Army Shreds Documents Following Friendly Fire Coverup (VIDEO)

Last month, Salon ran an article that featured video of an American tank appearing to fire on American troops, despite the army's denials regarding the incident. That NSFW video can be found below. Now it seems that the coverup went even further. Via Salon:

Salon has learned that documents relating to the two men were shredded hours after the story was published. Three soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo. -- including two who were present in Ramadi during the friendly fire incident, one of them just feet from where Nelson and Suarez died -- were ordered to shred two boxes full of documents about Nelson and Suarez. One of the soldiers preserved some of the documents as proof that the shredding occurred and provided them to Salon. All three soldiers, with the assistance of a U.S. senator's office, have since been relocated for their safety.

WATCH:

Comments

[WTFbush]

To the Tillman, Nelson, Suarez and many others families made to suffer as the result of overt and covert cover ups:

I offer my sincere condolences.

I thank you for everything that you have done in your quest for the truth thus far...Please do not give up the fight fortruth and justice. Obviously the culture that supports cover ups and deception still exists.

I pray that with a new administration, yours and other families including the Nelson's and Suarez's will get the peace and justice that they so deserve.

Peace

[walk0nwalls]

F$%k upper command.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

It seems that morale in the armed forces has dropped. When marines murder..... who CAN we trust to protect us.

This is absolutely horrible.....and they dare plead NOT GUILTY?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081121/ap_on_re_us/marine_slaying_1

[provoice]

One thing about war that most of these armchair generals don't understand is that often as many as 25% of the casualties are from friendly fire. Vietnam was no exception and certainly Iraq has been nearly as bad.

[Ocean girl]

you know, I have a little niggling doubt that this is not real. I don't understand any of the "arabic" in the background.

Regardless though, I feel so sorry for these men and women (on both sides) out her in this hell. They are obviously (if this is real) trying to do their best under the worst circumstances. And you will remember (and I don't understand why people haven't thrown a fit) that the National Guard was deployed to Iraq. "1 weekend a month, 2 weeks a year" - they are supposed to be sandbagging Katrina, not fighting complicated and ethnically charged wars.

Gosh I hope we can bring these folks home.

[andyg]

The video quality looks to too good to been shot by a steady cam.

[Twinkie]

What possible reason could there be for this to be fake? Please leave the dumb conspiracy theories to the neocons, that's their bag. We already know that the dead guys mother saw the video and saw her son in it. Any accusations of fakery are an insult to both of them. Sheesh

[Ocean girl]

Oh okay... so no critical thought aloud? Ahm Jus Sayin, Twinkie. And lest you blast me, did you not read the rest. My point was that the "arabic" was not intelligible and there was something kinda intuitively wrong about the shots.

BUT my overriding point was whether this is sensationalism in this particular instance or not, I am SURE this kind of travesty happens more than we would like to admit. And I say bring these folks home. They are doing their best. They don't have the support, strategically appropriate brains (higher up) or reason behind this war they are fighting for us.

[1lalady]

HuffPost's Pick

I understand this happens in war times, but it is dispeciable that the first thing that comes to mind is cover up. I wonder how many of our young men have killed by friendly? If this is something that happens report it as such, don't have our young men and women dying under a cloud of lies and decit.
DEPLORABLE.

[1logicalthinker]

Luckily, there is video evidence. If there was no evidence, there would be no story. The criminals who run these wars are much worse than the soldiers who fight them. But war after war, the same things happen. "Friendly fire" is an oxymoron, just like "clean coal" and "military intelligence." In a perfect world, the lowlifes at the top, i.e., Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. would be held accountable for their illegal, immoral, disgusting behavior that serves as an example to the troops. There is no end to the scandals, whether it be Abu Graib, Guantanamo, extreme rendition, illegal wiretaps. etc. Only one thing is certain; however, the only ones who are ever punished are the lower level people. It won't change until, and unless, we make it change.

[Krackonis]

The Hague is where they belong. Every single troop and every person involved in selling this war needs to go on trial. If found guilty of warcrimes then we do what we did to the Nazi's at Nuremburg.

[Artos]

1logicalthinker,

How do you rectify these wrongs, How? When the same people who do the wrongs have friends and allies up in those same high places that protect them from us. They cover for each other. Watch what will happen to these guys from the Bush Administration, nothing. The Democrats will push it all to the side and say something like, "We need to look ahead to the future and put the past behind us.".
Is it ineffectualness, laziness or just a lack of desire to see justice done. If they do something that I could respect, I will be very surprised.

