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Articles : "War on Terror"Spin of the Week
While embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan, Australian journalist Stephen Dupont filmed “U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of the suspected Taliban fighters” near Kandahar. Afterwards, members of a U.S. Army psychological operations unit “read taunting messages about the act over a loudspeaker to the nearby village,” which “was believed to be harboring Taliban soldiers,” Dupont reported. One message called the Taliban “cowardly dogs,” adding, “you allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned.” The goal was “to incite that much anger from the Taliban so the Taliban could attack them. ... That’s the only way they can find them,” said Dupont. U.S. embassies have been instructed “to make clear that what people might see on the videotape is not reflective of the actions of the vast majority of our U.S. military. ... They are not reflective of our values,” reports O’Dwyer’s. U.S. PR czar Karen Hughes, who is visiting Indonesia, is “fully prepared to deal with this issue,” said a State Department spokesperson.
Source: The Independent (UK), October 20, 2005
Read the transcript of the SBS (Australia) program here.
Spin of the Week comes courtesy of PR Watch, a project of the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...
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Posted by anthony on Friday, October 22nd 2004
I would have to say that, imho, this are the tactics of an agressor, and not those of a peace-creating/keeping force!
I loath the current tactics US armed forces are using!
These are the same tactics that Hollywood always show us cinema-lovers, the ‘enemies’ uses! How are these tactics EVER going to make resistance disappear? How is this tactics EVER going to promote peace? By genocide?
from a thread in the Open Forum…
“Attention Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs,” one message reportedly said. “You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be.“
How stupid do they think their enemy is?
Peace.The full report by John Martinkus and Stephen Dupont can be viewed at http://www.journeyman.tv/download.php?id=10977. I recommend it.
now this is a good piece of military strategy. desecrate the dead…broadcast insults to the populace…then hope for an attack…i’m sure the fires from those bodies reflects in the eyes of brand new insurgency recruits. only in the bush administration do two wrongs make a right.