(AFP) An Afghan man prays beside graves of people killed in a U.S. strike at Azizabad in August 2008
By David H Lewis
On August 23rd 2008 a U.S. Airstrike reportedly killed 76 civilians, mostly children, near the village of Azizabad in Afghanistan's Herat province. Unsurprisingly, this latest U.S. massacre of civilians prompted a vigorous protest from local people and even the ultra American loyalist President Hamid Karzai condemned the civilian casualties.
However, the U.S. reaction to this latest in an unending stream of gung-ho trigger happy massacres of defenceless civilians has been entirely predictable with the hollow promise of "an investigation" and an immediate counter claim that "only 30 were killed" as if that makes it O.K!
Unfortunately this sort of thing has been going on since the U.S. first illegally invaded Afghanistan some 7 years ago and several other airstrike massacres, including a so-called wedding party massacre of 50 innocent people back in July, are currently under investigation.
We might take some comfort from all these investigations if they led to some improvement or restraint in the American rules of engagement but the situation seems to be getting worse not better and we can gain an insight into the reasons for this if we look back to the ludicrous claims of one of the American's very first "investigations" – that into the infamous ''wedding party massacre'' of June 2002 which defied its own evidence to exonerate U.S. Forces and blame the hapless Afghan victims!
This incident was such an embarrassment to the Pentagon at the time (it's now become quite routine) that they sent then Brigadier General Tony Przybalawski to head the enquiry. He was well qualified for such a task because he'd previously commanded the fearsome B2 bombers whose most glorious feat of arms was to bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in '98.
The operation that led to this so-called wedding party massacre (it actually had nothing to do with a wedding) was code-named Full Throttle and involved attacking a suspected Taliban area in Oruzgan province and it resulted in scores and possibly hundreds of civilian deaths. The U.S. report was at pains to fudge the figures between an Afghan claim of 250 dead and 600 wounded to their own 34 dead and 50 wounded. They concluded with the familiar "an exact number will never be able to be confirmed" as if that somehow mitigated the crime. The same could be said for the British mass murderer Dr Shipman but no one excused him on that account!
Since their chronically incompetent intelligence advised them to expect anti aircraft fire an AC-130 gunship was assigned to suppress it. These are the familiar Hercules transports fitted with a fearsome array of heavy hitting rapid fire weapons and target acquisition devices on one side. The aircraft then orbits its target and pours a withering fire into the centre of the circle. From the plane the target thus appears stationary (and easy to inspect) while the plane presents a distant moving target.
As an indication, if any were needed, of the trigger happiness of the Americans, we might also note that American Central Command (Centcom) admitted a few months before, one of these aircraft had shot up part of an American army convoy in broad daylight killing Chief Warrant Officer S.L. Harriman and “two Afghan military personnel – who were not dignified by name - and wounding many others.
Operation Full Throttle attacked several sites and 2 were subsequently investigated. The American's embarrassment is palpable throughout. The first of these sites, for instance, was "the apparent location of most deaths and injuries" not actual, only apparent!
Now, although the report says, "significant efforts were expended to ensure only the compounds that were the source of fire were targeted". Their very next paragraph says, "The AC-130 was not able to observe the anti aircraft gun itself. Rather the ground location of the source of the fire was identified and fires were directed to that area. Just as the weapon itself is not seen, it is also not possible to determine if the fires from the AC-130 have damaged or destroyed the weapon. Consequently, personnel at the weapon's location were the primary targets. Unfortunately, it is not possible to distinguish men from women or adults from children."
So here we are being asked to believe they knew they were being fired on yet could not see the weapon itself (This is despite all their state of the art sensors not to mention the evidence of their own eyes seeing the muzzle flash or tracers coming at them if they really were being fired on!). Nonetheless they knew the ground location of the weapon but couldn't tell if their fire had damaged or destroyed it. That forced them to target the "personnel" (not people, note) at the weapon's location though unfortunately they couldn't tell adults from children.
The obvious comment on all that is if the weapon was damaged or destroyed it would surely stop firing at them but if they admit they can't tell the difference then they couldn't have known for sure they were being fired on in the first place! This is ludicrous! They seem to have some supernatural awareness that they ARE being fired on but they seem unable to tell when they are NOT being fired on!
