Last Call

If you're still wondering why the people of Afghanistan are siding with the Taliban over America, this might explain a few things.

US military personnel apparently mistook the cameras slung over the backs of two Reuters journalists for weapons when they opened fire on them and a group of people in a Baghdad suburb in 2007, recently released video footage shows.

The whistleblower Web site Wikileaks on Monday released a 17-minute video of footage from an Apache helicopter that was reportedly one of two helicopters involved in a fight against insurgents in the neighborhood of New Baghdad on July 12, 2007.

The video shows the deaths of Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22 and Saeed Chmagh, 40, along with six other people on a street corner. It also shows US forces firing on a minivan in which two injured children were found.

"The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured," Wikileaks states.

On Monday evening, the Pentagon finally acknowledged the video's legitimacy.

And these are some of the journalists and civilians we've been killing over the last, oh, going on nine years in November.  Nine.  Years.  Of this.  You wonder why in Afghanistan the Taliban is getting support and money and weapons.  You wonder why the locals aren't ratting them out.  Hell, at this point the locals are joining them.  Hell, at this point the Afghan government is threatening to join them.

We have a seriously unwinnable situation on our hands here that's rapidly going to past "lost cause".  It's time for us to get out.