U.S. Troops Theatrically ‘Slaying’ Afghan Civilians

Monday, the first of 12 soldiers charged with murder of civilians faced military tribunal.

The U.S. soldiers to face military tribunals for killing Afghan civilians didn’t only slaughter the people, according to the charges against them, but kept trophies ranging from photographs to body parts.

Spencer Ackerman at Wired added: “And if the Army gets its way, that gruesome evidence won’t be public.”

Reuters reported today (via The New York Times):

Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 22, from Wasilla, Alaska, is charged with premeditated murder in the deaths of three Afghan civilians, assaulting a fellow soldier and “wrongfully photographing and possessing visual images of human casualties.”

The case of Morlock and his co-defendants could become the grimmest investigation of alleged atrocities by U.S. military personnel during almost nine years of war in Afghanistan.

Reports of grisly photos of Afghan bodies being posed for photos by American troops could be among the more inflammatory revelations to emerge from the case, echoing worldwide outrage stirred by pictures of nude Iraqi prisoners of war taken by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The photos referred to in the charging documents “have not been released … as yet to the public,” Army spokeswoman Major Kathleen Turner told Reuters Sunday.

The troops from the 5th Stryker Brigade based in Washington state deployed to Kandahar province a year ago, and the murders occurred between January and March, according to charges by army prosecutors made public this month.

In two of the slayings, fragmentary grenades were thrown at the victims and they were shot, according to charging documents. The third victim also was shot.

Morlock was the first of five soldiers initially charged in June with the murders. Seven others have been charged since then with various other crimes stemming from the investigation, including conspiracy to cover up the slayings.

Four of the soldiers have been charged with keeping body parts, including finger bones, a skull, leg bones and a human tooth.

The sickness isn’t the post-traumatic stress disorder upon returning to everyday life, but the programming of the U.S. military of human beings to dehumanize themselves to further dehumanize others.

Case and point: if the public heard of soldiers treating dogs and cats this way, they’d actually be outraged.