All this was backed up by the investigators themselves because neither the troops who arrived later that night nor a fact finding mission 3 days later nor General Pryz 3 weeks later could find any evidence of any anti aircraft weapons at either site nor even any shell casings so in actual fact no gunfire was ever directed at the attacking aircraft because no guns were there!
Furthermore, although they could identify the precise "location" of this gun (albeit without knowing whether it was firing at them), one then also has to wonder how hard it was to distinguish adults from children. For their future reference, adults are big, children are little.
In the following paragraphs they then try to fudge and minimize the numbers maimed or murdered saying the exact number will "never be confirmed" as if that somehow excuses the outrage. Their embarrassment is especially well illustrated by the evasive way they account for the slain, saying "of the 20 at the second site, 2 were adult males".
Despite this rather pathetic attempt to camouflage their slaughter of women and children it doesn't take very much intelligence for us to work out the composition of the other 18!
They also make the incredible suggestion that most of the dead had already been buried within some two hours before their ground forces arrived.
So here they are asking us to believe the survivors dispensed with all the normal human reactions of shock, horror, extreme distress and trauma at the sight of their maimed and slain women and beloved children (not to mention their own wounds) and just robotically and woodenly picked up their shovels and began burying dozens and possibly scores or even hundreds of their slain women and children in just a couple of hours and in the dead of night! Despite this extraordinary claim they admit "no fresh gravesites were observed" so once again some supernatural forces seem to have been at work. Although the figure of 250 dead is mentioned the Americans actually admit to 34 dead and some 50 wounded.
But most amazingly in the teeth of their own evidence they then conclude their report with the "AC-130 acting properly and in accordance with the rules struck only those sites that were actively firing that night."
They then give us the entirely unconvincing, we "regret" the loss of innocent lives but, amazingly, after just admitting no guns were found they say "responsibility for that loss rests with those that knowingly directed fire at coalition forces" and placed those weapons in civilian communities!
This is an absolute insult to our intelligence. In fact of course the much more obvious and compelling inference of their own evidence is that their AC-130 gunship simply ran amok gunning down dozens and dozens of defenceless women and children indiscriminately in cold blood without even the least provocation of being fired on themselves. Incidentally, one can see these AC-130s gunning down defenceless people in the videos that find their way onto You-tube. The horror of these civilian attacks is only exceeded by the chorus of approving comments posted by red-neck American viewers!
If this is the standard of "investigation" we can expect from the
U.S. Military, desperately focussing on exonerating their own incompetence even in the teeth of their own evidence whilst blaming the innocent Afghan children for getting in the way of their hail of bullets then there is little hope of any improvement in their regular slaughter of defenceless Afghan women and children.
A proper investigation might be expected to make some recommendations to avoid future tragedies like this emphasising extremely basic military principles like properly identifying targets, not firing on small human figures (because they are the children) and making a fundamental re-assessment of the effectiveness of air-strikes which are presently entirely counter-productive. They might also recommend some disciplinary or legal action against the perpetrators of these outrages but we've learned from the Abu Ghraib affair, the Haditha massacre and numerous other American atrocities that the Pentagon has little interest or appetite for disciplining those responsible.
General Pryz's report did none of those things and so we've had to witness the continuing dismal catalogue of American atrocities against civilians year after year after year with the Americans immediately trying to minimise the claimed numbers of casualties and blaming the victims.
Typical of this mindset was the reaction of U.S. spokesman Lt Col Hilferty after yet another massacre of Afghan children some years later, who said we are, "not completely responsible" because the Afghans shouldn't keep weapons close to civilians! It will be very interesting to see if this latest commission of enquiry can improve on the nonsense of their first one! How will those defenceless children be blamed for being bombed and shot up by those brave American Special forces?
Better by far, of course, would be for the Americans to read the writing on the wall: If they've made no appreciable positive impact on Afghanistan in all these years (longer than their involvement in two world wars!) they're never going to and should leave forthwith. However, we also know from their bitter experience of defeat and humiliation in Vietnam and Iraq that they're likely to prolong the agony of their illegal occupation until they are finally forced to leave in humiliating circumstances. We can only hope that a new administration in the White House might recognise the better of those options and end the long agony of their illegal occupation of Afghanistan.
