Column calling US terrorists is inaccurate, ill-researched

Editor,

Andrew Beale’s last column is ill-informed, offensive and idiotic. He claims that the “United States government is the largest terrorist organization operating today,” but fails to even bother fact checking before he published.

First, it is true that two Reuters photographers were killed in that engagement. I do not dispute that fact. However, both Andrew Beale and Wikileaks.org fail to take into account the circumstances. One, the two photographers were standing in a group of military-aged males who were armed with RPGs, RPKs and variants of the AK-series of weapons.

Two, there was a group of insurgents firing upon American troops approximately 100 meters from their location.

Three, one of the photographers was moving in a highly suspicious manner, leaning around a corner and taking aim with an unknown object at the firefight. From the tiny screen in the cockpit of the helicopter, certainly smaller and farther away than a computer monitor, the camera definitely looks like a weapon (and photographs of a Humvee were recovered from the camera after the fact).

Finally, I have viewed both versions of the video available, including the one edited by Wikileaks. They erroneously pretend to be able to identify individuals in the video with 100 percent certainty, when the detail and resolution are far too poor for positive identification.

They then identify certain bodies as being the photographers, but during the course of the video, Wikileaks identifies at least four bodies in different locations as being the two dead Reuters employees. In the full-length video, several civilians can be seen entering and passing through the area after the shots were fired, including a woman with a child. None of these people were fired upon, but Wikileaks chose to edit those sections of the video out, preferring to try and portray American forces as senseless butchers.

Andrew Beale then shows a lack of knowledge about the Geneva Convention. Is it a war crime to shoot at properly marked medical vehicles and personnel, the international symbol for which is a red cross? Yes. Is it a war crime to shoot at an unmarked vehicle with unknown intentions that has just entered the scene of a firefight, the occupants of which appear to be picking up both bodies and weapons? No, it is not. The Geneva Convention applies to organized military forces, not insurgent groups. I will also note that insurgents in Iraq are more than willing to shoot at our medical personnel and vehicles, yet Andrew Beale fails to acknowledge that fact.

In regards to the wounded children, their involvement was unfortunate but by no means our fault. It is not possible for an AH-64 crew to see through solid objects, and even if “the whole country is a war zone,” the driver of the van still chose to bring children into an area that had just been hit by an attack helicopter which was still orbiting the area. Additionally, the statement “We bombed all their hospitals” is laughably inaccurate. A simple, 30-second search turns up over 30 functional hospitals in Baghdad alone, four of which are children’s hospitals. As a side note, the horrible terrorist organization we call our government played a huge part in rebuilding Iraqi medical facilities. Beale’s claim that, being members of NATO, the U.S. is directly responsible for the recent civilian deaths in Afghanistan is idiotic. I feel he is not aware that there are, in fact, 28 member countries of NATO, all of which are currently engaged in Afghanistan. The nationality of the shooters has not been officially identified, and according to first-hand accounts, the bus was rapidly moving towards the convoy and ignored signals to stop, both things that raise alarms in a war zone.

Now on to my favorite part of the column, the only part that seems to actually support Beale’s claim of terrorism: He claims that the United States took part in and perpetrated terrorist acts during WWII. I will ask him first: would you be yelling “terrorism” all the louder if we had, instead of dropping the atomic bombs, conducted Operation Downfall, the amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands? The military and civilian casualties of such an operation would be nearly inconceivable. I will acknowledge myself that the firebombing of Dresden was largely unnecessary, but let us not forget that the Axis powers were more than happy to attack civilians. Indeed, if the U.S. was responsible for more terrorist acts than the entire Axis combined, then where was our Rape of Nanking? Where was our Holocaust? Where was our Josef Mengele or our Unit 731?

Finally, I am disappointed that the Daily Lobo would permit a reporter on its own staff to publish such a poorly researched column, especially when it makes highly inflammatory accusations. Further, even though the piece is opinion, the fact that Andrew Beale identifies himself as a reporter for the Daily Lobo lends it the appearance of being authorized and condoned by his editors.

Austin Burke
UNM student