Press TV-American Dream-US 'Kill Team' on Trial-04-10-2010 (Part 1)

In this episode of American Dream the trial of US army soldiers charged with being part of a "Kill Team" that targeted civilians in Afghanistan is discussed.

In the military court, one of the 5 soldiers is accused of targeting civilians in Afghanistan and killing them for sport and as a game. Similar incidents happened in Iraq as well e.g. the Haditha massacre of 24 Iraqi men, women and children in 2005.

What is asked in this program is if the "Kill Team" mentality exists in the US military. Michael Lane with the IntElephant Strategies believes that in general soldiers are trained to kill. They are trained to identify an enemy and kill and so in that sense they are a "kill team" but there are rules of engagement that govern how that killing is supposed to be done. "If they found, in fact, guilty of these heinous crimes, that the rules of engagement have been violated, I would expect that the punishment would be quite severe."

Tony Welch, with the Dewey Square Group, believes that not enough attention has been paid to the mental health of soldiers overall; they are suffering from a lot of stress and all sorts of manifestations of stress are present e.g. suicide, drug use, alcohol abuse, perhaps carrying out criminal activities in the occupied countries.

Role of video games in such incidents is also analyzed.

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[Erik20091113]

Time for a no-fly-zone above Afghanistan

[landlogger]

It sickens me that you have these damn conversations and take no action.This is one instance and it gets worse. Talk to the soldier that was at the collateral murder incident. The one carrying the child. He said doing this was not rare and 2-3 weeks ago they murder 9 little kids collecting firewood..From the chopper they very clearly see who they are killing. Disgusting you sit there talking as if this were a ball game.Stand up be counted like men not mouths.