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As part of a long-planned training evolution, United States Central Command is deploying about 750 people from its Tampa headquarters to its new forward headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base, Doha, Qatar.

From: http://www.heritageofqatar.org/sites-to-visit-in-qatar/

Qatar has a close relationship with the United States military and is “U.S. Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and the Combined Air Operations Center.”

From: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/qatar.htm

An extremely advantageous (for the U .S.) Defense Cooperation Agreement governs the U.S. military presence in Qatar, which as of 2008 hosted approximately 9,000 U.S. forces, some 100 U.S. and Coalition aircraft, as well as the CENTCOM Forward Headquarters, the Combined Air Operations Center, SOCCENT Forward Headquarters, and other important DOD facilities. Qatar had no objection to stationing B-1 bombers and Patriot missile batteries here, and regularly sent military personnel to the U.S. for training.

How do you know he didn't take it up the chain of command? Because his superiors claim he didn't?

I don't know that. I do know that nowhere in all the very high profile coverage of the case has anybody suggested he did any such thing, including PFC Manning himself. If he or his lawyer would like to release information documenting his efforts to take this issue up the chain of command, I'd be happy to review it, and adjust my opinion accordingly.

As in, the same superiors who gave access to shit-tons of top secret documents to a private? Doesn't sound like a trustworthy group if you ask me.

Sorry, in what way is this an argument against the trustworthiness of his chain of command? He had a job in the Army. His job - as an intel analyst - required him to have access to secret materials. Hard to analyze intel if you can't actually read the intel, no?

Wait... I thought you were trying to argue against his releasing the info to Wikileaks, and now you're supporting it?

You have reading comprehension issues. I said his decision to go straight from "obey orders" to the 'nuclear' option of "leak everything in the database to wikileaks" was a poor decision. I never said the leak shouldn't have happened, I said it should ONLY have happened after an exhaustive pursuit of alternatives, of which there were many available to him.

Such as? Can you provide an example?

Oh, I don't know, Watergate springs to mind.

Yet you seem unable to provide a third option

The third option, you dimwit, is the *gradually increasing rank of the people you contact.* If you go outside your chain of command without first working THROUGH your chain of command, you are wrong. Unless you're really trying to suggest that EVERY OFFICER and NCO in the US military from Manning all the way to the president was complicit in some sort of conspiracy to silence him, then the "third option" is simply - follow your chain of command until you get a response, and only escalate beyond the chain of command if you DON'T get a response.

Options which, again, you appear incapable of providing.

Did you have a stroke while reading my post? I provided a different option he could have pursued RIGHT THERE. I know it challenges your foolish preconceived notions that "hurr durr military r teh darkest evulz evar," but any suggestion that I did not point out an alternative that lies between "shut up and obey orders" and "dump the entire SIPRNet database onto Wikileaks servers" is false.

As for:

Reuters did, [collateralmurder.com] and were told "the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".

The US military concluded that, and released reports explaining the reasoning under FOIA.

If your only argument is a HIGHLY edited video showing selective moments of that incident in an effort to portray the US military as bloodthirsty savages gunning down civilians in broad daylight, one which has repeatedly been show to be highly misleading (the insurgents WERE armed; the military HAD taken fire in that area earlier in the day; the children injured in the follow-on attack on the van were NOT killed; the pilots DID believe the insurgents were armed after seeing what appeared to be AK-47's and RPGs; and the pilots DID wait for a green light to open fire in the first place;), then sorry, your argument is irrelevant. You're entitled to your opinions about whether or not the military should have been in Iraq to begin with, and I'm inclined to agree with

So in accordance with this "logic", if I decide to rob you and so I proceed to your house wherein I blow away your kids and wife and then torture you for the location of your safe, but I am careful to call the whole thing "war on Internet users who call themselves sumdumass", this makes it all right then, no? After all "shit happens in war"!

Is the very definition of insane troll logic.

You seem to think that the UN has moral authority over wars, and that a war might somehow be acceptable if the Security Council were to authorize one.

You seem to have forgotten that nearly half the countries on the planet are a part of the coalition, likely including the one you currently live in.

