If your church displays an American flag, you need to watch this video.

If you call yourself a human being, you need to watch this video.

It’s graphic.  It’s appalling.  And it’s been approved by the US military.  From the special Wikileaks website:

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.

After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own “Rules of Engagement”.

[Note: The video is best viewed full screen, and be sure your audio is turned on. The conversation of "our troops" is quite enlightening.]

Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short That it cannot save;
Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,
And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.
For your hands are defiled with blood And your fingers with iniquity;
Your lips have spoken falsehood, Your tongue mutters wickedness.
No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly.
They trust in confusion and speak lies;
They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web;
He who eats of their eggs dies, And from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth.
Their webs will not become clothing, Nor will they cover themselves with their works;
Their works are works of iniquity, And an act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, And they hasten to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity,
Devastation and destruction are in their highways.
They do not know the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks;
They have made their paths crooked, Whoever treads on them does not know peace.
Therefore justice is far from us, And righteousness does not overtake us;
We hope for light, but behold, darkness, For brightness, but we walk in gloom.
(Isaiah 59:1-9)

Update: Huffington Post has more details on this story.  NY Times has information on another cover-up in Afghanistan, “including a new report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the true nature of their deaths.”

Well, this article in the NY Times provides some additional motivation.

Oil production has begun falling at all of the major Western oil companies, and they are finding it harder than ever to find new prospects even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand.

Part of the reason is political. From the Caspian Sea to South America, Western oil companies are being squeezed out of resource-rich provinces. They are being forced to renegotiate contracts on less-favorable terms and are fighting losing battles with assertive state-owned oil companies.

And much of their production is in mature regions that are declining, like the North Sea.

The reality, experts say, is that the oil giants that once dominated the global market have lost much of their influence — and with it, their ability to increase supplies.

Bush has only got 148 days left to make big oil happy. Think he’ll get the job done?

Parko issues this warning:

The instant we attack Iran, oil prices will double, perhaps triple. This price increase will devastate the U.S. economy. The ensuing retaliatory strikes by Iran on Israel, as well as on U.S. military installations in Iraq, will leave hundreds, maybe thousands, dead. The Shiites in the region, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, will see an attack on Iran as a war against Shiism. They will turn with rage and violence on us and our allies. Hezbollah will renew attacks on northern Israel, while Hamas increases its attacks in southern Israel. And the localized war in Iraq will become a long, messy and protracted regional war that, by the time it is done, will most likely end the American empire and leave in its wake mounds of corpses and smoldering ruins.

Is he wrong? Go read the whole article.

The latest Newspeak out of Washington is that CIA operations, which legally require disclosure to congressional leaders, are really military operations, which don’t need disclosure. Specifically, escalated covert operations in (you guessed it) Iran are nobody’s business but the Commander-inChief’s. [Picture Bush sticking his tongue out, and saying, nah-nah-na-nah-nah.] Of course, the military generals are also left in the dark, which tends to hinder the war on the ground. The New Yorker has an in-depth article on all this, and it will undoubtedly turn your stomach.

The House is in the process of passing Resolution 362, the “Iran War Resolution.” The Senate is working on the similar Resolution 580. One of the key passages calls for an economic blockade to pressure Iran. A unilateral naval blockade without UN sanction is an act of war.

We mustn’t forget the Israeli point of view in all of this: “If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,” Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz told the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

This whole package, not surprisingly, has led to another exchange of threats.

Chief of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards: “It is natural that when a country is attacked it uses all of its capabilities against the enemy, and definitely our control of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz would be one of our actions,” Jafari said.

Vice-Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff, commander of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet responds:
“They will not close it … They will not be allowed to close it.”

And, once again, we get to the crux of the matter: oil. Specifically, BIG oil. If you substitute “weapons of mass destruction, Iraq, and Saddam Hussein” for the current “development of nuclear weapons, Iran, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” you can’t help but notice a pattern.

Could it be that Bush’s plan is to topple another odious leader of another very oil-rich sovereign nation? Could it be that Bush thinks he owns all the mideast oil, and he’s got the military to prove it? Or maybe he’s thinking of his mark in history. Maybe he wants to go down as the first president in the history of the US who started three separate wars. It doesn’t really matter what his justification is. War is still war, and the price is still death.

Current cost of oil in Iraq:

civilian deaths: 85,325 – 93,067
US coalition deaths: 4,427
US wounded: over 29,000

Interesting link: A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS by Dr. Zoltan Grossman at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, has charted the US tendency to invade other nations. This is a digest-it-in-a-minute, suitable-for-Americans-who-don’t-have-time-to-read national history of war.

Update on the price of oil:

4422 military deaths
29,000 military wounded
85,153 – 92,883 civilian deaths

Or, if you prefer a more colloquial expression, if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

What is the real fruit of the Bush administration? Is it the “War on Terror” that continues to mock the Bill of Rights? Is it the 84,723 – 92,414 civilian deaths in Iraq? Or maybe the 4414 military deaths and 29,000 military wounded? What about the torture scandals that continue to violate everything America used to stand for? No, those are only some of the by-products of the Bush tree, the pollen that gets scattered along the way.

Bush’s real fruit, the purpose behind all that pollen, is finally coming to light. Today’s NY Times tells us that a deal will be announced on June 30th between Iraq and several western oil companies. These are “no-bid” contracts, something unheard of in the oil industry.

This story also tells us that 36 years ago, Exxon/Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — were booted out of Iraq when Saddam Hussein nationalized the industry. But now they’re on their way back.

So let’s look at this chronologically, leaving out all the lies and justifications.

1) American big oil gets tossed out of Iraq by Saddam.

2) Bush invents a reason to invade Iraq and get Saddam killed.

3) American big oil moves back into Iraq.

Who says Bush is incompetent?