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The WikiLeaks War Logs Don't Show Rare War Crimes--They Show The (Legal) Reality of War

Sat, 04/21/2012 - 20:30 — Dave Culver
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Peace & Nonviolence

  • The real problem with the laws of war is not what they fail to restrain but what they authorize.
  • Murder Is Not an Anomaly in War

Chase Madar, TomDispatch

Anyone who would like to witness a vivid example of modern warfare that adheres to the laws of war -- that corpus of regulations developed painstakingly over centuries by jurists, humanitarians, and soldiers, a body of rules that is now an essential, institutionalized part of the U.S. armed forces and indeed all modern militaries -- should simply click here and watch the video.

Wait a minute: that’s the WikiLeaks “Collateral Murder” video!  The gunsight view of an Apache helicopter opening fire from half a mile high on a crowd of Iraqis -- a few armed men, but mostly unarmed civilians, including a couple of Reuters employees -- as they unsuspectingly walked the streets of a Baghdad suburb one July day in 2007.

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Related:

Murder Is Not an Anomaly in War, Chris Hedges, truthdig

  • To decry the butchery of this case and to defend the wars of occupation we wage is to know nothing about combat. We kill children nearly every day in Afghanistan.
  • Libya: NATO accused of failing to investigate civilian deaths from airstrikes - new report
  • A crime against humanity
  • "We dropped a few civilians", said Sgt Eric Schrumpf of the US Marines

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