me.

Obama before he became president called Iraq a “dumb war.”

It was also dishonest, wrong and immoral.

We’re not right just because we’re America. I won’t let this country hide behind the shield of its power. Somebody has to have the courage to say it.

The war in Iraq was engineered based on lies by George Bush and Dick Cheney. We had equipped, supplied and encouraged the dictator of Iraq (look at the picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking the no-good bastard’s hand). We thought he was our puppet. When he acted too big for his britches, we attacked his country in a false effort to tie it to 9-11. Bush and Cheney needed to sell the war to the American people so they created the false weapons of mass destruction scam.

Americans want to feel good and the president has to justify what happened. He can’t admit wrong or risk being called a traitor. The system has built-in protections to safeguard it from the truth. Obama, as good a man as he is, is a pawn of the system.

No one will ever discuss what we did or learn from the mistakes. [ SPECIAL READ: BUSH'S MIDEAST DISHONOR ]

Iraq War Crimes

George W. Bush — A War Criminal

   Columnist – John Sammon
Never once in my journalistic career have I ever attacked the work of another political columnist. Until now.

On Veterans Day my local newspaper ran a lone editorial on its editorial page written by David O’Brien, a professor of faith and culture at the University of Dayton. The editorial extolled the sacrifices made by our troops. There are reasons I must respond.

The editorial contains falsehoods, exaggerations and half-truths. Secondly, it’s the only opinion given, with no rebuttal. Thirdly, if we are unwilling to learn from past mistakes, or say we never make them, we will repeat them.

O’Brien starts out saying we gather on Veterans Day with heavy hearts mourning our fallen troops and I whole-heartedly agree. No argument there. But then he says, “We put aside our complaints about “Bush’s War” or “Obama’s War” and acknowledge our shared responsibilities.”

We put aside our complaints?

Who are we?

I never put aside my complaints. I opposed the war in Iraq from day one. I’m sure there are others, so it isn’t a case of “we.”

To get Americans to support war in Iraq, Bush lied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as he put it “such as the world had never seen,” and maintained that an attack on America using such weapons was imminent. That means like next week. So it was “Bush’s war.” Obama inherited it.

“Shared responsibilities?”

We failed in our shared responsibilities, especially the media, to ask tough questions of the president requiring him to make a truthful case, and instead were swept along on a drumbeat of pro-war fervor in the wake of 9-11 fuelled by deceptions.

O’Brien continues, “After 9-11, we launched our war on Afghanistan, then after extended debate, we invaded Iraq.”

Extended debate?

What is your perception of the word “extended?” I would describe it instead more as a “rubber stamp” fed by falsehoods and distortions, with anyone questioning it labeled a traitor. The Founding Fathers expected presidents to ask Congress for a Declaration of War to maintain some control over the Oval Office, a requirement presidents for the past 60 years have chosen to ignore as they continually extend their power.

O’Brien says, “Later, a majority of us decided that preemptive war in Iraq was the right choice.”

He neglects to also mention that today a sizeable portion of the population don’t consider the war in Iraq worth the cost.

He then says, “We accepted a surge of troops in Iraq and welcomed subsequent news of progress.” As Ronald Reagan would have once said, “there you go again” David, with the “we” statement. I was skeptical of the benefits of the “surge,” flooding parts of a country with troops when you’re dealing with a highly mobile insurgency. Its results can be debated, but there were critics in the military who labeled it “The Pillsbury Doughboy.” You push them out of an area, and like pushing the Doughboy in the stomach, they bulge out the back, simply moving and setting up shop somewhere else.

A surge is like a tide that comes in and out. Assuming it was successful, will it be so permanently?

O’Brien then says, “Those of us who opposed these wars (he finally acknowledges me) blamed presidents and politicians.”

Who else you gonna blame? Lindsay Lohan? I didn’t have a vote on whether to go to war.

“Occasionally we demanded withdrawal, but we proposed no persuasive alternative strategies,” O’Brien continues.

Was Cindy Sheehan’s opposition, the mom who opposed the war after her son was killed, “occasional?”

There you go again with the “we” David. If I had proposed an alternate strategy, would the Joint Chiefs of Staff listen? When you say “we,” we who? There is no alternate strategy to a wrong war, other than not fighting it. Just before the war in Iraq was launched, United Nations Weapons Inspectors were in the country looking for and not finding the alleged weapons of mass destruction. Bush and company basically told the UN “you’re too late, there are weapons, get out of the way.”

I should say at this point I did not oppose the strike on Afghanistan because that country harbored the culprits from 9-11. I opposed Iraq because it was wrong and would weaken our efforts in Afghanistan, which it did.

O’Brien then says, “ending American wars is never easy (I agree),” and he lists past wars, but then adds “our shameful withdrawal from Vietnam.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower considered an open-ended land war in Asia unwinnable and apparently O’Brien has never heard of the deceptions revealed in the Pentagon Papers in which the government was lying to its own people. This is all documented.

Do I also need to remind readers that the “shameful withdrawal” was carried out under the conservative Republican Administration of Gerald Ford, who had inherited it from the disgraced Richard Nixon, who had earlier pledged to get us out? Perhaps the best way to answer “shameful withdrawal” is to quote anti-war activist and folk singer Pete Seeger, who was labeled a communist because of his views.

“Was Abraham Lincoln a traitor because he opposed the Mexican War?” Seeger asked. “Was Mark Twain a traitor because he opposed the Spanish American War?”