Bush's the ringleader in Wild West horror

[Blackleaf]

BUSH'S THE RINGLEADER IN WILD WEST HORROR

Brian Reade
08/02/2007

"WE'RE IN JAIL, DUDE... AAAAAAAAGH... GODAMMIT... F***... GOD, F***ING S**T... THIS SUCKS."

WORDS used by US Air Force pilots after they had attacked L/Cpl Matty Hull's marked convoy, either through poor training, woeful judgment, or a gungho desire to play with their shoot 'em up joy-sticks.

Words which show a lamentable lack of professionalism and maturity.

Words which will surely make future generations ask why British servicemen were forced to fight America's war for oil alongside the juvenile cast of the cartoon show South Park?

Well, did those American pilots sound any different from Cartman and Kenny?

Didn't the Pentagon basically slap the same disclaimer on footage of L/Cpl Hull's death that appears at the start of every South Park episode: "The following programme contains coarse language and, due to its contents, should not be viewed by anyone."?

And how many times over the years, when "friendly fire" has taken out their own, must air traffic controllers have yelled: "Oh, my God, they killed Kenny... Bastards."

There is nothing funny about Matty Hull's tragic murder but my, how the Yanks have added a comic slant.

According to US Central Command, it regrets this tape going public in case "it gives the enemy a glimpse of our capability".

Capability? To what? Kill for the sake of killing. A spokesman for Matty Hull's Household Cavalry colleagues says that they are glad this tape has come to light, because it shows "the Americans are cowboys".

And the facts at the time of his death back up the slur. In 2003 alone, American friendly fire claimed 16 British servicemen, five American and an ITV camera crew. A bus full of Syrian workers was blown up, and 33 Kurds were murdered in their village. And it was nothing new. During the first Gulf War, 24 per cent of American deaths were caused by their own guns.

Who can forget their slaughter of the Afghan wedding party, or the 64 Albanian refugees killed on tractors as they fled Kosovo?

That's before we count the thousands of Iraqis wiped out by the Washington doctrine of Minimum Lethal Force. A phrase as bizarrely contradictory as healthy corpses. Or friendly fire.

But maybe we should ask the question: what came first, the cowboys or the cowboy state? Look at the Commander-In- Chief, who ordered troops into battle with no legal reason and no clear objectives other than to kill for revenge in some mythical war on terror.

Remember when George Bush said that al-Qaeda members were wanted dead or alive and compared his battle with Osama bin Laden to a Wild West shoot-out?

How, when he announced on TV that he had ordered the carpet bombing of Iraq, he was caught off-mic, saying: "Ah feel good." Remember how he greets his faithful, trigger-happy pardner-in-crime with the words: "Yo, Blair!"

I can just imagine Bush phoning up Downing Street after another deadly calamity and saying: "Yo, Blair... God f***ing s**t... This sucks."

And I can only pray that, one day, Yo Blair yells back: "We're in jail, dude... aaaaaaaagh."


mirror.co.uk

 

[hermanntrude]

that's nuts. If i killed a person i think i'd swear about it too.

 

[CDNBear]

They call it war for a reason, if it was a picnic, that's what they'ld call it. That is not an excuse for the errors, but rather the reason. Emotions and senses running on uppers, downers and all the while watching for threats.

I lost a friend in Afghanistan to the Americans. It hurt, but its still war.

 

[hermanntrude]

do you think they should have been more professional in their words when they realised? I think they're entitled to a loss of verbal control after realising a collosal ballsup like that. As you said they were already under major stress, especially since they thought what they were striking at was tanks with missile launchers, they must have been first scared for their lives, then under the realisation they had killed enemies (still must feel bad) and then finally under the realisation they had killed allies. I'd lose my mind, i think.

 

[CDNBear]

do you think they should have been more professional in their words when they realised? I think they're entitled to a loss of verbal control after realising a collosal ballsup like that. As you said they were already under major stress, especially since they thought what they were striking at was tanks with missile launchers, they must have been first scared for their lives, then under the realisation they had killed enemies (still must feel bad) and then finally under the realisation they had killed allies. I'd lose my mind, i think.

Yep, I agree. War is hell, shyte happens in the heat of it, hell it even happens in the cool of it.

In general, shyte happens!

The only part I take issue with in the commentary as posted here, in the OP, is...
"WE'RE IN JAIL, DUDE... AAAAAAAAGH"

"oh f*ck, what have I done"-"oh f*ck I'm going to hell", and so on, would have denoted a sence of personal guilt, not an expression of having screwed oneself.

