The Path Whisperer

I’m reposting a comment I made over at OpEdNews.  From the original article:

Wikileaks Soldier Reveals Orders for “360 Rotational Fire” Against Civilians in Iraq

Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers seen in the now-famous Wikileaks video in which two American Apache helicopters fire upon a relaxed, unhurried gaggle of men in Baghdad, has stated in an interview with World Socialist Website that he witnessed numerous times the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Iraq after IED attacks. McCord is on of the soldiers seen helping two wounded children after the attack.  [. . .]

“we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].He goes, “If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherf*cker on the street.” Myself and Josh and a lot of other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, “Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?”   [. . .]

McCord says that when he found the two children wounded in the van, another soldier began to vomit and ran off. Then he recounts:  [. . .] I ran up to the Bradley and placed [the wounded boy] inside. My platoon leader was standing there at the time, and he yelled at me for doing what I did. He told me to “stop worrying about these motherf*cking kids and start worrying about pulling security.”

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Wikileaks-Soldier-Reveals-by-Ralph-Lopez-100616-298.html

My comment:

Psychopathic order

The “gung-ho” commander who gave the order of “360 Rotational Fire” should not only be courtmartialed and tried for war crimes, he should be tested for psychopathy.  IMO, all officer candidates should have brain scans for psychopathic brain structures.

The fact that McCord uses the term, gung-ho, would seem to imply that this commander’s orders would be admired in this war’s military culture.  A normal human would very likely “beg[i]n to vomit and r[u]n off” at the sight of children that their operation had just shot up. The platoon leader yelled at McCord, “stop worrying about these motherf*cking kids . . .”  Psychopathic morals spread like cancer, infecting all they touch.

See:  “I gave them a good boy, and they sent me back a murderer,” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25439.htm

When lower ranking psychopaths observe psychopathic leadership and policies, they naturally assume they have a license to behave as they wish.  See Pfc. Steven Green‘s history:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_killings.

The armed forces do have a policy against recruiting psychopathic soldiers (quite rightly) — it is time, and there are the tools (brain scans), to have the same policy for the officers.