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Many of the people we call terrorists help people all the time, including those of countries they are trying to overthrow.. We know hezbollah does this, the taliban do it, and the people we call al qaeda, the mujahideen do it.

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There's plenty to be outraged about on every side, I just see the shades of grey. All sides in war are deplorable. When we win a war, we get to write the history.

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He used to boast about all the "stuff" he had done in Iraq and about how easy it was for an American soldier to get away with almost anything in a war. Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, 25, a native of the US state of Montana, was the highest-ranking member of a group of five soldiers that he allegedly dubbed the "kill team." Gibbs had been in Iraq long enough to know how to impress his fellow soldiers. All you have to do, he told them in December, is "toss a grenade" and you'll have killed a bunch of Afghans. The kill team apparently tossed its first grenade in January.
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If the claims made in the indictment are true, the crimes committed by the kill team went beyond the killing of Afghan civilians. In fact, the men allegedly devised "scenarios" for the killings, a kind of script that included plausible pretexts for the murders. Gibbs is believed to have been the planner, while the younger team members did the shooting. The men apparently treated killing as a sport.

They allegedly fired at their victims with gusto, collecting trophies that included finger and toe bones, and even a tooth.

When the men of the kill team allegedly attacked their first victim, Gul Mudin, on Jan. 15, it was as if they were shooting at clay pigeons. When they saw Mudin on the edge of a poppy field, Gibbs allegedly ordered one of the soldiers to throw a grenade over the wall and then ordered a younger soldier to open fire. But that was only the beginning. On Feb. 22, Gibbs allegedly shot Marach Agha during a patrol and then placed a Kalashnikov next to the body to make it look like self-defense. More than two months later, on May 2, the team apparently shot its last victim, Mullah Adahdad.

But how much did commanding officers know? What did the army do to investigate the murders? Or did it actually try to sweep the crimes under the table? The father of Adam Winfield, one of the five main suspects, claims that he warned the military leadership months ago.

Of course, the Kandahar case also raises the question of what we really know about the true extent of crimes in wartime, about all the misdeeds that are never reported and all the perpetrators who are never brought to trial. An esprit de corps is taking hold once again. A number of soldiers are already denying that murders were even committed in Afghanistan, insisting that they were merely acts of self-defense.

Jeremy Morlock, the youngest member of Gibbs' team and the main witness for the prosecution, also appears to be reconsidering his testimony. His attorney, Michael Waddington, argues that Morlock's statements should be disallowed because he was allegedly under the influence of prescription drugs when he made them.

According to Gibbs' attorney, his client insists that all of the killings were "appropriate engagements." http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,717127-2,00.html

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Although the video's existence has been known since shortly after the July 12, 2007, attack, all attempts to make it public under the Freedom of Information Act have been rebuffed by the U.S. defence department. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1263822/WikiLeaks-video-Reuter
s-journalists-civilians-gunned-US-pilots.html

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The release of the video from Baghdad also comes shortly after the US military admitted that its special forces attempted to cover up the killings of three Afghan women in a raid in February by digging the bullets out of their bodies.

The newly released video of the Baghdad attacks was recorded on one of two Apache helicopters hunting for insurgents on 12 July 2007. Among the dead were a 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. The Pentagon blocked an attempt by Reuters to obtain the video through a freedom of information request. Wikileaks director Julian Assange said his organisation had to break through encryption by the military to view it.

One of the helicopter crew is then heard saying that one of the group is shooting. But the video shows there is no shooting or even pointing of weapons. The men are standing around, apparently unperturbed.

The lead helicopter, using the moniker Crazyhorse, opens fire. "Hahaha. I hit 'em," shouts one of the American crew. Another responds a little later: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards."

One of the men on the ground, believed to be Chmagh, is seen wounded and trying to crawl to safety. One of the helicopter crew is heard wishing for the man to reach for a gun, even though there is none visible nearby, so he has the pretext for opening fire: "All you gotta do is pick up a weapon." A van draws up next to the wounded man and Iraqis climb out. They are unarmed and start to carry the victim to the vehicle in what would appear to be an attempt to get him to hospital. One of the helicopters opens fire with armour-piercing shells. "Look at that. Right through the windshield," says one of the crew. Another responds with a laugh.

Sitting behind the windscreen were two children who were wounded.

