'Kill team' soldier in video confession

'Kill team' soldier in video confession

www.abc.net.au

In what is being described as one of the worst crime cases out of Afghanistan, five US soldiers have been accused of the premeditated murder of three randomly selected civilians.

The five soldiers, who were stationed in the country's south, are accused of forming their own "kill team".

Prosecutors say the soldiers kept body parts of their victims and three of the accused men have confessed.

In a video, one of the accused - Corporal Jeremy Morlock - tells investigators his sergeant rando

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Hey guys ,hope you are all well guys.I found this story shocking myself. It seems that there has being soldiers that have being killing innocent Afgans and not onlt that they have being cutting off body parts as soveneirs.
A soldier told his mother over facebook,she called many people[senators and the like] but nothing could be done for him.
Now it seems this kid was ordered to fire on someone and kill them,he has being charged with murder now!!
Nice propaganda at the end "blame it on the hash" even though it makes them calm and relaxed. "#ing guys"


www.abc.net.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

I hope the kid is alright and gets out without doing 20 years and the like.I bet he was forced to kill a Afgani when his mother called up and complained about it all.The crazy leader wanted him to show his loyality.
The poor afganis getting pluged for nothing
utter crap of the highest order

Great post. Yes I recall reading about some soldiers cutting off fingers as "trophies". I have also seen videos of innocents getting killed. I wonder what goes on in "boot" camp. How do they turn all these people into sociopaths?

"War is not the answer, only love can conquer hate"

Originally posted by Ignorance_Defier
Great post. Yes I recall reading about some soldiers cutting off fingers as "trophies". I have also seen videos of innocents getting killed. I wonder what goes on in "boot" camp. How do they turn all these people into sociopaths?

"War is not the answer, only love can conquer hate"

Hello Ignorance-Defier,thank you for your positive words buddy ,i have also seen a few of the videos you talk about,they are shocking!! did you see the helicopter fire on the van of people that stopped to help injured people in iraq??? It was a very sad bit of footage
I have also wondered about how they become sociopaths so easy by look of it,it really does boggle the mind.
Your so right,love is the way and for everybody to know all this war is just divide and conquer.

Originally posted by Ignorance_Defier
I have also seen videos of innocents getting killed. I wonder what goes on in "boot" camp. How do they turn all these people into sociopaths?

Boot camp is about conditioning people into becoming effective soldiers. Drill Sergeants are one of the main conditioning tools. They are specially selected for their potential as a role model and imitation-factor, being a decorated veteran for example, it’s heavily implied if not stated outright that “this is a soldier, be like him.”

It's funny that you should say that they're “turning people into sociopaths”, that's exactly how a Drill Sergeant is meant to act. The reason for their excessive aggression and nastiness is to both to encourage aggressiveness in recruits through imitation and to inoculate recruits against the fact that human beings can be horrible creatures. Basically, people who haven’t experienced “evil” for want of a better word tend to freeze up with fear and become compliant when faced with it (Jews during the Holocaust are an example of this).

Under extreme stress you will act how you are conditioned to act, boot camp must condition soldiers to react reflexively/instinctively in the right fashion in a battlefield situation. There is a natural resistance to killing your own species which must be gradually eroded during boot camp. Shooting on a range not only teaches soldiers to shoot well but to enjoy killing the enemy as well as dehumanizing a potential enemy. Pop-up silhouettes fall down as a “reward” when hit and additional rewards may be given for soldiers who shoot well. The more experienced the soldier, the more realistic-looking targets they are given. There’s other stuff but it's less relevant to your question.

Originally posted by Soshh

Originally posted by Ignorance_Defier
I have also seen videos of innocents getting killed. I wonder what goes on in "boot" camp. How do they turn all these people into sociopaths?

Boot camp is about conditioning people into becoming effective soldiers. Drill Sergeants are one of the main conditioning tools. They are specially selected for their potential as a role model and imitation-factor, being a decorated veteran for example, it’s heavily implied if not stated outright that “this is a soldier, be like him.”

