(Photo: Staff Sgt. Liesl Marelli / DVIDSHUB; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)
Another former soldier of Bravo Company 2-16 (2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment) has said in a radio interview that a controversial battalion commander ordered soldiers to open fire on civilians in an indiscriminate pattern of "360 rotational fire," upon being hit by an improvised explosive device (IED). The interview took place last month with Scott Horton of AntiWar.com Radio. The commander in question is the same commander who led the first of many investigations into the death of NFL football star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, in 2004, and was one of Tillman's commanding officers. A documentary on what the Pentagon has said was a "friendly fire" incident has just been released, "The Tillman Story." In the interview with Horton, Spc. Josh Stieber said that he witnessed the street massacres, which resulted when the order was carried out "maybe five to ten times."
The first soldier to reveal the order, Spc. Ethan McCord, told World Socialist Website News reporter Bill Van Auken last April that the commander, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, told his men in different settings and at various times that they were to have a new "S.O.P." (standard operating procedure) whenever an IED went off. At that time, in early 2007, the Bush "surge" was just getting underway, and IED attacks and troop deaths had risen sharply. McCord told Van Auken: "He [Kauzlarich] goes, 'If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherf*cker on the street.'" McCord said that he had also witnessed the order carried out, saying: "I've seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them."
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Ralph Lopez @'truthout'
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