Operation Give Up The Moral High Ground is a complete success!

[theweaselking]

US Army's new tactic: Leave explosives on the street in public, and have snipers set to shoot anyone who touches it on the theory that anyone who *might* want to get A BOX OF EXPLOSIVES off the street NEXT TO THEIR HOUSE is obviously planning to kill Americans with it.

Operation Shoot Own Foot and Operation Create Terrorists are still going full-bore.

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Oh J---s f--k it's not a joke.

[twisted-times.livejournal.com]

That's just... wrong. The possibility of "collateral damage" (a wonderful military euphemism) resulting in the death of innocent civilians ("non-combatants" to use MilSpeak) is far too great to justify this method IMO.

[chizzer.livejournal.com]

*blink*

LOLZ -> Confusion -> Read article -> OMG truth?!? -> Slow realization of impending doom.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

That's... not serious, right?

Right?

Seriously, I'm begging, right!??!

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I was expecting something Onion-ish in the url. Can't say I'm surprised, though.

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Wow. If you took everything they said in that article and applied it to police instead of soldiers...

I know that there are huge differences between how the police and the military are expected to act under law, but as soldiers in Iraq are often having to act in a policing capacity I think my comment is valid.

[atlasimpure.livejournal.com]

Um, relevant fact, Dider is in the process of being court-martialed for killing civilians and planting evidence.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Because he thought the piles of stuff were meant to be dropped on dead bodies to make sure they looked guilty.

However, the official program, which there were and are official orders to participate in, was to leave crap around and shoot anyone who touches it - which is quite different than keeping a bunch of rifles around that you can leave on the bodies after you shoot them.

[atlasimpure.livejournal.com]

Wasn't aware they'd actually confirmed that the baiting program was ever officially comissioned. I know that someone had proposed it but was pretty sure it got shot down as prone to collateral damage.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

Army officials declined to discuss the classified program, details of which appear in unclassified investigative documents and in transcripts of court testimony. Criminal investigators wrote that they found materials related to the program in a white cardboard box and an ammunition can at the sniper unit's base.

"We don't discuss specific methods targeting enemy combatants," said Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman.

[atlasimpure.livejournal.com]

The AP's source is the court documents outlining his testimony and the motions on the part of his defense attorneys. And the materials found on-site are referred to as an in-unit memorandum. It's a fucked up situation but nothing has come forward that actually labels it as policy outside of the actions of the one small forces unit.