It's funny that you should say that they're “turning people into sociopaths”, that's exactly how a Drill Sergeant is meant to act. The reason for their excessive aggression and nastiness is to both to encourage aggressiveness in recruits through imitation and to inoculate recruits against the fact that human beings can be horrible creatures. Basically, people who haven’t experienced “evil” for want of a better word tend to freeze up with fear and become compliant when faced with it (Jews during the Holocaust are an example of this).

Under extreme stress you will act how you are conditioned to act, boot camp must condition soldiers to react reflexively/instinctively in the right fashion in a battlefield situation. There is a natural resistance to killing your own species which must be gradually eroded during boot camp. Shooting on a range not only teaches soldiers to shoot well but to enjoy killing the enemy as well as dehumanizing a potential enemy. Pop-up silhouettes fall down as a “reward” when hit and additional rewards may be given for soldiers who shoot well. The more experienced the soldier, the more realistic-looking targets they are given. There’s other stuff but it's less relevant to your question.

edit on 28-9-2010 by Soshh because: (no reason given)

Thanks for the reply buddy ,you make some very good points,the one about people freezing up in difficult situations is spot on,only experience can stop this and you often hear soldiers say "i cant wait to just get out there" talking about going to war.They get so hyped upped in training they cant wait to get out and shoot so called bad guys.I feel bad for the poor civilans that got murdered for nothing at all.
Its amazing how cruel man can be.

This is of course devastating news, and highly polarising of course. There will be those who will support the accused parties, out of misplaced loyalty and patriotism. While loyalty and patriotism are virtues which many could learn alot by upholding, it is important to focus those attributes on those who are deserving of them, and wanton murder cannot be supported legitimately.
The men accused of this crime, stand as such because they have crossed a line which should never need to be pointed out to reasonable men. Regardless of what happens to a person in thier lives, if they consider this behaviour acceptable, tolerable, or even as an understandable reaction to a bad situation, then they are nothing more than a disease, no matter how they arrive at that mental standpoint . The very second you allow your moral fibre to decay to the point of anarchy and devotion to mayhem, you become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
On the part of the instigator/instigators of this crime, the parties responsible have acted to the peril of the war effort, any peace process which might come after, and any respect the so called enemy might have had for US and allied forces in the area, not to mention making it increasingly difficult for locals to put thier trust in what ammounts to an invasion force. They have basicaly scuppered thier own boat , for no good reason , other than they thought it would be a hoot.

On the part of those who participated under duress, I can only imagine the turmoil those men must have gone through. I mean this isnt robbing an ice cream cart, this was obvious and sickening murder. No profit, no gain, just blood and damnation in reward for this act. And yet, when you are told to jump, you might not ask how high , but you damned well jump... thats how military society is constructed. It must have been horrific for those unwilling participants to be forced to effectively take a crap on any moral reasoning they might have had for joining the military in the first place, let alone any of the deeper moral fibre that they might have lived by. They will perhaps spend the rest of thier lives trying to tell themselves that they should have prevented this, and maybe they should have. But I can understand why they didnt . Theres alot that can happen to an unsupported deserter , which assuming they failed in thier defence of the locals, would have been exactly what they were reported as later, you can bet your rear on it.

I too have seen the video of the helicopter attack on what were obviously photographers , and the destruction visited on those who were trying to save them. It was quite frankly appalling , as is this case. However where the helicopter attack is concerned , I personaly feel that the problem there was that a helicopter was being used to destroy ground targets without confirmation that the targets were legitimate, from a source closer to those targets. In short, I feel that the problem was more about operational procedure (i.e. the shoot everything to merry death , and we'll whitewash it later) than about murder. I mean sure, any twit could see that the targets were not armed, but there again, men who kill for a living might see any old shape that fits as a weapon, where as those of us not trained to react before we think would take a longer look. The case of these trophy takers on the other hand... theres just no justification, or explanation which can excuse them. In order to perform these acts, the parties involved would have had to visualy accept that they were about to kill a noncombatant target, in short a defenseless person. I doubt they even had the decency to provide any of the victims with a means to fight for thier life.

