U.S. Inquiry Is Said to Conclude 30 Civilians Died in Afghan Raid

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

U.S. Inquiry Is Said to Conclude 30 Civilians Died in Afghan Raid

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: October 7, 2008

WASHINGTON — An investigation by the military has
concluded that American airstrikes on Aug. 22 in a
village in western Afghanistan killed far more
civilians than American commanders there have
acknowledged, according to two American military
officials.

The military investigator’s report found that more than
30 civilians — not 5 to 7 as the military has long
insisted — died in the airstrikes against a suspected
Taliban compound in Azizabad.

The investigator, Brig. Gen. Michael W. Callan of the
Air Force, concluded that many more civilians, including
women and children, had been buried in the rubble than
the military had asserted, one of the military officials
said.

The airstrikes have been the focus of sharp tensions
between the Afghan government, which has said that 90
civilians died in the raid, and the American military,
under Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top American military
commander in Afghanistan, which has repeatedly insisted
that only a handful of civilians were killed.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/washington/08inquiry.html?hp

[DUlover2909]

1. Killing civilians undermines our war on terror.

It makes us the terrorists.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. That's immaterial for Chimp and the neocons.

More important for them is that it creates more terrorists with a strong desire to kill Americans.

If you are going to wage a profitable 100 year war on terror, you're always going to need a steady supply of terrorists to threaten taxpayers with as you reach into their pockets for the money to buy bombs and missiles.

The Good War is a Bad War
by John Pilger

SNIP

Acclaimed as the first "victory" in the "war on terror", the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 and its ripple effect caused the deaths of thousands of civilians who, even more than Iraqis, remain invisible to western eyes. The family of Gulam Rasul is typical. It was 7.45am on 21 October. The headmaster of a school in the town of Khair Khana, Rasul had just finished eating breakfast with his family and had walked outside to chat to a neighbour. Inside the house were his wife, Shiekra, his four sons, aged three to ten, his brother and his wife, his sister and her husband. He looked up to see an aircraft weaving in the sky, then his house exploded in a fireball behind him. Nine people died in this attack by a US F-16 dropping a 500lb bomb. The only survivor was his nine-year-old son, Ahmad Bilal. "Most of the people killed in this war are not Taliban; they are innocents," Gulam Rasul told me. "Was the killing of my family a mistake? No, it was not. They fly their planes and look down on us, the mere Afghan people, who have no planes, and they bomb us for our birthright, and with all contempt."

There was the wedding party in the village of Niazi Qala, 100km south of Kabul, to celebrate the marriage of the son of a respected farmer. By all accounts it was a wonderfully boisterous affair, with music and singing. The roar of aircraft started when everyone was asleep, at about three in the morning. According to a United Nations report, the bombing lasted two hours and killed 52 people: 17 men, ten women and 25 children, many of whom were found blown to bits where they had desperately sought refuge, in a dried-up pond. Such slaughter is not uncommon, and these days the dead are described as "Taliban"; or, if they are children, they are said to be "partly to blame for being at a site used by militants" – according to the BBC, speaking to a US military spokesman.

The British military have played an important part in this violence, having stepped up high-altitude bombing by up to 30 per cent since they took over command of Nato forces in Afghanistan in May 2006. This translated to more than 6,200 Afghan deaths last year. In December, a contrived news event was the "fall" of a "Taliban stronghold", Musa Qala, in southern Afghanistan. Puppet government forces were allowed to "liberate" rubble left by American B-52s.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19041.htm

[DUlover2909]

9. And Palin said Obama's remarks about this were "dishonorable". sheesh

[JohnyCanuck]

17. The creation of a suicide bomber

The Surge That Failed: Afghanistan under the Bombs

By Anand Gopal

SNIP

One day, as Zubair was walking home, he noticed that the carpet factory near his house in the southern province of Ghazni was silent. That's strange, he thought, because he could usually hear the din of spinning looms as he approached. As he rounded the corner, he saw a crowd of people, villagers and factory workers, gathered around his destroyed house. An American bomb had flattened it into a pancake of cement blocks and pulverized bricks. He ran toward the scene. It was only when he shoved his way through the crowd and up to the wreckage that he actually saw it -- his mother's severed head lying amid mangled furniture.

