TERRORISM AS U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Soldiers Say Ordered to Kill Young Men

From the AP via My Way courtesy of AlterNet:

Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were under orders to "kill all military age males," according to sworn statements obtained by The Associated Press.

The soldiers first took some of the men into custody because they were using two women and a toddler as human shields. They shot three of the men after the women and child were safe and say the men attacked them.

"The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on Objective Murray," Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard told investigators, referring to the target by its code name.

That target, an island on a canal in the northern Salahuddin province, was believed to be an al-Qaida training camp. The soldiers said officers in their chain of command gave them the order and explained that special forces had tried before to target the island and had come under fire from insurgents.

Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and Spc. Juston R. Graber are charged with murder and other offenses in the shooting deaths of three of the men during the May 9 raid.

Click here for the rest.

Okay, I know the situation is crazy and chaotic over there, but "kill all military age males" sounds very much like the "free fire zones" and "search and destroy missions" in Vietnam that created the context in which atrocities like the My Lai Massacre took place. That is, the case described above may very well be murder, but the rules of engagement were such that gung-ho soldiers in the field might have easily misinterpreted them to mean, literally, "kill all military age males." But then, if those were actually the ROE, indiscriminately shooting any man you see, these soldiers weren't misinterpreting their orders. And if that's the case, it's pretty easy to assume that, as longtime British Middle Eastern correspondent Robert Fisk has asserted on several occasions, terrorism is official US policy in Iraq.

This leads to an important question: how is the US government any different from Al Qaeda?

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