After ground forces arrive and the children are discovered, the American air crew blame the Iraqis. "Well it's their fault for bringing kids in to a battle," says one. "That's right," says another. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-att
ack bullshit that they were responding to an attack of any kind. Anyone with brains can see the truth, which is all that needs saying. And gee, what about those Afghan women? Oh, and look at that; Iraqis tried to help people wounded by our soldiers...I guess they never do THAT, either.

Then there's:

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The soldier accused of being the ringleader of a rogue Army unit that killed three Afghan civilians last year for sport, crimes that angered Afghan leaders and villagers and rattled high levels of the American military, was found guilty of all charges on Thursday.

The soldier, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 26, of Billings, Mont., was found guilty of three counts of murder, of conspiring to commit murder and several other charges, including assaulting a fellow soldier and taking fingers and a tooth from the dead. He was sentenced to life in prison but could be eligible for parole in less than 10 years.
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All told, five soldiers were charged with killing civilians in three separate episodes early last year. Soldiers repeatedly described Sergeant Gibbs as devising “scenarios” in which the unit would fake combat situations by detonating grenades or planting weapons near their victims. They said he even supplied “drop weapons” and grenades to make the victims appear armed. Some soldiers took pictures posing with the dead and took body parts as trophies. Sergeant Gibbs is accused of snipping fingers from victims and later using them to intimidate another soldier.
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One of the principal witnesses against him, Pfc. Jeremy Morlock, pleaded guilty to all three killings in March and faces a 24-year sentence. Specialist Adam C. Winfield pleaded guilty in August to manslaughter in one of the killings and faces three years in prison. Pfc. Andrew Holmes pleaded guilty to one of the killings in September.

Many of the defendants, as well as six others charged in the unit, pleaded guilty to other charges, including smoking hashish and assaulting a soldier who eventually led Army investigators to discover the killings. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/us/calvin-gibbs-convicted-of-killing
-civilians-in-afghanistan.html I guess admitting guilt or being found guilty in a military court doesn't count. Oh, and I guess the Pentagon apologizing doesn't count either:

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The Pentagon tonight apologised after shocking new details emerged of how American soldiers formed a 'death squad' to randomly murder Afghan civilians and mutilate their corpses.
An investigation by Rolling Stone magazine details how senior officers failed to stop troops killing Afghans and keeping their body parts as trophies.
In one horrific episode, the magazine claims troops threw a grenade at an innocent Afghan boy before chopping off his finger and later using it as 'gambling chip' in a game of cards.

The disturbing detail included in the dossier accuses American troops of a new level of depravity and is likely to be a public relations disaster for the military.
The U.S. Army says the photos of American soldiers posing with dead Afghans are 'in striking contrast' to its standards and values - apologising for any distress caused by the images.
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The investigation revealed:

Troops shot dead civilians and tried to cover their tracks;
U.S. soldiers hacked off part of a dead man's skull;
Soldiers cheered as they filmed a U.S. airstrike blowing up two Afghan civilians;
A video showed two Afghans on a motorcycle being gunned down.
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The men joked for weeks about killing ‘savages’ before finally murdering a boy of around 15 in a farming village, their first kill.
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In another incident on a night in January 2010 the platoon was driving near their forward operating base and spotted a human heat signature on the roadside through their thermal imaging equipment.
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‘Basically, what we did was a desperate search to justify killing this guy,’ a private named Justin Stoner Stoner told investigators. ‘But in reality he was just some old, deaf, retarded guy. We basically executed this man.’
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The soldiers felt invincible and emboldened by the lack of policing by their superiors.
It also details a serious of disturbing videos and pictures of the victims taken by the men - one shows a hand with a missing finger, another depicts a severed head on a stick and others show blown up legs.
In two cases soldiers pose over the bodies of their victims as if they are hunting trophies.
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Internal records show the ‘Kill team’ was ‘operating out in the open, in ‘plain view of the rest of the company’.

‘Far from being clandestine, as the Pentagon has implied, the murders of civilians were common knowledge among the unit and understood to be illegal by "pretty much the whole platoon",' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370758/Shocking-video-shows-U
-S-troops-cheering-airstrike-blows-Afghan-civilians.html, we're the good guys, you betcha. Note most of it comes from the UK news source; as usual, we get more complete news from other countries than from our own news. I learned that long ago.