10mo ago

US airman Aaron Bushnell claimed to have classified knowledge of US forces fighting in Gaza tunnels on night before setting himself on fire: pal

nypost.com US airman Aaron Bushnell claimed to have classified knowledge of US forces fighting in Gaza tunnels on night before setting himself on fire: pal

“He told me on Saturday that we have troops in those tunnels, that it’s US soldiers participating in the killings,’’ the pal claimed.

US airman Aaron Bushnell claimed to have classified knowledge of US forces fighting in Gaza tunnels on night before setting himself on fire: pal

Aaron Bushnell claimed he had secret knowledge of US troops fighting in Hamas tunnels under Gaza — just hours before setting himself on fire

"His actual job involves the processing of intelligence data. Some of what he was processing had to do with the Israeli Gaza conflict.
“One of the things he told me is that coming across his desk … was the US military was involved in the genocides going on in Palestine,’’ the friend said,

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23 comments

I mean, I feel like someone who was willing to set themselves on fire would also be willing to illegally leak classified documents if such existed.
- Agree. But I'm going to assume both are happening:
  He didn't have the whole story
  Neither do we.
  I bet there are western special ops forces or contractors operating in Gaza, ostensibly hunting Iranian assets. I doubt they would risk the global pr explosion of using any non Israelis to conduct the policing and harassing tasks we are seeing. Deaths from which are genocidal in Nature)
  I'm not justifying any of it, and I'm not absolving the US of contributing to a genocide in Gaza. I just bet they are using the chaos to go hunting.
  So, if any of my assumptions are right, it could have been misreported to him. Or it wasn't that and he deemed our known-public support of Israel's ongoing genocidal actions as sufficient to motivate his protest.
  The US doesn't care about Gaza, ( I mean this both ways: they wouldn't take the time to conduct this genocide themselves, but also don't care about the civilian welfare damn near enough). But they absolutely do care about what Iran is up to and would not hesitate to hunt Iranian agents or connections in an "open" area.
- then again, we are reading this so I guess it worked

This will be something that's derided as a wild conspiracy for 30 years until the CIA posts an old doc on their official website that confirms it matter-of-factly
On a more positive note, the time between speculation like this and hard proof emerging seems to be plummeting. Bushnell was not the only person inside the machine struggling with the consequences of his actions, so hopefully we get some leaks sooner rather than later.
- See also the NYT article about the CIA being extremely involved in the war in Ukraine, and the many ways they assisted in escalating things before Russia invaded. Not a Russia fanboy, they shouldn't have invaded and I hope they're defeated soundly, but there was a lot of hand washing pretending that the US did not provoke this war, and it did.
  At least with Gaza, I actually kinda hope it's true and US Special Forces are in those tunnels fighting Hamas members. Because that's a far more effective method of stopping this fight than Israel carpet bombing civilians. I would like the US to beat Hamas before Israel does, in the same way Germans wanted the US to get to Berlin before the USSR.

Looks like he also received a mandatory deployment order to "israel" to directly participate in the genocide before he decided to go through with this.
- That’s not a deployment order, and I feel this has been taken out of context by people unfamiliar with the military. I can’t say with certainty what this is, but it could be guidance like “don’t wear your uniform in public if you’re in Israel”. It wouldn’t have no restrictions on releasing it if it were anything important.
  To say this is evidence of mandatory deployment orders is ridiculous.
  
  Yeah it's unclassified. Plus it's not even a secret that us troops are in Israel, biden sent like 2000 in November or December. It would be interesting news if they were fighting in Gaza, but I'm definitely going to need evidence before I even entertain that idea.
  This document as evidence is particularly weak because the air force doesn't fight on the ground.
- Such a shame he killed the only troop willing to die for Palestinians, instead of killing- well
- Supersedes All Previous Israel Reporting Instructions
  Ok I'm a bit of a pedant and this type of language frustrates me. Give me an Order number, or document designation of any kind. This has no timeframe attached to it either. It should supersede a set of orders and not be vague like this.
- He did say he wasn’t going to be a part of the genocide, so that checks out