Feature: Crossroads

Stefan Zaklin, a photographer who was working for the European Pressphoto Agency and embedded with a United States Army company photographed this soldier, who was shot and killed in Fallujah. After the photograph ran in several European publications Mr. Zaklin was banned from working with the US Army. (Photo: Stefan Zaklin / European Pressphoto Agency)

"NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT LIKE...TO BE THE BAD MAN"

An excerpt from the blog :: http://calmbeforethesand.blogspot.com/
"My name is Seth, and I am twenty-five years old. I come from a small town in rural Michigan, on the shores of Lake Huron. I am an aspiring writer. I consider myself a follower of Zen Buddhist philosophy. I have a wife of three years, whom I love very much." "And it only got worse. I deployed several months before the start of what we now call "The Surge," that extra boost of 30,000 troops intended to pacify the region. It was a joke, and we all knew it. Those extra troops were us, simply extended for another three months, on top of all we had already suffered. The blow to our collective morale was crushing. Meanwhile, the months wore on, and the situation outside the wire grew ever more stark. Mortar and small-arms attacks jumped, and soon insurgents began to target the very structures we were put in place to maintain: bridges. With only two companies in theater to deal with the offensive, and one of those handling 80 percent of the workload, our injury, illness, and mental collapse rates soon skyrocketed. Missions where we worked 70+ hours without sleep became routine. We were worked to the bone, and crushed into the dirt, and when we objected, we were scorned, or even punished. Leaders neglected our safety and health, even as injury and attrition rates skyrocketed to over thirty percent. Eventually, the job became more likely to kill us than the enemy." "I'll admit it--I was angry. I think anyone would be. This was not how I had imagined we would be used. But that was the truth of it: we WERE being used, used to wage a war that was pointless and cruel, and was only hurting my family and friends. We were being used to justify horrible things, and used as a symbol to silence dissent. So yes, I was angry. And with this journal, I vented my anger. I cried out my fear and bitterness, castigated the armchair warriors for glorifying what they didn't understand. I criticized the leaders who had forgotten us, and appealed to the American people for redress."

NOTHING WILL STOP THE MADNESS--UNTIL WE CAN SEE...UNTIL WE CAN SEE..

From our Friends at www.truthout.org

OUR GOVERNMENT SEDUCES ITS CITIZENS....CITIZENS SWALLOW IT HOOK, LINE AND SINKER....OPEN YOUR EYES.

US Military Recruits Children: "America's Army" Video Game Violates International Law

Wednesday 23 July 2008

by: Michael B. Reagan, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

"America's Army" is a video game developed in part by the US Army to lure potential recruits. (Photo: techtarget.com)

" In May of 2002, the United States Army invaded E3, the annual video game convention held in Los Angeles. At the city's Convention Center, young game enthusiasts mixed with camouflaged soldiers, Humvees and a small tank parked near the entrance. Thundering helicopter sound effects drew the curious to the Army's interactive display, where a giant video screen flashed the words "Empower yourself. Defend America ... You will be a soldier."(1)

But behind the fun and games is an attempt, in the words of a military booklet on "America's Army," "to build a game for Army strategic communication in support of recruiting." The Army spent $6 million to develop the game at the Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation Institute (MOVES) before handing it over to private companies for adaptation to the console formats in 2004. As the name implies, the MOVES Institute is the military center for creating virtual training environments and simulators. A MOVES Institute booklet proclaims a later version of the game, "America's Army: Special Forces," was developed specifically to increase the number of Army Special Forces recruits. "The Department of Defense want[ed] to double the number of Special Forces Soldiers, so essential did they prove in Afghanistan and northern Iraq; consequently, orders ... trickled down the chain of command and found application in the current release of 'America's Army.'"(3) Yet, far from providing realism, "America's Army" offers a sanitized version of war to propagandize youth on the benefits of an Army career and prepare them for the battlefield. In the game, soldiers are not massacred in bloody fire typical of most video games, or for that matter, real combat. When hit, bullet wounds resemble puffs of red smoke, and players can take up to four hits before being killed. To further protect youth, concerned parents can turn on optional controls that sanitize the violence even more - shots produce no blood whatsoever and dead soldiers just sit down. This presentation of war contrasts to the much more grisly reality unfolding every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, like a June suicide attack on the Fallujah City Council in which three Marines, two interpreters and 20 Iraqis, including young children, were killed. Photos by American photojournalist Zoriah depict a horror scene in a small courtyard, dismembered body parts - ears, hands and pieces of skull - spot the ground; one Marine's head looks smeared into the pavement. Zoriah writes of the scene, "There are dying people strewn around like limp dolls along with lifeless bodies of all ages. People are screaming and crying and running as if they have something important to do, only they can't figure out what that important thing could possibly be ... people are literally frantic removing the dead, as if their pace may bring some of them back." It is this violent, realistic quality of combat that has been excised from the game."(5) AND WHO PROFITS.....AMERICAN PEOPLE?? THE SOLDIERS.???.NO SILLY ike so many aspects of contemporary military operations, the development of later versions of the game has been handed over to corporations for private profit. Some of the biggest game companies have worked on the console, arcade and cell phone versions of "America's Army." Ubisoft, the world's seventh largest video game company, is the game's exclusive producer and has recently publicized record profits for the first quarter of 2008. Ubisoft worked closely with San Francisco based Secret Level to develop the 2005 Xbox version. Global VR, in San Jose, California, is preparing the release of the arcade version, and Gameloft programmed a version available for download to cell phones. Getting in on the action are other more traditional military contractors, such as Digital Consulting Services (DSC), a multimillion-dollar military tech company based in Newbury Park, California. Among DCS's other projects are the Encore II Information Technology Solution for the innocuous sounding Global Information Grid, "an all encompassing communications project for the Department of Defense," worth $13 billion over five years. Or the Navy's Seaport-Enhanced - a $100 billion multicontract program to integrate Navy warfare operations. The Army worked closely with these and other companies to produce "America's Army," the first and only officially licensed Army game. It is this partnership and the close attention to technical detail that the Army and game companies claim gives "America's Army" its realistic quality. As Col. Casey Wardynski, director of the US Army's Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis (OEMA) and director of the game project proclaims, "America's Army" is "the most authentic console game about soldiering in the US Army."(4)