He didn't scream. Instead, the sight induced a sort of catatonia; he picked up the head, cradled it in his arms, and started walking aimlessly. He carried on like this for days, until tribal elders pried the head from his hands and convinced him to deal with his loss more constructively. He decided he would get revenge by becoming a suicide bomber and inflicting a loss on some American family as painful as the one he had just suffered.

When one decides to become a suicide bomber, it is pretty easy to find the Taliban. In Zubair's case he just asked a relative to direct him to the nearest Talib; every village in the country's south and east has at least a few. He found them and he trained -- yes, suicide bombing requires training -- for some time and then he was fitted with the latest model suicide vest. One morning, he made his way, as directed, towards an office building where Americans advisors were training their Afghan counterparts, but before he could detonate his vest, a pair of sharp-eyed intelligence officers spotted him and wrestled him to the ground. Zubair now spends his days in an Afghan prison.

A poll of 42 Taliban fighters by the Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper earlier this year revealed that 12 had seen family members killed in air strikes, and six joined the insurgency after such attacks. Far more who don't join offer their support.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/17797

[ronnie624]

20. There is no such thing as a "war on terror".

The plots for 9/11 were hatched in Germany and the United Arab Emirates, with final training of the 'pilots' occurring in the United States. The Bush Administration allowed Osama bin Laden and "al Qaeda" (which includes elements within the Pakistani and Saudi governments) to escape into Pakistan years ago. The invasion of Afghanistan is more about control over energy reserves for strategic reasons. The people of Afghanistan are victims of centuries of imperialism, pure and simple.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Hearts and minds

You kill their hearts and you don't mind.

[JohnyCanuck]

4. "They were invaded and bombed in the name of democracy, human rights and women's rights"

Bearing Witness: The Afghan Tragedy
By Malalai Joya

October 7, 2008

SNIP

Seven years after the US invasion of Afghanistan, our devastated country is still chained to the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban; the country is like an unconscious body breathing its last.

The US government and its allies exploited the plight of Afghan women to legitimate its so-called "war on terror" and attack on Afghanistan. The medieval and brutal regime of the Taliban was toppled, but instead of relying on Afghan people, the United States and its allies pushed us from the frying pan to the fire and brought the infamous criminals of the "Northern Alliance" into power--sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, who are as dark-minded, evil, anti-women and cruel as the Taliban.

SNIP


US and NATO forces kill more Afghan civilians than enemies of Afghan people. Thousands of innocent Afghan women and children have been killed in the US/NATO operations. On July 6, 2008, US troops bombed a wedding party in Nengarhar province and killed forty-seven civilians--including the bride. In the similar tragic incident, twenty-seven civilians perished in a US-led NATO attack in a remote village of Nouristan. In an air raid on Azizabad village in Heart province over ninety civilians were killed, sixty of them children, according to the United Nations.

My suffering people have been well and truly betrayed over the past seven years by the US and allies. They were invaded and bombed in the name of democracy, human rights and women's rights, but the most infamous enemies of these values were supported and installed into the power. They relied on the Northern Alliance bands who have a history full of bloodshed, treason and crimes against our people.

The only sector in which Afghanistan has progressed is in drug cultivation and trafficking. "The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government," the Daily Mail reported July 21, 2007. That is why today drug-mafia holds the real power; the insurgency and warlords all have hand in this dirty business.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081020/joya

[jayfish]

5. Someone Get This Information To...

Sarah Palin as soon as possible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/07/mccain.palin.obama.afghanistan

Jay

[Pedalman]

6. This is outrageous!

The U.S. is using Afghanistan and Pakistani civilians as practice targets for all of our new weapons gadgetry. It's a combination of computer technology and the Phoenix program from Viet Nam.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Eric Margolis:"war in Afghanistan is not really about al-Qaida and `terrorism,

but about opening a secure corridor through Pashtun tribal territory to export the oil and gas riches of the Caspian Basin of Central Asia to the West. The US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are essentially pipeline protection troops fighting off the hostile natives.."

