Michael Scherer does an excellent job of dissecting toture advocate Mark Thiessenattack on Wikileaks. Scherer looks back at history, namely the release of the Pentagon Papers that helped turn the war. The Pentagon Papers showed that more than one president deliberately mislead the country about the war in Vietnam and almost 70,000 US troops died as a result.

Supreme Court’s opinion in New York Times Co. v. United States, the so-called Pentagon Papers case from 1971.

Concurring in that case, Justice Potter Stewart observed, “In the absence of governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the area of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry — in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government.. . . . Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people.”

The article also quotes from Justices Hugo Black and William Brennan

[W]e are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment’s emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of “national security.” The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to “make” a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law. To find that the President has “inherent power” to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make “secure.” No one can read the history of the adoption of the First Amendment without being convinced beyond any doubt that it was injunctions like those sought here that Madison and his collaborators intended to outlaw in this Nation for all time. The word “security” is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic.

A government that lies to its people betrays everything a soldier hopes to be fighting for, everything. Long live Wikileaks and all independent media because without it we have no democracy at all.

As the mother of an Iraq combat veteran these video confirmations of what many know to be a common occurrence in any war zone is painful to watch and painful to write about. Yet, it is critically important that we as a nation fully understand what is we are asking our youth to do and what we are asking them to become. The WikiLeaks video at the bottom was released Monday and I preferred to wait for calmer and more thoughtful heads to evaluate it because I may not be as objective as I would like but it is imperative we get past the DOD suppression of these events and evaluate the rules of engagement.

When you send people into horrible situations they will often do horrible things. When they come home they have to live with it. There are some well written pieces on this shocking video but the important thing to know is it is not uncommon, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in any war zone. The Pentagon goes to great lengths to hide this from the public. Thankfully, Pentagon staff and others working for the Department of Defense leaked this video to provide the truth to America.

Democracy Now has some exclusive interview footage taken the day after the massacre.

My son, John, who served two tours in Iraq saw the first few moments of this video and believed the young Reuters photographer’s camera lens was an RPG. Nevertheless, the order to fire was given before the twenty two year old photographer took up his camera and people were not firing at anyone as originally reported by the Pentagon and there were no troops beyond the helicopter gunship nearby to fire on anyway. This is painful viewing but it should be watched.

The young soldiers involved in this massacre will have to live with this the rest of their lives, just as my son is living with his experiences.

In the seven years since my son first left for war as part of the initial invasion of Iraq, I have found that my stomach for detail has greatly diminished. In the beginning, I wanted to know everything, understand everything, know what it was to be a warrior, know the sound of mortars and strong metallic scent of blood and the stench of burning bodies. Knowing these things, I believed, were important so that I could help my son, John, who after a second tour in Iraq is permanently disabled suffering from debilitating PTSD and TBI.

John wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t share much of what happened except occasionally almost by accident. As the war has worn on I find I can’t bare to go to Icasualties.org anymore. The painful individual stories of the soldiers and Marines I have met are too hard for me to take now. Believe me I still care but the motivation previously induced by the senseless suffering of the kids we send to war now just hurts too much that accomplishing anything is almost impossible. for now anyway, I won’t be watching the documentaries ‘Taxi to the Dark Side’, or ‘Body of War’, they are just too painful and I will not go to see The Hurt Locker, and at least one Marine blinded in Iraq feels the same way.

“The Hurt Locker” and all the other movies I mentioned, whether they are good or bad as entertainment, are still war movies and war movies glorify the acts of violence that I described above. How do you feel about that? Would you bring your children out to the battlefield to witness it live and in person? There is no happy ending. Kelly does not get the gold, Stryker does not make it to the top of Mount Suribachi and 8-Ball gets cut down by a sniper. Please remember that when you watch a war movie you are watching stories about young Americans who went far from home and risked their lives; some of them died there with only their brothers in arms to witness. Hollywood is now taking our money by walking on their graves.

Maybe that’s extreme. Of course I understand why people watch war movies. I watch them, too. But I have seen my friends die and most of the movies just bring up very painful memories.

Apparently, more than one veteran is unhappy with The Hurt Locker – from the Atlantic

In his self-published book, Stolen Valor, Vietnam veteran B.G. Burkett exposes scores of men who pass themselves off as war heroes. He digs through stacks of military personnel records and outs city councilmen, prominent businessmen and even presidents of veterans groups as frauds. Some had served in the military and finagled paperwork that bumped them up several ranks and turned them into battlefield legends. Purple Hearts, Silver Stars, Medals of Honor. Others hadn’t spent a day in uniform but conjured equally dramatic tales of daring and sacrifice. The imposters, he says, had become some of the most vocal and visible veterans. They influenced the public’s perception of war and even guided legislative agendas, a disservice to those who did the fighting and the bleeding.

How could they get away with that? Moral authority. So few Americans have actually walked and sweated on battlefields that they defer to those who say they have, and assume those men and women speak the truth.

This also explains why The Hurt Locker is up for a Best Picture Oscar. And why it shouldn’t win.

The US military has loosened regulations, issuing “moral waivers” allowing convicted criminal to join up just as they did during Vietnam. GIs suffering from PTSD and TBI are being called back into combat for third and fourth tours to make up for the 99% of the US that do not care to enlist. Read my essay about drafting war supporters here

Nevertheless, despite Army regulations that prohibit soldiers from participating in racist groups the military have hit a new low as to meeting their recruitment needs and are accepting white supremacists.

Following an investigation of white supremacist groups, a 2008 FBI report declared: “Military experience — ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces — is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement.” In white supremacist incidents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI identified 203 veterans. Most of them were associated with the National Alliance and the National Socialist Movement, which promote anti-Semitism and the overthrow of the U.S. government, and assorted skinhead groups.

Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its numbers don’t include the many extremist soldiers who have managed to stay off the radar. But its report does pinpoint why the white supremacist movements seek to recruit veterans — they “may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intelligence or apply specialized training in weapons, tactics, and organizational skills to benefit the extremist movement.”

In fact, since the movement’s inception, its leaders have encouraged members to enlist in the U.S. military as a way to receive state-of-the-art combat training, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, in preparation for a domestic race war. The concept of a race war is central to extremist groups, whose adherents imagine an eruption of violence that pits races against each other and the government.

Given the military are not focused on winning hearts and minds or nation building it may seem inconsequential to have extremists of this type in the military unless, of course, the guy backing you up or giving you orders is black or Jewish or Hispanic, or heaven forbid, Gay! and the supremacist is depending upon them to survive.

It is sad that people like this exist. It is criminal that people like this should be allowed into the military and taught how to use weapons. It is sickening that people like this live in Coos County.

Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Stephen tackles Don’t ask, don’t tell in front of thousands of American GIs in Baghdad, Iraq. He shows off his new haircut too.

Stephen is thrilled to bring his show to Iraq, and John McCain has a word of advice for the troops.

Dick Cheney doesn’t recall Richard Clarke warning the White House of an imminent terrorist attack months before 9/11, but he hasn’t read his book.