We might take some comfort from all these investigations if they led to some improvement or restraint in the American rules of engagement but the situation seems to be getting worse not better and we can gain an insight into the reasons for this if we look back to the ludicrous claims of one of the American's very first "investigations" – that into the infamous ''wedding party massacre'' of June 2002 which defied its own evidence to exonerate U.S. Forces and blame the hapless Afghan victims!
This incident was such an embarrassment to the Pentagon at the time (it's now become quite routine) that they sent then Brigadier General Tony Przybalawski to head the enquiry. He was well qualified for such a task because he'd previously commanded the fearsome B2 bombers whose most glorious feat of arms was to bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in '98.
The operation that led to this so-called wedding party massacre (it actually had nothing to do with a wedding) was code-named Full Throttle and involved attacking a suspected Taliban area in Oruzgan province and it resulted in scores and possibly hundreds of civilian deaths. The U.S. report was at pains to fudge the figures between an Afghan claim of 250 dead and 600 wounded to their own 34 dead and 50 wounded. They concluded with the familiar "an exact number will never be able to be confirmed" as if that somehow mitigated the crime. The same could be said for the British mass murderer Dr Shipman but no one excused him on that account!
Since their chronically incompetent intelligence advised them to expect anti aircraft fire an AC-130 gunship was assigned to suppress it. These are the familiar Hercules transports fitted with a fearsome array of heavy hitting rapid fire weapons and target acquisition devices on one side. The aircraft then orbits its target and pours a withering fire into the centre of the circle. From the plane the target thus appears stationary (and easy to inspect) while the plane presents a distant moving target.
As an indication, if any were needed, of the trigger happiness of the Americans, we might also note that American Central Command (Centcom) admitted a few months before, one of these aircraft had shot up part of an American army convoy in broad daylight killing Chief Warrant Officer S.L. Harriman and “two Afghan military personnel – who were not dignified by name - and wounding many others.
Operation Full Throttle attacked several sites and 2 were subsequently investigated. The American's embarrassment is palpable throughout. The first of these sites, for instance, was "the apparent location of most deaths and injuries" not actual, only apparent!
Now, although the report says, "significant efforts were expended to ensure only the compounds that were the source of fire were targeted". Their very next paragraph says, "The AC-130 was not able to observe the anti aircraft gun itself. Rather the ground location of the source of the fire was identified and fires were directed to that area. Just as the weapon itself is not seen, it is also not possible to determine if the fires from the AC-130 have damaged or destroyed the weapon. Consequently, personnel at the weapon's location were the primary targets. Unfortunately, it is not possible to distinguish men from women or adults from children."
So here we are being asked to believe they knew they were being fired on yet could not see the weapon itself (This is despite all their state of the art sensors not to mention the evidence of their own eyes seeing the muzzle flash or tracers coming at them if they really were being fired on!). Nonetheless they knew the ground location of the weapon but couldn't tell if their fire had damaged or destroyed it. That forced them to target the "personnel" (not people, note) at the weapon's location though unfortunately they couldn't tell adults from children.
The obvious comment on all that is if the weapon was damaged or destroyed it would surely stop firing at them but if they admit they can't tell the difference then they couldn't have known for sure they were being fired on in the first place! This is ludicrous! They seem to have some supernatural awareness that they ARE being fired on but they seem unable to tell when they are NOT being fired on!
All this was backed up by the investigators themselves because neither the troops who arrived later that night nor a fact finding mission 3 days later nor General Pryz 3 weeks later could find any evidence of any anti aircraft weapons at either site nor even any shell casings so in actual fact no gunfire was ever directed at the attacking aircraft because no guns were there!
Furthermore, although they could identify the precise "location" of this gun (albeit without knowing whether it was firing at them), one then also has to wonder how hard it was to distinguish adults from children. For their future reference, adults are big, children are little.
In the following paragraphs they then try to fudge and minimize the numbers maimed or murdered saying the exact number will "never be confirmed" as if that somehow excuses the outrage. Their embarrassment is especially well illustrated by the evasive way they account for the slain, saying "of the 20 at the second site, 2 were adult males".
Despite this rather pathetic attempt to camouflage their slaughter of women and children it doesn't take very much intelligence for us to work out the composition of the other 18!
They also make the incredible suggestion that most of the dead had already been buried within some two hours before their ground forces arrived.