Umm...yes, we do have an idea what has happened. Read the Gawker article that I linked, or the actual SWORN Statements from the soldiers themselves. http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210/Death%20of%20Reuters%20Journalists/2--Sworn%20Statements%20.pdf

The pilot indeed says on the radio that they have come to pick up the bodies (before they have even stopped!) and then "probably" to pick up the bodies and the weapons, after which they get permission to fire. They could clearly see before they opened fire, however, that the men picked up only the wounded man, and didn't touch any of the weapons. The ground forces who authorized the attack were not informed about that, and I wonder if they would still have done so if they were. If you read the declassified report clearing the pilots, it is not clear that any investigating or questioning of the Apache crews' version of events went on at all. The ground forces report is much more complete, but its objective is only to establish whether the military should pay compensation to the children or their families, not to judge the pilots.

Its comment on the van is: "...it is obvious from the radio transmissions on the gun camera tapes that the Apache pilots thought the van was to be used as a means of escape for the wounded insurgents...it is unknown what, if any, connection the van had to the insurgent activity." The report writer merely states that the pilots couldn't have known that there were children in the van, and that the crews likely thought the van was part of the same group (and from the video, I agree), not that they were actually correct to fire on it.

Regardless of whether the RoE was ever violated, the initial order to fire was given based not on the knowledge that the "insurgents" had an RPG, but on the basis that they were nonchalantly strolling around the corner of a building at the other end of the block from the convoy, and some of them appeared to have AK-47s. The action of the photographer, leaning around the building to take a photo, was certainly provocative, but when he took it the order to fire had already been given. And certainly the later incident which is partially included on the same video (the hellfire strike) implies that being armed and on the streets in the general vicinity of a patrol which hears small arms fire is always a death sentence. While this policy is no doubt effective from a force protection standpoint, it seems rather inevitable that it will engender massive resentment in the populace against both coalition forces, and even the current Iraqi government (which was jointly patrolling in the area). In other words, it is hard to believe that it will ever make the country "stable" enough for us to declare "victory."

Even if we declare victory anyway in Iraq, we have the same policies in Afghanistan, except with the added bonus of regular bombings with massive collateral damage. Karzai thinks that expressing anti-U.S. sentiment is a popular position. It is hard to believe that, whatever our objective, going on patrols to provoke insurgent activity and then blowing away everyone who looks threatening is going to bring us any closer to achieving it (unless our objective is indeed to occupy Iraq and/or Afghanistan indefinitely).

It's interesting to see what goodwill (none) France has gotten by pandering to the Islamists. Perhaps that will influence future French behaviour when dealing with radical Islamic states.

Huh? I don't call banning their religeous observation, pandering. Were you referring to Iraq? They weren't a "radical Islamic state". They are moving that way now, but we don't like to talk about that. Otherwise, the French have been fighting in Afganistan.

So perhaps you can explain what you mean?

The data you're looking for is allready available on line. Have a look here and here for example

Here's the address that you can send your ISP info to: president@whitehouse.gov

> It seems to only be the US version of google that censored. Performing
> the same search on google.co.uk (for example) reveals no censorship.

I did a search on google.co.uk and none of the torture pictures show up. But on the first page a picture of happy, smiling Iraqis and American troops cutting a ribbon shows up courtesy of Centcom - I think that picture made me feel more nauseous than the torture pics.

A search for Lynndie England returns nothing.

Google have to come up with a pretty convincing explanation as to why these searches turn up nothing - an explanation that doesn't include censorship or technical incompetence or else I'm off to find me a better search engine.

If as others have suggested that they don't update their picture index for 6 months.....well that's pretty pathetic from the leading search engine if it's the case.

When you go to iraq to repair the infastructure, remember this flyer:
You've got a tough job ahead of you

Before I saw this, I never considered Iraq's fiber infastructure. This really could account for all those bombing missions.

If you can't get unbiased media, you can try to read all sides and make your own mind up. A key part of that is getting at the data the press are filtering for you.

http://www.centcom.mil/ is where the US military distribute their news, eg transcripts of press briefings, images of leaflets they've been dropping on Iraq, that kind of thing. Unfortunately they seem to be running it off a teeny weeny server so its always on the brink of falling over.

The BBC's John Simpson was going to be crossing the border into Iraq from the Kurdish side as soon as possible, and is not travelling with Army units (he says "the army - anybody's army - gets in the way of reporting"). His reports can be interesting if a little self-aggrandizing (if you heard his reports when he arrived in Kabul last year you'll know what I mean). Anyway, unlike most of the press, he won't just be reporting what he's been briefed by the military.

One might have hoped that tragic events in Afghanistan would have taught the US military that drugging your troops is a bad idea.