For decades, the U.S. government has tried to define “militant” or “terrorist” to mean any non-American person who dies when an American weapon explodes. We’ve seen twenty years of these lies and uncountable other lies, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. When caught, the military nonchalantly “corrects the record” without apology or explanation, even though there was no basis for the initial claim. A dramatic example of this occurred when Wikileaks (see “Collateral Murder” video) exposed the killings of Reuters employees who the U.S. claimed were “terrorists.” It recently happened again in a dramatic way, as CENTCOM’s mendacity has been exposed. [1] Those dead “terrorists” turn out to have been an aid worker and a family, including multiple children. In wars, truth is the first victim.
As Glenn Greenwald noted, much of the legacy news media (including the NYT and WaPo) played right along with the initial lie. This is one of those rare cases where the reporters kept digging.
[2]
One more Tweet channels my frustration:
[3]
Print this post [4]
[5]