War Crimes? I'll Tell Ya What! Let's Make 'Em Into A Video Game!!!

Hallelujah! NPR's "Fair & Balanced" treatment of the new video-game, "Six Days in Fallujah!," renders the verdict: "A new video game has upset the families of some Iraq war veterans. "Six Days in Fallujah" takes gamers into a simulation of the 2004 battle. The creators say this is entertainment with substance. Critics say war is not for the amusement of others."

Marines who fought the engagement are said to have contributed (presumably with satisfactory remuneration for such) to the 'reality' of the game. USAToday, in April, printed this adulatory report, in which USer Marines explain:

"This is the first opportunity anybody has had to get this level of insight into an actual battle," says Peter Tamte of Atomic Games. "The missions are re-creations of real firefights, mapped out by the Marines in the actual firefight."

Dane Thompson, a corporal during the battle who ended his service as a sergeant in June 2005, says the game is "a way to get a small taste (of battle) without any of the danger or potential life-changing events. (The battle's) first week was hell on Earth."

Thompson, who helped capture a train station to use as a headquarters during the battle, says he and other Marines discussed tactics and even sketched out homes they had secured. Some of the Marines also had their likenesses digitized to appear in the game.

"Something that most people don't realize, there is this huge battle going on and we are getting shot at, there's buildings blowing up next to us, and we're still making jokes," he says. "That's how Marines are. I think they are going to try to bring that to the game, too."

So you, too, can experience the jolly camaraderie of Marines killing "raghaids" for fun and profit.

Except that the 'reality' of the battle, as reported by Dahr Jamail. He was on the scene and NOT "embedded" portrays the events there in 2004 (after the Iraqis had had the effrontery to kill, and then to defile the corpses of, a couple of Blackwater mercs sent there to kill them) and presents quite a different view. Moreover the Guardian's George Monbiot is explicit:

"Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Fallujah were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city, the marines stopped men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed: the Guardian's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left. The marines treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used 'hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population'."

Not to mention the flagrant, illegal use of white phosphorus... (The foregoing was shamelessly pilfered from NPRCheck, according to whom:

Interestingly, NPR's coverage of the video game is almost identical to the same "fair and balanced" story on Fox and Friends back on June 11, 2009 - although NPR's story is - if anything - more praiseworthy of the US destruction of Fallujah. Both stories cover only the critique of the video game as offensive to the families of US soldiers killed in Fallujah - not the atrocities committed by the US military there. Like Fox's coverage, NPR's positive spin focuses on the use of the game to teach about what NPR's Laura Sydell calls "a pivotal moment in the Iraqi conflict." Like Fox she allows game consultant and Fallujah veteran, retired Marine Captain Read Omohundro to tout the educational value of the game, claiming that it "will explain the war to people in a manner that helps them associate why war is not a game." Given the complete omission of the cost of the Fallujah attack on human life and infrastructure in the city, Leyden's statement that "Six Days in Fallujah recreates the feel and look of the city as well as actual events in the battle" is painful to swallow.

As an interesting aside, if you look at this web page from Atomic Games, the company creating "Six Days of Fallujah" you can read the following in the "About Atomic Games" section:

"Headquartered in Raleigh, NC, Atomic Games is a video game development studio pioneering new kinds of Historical Action video games. Atomic is owned by a variety of employees and investors, including In-Q-Tel, a private venture capital firm funded by the United States Central Intelligence Agency."

Rest assured, no marines in the vid ever shoot any unarmed women or children, or call in artillery or air-strikes against buildings without knowing who's inside them.

It doesn't take much of a tin-foil hat to believe that the CIA has a covert agenda in their support of such sheer, pure propaganda devices. My congratulations to MyTWords for his good catch. (Emphases supplied, throughout. Ed.)