In many of the warrior cultures (many of which were extremely honour based) down the ages, it was custom that if you kill a person, it must be in combat. Duels were regularly fought, and in that instance a weapon would be provided to the person marked for death, so that if the target could defend himself, there was a fairer chance for them to survive, and provided the warrior the oppertunity for "glory" . Sure, not a great and moraly advanced way to live life, but better than just murdering people and giving them no chance to defend themselves. Those warrior castes from around the world were oft decried for thier brutal methods, and yet these modern, well equiped men, some with families and children at home, have dropped BELOW the level of some of histories most barbaric cultures, and merely stamped out life, without reason, without mercy. They are less than human now, and by the law of the land they are from, and the land they are in, damned .
This incident poses even more questions about the entire conduct of the military over the last few years, right from Iraq to the present day. How many deaths can be attributed to senseless, and utterly inexcusable murder? Is it just those few we hear about (which arent actualy all that few if you really have a think about it) or is the number of murder victims higher than the governments in control of the war effort would have us believe? Is there an iceberg under this dirty tip?

reply to post by johnny c


That hyped-up feeling is exactly the same kind of thing you get before a football match or another team game. You’re confident in your abilities and you want to go out there with your boys and do what you have been training to do for so long.

Civilian casualties are of course a tragedy and are counter-productive to what we are trying to achieve out there, but you can't account for the minority of warped and sick people that you will find in any population. People with perhaps hidden qualities that are exacerbated during boot camp. The most tragic thing in my opinion is the fact that most civilian casualties are suffered through misplaced bombs and strikes launched on poor intelligence. You CAN account for bad soldiering but it appears to be US doctrine to obliterate anywhere that smells of the enemy; which is like counter-insurgency suicide.

Originally posted by TrueBrit
This is of course devastating news, and highly polarising of course. There will be those who will support the accused parties, out of misplaced loyalty and patriotism. While loyalty and patriotism are virtues which many could learn alot by upholding, it is important to focus those attributes on those who are deserving of them, and wanton murder cannot be supported legitimately.
The men accused of this crime, stand as such because they have crossed a line which should never need to be pointed out to reasonable men. Regardless of what happens to a person in thier lives, if they consider this behaviour acceptable, tolerable, or even as an understandable reaction to a bad situation, then they are nothing more than a disease, no matter how they arrive at that mental standpoint . The very second you allow your moral fibre to decay to the point of anarchy and devotion to mayhem, you become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
On the part of the instigator/instigators of this crime, the parties responsible have acted to the peril of the war effort, any peace process which might come after, and any respect the so called enemy might have had for US and allied forces in the area, not to mention making it increasingly difficult for locals to put thier trust in what ammounts to an invasion force. They have basicaly scuppered thier own boat , for no good reason , other than they thought it would be a hoot.

On the part of those who participated under duress, I can only imagine the turmoil those men must have gone through. I mean this isnt robbing an ice cream cart, this was obvious and sickening murder. No profit, no gain, just blood and damnation in reward for this act. And yet, when you are told to jump, you might not ask how high , but you damned well jump... thats how military society is constructed. It must have been horrific for those unwilling participants to be forced to effectively take a crap on any moral reasoning they might have had for joining the military in the first place, let alone any of the deeper moral fibre that they might have lived by. They will perhaps spend the rest of thier lives trying to tell themselves that they should have prevented this, and maybe they should have. But I can understand why they didnt . Theres alot that can happen to an unsupported deserter , which assuming they failed in thier defence of the locals, would have been exactly what they were reported as later, you can bet your rear on it.

