The New Yorker: "The “Kill Team” Photographs"

[Xicano]

It’s the smile. In photographs released by the German weekly Der Spiegel, an American soldier is looking directly at the camera with a wide grin. His hand is on the body of an Afghan whom he and his fellow soldiers appear to have just killed, allegedly for sport. In a sense, we’ve seen that smile before: on the faces of the American men and women who piled naked Iraqi prisoners on top of each other, eight years ago, and posed for photographs and videos at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.

It’s also the cameras. Der Spiegel reported this week that it had obtained four thousand photographs and videos taken by American soldiers who referred to themselves as a “kill team.” (Der Spiegel chose to publish only three of the photographs.) The images are in the hands of military prosecutors. Five soldiers, including Jeremy Morlock, the smiling man in the picture, who is twenty-two years old, are awaiting courts-martial for the murder of three Afghan civilians; seven other soldiers had lesser, related charges filed against them, including drug use. On Tuesday, Morlock’s lawyer said that he would plead guilty.



warning graphic photographs at link

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/the-kill-team-photographs.html#ixzz1HQK0mGav

[Poll_Blind]

1. Here is a link to one of the other pictures. Note what appear to be bindings on...

...one of the prisoners. The following picture is "graphic" but it is by no means anything more graphic than you've seen before. No gore, etc, just two dead guys, apparently bound at the wrist in some fashion before being killed (presumably together), with the deceased on the left appearing also to have some kind of binding around feet. HERE is that image.

Looks execution style.

PB

[gratuitous]

2. Photos notably missing from all the slick recruiting ads

I wonder what sort of justice might be meted out to our star-spangled fightin' men and women were they to be tried by the countrymen of their victims rather than by their comrades in arms?

[Anakin Skywalker]

3. .

[Kablooie]

4. Here we go again. Maybe this is who America really is beneath the surface..

[Bonobo]

5. Not "Kill Team". Those are US Army personnel and what they did was

probably no surprise and no shock to their fellow soldiers.

Wake up, the coffee is burning.

[xchrom]

6. recommend

[L0oniX]

7. Would you want to be friends with this guy when he comes back here?