As the news breaks of an image of U.S. Marines urinating on corpses I took a moment to head over to one of the sites run by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. As of yet, no news flash regarding this incident is up for view. The site has archives and active up-to-date news releases.
How many remember when the Boston Globe ran fake photos of our soldiers in Iraq raping women? That was back in May of 1994. Dummies. I received the same (and possibly expanded) packet of disinformation earlier. And it tracked back to a website in Tunisia to free Saddam Hussein. An editor at Dallas Morning News took it in hand to do the tracking for me. In my packet, were pictures of Iraqi women being sodomized, an image of a woman kneeling in front of a man with an open military trench style coat and a leashed German shepherd at his side, etc. I also received the image of our Navy sailors standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier in their white uniforms. From the sky, the formation spelled "F-ck Iraq". Uh huh. We don't pull off crap like that.
Another nice little packet of disinformation sent my way showed "buried U.S. soldiers" to hide the true number of our casualties. One partially excavated "casualty" looked perfectly posed with his hand conveniently clutching an empty bottle of booze. We also don't pull that kind of crap. At some point in time, Aunt Susie is going to figure out that her favorite nephew never came home from the war.
If the images prove to be true they do not reflect our training nor our military culture and leanings. The truth is out there. And actions will follow an investigation which seeks out the truth of the matter. That being said, it is hoped that the scene is one of staged propaganda and not a lapse of judgment. If it is the latter, we discipline our own.
Tammy Swofford
|