I too have seen the video of the helicopter attack on what were obviously photographers , and the destruction visited on those who were trying to save them. It was quite frankly appalling , as is this case. However where the helicopter attack is concerned , I personaly feel that the problem there was that a helicopter was being used to destroy ground targets without confirmation that the targets were legitimate, from a source closer to those targets. In short, I feel that the problem was more about operational procedure (i.e. the shoot everything to merry death , and we'll whitewash it later) than about murder. I mean sure, any twit could see that the targets were not armed, but there again, men who kill for a living might see any old shape that fits as a weapon, where as those of us not trained to react before we think would take a longer look. The case of these trophy takers on the other hand... theres just no justification, or explanation which can excuse them. In order to perform these acts, the parties involved would have had to visualy accept that they were about to kill a noncombatant target, in short a defenseless person. I doubt they even had the decency to provide any of the victims with a means to fight for thier life.

In many of the warrior cultures (many of which were extremely honour based) down the ages, it was custom that if you kill a person, it must be in combat. Duels were regularly fought, and in that instance a weapon would be provided to the person marked for death, so that if the target could defend himself, there was a fairer chance for them to survive, and provided the warrior the oppertunity for "glory" . Sure, not a great and moraly advanced way to live life, but better than just murdering people and giving them no chance to defend themselves. Those warrior castes from around the world were oft decried for thier brutal methods, and yet these modern, well equiped men, some with families and children at home, have dropped BELOW the level of some of histories most barbaric cultures, and merely stamped out life, without reason, without mercy. They are less than human now, and by the law of the land they are from, and the land they are in, damned .
This incident poses even more questions about the entire conduct of the military over the last few years, right from Iraq to the present day. How many deaths can be attributed to senseless, and utterly inexcusable murder? Is it just those few we hear about (which arent actualy all that few if you really have a think about it) or is the number of murder victims higher than the governments in control of the war effort would have us believe? Is there an iceberg under this dirty tip?

Hello True articulate Brit,thank you my friend for your most informed and toughtfull reply
I agree with you whole heartedley .The true heros can not be put in a pot with these slimeballs.
I liked your story about how people use fight with honour,these days they just stab each other in the back.
Imagine how the families feel after geting their mothers,husband,brothers or sisters killed for no reason what so ever. I also feel sorry for the good ones having to put up with this lark.Their tours must be a living nightmare.
thanks for the great reply.
In my opinion there is a dirty iceberg under the tip mate,we hear nothing really and when we do its disgusting

reply to post by Soshh


Heya Soshh,thanks for the replies

Civilian casualties are of course a tragedy and are counter-productive to what we are trying to achieve out there, but you can't account for the minority of warped and sick people that you will find in any population. People with perhaps hidden qualities that are exacerbated during boot camp. The most tragic thing in my opinion is the fact that most civilian casualties are suffered through misplaced bombs and strikes launched on poor intelligence. You CAN account for bad soldiering but it appears to be US doctrine to obliterate anywhere that smells of the enemy; which is like counter-insurgency suicide.

I agree with you,this is so counte productive its un real, this destroys the good work all the decent soldiers do.
They could be friends to the Afganis for years but the minute one dies all trust is lost,its a dam shame too.
Imagine sitting at home and a bomb hits your place and kills your family ,i agree this is the saddest part.
lives ruinned in a spilt second,intelligence should be spot on to justify destroying a place,unfortunly this is impossible.

reply to post by johnny c


Tragic.

"If Gibbs knew that I was sitting in front of this camera right now there's no doubt in my mind that he'd f****ing take me out if he had to."

reply to post by johnny c


Iraq was like a testing-ground for techniques used in Afghanistan today, they are both environments that required a new approach to counter-terrorism, so-called “Industrial Counter-Terrorism”. It was a phrase coined by the British Director Special Forces in a conversation with McChrystal, although he was using it negatively and questioned whether this approach would work. Fortunately many in the British camp thought it would work and they made it work.