 

[Tonington]

It's unfortunate, losses will happen, and as has been said in other threads the more troops involved, the higher the frequency of these events. Human error can't be removed. Theres protocol in place to minimize this kinda stuff, but as Bear said
"shyte happens"

It doesn't help matters to villainize the poor fellas judgement. The verbal slip of the tongue is completely understandable, hell I'd have said and done the same I'm sure.

 

[hermanntrude]

bear do you think this kind of thing can be cut down upon with better/longer training?

 

[thomaska]

Somehow, I get the feeling that this keeps being brought up by the OP, not because of an overwhelming sense of genuine sorrow for the British soldiers, but more of a way to stick it to the U.S. military.

By the way, I've been searching all morning for proof that the British have never killed anyone in a friendly fire accident. Haven't found it yet.

 

[CDNBear]

bear do you think this kind of thing can be cut down upon with better/longer training?

Not likely, it is a cost of war, that with a little more care, could be avoided, but I highly doubt, with the extreme demands placed on the Pilots of modern aircraft, that we will see any real change in the way they function, until someone learns to hardwire their programming.

Somehow, I get the feeling that this keeps being brought up by the OP, not because of an overwhelming sense of genuine sorrow for the British soldiers, but more of a way to stick it to the U.S. military.

By the way, I've been searching all morning for proof that the British have never killed anyone in a friendly fire accident. Haven't found it yet.

I didn't search for their friendly fire casualty numbers, but I doubt that they are any higher then the casualties they inflicted on Canadians, as we were used as cannon fodder...

http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/archives/200312/0151.html

Selective outrage
Hypocracy

Half dozen of one, six of the other.

 

[Vicious]

From Today's National Post - the bolding is mine:

"During the first week of the Iraq invasion in March, 2003, a pair of American A-1 0 Thunderbolts strafed a British truck convoy. A British soldier, Lance-Corporal Matty Hull, was killed and four others wounded. For four years, the U.S. military refused to release the "top secret" cockpit video of the incident. This week, however, London's Sun newspaper obtained a leaked copy. It immediately became Britain's biggest story, with pundits fulminating that the U.S. pilots were "cowboys" and "imbeciles" who "whooped with delight."
But transcript of the two pilots' conversations with one another, and with air-cover controllers, tell a different tale.
Five times before they fire on the British trucks, the pair ask whether or not there are "friendlies" in the area. All five times, they are told there are none; and that, indeed, "intel" (intelligence reports) suggest the presence of Iraqi trucks in the target zone. Finally, one of the two pilots describes the trucks and their location to a ground observer, then asks directly "Are those [the Iraqi] targets?" To which the observer -- a U.S. marine travelling with a British unit -- replies "That's affirm."javascript:void window.open('/compo...r=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=no')

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The pilots take turns dipping their wings over the targets to see whether they can identify them as friend or foe. They even ask air cover controllers to have a nearby artillery unit fire a shell at the column in question to see whether that provokes a telling response from allied units. But before a shell can be fired, one of the trucks seems to make a break for a nearby village, so the lead pilot decides to attack.
It is then that his wingman shouts "Get him, get him," into his radio; not - as British outlets have suggested - as part of some "blood lust," but rather to prevent an assumed enemy unit from escaping.
This was just eight days into the Iraq war, and the American pilots were flying into the battle at its most confused state. Nearly 200,000 coalition troops and almost 400,000 Iraqi soldiers were moving every which way in southern Iraq.
On the surface, this tragic accident is reminiscent of the 2002 attack on Canadian soldiers near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in which an incompetent American pilot, Harry Schmidt, dropped a 500- lb. bomb on a night-time training exercise, killing four and wounding eight others.
But the two tragedies are very different. Colonel Schmidt was repeatedly told to "stand b y," "hold fire," and not attack until the group on the ground could be identified. Although his plane was safe, high above the "streaks" of weapons he said he saw below, he bombed the Canadians anyway, in contravention of a direct order. To this day, Col. Schmidt has never admitted culpability.
The Americans who killed LCpl. Hull, by contrast, immediately broke off their attack when told of the mistake and instantly felt sick about what they'd done.
The Americans should cooperate with the inquest into LCpl. Hull's death, something they have failed to do adequately thus far. But the attack that came to light this week should properly be regarded as a tragic accident, not as a manifestation of reckless American bravado."