“And so you have that pattern again.”

 

Politics

“In one case - after I did Abu Ghraib, I got a bunch of digital pictures emailed me […] in this case, a bunch of kids were going along in three vehicles. One of them got blown up. The other two units - soldiers ran out, saw some people running, opened up fire. It was a bunch of boys playing soccer. And in the digital videos you see everybody standing around, they pull the bodies together. This is last summer. They pull the bodies together. You see the body parts, the legs and boots of the Americans pulling bodies together. Young kids, I don’t know how old, 13, 15, I guess. And then you see soldiers dropping R.P.G.’s, which are rocket-launched grenades around them. And then they’re called in as an insurgent kill. It’s a kill of, you know, would-be insurgents or resistance and it goes into the computers, and I’m sure it’s briefed. Everybody remembers how My Lai was briefed as a great victory, ‘128 Vietcong killed.’ And so you have that pattern again.” - Seymour Hersh