US Marines spoofed drone to cover up murder,

[intaglio]

Source: The Register

According to court testimony and reports, a Marine squad led by Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins III deliberately set out to kill an insurgent named Saleh Gowad, who had previously been captured and released several times. Failing to find him, they randomly seized disabled ex-policeman Hashim Awad from his home as he slept.

The Marines cuffed Awad and took him to a nearby bomb crater. At this point the drone approached for its first pass overhead. One of the group moved forward and dug a hole at the crater, while the others posed with Awad behind a wall. The recorded thermal imagery from the aircraft seemed to show troops watching an insurgent digging by the road, perhaps to place a bomb.

After the drone had passed, the group moved Awad forward to the hole. But at this point the surveillance platform returned, so one of the Marines wrapped himself around Awad so as to create a single thermal signature, disguising the captive's presence.

Read more: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/22/murder_marines_fool_drone/

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Murder pure and simple. And an inditement of the reliability od technological evidence

The Register story sourced from Wired http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,73012-0.html?tw=wn_index_1#

[Judi Lynn]

1. Absolutely hideous. Hope they have a long time to appreciate the lowness of this

filthy act against an innocent man who was unlucky enough to live next door to someone they sought to harm.

[gratuitous]

2. Tell me again about duty, honor and integrity?

Because I seem to forget all that stuff that our military is supposed to stand for when I read accounts like this.

[tchunter]

3. "quit being a pussy"

and shoot that tied up cripple...

[maxsolomon]

4. war of the future

we spend all our time fooling the robots.

start making more cannon fodder, conservatives - there's gonna be a lot of robots. ain't you seen the terminator?

[tblue37]

5. This is about as premeditated as you can get, isn't it? (eom)

[MODemocrat]

6. I didn't have the stomach to watch him on 60 minutes

Looks as if he'd been cleaned and scrubbed in order to look good before the cameras. They're no better
than street gangs everywhere. :nopity:

[Bicoastal]

7. Spoofed?

What does that mean?

No to crack wise about such a horrendous act, but I always thought the only meaning of "spoof" was "a filmed parody of other films within a particular genre, a la Mel Brooks."

Must be Britspeak...

[TheWraith]

8. No, it's a common phrasing online.

"Spoofing" originally came from certain forms of internet server attacks, and gradually evolved into a catchall term for deception or masquerading using technology, i.e. setting up a fake website to fool people into providing their passwords to the real thing, or providing a false origination identity for an email phone call, etcetera.

[sakabatou]

9. Sickening

We can't seem to get the "bad guys," so we have to stage it. Great...

[Lisa]

10. wow. This sounds like a crime uncovered on that fictional "NCIS" show

... but unfortunately for poor Mr. Awad, those guys really did think they could get away with such a vicious, cynical deception. And would have, too, if that medic hadn't had a conscience.