One of the ugliest massacres committed by US troops in the entire Iraqi War is getting another look from Iraqi officials, following the WikiLeaks release of State Department cables showing the US soldiers handcuffed and executed children as young as five months of age, and ordered an air strike aimed at covering up their crime.
The coverup failed and the Tikrit Hospital confirmed that all the corpses were handcuffed and shot in the head. UN Inspector Philip Alston, quoted in the cables, supports the hospital’s claims.
At the time US officials declared everyone slain a “collaborator” and insisted that they followed the rules of engagement in the attack. Just months later, the US military determined that the killings amounted to “appropriate force.”
This is where many of these ugly stories end, but the WikiLeaks cables ensure that this is not the case this time, and that the truth actually had a shot at coming out to the public. Predictably slow to recognize when the jig is up, the Pentagon responded by insisting that the cable’s explicit descriptions of war crimes revealed “nothing new”
Just another mass murder, the press will concern itself with the latest hollywood drunk.
I wonder how long it will take Panetta to put his foot in his mouth IF asked by the FCM about this war crime? But I assume that the FCM have already been told to avoid the topic – after all, Wikileaks is a terrorist organization…
So much for the argument that America is a force for good in the world.
How do you say in Arabic, "Yankee, go home!" ?
They need to do alot more investigations but its a start to see the crimes being commited by the occuping force.American soldiers are killing themselfs because they hate what they are doing to innocent people in cluding cuffing children and shoting them in the back of the head mafia style but with a country backing them.
"…the Pentagon responded by insisting that the cable’s explicit descriptions of war crimes revealed 'nothing new'”. Yes, for the psychopaths that inhabit the Pentagon and the White House, killing civilians and infants is business as usual.
And that would be the reason why the USG wants Assange's ass as badly as they do. Shoot the messenger not the message should be the message of the Empire.