"Afghanistan war logs: How US marines sanitised record of bloodbath"

The site of a suicide bomb which was followed by civilian deaths as US marines escaped. Photograph: Noorullah/EPA

GuardianUK:

Brevity is the hallmark of military reporting, but even by those standards the description of one disastrous event is remarkably short: "The patrol returned to base."

It started with a suicide bomb. On 4 March 2007 a convoy of US marines, who arrived in Afghanistan three weeks earlier, were hit by an explosives-rigged minivan outside the city of Jalalabad.

The marines made a frenzied escape, opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way – teenage girls in fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded. MORE...

Howie P.S.: H/t to Glenn Greenwald who comments:

These are the kinds of stories the WikiLeaks documents enable - decide for yourself if they're worthwhile.