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Rollingstone.com: The Kill Team, How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses – and how their officers failed to stop them.

killerbee99

By killerbee99
in The Tailgate

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killerbee99

killerbee99

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Now the pics in this article are pretty graphic, but it is a very disturbing story, following up from last year arrests of all these guys

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327

Early last year, after six hard

months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji. Among the men of Bravo Company, the notion of killing an Afghan civilian had

been the subject of countless conversations, during lunchtime chats and late-night bull sessions. For weeks, they had weighed the ethics of bagging "savages" and debated the probability of getting caught. Some of them agonized over the idea; others were gung-ho from the start. But not long after the New Year, as winter descended on the arid plains of Kandahar Province, they agreed to stop talking and actually pull the trigger.

Bravo Company had been stationed in the area since summer, struggling, with little success, to root out the Taliban and establish an American presence in one of the most violent and lawless regions of the country. On the morning of January 15th, the company's 3rd Platoon – part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based out of Tacoma, Washington – left the mini-metropolis of tents and trailers at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in a convoy of armored Stryker troop carriers. The massive, eight-wheeled trucks surged across wide, vacant stretches of desert, until they came to La Mohammad Kalay, an isolated farming village tucked away behind a few poppy fields.

To provide perimeter security, the soldiers parked the Strykers at the outskirts of the settlement, which was nothing more than a warren of mud-and-straw compounds. Then they set out on foot. Local villagers were suspected of supporting the Taliban, providing a safe haven for strikes against U.S. troops. But as the soldiers of 3rd Platoon walked through the alleys of La Mohammad Kalay, they saw no armed fighters, no evidence of enemy positions. Instead, they were greeted by a frustratingly familiar sight: destitute Afghan farmers living without electricity or running water; bearded men with poor teeth in tattered traditional clothes; young kids eager for candy and money. It was impossible to tell which, if any, of the villagers were sympathetic to the Taliban. The insurgents, for their part, preferred to stay hidden from American troops, striking from a distance with IEDs.

While the officers of 3rd Platoon peeled off to talk to a village elder inside a compound, two soldiers walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. There, in a nearby poppy field, they began looking for someone to kill. "The general consensus was, if we are going to do something that ****ing crazy, no one wanted anybody around to witness it," one of the men later told Army investigators.

The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution.

He was a smooth-faced kid, about 15 years old. Not much younger than they were: Morlock was 21, Holmes was 19. His name, they would later learn, was Gul Mudin, a common name in Afghanistan. He was wearing a little cap and a Western-style green jacket. He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. "He was not a threat," Morlock later confessed.

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G.A.C.O.L.B.

G.A.C.O.L.B.

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I know it's crazy...just wandering wtf my fellow soldiers were thinking

I might some real ****ed up individuals in the Army. But I always thought the good outweighed the bad and kept them under wraps. Guess that failed here? I don't know. This is such a up messed up story. On so many levels.

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Destino

Destino

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Sounds like a sociopath ran into some other sociopaths and/or some weak needy personalities that could be controlled. The disturbing part to me was that other knew about it and didn't seem to do anything. The fact that bad people exist in just about every large group, and at time work in groups, is no surprise and doesn't speak ill of the military. That is unavoidable. The silence and inaction that would have stopped this sooner is what needs attention.

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thebluefood

thebluefood

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It's like...it's like some of these people are actually double agents, working for our enemies, and doing this so we'll look bad.

That would be an all too convenient excuse, though. I am truly disgusted. I know some of our soldiers have been responsible for atrocities; but seeing it put right in front of you just really smacks you across the face. We're supposed to be fighting AGAINST things like this. I maybe naive for saying this, but we're supposed to be the knights in shining armor. Then you read this and you feel completely disillusioned.

These guys deserve nothing less than 21 gun salute (in their direction) .

