“Kill TV” in the “Death Star”
June 26th, 2010Via: New Zealand Herald:
They called it the “Death Star” because according to one source who worked inside it, “you could just reach out with a finger and eliminate” somebody.
On the walls were television screens, known by the special forces boys as “Kill TV”, where footage from image-intensifier cameras of the enemy being blown up by air strikes, or being gunned down by undercover hit teams was shown.
This place was “the Machine”, a state-of-the-art military command centre hidden away in an airbase in Balad, a desolate stretch of land north of Baghdad.
It was created by Major General Stanley McChrystal, the chief of United States Special Forces, the most secretive force in the American military.
Here, in the permanently darkened communications cockpit, dozens of US and British (SAS) personnel would gather around as nightly raids took place against al Qaeda and their insurgent allies.
Sometimes McChrystal would lead the raids himself, his squad of elite undercover combat troops, known as Delta Force, being told at the last minute that the commander was coming along for the ride.
No one was quite sure what the Pentagon policy was on two star generals going on such dangerous missions, but then very few people in the US Department of Defence, and even fewer outside it in Washington, were even aware of these shadowy operations going on in Iraq.
This was the secret and violent world which shaped Stanley McChrystal, who three days ago was sacked from his job as commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan.
Why don’t American officials simply admit that it is their intention to kill every man, woman and child in the Islamic world? This pussyfooting around about winning “hearts and minds” is that same lie told in Vietnam 50 years ago.
So happy you’re back on the air.
So I’m a little slow, and the signal/noise ratio on this thing spiked so high I was trying not to even think about it, but McChrystal was boots on the ground with his Deltas, hunting? The narrative of the article throws me off… “Death Star” TV screens and such.