U.S. Military Admits A Lie

U.S. Military Says Soldiers Fired on Civilians - - NYT

U.S. Military NOW says that soldiers fired on civilians back in June. Not on terrorists. This killing of a man and two women on their way to work - "gunfire raked their car" - and then the attempt to frame the victims as terrorists enraged many in Iraq, enough to ask us to leave, which is why we are now discussing timelines.

A military convoy took a wrong turn and wound up on the road to the airport. They stopped by the side of the road to fix a problem with a vehicle. As traffic approached from the rear, they fired warning shots, forcing a couple of cars to turn around and reverse course.

But these people were on their way to work. They didn't stop.

Because they didn't stop, force was escalated. They were killed. And the military lied, finding a gun that wasn't there (the car had just been through a rigorous checkpoint) and saying that the car exploded, as if armed, when actually it just burned. Starting from the engine toward the rear, engulfing the victims. As they died.

The intersection of a U.S. military which is at war as best as it knows how to do it and an Iraq civilian population who are just trying to make ends meet in artificially difficult times guarantees problems. We are at war, they are not. We lie for strategic reasons. They own the visible truth.

The military will be

"... reviewing escalation of force procedures “to see if they are meeting needs of the current environment.”"

Given that the military lies when it thinks it can ...

How can their internal courts be trusted? How can a judge accept anything they present in evidence? How can the military confirm that they are not lying?

A government must be trustworthy. And wise enough to know that it must be trustworthy.