20-plus years ago, my father was trying to convince me to join ROTC or the National Guard so they would pay my college tuition (not that that money was coming out of his pocket). I was a journalism major and he suggested that I could be the person who wrote the "no we didn't accidentally bomb that village of nuns" press releases. He was a Vietnam vet who knew what the score was in terms of the military's tendency to lie baldfaced to the public.

bigtree (1000+ posts) Sat May-09-09 12:46 PM
Original message
Bombing Afghans in Defense of Afghanistan?

AFTER nearly a week of denials and counter accusations, an anonymous U.S. military official admitted today that their airstrikes Monday in Afghanistan killed at least 50 civilians. Despite that conclusion, local authorities still insist that as many as 140 innocent civilians were savagely bombed in their own homes as they took refuge from an unraveling battle between Taliban and Afghan/coalition forces.

Initially, the U.S. military gave their standard (infuriating) denial that civilians were killed, as they have in all of the many instances where civilians have been killed by the collateral effects of U.S. dominated raids and bombings (several deliberately targeted, only to find later that 'faulty intelligence' led them to kill the wrong people). Later, when local police and other Afghan officials protested loudly and produced bodies of the women and children who had been caught in the way of the deliberate bombing, Pentagon officials immediately strained to find some way to blame the Taliban - by the weekend settling on claiming that it was actually the Taliban who had killed the civilians in an effort to generate protests from the Afghan population.
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After reports from the Red Cross and others confirmed that civilians had been slaughtered in the three villages - Gerani, Gangabad and Koujaha - which sustained the brunt of the hours of bombardments, Mr. Gates (and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well, in a statement with Karzai in D.C.) did indeed express 'regret' over the deaths. However, his comments implicating the Taliban suggest a new tactic from the Pentagon which would deflect from criticism and stifle the growing movement among Afganis who are insisting that the U.S. dominated forces stand down from these reckless and deadly raids and airstrikes.

"We regret any, even one, Afghan ... innocent civilian casualty. And we will make whatever amends are necessary," Gates said in Afghanistan Thursday. "We all know that the Taliban use civilian casualties and sometimes create them to create problems for ... the United States and our coalition partners. We will have to wait and see what happened in this particular case."

His subordinates at the Pentagon didn't wait, however, to float to the press what they admitted were "loosely sourced" rumors which suggested the combatants had taken the time during the hours of bombings to stage the killings of villagers in the Taliban stronghold to make it appear as a result of the U.S. airstrikes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5623860