{"id":30657,"date":"2012-07-06T13:32:56","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T17:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=30657"},"modified":"2012-07-06T13:32:56","modified_gmt":"2012-07-06T17:32:56","slug":"not-letting-the-facts-get-in-the-way-of-the-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30657","title":{"rendered":"Not letting the facts get in the way of the meme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My editor, Robert Johnson at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/unverified-video-shows-us-helicopter-pilot-singing-american-pie-while-shooting-afghan-civilians-2012-7\">Business Insider<\/a> put up this bit of war pr0n that was at LiveLeak and posted at the UK&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2169418\/US-helicopter-strike-blasts-Afghan-man-pilot-sings-Bye-bye-Miss-American-Pie.html\">Daily Mail<\/a>. It shows an Apache crew blasting at some Afghans;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.liveleak.com\/ll_embed?f=16f388965b59\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Mail describes the targets from the caption at LiveLeak;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>According to the caption the victims were \u2018innocent farms planting poppy seeds in the middle of the road,\u2019 although that has not been verified.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As Robert says;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Planting poppies in road is an unlikely horticultural practice, and could instead be insurgents planting a bomb in the road.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah, since it&#8217;s at night and there&#8217;s a crowd of the little bastards, and since tires tend to kill young plants, I think planting poppies in the road is the very last thing any Afghans would be doing late at night.<\/p>\n<p>The Mail also complains that the pilot sings &#8220;Bye, bye, Miss American Pie&#8221; while the missile flies to it&#8217;s target, but if you listen closely, the voice doesn&#8217;t sound like the pilot&#8217;s voice which occurs before the launch, yeah, it might be the gunner, but it sounds dubbed to me.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the Mail says this was released by Wikileaks and compares it to the urination videos;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The footage is the latest clip to emerge on LiveLeak which will prove embarrassing to top brass.<\/p>\n<p>In January footage emerged on the website which showed four American soldiers urinating on dead bodies in what appeared to be Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>The Marine Corps began an official investigation over the clip in which one of the men can be heard saying: \u2018Have a great day, buddy\u2019 to laughter from his colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>Another of them joked, \u2018Golden like a shower\u2019 and said \u2018Yeahhhh!\u2019 as they groaned with relief whilst urinating.<\/p>\n<p>The reputation of America\u2019s military has also still not fully recovered from the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal in Baghdad.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> Reporting on the same video, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2012\/jul\/06\/bye-bye-american-pie-afghanistan?newsfeed=true\">the Guardian<\/a> makes the same comparison;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The footage comes in the wake of a string of damaging videos and pictures showing US forces in Afghanistan urinating on the bodies of dead insurgents, and posing with the remains of suicide bombers and civilians killed for sport by a group of rogue soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>If it is proved to be authentic, it could further undermine the image of foreign forces in a country where there is already deep resentment owing to civilian deaths and a perception among many Afghans that US troops lack respect for Afghan culture and people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rt.com\/news\/american-pilot-target-video-582\/\">Russia TV piles on<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This is only the latest in a series of revelations which has forced the US armed services to launch damage control investigations into the conduct of its soldiers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesun.co.uk\/sol\/homepage\/news\/4414052\/US-chopper-pilot-sings-song-while-blasting-Afghans.html\">UK&#8217;s Sun<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The footage is the latest clip to emerge on LiveLeak which could embarrass the US Army.<\/p>\n<p>In January footage was posted which appeared to show four American soldiers urinating on bodies. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Personally, I think they&#8217;re all full of shit. First of all, they ain&#8217;t plantin&#8217; poppies in the middle of the street and even if it is the pilot and his weapons officer on the tape, what&#8217;s the big damn deal? Do they expect soldiers in war killing people intent on killing their friends and comrades to bow their heads and say a silent prayer for their enemies? Or yell out the window &#8220;Lookout!&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>FFS, these prissy-assed journalists are really stretching the meme of heartless American killers gone on a rampage a little too far.<\/p>\n<p>And the American press, except Business Insider, are absolutely silent on this so far probably because they don&#8217;t have the guts to stand up for the soldiers in this instance. The implication that this is a an outrage is ridiculous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My editor, Robert Johnson at Business Insider put up this bit of war pr0n that was &hellip; <a title=\"Not letting the facts get in the way of the meme\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30657\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Not letting the facts get in the way of the meme<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}