Your tax dollars at work
Thanks to WikiLeaks.org, a nonprofit organization funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists and others, Americans can watch what their tax dollars bought three years ago when Apache helicopters opened fire on a group of supposed insurgents, killing a Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.
WikilLeaks released authentic leaked video footage of the attack, which includes audio of the pilots as they mistake Noor-Eldeen’s camera for an AK-47 and open fire, then laugh about it.
“Look at those dead bastards,” one pilot says, adding, “Nice.”
As a wounded man crawls across the ground, the pilots talk about how they hope he will fire at them so they can shoot him again.
“All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” one of them says.
Then, when a van arrives to aid the wounded, the choppers open fire again, wounding two children inside.
“Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” one pilot says.
One of the pilots later chuckles when an American armored vehicle appears to run over a dead body.
David Schlesinger, the editor-inchief of Reuters, told the New York Times that the video offers “graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism.”
But it also offers graphic evidence of how sick and twisted the minds of men can become when they’ve been given the thumbs-up to kill. Even in times of war the taking of human life ought to be viewed as a horrible thing. To laugh about it is cruel and depraved and ought to be unworthy of any member of the U.S. military.
There’s no word as to whether the army has begun training pilots to tell the difference between cameras and automatic rifles.
To help fund WikiLeaks, go to www.wikileaks.org.
Bosley taps Brown, again
So the news came out this week that CU Board of Regents Chair Steve Bosley, a Republican, is seeking re-election to his statewide seat. Oh, and he’s convinced Hank Brown, former U.S. senator and former CU president, to chair his campaign.
That’s going to be a hard team to beat.
Both are very nice men to your face, and Bosley, like Brown, is a local pillar, having been president of the Bank of Boulder and founding that little jog we have in town on Memorial Day.
Among Bosley’s accomplishments, according to his news release, is his service “chairing the past two presidential searches for the university, which have resulted in the successful presidencies of Hank Brown and Bruce Benson.”
Hmm… Another “accomplishment” is that he “offered the resolution to fire Ward Churchill, the ethnic studies professor whose controversial statements about 9/11 victims caused a national firestorm.”
Yeah, we can’t have any controversial statements in a university environment. Those environments should be highly controlled by elected politicians, so that any attempt at exercising one’s freespeech rights to see what floats in a marketplace of ideas is thoroughly quashed.
We feel lucky that we’ve had such dedicated guardians like Brown and Bosley to keep us from hearing any more of that stuff we don’t like.
Reminds us of his fellow Republican regent, Tom Lucero, who also attempted to take credit for the firing of Churchill as a way to boost his Congressional campaign in the 4th District.
Wait, we thought that the firing of Churchill wasn’t political, that it was just about his research misconduct.
Right? Currently, the Board of Regents has five Republicans and four Democrats. The other two seats opening up in this fall’s election are expected to stay with the party that currently holds them. Is there a Democrat willing to challenge Bosley at the statewide level to tip the political balance of the board to blue for the first time in many moons?
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
