State of the Union, MLK and 30mm DU

“The 30mm x 173 GAU–8/A ammunition was among the most effective ammunition used in Operation Desert Storm with proven performance against all targets, including tanks, armored and light vehicles. The 30mm lightweight family of ammunition was developed to optimize the air–to–ground mission of the U.S. Army AH–64 Apache helicopter. This ammunition family is also compatible with all 30mm x 113 gun systems.

“The PGU–14/B API Armor Piercing Incendiary round has a lightweight body which contains a sub–calibre high density penetrator of Depleted Uranium (DU). In addition to its penetrating capability DU is a natural pyrophoric material which enhances the incendiary effects.”

–Federation of American Scientists, Military Analysis Network

“Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing–oriented” society to a “person–oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world. The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct — were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq’s regime is disarming. It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see, and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.

“The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax — enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn’t accounted for that material. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

“The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin — enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn’t accounted for that material. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

“Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He’s not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

“U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them –despite Iraq’s recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

“From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high–strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

“The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving.”

–George W. Bush, 2003 State of the Union address

Now that you’ve read these lines, and as George W. Bush, who was just denounced by Black leaders across the United States for his latest shameless publicity stunt at the tomb of Dr. King… as this arrogant piece of shit called the President of the United States prepares to give the 2004 State of the Union address, I invite readers to click onto this link www.journalism.co.uk/ where you can see video footage of the multiple murder of three Iraqis that the United States armed forces and thousands of its apologists will inevitably claim is justified.

This is a video shot from an Apache helicopter in Iraq while it fired 30mm armor–piercing depleted uranium rounds into three men (who are visible, there may have been another), a pickup truck, a flatbed truck, and a tractor still sitting at the end of a tiller–track in a farm field. You will note the efficacy of the DU ammunition that tears through mere automotive metal like a hot knife through butter and splatters a human being into so many pieces that his own family will be unable to identify them when they come looking for him the following day. It’s a very effective round, that 30mm.

One of these farmers was reported to have carried something, maybe a rocket launcher to hide in the furrows of the field, though there are no weapons visible in this video, and it is quite a stretch to think guerrilla operations are being mounted from a tractor in an open field… but why take any chances. The Apache helicopter — note that the same spirit of shamelessness that characterized the Commander–in–Chief’s visit to the MLK tomb also allows us to name our hunter–killer helicopters after another nation that was annihilated resisting the theft of its land and resources…this helicopter takes no evasive action, and instead hovers casually throughout this whole hunting expedition, clearly indicating that the chopper crew firing the 30mm ammunition through the vehicles and through the men’s bodies feels no sense of threat… but they kill them anyway.

Note, especially, how calm and collected the crew is as they erase these people’s lives and leave them for their families to find rotting in the fields later… because evil, you see, doesn’t look like the Other, doesn’t sound like the Other, doesn’t come off as particularly sinister. It looks and sounds just like you and me. Note how dispassionate the shooters are when they spot one victim writhing on the ground and they give him another burst that — in a particularly impressive display of digitalized, airborne, automatic weapons marksmanship — they finish off the wounded man in the same burst that explodes the pickup truck. That great pyrophyric effect of the DU is on display as the vehicles burst into flame.

That’ll teach those hajjis who’s boss. Let’s go get supper.

So while Monday’s national celebration of MLK, a great leader for peace and equality, passes into Tuesday and yet another painful interlude as the Texas preppy mounts the podium for another exercise in obscene oratorical impunity, I invite everyone to have a peek at the true face of occupation and have a listen to the immanently reasonable and familiar voices of someone’s brother or husband or son who has erased the meaning of Iraqi lives and can now casually erase three Iraqi farmers altogether.

Enjoy this video, like good pornography. That’s what it is… a snuff film. Now we can all have a titillating glimpse of the rarified world of systematic slaughter that some of us carry around in our heads, waiting to crawl out into our dreams.

Don’t bother with outrage, because I’m told you will be ignored. No one cares. The news media won’t cover it. Congress won’t demand an investigation. People will make excuses for it. It it a total violation of the Law of Warfare and the Geneva Conventions, but America doesn’t recongize international law any more, so fuck it, right?

Hell, Rusty Calley is healthy and happy selling cars in Georgia, I hear. He and his crew killed almost 400 unarmed civilians in My Lai.

This is our age. You can get away with anything, even filming murder. Last month, a video was released showing a Marine being cheered on by his comrades as he killed a wounded Iraqi. No outrage then either. No investigations. No nothin’.

So you might as well sit back and enjoy it.

Wow, that 30mm is a helluva weapon, eh?

STAN GOFF is the author of Hideous Dream and the newly published Full-Spectrum Disorder. He can be reached at: stan@ncwarn.org.

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Stan Goff retired from the US Army in February 1996. He is a veteran of the US occupation of Vietnam, and seven other conflict areas. His books include Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti (Soft Skull Press), Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century (Soft Skull Books), Borderline: Reflections on War, Sex, and Church (Cascade Books), Mammon’s Ecology: Metaphysic of the Empty Sign (Cascade Books), Tough Gynes: Violent Women in Film as Honorary Men (Cascade Books), and Smitten Gate (a novel about Afghanistan, from Club Orlov Press).