TIME TO FACE FACTS IN AFGHANISTAN
Eric Margolis

Toronto October 06, 2008

SNIP

The US-installed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, revealed last week he had asked Saudi Arabia to broker peace talks with the alliance of tribal and political groups resisting Western occupation collectively known as Taliban. Saudi Arabia had been one of the few nations to recognize the Taliban government and retains considerable influence in Afghanistan and remains a loyal friend of Pakistan.

Taliban leader Mullah Omar quickly rejected Karzai’s offer, and claimed the US was heading toward the same kind of catastrophic defeat in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union had met. The ongoing financial panic in North America lent substance to his words.

The US economy is in grave peril and its big three automakers may soon face bankruptcy. In a crazy sidebar, as Wall Street and the Us banking system faced meltdown, the insouciant Pentagon just announced it would spend $300 million with American `contractors’ to spread pro-US propaganda in Iraq. This remarkable idiocy notwithstanding, Washington could soon run out of money necessary to keep paying for operations in Iraq, and bribing Pakistan with $250-300 million a month to wage war against its own rebellious Pashtun tribes people along the Afghanistan border.

SNIP

The current war in Afghanistan is not really about al-Qaida and `terrorism,’ but about opening a secure corridor through Pashtun tribal territory to export the oil and gas riches of the Caspian Basin of Central Asia to the West. The US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are essentially pipeline protection troops fighting off the hostile natives..

Both Barack Obama and John McCain are wrong about Afghanistan. It is not a `good’ fight against `terrorism,’ but a classic, 19th century colonial war to advance western geopolitical power into resource-rich Central Asia. The Pashtun Afghans who live there are ready to fight for another 100 years. The western powers certainly are not.

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m47794&hd=&size=1&l=e

[JohnyCanuck]

8. kick n/t

[Nambe]

10. Military Justifies Attack That Killed at Least 33 Afghan Civilians

Source:

A military investigation has concluded that U.S. forces acted in legitimate self-defense in launching an August air assault against Taliban militants in Afghanistan that it said left 33 civilians dead, including at least 12 children.

A summary of the classified report, released yesterday by the U.S. Central Command, said the military's initial conclusion that only five to seven civilians died in the Aug. 21-22 raid was erroneous. The Afghan government and human rights organizations, as well as the United Nations, have said at least 90 civilians were killed by U.S. and Afghan ground forces and a U.S. AC-130H gunship in the village of Azizabad in western Afghanistan. ...

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/08/AR2008100803876.html

---

Unforgivable.

[xchrom]

11. recommend -- that bombing = the uglyness of our efforts in afghanistan. nt

[Sharkfin]

12. Acceptable

Who was it who said the 500,000 dead Iraqi children was acceptable.

This is just another case of "acceptable". Everything seems acceptable to these animals in Washington, yet nothing done to Americans is acceptable

[ronnie624]

21. Madeleine Albright. n/t

[Arctic Dave]

13. How is killing civilians in their own country "acceptable".

Did the military forget they are Afgahnistan and Iraq, not Arkansas or Iowa. I think they keep forgetting that they shouldn't even be there to begin with.

[Lorentz]

14. No, that must be wrong. Sarah Pain said we were only there to kill terrorists and spread democracy.

[Icelander]

15. What a sad , sad world we live in. N/T

[gratuitous]

16. "Legitimate self-defense"

Can we please weed out the pants-wetting scaredy cats from the military who not only feel that it's legitimate to kill children by the dozen when they're frightened, as well as their superiors who are even jumpier that they can justify such an atrocity after the fact?

I'd always heard the military was supposed to make a man out of a recruit. Looks like just another myth of the High Church of Redemptive Violence to me.

[Supersedeas]

18. the term 'collateral damage' is used marginalized and trivialize the 'human' loss

[SpiralHawk]

19. "Uh oh. Failed again. As usual." - Commander AWOL & Republicon 'leaders'