Glenn: Like all propaganda, [the U.S. use of the word "militant"] is designed to deceive the citizenry in order to compel acquiescence to government conduct

yes, i know i tend to be a little heavy in citing glenn in my posts but he's one of the few observers i turn to regularly who happen to have a consistent, firm grasp on reality...

here, glenn is commenting on yesterday's wapo story on a u.s. drone missile strike in pakistan...

[T]he word “militant” is being aggressively distorted by deceitful U.S. government propaganda that defines the term to mean: any “military-age males” whom we kill (the use of the phrase “suspected militants” in the body of the article suffers the same infirmity).

How is it possible to have any informed democratic debate over a policy about which the U.S. media relentlessly propagandizes this way? If drone strikes kill nobody other than “militants,” then very few people will even think about opposing them (and that’s independent of the fact that the word “militant” is a wildly ambiguous term — militant about what? — though it is clearly designed (when combined with “Pakistan”) to evoke images of those who attacked the World Trade Center). Debate-suppression is not just the effect but the intent of this propaganda: like all propaganda, it is designed to deceive the citizenry in order to compel acquiescence to government conduct.

what most people in the u.s. fail to realize is just how massively we are propagandized on a daily basis... it hits us from every direction, 24/7, from the ceaseless ads on tv for prescription drugs ("ask your doctor if it's right for you") to the critical importance of checking our credit scores to news stories obsessing on celebrities, the the all-pervasive focus on violence... then, besides the in-your-face kind of propaganda, there's the more subtle and insidious kind that simply fails to report on anything of substance or, if something of substance is being reported, omitting all relevant context thus ensuring that any real understanding is virtually impossible... i was lunching with a friend and colleague this week who, bless his heart, is one of the few who understands just how little we are told about what's really happening in the world... i probably wouldn't be so aware of it myself if i didn't spend so much time poring over multiple sources and trying to fit the pieces together... (whether that's healthy or not is for a later discussion...!)

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Glenn: To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined "militant" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone"

glenn comments on the latest revelation about the covert activities of our sociopathic leaders...

I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of “militant” is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father, even though nobody claims the teenager was anything but completely innocent: “Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen”).

This morning, the New York Times has a very lengthy and detailed article about President Obama’s counter-Terrorism policies based on interviews with “three dozen of his current and former advisers.” [...] The article explains that Obama’s rhetorical emphasis on avoiding civilian deaths “did not significantly change” the drone program, because Obama himself simply expanded the definition of a “militant” to ensure that it includes virtually everyone killed by his drone strikes. Just read this remarkable passage:

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.

This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.

But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.

“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”

For the moment, leave the ethical issues to the side that arise from viewing “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants”; that’s nothing less than sociopathic... [...] By “militant,” the Obama administration literally means nothing more than: any military-age male whom we kill, even when we know nothing else about them. They have no idea whether the person killed is really a militant: if they’re male and of a certain age they just call them one in order to whitewash their behavior and propagandize the citizenry (unless conclusive evidence somehow later emerges proving their innocence).

when, dear lord, will this nightmare end...?

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Meanwhile, what is now Obama's Afghanistan war continues to produce endless tragedy

i am sitting at my desk here in kabul, surrounded by my afghan colleagues, and i can't help but ponder how horrible they and i would feel if something like this happened to members of their family, committed at the hands of people working for my own country...

from al jazeera...

The US military has admitted that its troops killed four civilians in Afghanistan, including a child, not fighters as was earlier reported.

The US has also offered an apology for the deaths on Wednesday night and indicated that the family will receive support.

Brigadier-General Michael Ryan said in a statement late on Thursday: "We deeply regret the tragic loss of life in this precious family."

A 13-year-old boy who survived the night-time raid on his home told Al Jazeera that his mother, brother, uncle and another female family member were killed.

A woman who was nine months' pregnant was wounded and lost her baby.

at least the u.s. military has 'fessed up, altho' no words of sympathy or regret could possibly make a tragedy like this any easier to bear...

"Words alone cannot begin to express our regret and sympathy and we will ensure the surviving family members are properly cared for," Ryan said.

yeah... well... whatever...

check the al jazeera video... it'll break your heart...

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As painful and heartbreaking as it is, as a country, we simply MUST face the reality of what we're doing

Two-year-old Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of
his family's home in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City
in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, April 29, 2008. The child,
who later died in hospital, was in one of four homes
allegedly destroyed by U.S. missiles. More than two
dozen people were killed when Shiite militants ambushed
a U.S. patrol in Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district,
bringing the death toll in area on Tuesday to more than
30, a U.S. military spokesman and Iraqi officials said.
(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)



Ridh Hadi places his two-year old
nephew, Ali Hussein, into a coffin in
the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad,
Iraq on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. The child
died on Tuesday after U.S. forces struck
back at militia fighters with 200-pound
(90-kilogram) guided rockets that
devastated at least three buildings in the
densely packed district that serves as the
Baghdad base for the powerful Mahdi
Army militia.
(AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

helen thomas...

Some readers resented The Washington Post for publishing an Associated Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from the rubble of his home in Baghdad’s Sadr City “after a U.S. airstrike.”

Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital.

As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it showed the true horrors of this war.

Neither side is immune from the killing of Iraqi civilians. But Americans should be aware of their own responsibility for inflicting death and pain on the innocent.

damn right...

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Why they hate us...

meanwhile, in that country that sits right on the other side of iran from where i'm sitting now in afghanistan...

from yahoo news...


Ridh Hadi places his two-year old nephew,
Ali Hussein, into a coffin in the Shiite
stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq
on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. The child
died on Tuesday after U.S. forces struck
back at militia fighters with 200-pound
(90-kilogram) guided rockets that
devastated at least three buildings in the
densely packed district that serves as the
Baghdad base for the powerful Mahdi
Army militia.
(AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

from the sf chronicle...

The U.S. Army said they were militants. Sadr City residents said at least some were civilians, and photographs showed the dust-covered body of at least one child being pulled from a mountain of rubble after Tuesday's fighting.

Whatever the facts, at least 28 people were dead after the four-hour battle, the latest deadly showdown between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Shiite Muslim militiamen over recent weeks.

Based on the photographs, it appeared that at least one of the dead was a civilian. In its captions, the Associated Press identified the boy in the bloodied shorts being carried from the ruins of a house as 2-year-old Ali Hussein.

The brother-in-law of an Iraqi journalist who works with the Los Angeles Times also was reported killed. The victim recently had moved his family out of the neighborhood because of the fighting.

The destruction and death toll underscored the intensity of fighting in Sadr City, where U.S. forces are pursuing militants who often operate from the narrow alleyways and crowded residential sectors of the sprawling Shiite stronghold. Clashes have occurred there nearly every day since the end of March, when an Iraqi military crackdown on Shiite militias sparked an uprising by fighters loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

With many of Sadr City's main roads peppered with roadside bombs and its side streets too narrow for U.S. tanks or other heavy vehicles to navigate, U.S. forces often call in air strikes or use guided rockets to hit their targets.

Locals say civilians often are caught in the chaos.

the last thing in this world any human being wants to do is to lay a two year-old boy into a coffin... that it took place as a result of being bombed by your so-called "liberators" is painful beyond imagining...

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