The system used by UKSF was/is find, fix, finish, exploit. Find is targeting an individual, fix is ascertaining his location and movements, finish involves killing or capturing him. You then gather information from him, others with him and from objects around them which is the ‘exploit’ part. This intelligence is used to plan further raids; rinse and repeat.

This system means that you can’t afford to drop several JDAMs on a target because you lose valuable intelligence. It not only means that you require a room-by-room assault of the house, selectively killing only those who actually pose a threat at the time, but that capturing subjects alive is extremely important. You’ll be pleased to know that despite reports of umpteen civilian casualties there are those who are doing an excellent job, no doubt books will be written following the war and you’ll be able to read all about it

Originally posted by burntheships
reply to post by johnny c

 

Tragic.

"If Gibbs knew that I was sitting in front of this camera right now there's no doubt in my mind that he'd f****ing take me out if he had to."

Thanks for the reply bts,i agree with you,its bad enough having to worry about the enemy shooting you without worrying about your own team.poor kid,now he might go to jail for ever

reply to post by Ignorance_Defier

How do they turn all these people into sociopaths?

Who says they were TURNED into anything? It's always the governments fault, isn it? Always. People who think that way make me physically sad.

reply to post by Soshh

This system means that you can’t afford to drop several JDAMs on a target because you lose valuable intelligence. It not only means that you require a room-by-room assault of the house, selectively killing only those who actually pose a threat at the time, but that capturing subjects alive is extremely important. You’ll be pleased to know that despite reports of umpteen civilian casualties there are those who are doing an excellent job, no doubt books will be written following the war and you’ll be able to read all about it

I agree 99.9 percent of the guys and gals are good folks over there. I wasnt in no way bad mouthing the people over there man.I remembering watching them ross kemp programs and thinking fair play to them.There the good guys .Being cool to people even though they have a job to do.But they were as nice as possible about it.
I agree with going room to room instead of nuking the property.
But bo lax to killing innocent people and cutting their body parts off to think your hard because you seen it in a film.

Originally posted by Snarf
reply to post by Ignorance_Defier

 

How do they turn all these people into sociopaths?

Who says they were TURNED into anything? It's always the governments fault, isn it? Always. People who think that way make me physically sad.

Thanks for the reply Snarf, your right there,no one gives them books or training to cut body parts off their victims after killing them. Its a mans moral choice
Also you would wonder now about all them soldiers that go mad and shoot up their own camps!
what the reason for this might be.

reply to post by johnny c


Yup I know you weren’t mouthing off at them, I was just saying that a lot of great work is being done over there and you don’t see people talking a lot about that, especially on these boards.

Cutting off body parts is not necessary but it’s interesting from a psychologist’s point of view. It’s an act of degrading the enemy, a release from the constant stress and the anticipation of enemy contact, a way of getting at those who have tormented you for so long. In that sense it’s almost forgivable, more so than for the sake of taking a trophy at least. That’s all it was originally but as you said, after seeing it in films people associate it with being “bad” and a "killer" and it appeals to all of the Rambo wannabes and people who want to prove how twisted they are.

reply to post by Soshh

Cutting off body parts is not necessary but it’s interesting from a psychologist’s point of view. It’s an act of degrading the enemy, a release from the constant stress and the anticipation of enemy contact, a way of getting at those who have tormented you for so long. In that sense it’s almost forgivable, more so than for the sake of taking a trophy at least. That’s all it was originally but as you said, after seeing it in films people associate it with being “bad” and a "killer" and it appeals to all of the Rambo wannabes and people who want to prove how twisted they are.

Thank Soshh ,i agree with you in psychologists would have a feild day with it. you seem to have a great deal of knowledge on the subject of war ,I never knew what it was done for untill now[nice one] it make perfect sense too but i agree these were just trying to be the meanest and most sickest as some sort of badge of honour.
I must do some reading on the subject sometime

The insanity continues.. How many more innocents will be murdered for corporate greed and the ego of fools ...