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LeesburgSkinFan

LeesburgSkinFan

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Given the average readership of Rolling Stone it will do nothing more than strengthen the already entrenched anti-military view of it's readership. It will further the perception that the entire military is like these idiots. It makes those in a tactical environment have to work that much harder to reassure the ANSF and the locals they work with that they aren't like that. Really piss poor timing...but intentionally done by not only Rolling Stone but Der Spiegel in when they released this stuff. And lets not mention the illegally acquired photos and video that are supposed to be looked up as evidence in an ongoing series of murder trials...so much for journalistic integrity there...

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Madison Redskin

Madison Redskin

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This reminds me of that story that came out of Iraq a few years ago in which a few soldiers broke into a home, raped a Iraqi child, and killed her entire family. Even if 95% of our military men and women are brave and honorable, it just takes a few ****s to make Iraqis and Afghans hate Americans. If the allegations are true, I think we should hand the soldiers over to the Afghans for trial and punishment. Seriously.

---------- Post added March-29th-2011 at 05:58 AM ----------

Given the average readership of Rolling Stone it will do nothing more than strengthen the already entrenched anti-military view of it's readership. It will further the perception that the entire military is like these idiots. It makes those in a tactical environment have to work that much harder to reassure the ANSF and the locals they work with that they aren't like that. Really piss poor timing...but intentionally done by not only Rolling Stone but Der Spiegel in when they released this stuff. And lets not mention the illegally acquired photos and video that are supposed to be looked up as evidence in an ongoing series of murder trials...so much for journalistic integrity there...

Wait, RS and DS are to blame for this? They are news outlets and this story is newsworthy. US soldiers murdered several Afghan civilians (including at least one 15 year old boy) and mutilated their corpses.

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Burgold

Burgold

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Given the average readership of Rolling Stone it will do nothing more than strengthen the already entrenched anti-military view of it's readership. It will further the perception that the entire military is like these idiots. It makes those in a tactical environment have to work that much harder to reassure the ANSF and the locals they work with that they aren't like that. Really piss poor timing...but intentionally done by not only Rolling Stone but Der Spiegel in when they released this stuff. And lets not mention the illegally acquired photos and video that are supposed to be looked up as evidence in an ongoing series of murder trials...so much for journalistic integrity there...

You're guilty of the same overblown generalization you are accusing the readers of RS of. In this, blame the men who committed the attrocity. Until this point in the thread there was an appropriate degree of condemnation from all sides about how unacceptible and intolerable these actions are/were. Deflection isn't necessary. Shooting the messenger isn't necessary.

I think almost everyone knows and agrees that this is not the norm for our military and it is not approved. That's why these guys were stopped. When I volunteered in military hospitals I was constantly amazed by the degree of dedication, seriousness, and maturity of the young men and women I worked with. They would denounce this... not the media.

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TD_washingtonredskins

TD_washingtonredskins

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Basically we train kids to be killers, turn them into heavily armed ruthless murderers.

And when some inevitably go off the deep end, we act all shocked.

It's a natural by product of having soldiers.

~Bang

I have to somewhat disagree. There is nothing natural about this. Nothing. I'm sure we "train kids to be killers" in the appropriate scenarios.

---------- Post added March-29th-2011 at 09:20 AM ----------

I don't know how this will be received by some of you, but I'd like to see everyone who is found guilty of these atrocities either locked up or put to death (whatever the letter-of-the-law punishment is). This is gross and despicable.

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JimboDaMan

JimboDaMan

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Given the average readership of Rolling Stone it will do nothing more than strengthen the already entrenched anti-military view of it's readership. It will further the perception that the entire military is like these idiots. It makes those in a tactical environment have to work that much harder to reassure the ANSF and the locals they work with that they aren't like that. Really piss poor timing...but intentionally done by not only Rolling Stone but Der Spiegel in when they released this stuff. And lets not mention the illegally acquired photos and video that are supposed to be looked up as evidence in an ongoing series of murder trials...so much for journalistic integrity there...
Yeah, let's not mention that. How any American can read that and come away voicing complaints not that these scum are committing the worst possible crimes and staining our military and our country with their filth, but that the magazines weren't supposed to print some of the photos. Are you thinking that reporting these crimes is a bigger problem than the crimes themselves? This attitude is well down the path that allows these things to happen by deliberately overlooking them.
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