So here they are asking us to believe the survivors dispensed with all the normal human reactions of shock, horror, extreme distress and trauma at the sight of their maimed and slain women and beloved children (not to mention their own wounds) and just robotically and woodenly picked up their shovels and began burying dozens and possibly scores or even hundreds of their slain women and children in just a couple of hours and in the dead of night! Despite this extraordinary claim they admit "no fresh gravesites were observed" so once again some supernatural forces seem to have been at work. Although the figure of 250 dead is mentioned the Americans actually admit to 34 dead and some 50 wounded.
But most amazingly in the teeth of their own evidence they then conclude their report with the "AC-130 acting properly and in accordance with the rules struck only those sites that were actively firing that night."
They then give us the entirely unconvincing, we "regret" the loss of innocent lives but, amazingly, after just admitting no guns were found they say "responsibility for that loss rests with those that knowingly directed fire at coalition forces" and placed those weapons in civilian communities!
This is an absolute insult to our intelligence. In fact of course the much more obvious and compelling inference of their own evidence is that their AC-130 gunship simply ran amok gunning down dozens and dozens of defenceless women and children indiscriminately in cold blood without even the least provocation of being fired on themselves. Incidentally, one can see these AC-130s gunning down defenceless people in the videos that find their way onto You-tube. The horror of these civilian attacks is only exceeded by the chorus of approving comments posted by red-neck American viewers!
If this is the standard of "investigation" we can expect from the
U.S. Military, desperately focussing on exonerating their own incompetence even in the teeth of their own evidence whilst blaming the innocent Afghan children for getting in the way of their hail of bullets then there is little hope of any improvement in their regular slaughter of defenceless Afghan women and children.
A proper investigation might be expected to make some recommendations to avoid future tragedies like this emphasising extremely basic military principles like properly identifying targets, not firing on small human figures (because they are the children) and making a fundamental re-assessment of the effectiveness of air-strikes which are presently entirely counter-productive. They might also recommend some disciplinary or legal action against the perpetrators of these outrages but we've learned from the Abu Ghraib affair, the Haditha massacre and numerous other American atrocities that the Pentagon has little interest or appetite for disciplining those responsible.
General Pryz's report did none of those things and so we've had to witness the continuing dismal catalogue of American atrocities against civilians year after year after year with the Americans immediately trying to minimise the claimed numbers of casualties and blaming the victims.
Typical of this mindset was the reaction of U.S. spokesman Lt Col Hilferty after yet another massacre of Afghan children some years later, who said we are, "not completely responsible" because the Afghans shouldn't keep weapons close to civilians! It will be very interesting to see if this latest commission of enquiry can improve on the nonsense of their first one! How will those defenceless children be blamed for being bombed and shot up by those brave American Special forces?
Better by far, of course, would be for the Americans to read the writing on the wall: If they've made no appreciable positive impact on Afghanistan in all these years (longer than their involvement in two world wars!) they're never going to and should leave forthwith. However, we also know from their bitter experience of defeat and humiliation in Vietnam and Iraq that they're likely to prolong the agony of their illegal occupation until they are finally forced to leave in humiliating circumstances. We can only hope that a new administration in the White House might recognise the better of those options and end the long agony of their illegal occupation of Afghanistan.
An Afghan policeman keeps watch at a blast site in Kandahar province February 17, 2008. A suspected suicide bomb attack at a picnic spot in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Sunday killed at ...
Pentagon Relied On An "Independent Journalist" To Deny Villagers' Claims Of Large-Scale Civilian Deaths. It Turned Out The "Journalist" Is Fox's Oliver North
11th September 2008
Read details at:
http://www.appletreeblog.com/?cat=90
Another Afghan Wedding
America Murders Still More Innocent Little Kids - at Another Afghan Wedding
12th July 2008
So.
We see some Americans have murdered 47 more (innocent), Afghan civilians.
Eh?
So what's new? 
(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)
Posted in War, Afghanistan, Outrage, That Old Brit | 11 Comments »
Read details at:
http://www.appletreeblog.com/?cat=90
Air Strikes Afghanistan
Per the last post, a new UN report out states that the US airstrikes in Afghanistan have killed 90 civilians.
Afghan Civilian Casualty Rates increasing ....
Our murderous comedy of errors:
From the cutting pen of John Pilger. No laughing matter. Why isn't the Hague/UN doing anything about the trail of murder/genocide? How can we afford to live with this blood on our hands?
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