[aubrey8]

the military is out of control. needs to be cut down in size, could save hundred of billions there.

[harriettubman]

If people only knew half the stuff that goes on in the army they would demand investigations. If you ever have a loved one killed in Iraq you should request one. They lied about how Pat Tillman was killed and many others.

[Golfer59]

Am sure Bush won't be able to sleep at night once he hears about this..

[lgg]

i'm not so sure about that...

[Eric8869]

It's shameful when the military covers up the killing of their own people.

Disgusting about their cover up of Pat Tillman's death

Remember the USS Iowa when a powder explosion killed people - the military not only tried to cover it up but blamed in on one of the men who died. Even making up a homosexual relationship as cover. (so cover up and homophobia together)

This has got to change.

[ElBruce]

I'm waiting for somebody's head to roll on this. I won't accept less than a Colonel.

[piper1233]

This is not Chaos, this is what war is. Everyone doing their part and loud enough to be heard to avoid mis-comunication. There is no more chaos here than there is in an Emergency room at a active Hospital in an inner city. I saw no confusion, mayhem, or indecision by anyone in this brief footage. the only dishonorable act here is the attempt to coverup an incident that has happened in the past, and will happen in the future. Bad call by the Leadership, but the fact that there are people who see this footage as unusally disorganized, shows how well the US Military has protected the American Public from the true horrors of war. Well here it is John Q. Get Some!

[jimmyjones22]

I agree. If you look at the time lapsed between when the FF incident started, and when they were able to comunicate for the tank to stop, you can see it must have been only seconds. This is especially well coordinated when you consider the fact (that most civilians may not get) that both these units were operating independently.

It could have been a lot worse if they were unorginized. The tank wouldn't have hesitated to use more than its .50cal if it continued to believe that they were a threat, and that could have killed everyone in the building.

These things happen in war, there's no reason to cover them up. That's the delemna.

[newshawk14]

There is an excellent reason for not covering it up. The only way you can analyze
situations like this to have the data on what went wrong, and hopefully prevent
future occurrences.

[instagladiator]

As a Vietnam vet, I agree 100% - thanks for saying it.

[instagladiator]

As a V.i.e.t.n.a.m V.e.t I agree 100%. Thanks for saying it.

[ZimboChick]

So well said. I now realise why I do not react like most Americans. You make complete sense.

[haramagoti]

Of course you can't expect people to understand war, people don't want to, people don't want war naturally. It's dumbing people down to say people don't understand it's "unusually disorganized", of course they understand, at the very least, it gets like that in the heat of it. By your choice of phrasing that this "only dishonorable act" seems to take that act lightly; why should such dishonor occur in the first? We demand it does not, and we cannot accept someone telling us to take that deception lying down, asking for more. War by definition is chaos, humans killing humans, sometimes necessary, sometimes Not, hopefully for the betterment of the world, and i don't see how understanding friendly fire, or the fact of cover ups makes either go down any better when our being compliant and accepting of it causes it to occur that much more. Those are us, the people over there, and leadership to be that bent causes us, the people over here to understand things need to change, real time and on the ground to afford those valiant troops a better chance of not dying under the "bad call" of leadership and then not having those families of the fallen, nor us, understand the bitter truth. There is no pill so small that can be swallowed to amend this behavior by a military that represents this advanced a country's forces. And we should demand better no matter what.

Get Some? How about Get Out?

[zepfan81]

This is the one thing that angers me about the military. I accept the fact that war is chaotic, that civilians are killed, that sometimes we even kill and maid our own. The problem is that instead of just admitting that some in the military want to maintain this picture of perfection, that the U.S. military can make no mistakes. This does no good, but only harm. The majority of Americans have no connection to the military, so when they hear about situations like Haditha they think the soldiers are just uncontrolled brutes, which is not the case. Just be honest!

[piper1233]

Friendly Fire is a horrible fact of war, coverups are both horrible and Illegal. The former can be forgiven as long as there is a continual effort to limit if not end future occurences, the latter cannot be excused and violators must be prosecuted and punished.

[hotstuff]

In viet nam this happened more often. It's tragic, but it's war, and human error! Why not just say it happened? I agree with you piper 1233