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KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) – NATO forces in Afghanistan were investigating on Friday whether civilians were among scores of people burned to death when they carried out an air strike against two hijacked fuel tankers.
…Kunduz province Governor Mohammad Omar said as many as 90 people were feared killed, burned alive in a giant fireball.
NATO demonstrates why I don’t by the "Counterinsurgency: Now Low in Civilian Casualties!" sales pitch:
Lieutenant-Commander Christine Sidenstricker, press officer for the U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said Afghan authorities had reported two fuel trucks hijacked. NATO aircraft spotted them on a river bank.
"After observing that only insurgents were in the area, the local ISAF commander ordered air strikes which destroyed the fuel trucks and killed a large number of insurgents," she said.
…
"My brother was burned when the aircraft bombed the fuel tankers. I don’t know whether he is dead or alive," said weeping villager Ghulam Yahya, one of dozens of relatives gathered outside Kunduz Central Hospital in the provincial capital.
AP reports that as many as 40 of the dead were civilians.
As usual:
In other news:
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled on Thursday that he would be open to sending additional troops, asserting the war was not "slipping through the administration’s fingers."
UPDATE: This story is very fluid, and the numbers quoted above are the very conservative estimates. Reports from the scene indicate that few bodies are in one piece. The health minister from Kabul indicates that "Around 200 to 250 villagers were believed to have gathered" around the trucks before the bombs fell, and the trucks were, obviously, highly combustible before hit with ordinance. I will keep updating this post throughout the day.
(Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about civilian casualties caused by the war in Afghanistan by watching Rethink Afghanistan (Part Four): Civilian Casualties, or by visiting http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.)
28 Comments
Recommended. Thank you, Derrick and Brave New Films, for showing us in stark horror exactly what America is visiting upon these poor victims whose misfortune it is to have oil under their land and their country to lie in a strategic site for that big UNICOL pipeline.
The plans to invade Afghanistan were well formed in the summer before 9/11 and the order was on Bush’s desk to be signed on 09/10/2001 after one of his many absences from DC.
The war in Afghanistan is based on just as big a mass of lies as that in Iraq. How fortunate for Cheney’s energy task force that the Second Pearl Harbor happened on 9/11/2001 and the focus could be thrown on Bin Ladin as the perpetrator, and hatred for him used to incite the American people to support Bush/Cheney in a war they had already planned.
It is way past time for the countries of the world, and the American people, to condemn these war crimes and bring to true Justice the entire Bush/Cheney cabal that sought to subdue and subject these oil-rich countries.
Hearts and minds
Jesus Fucking Christ! Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is no longer a satire, is come to life.
“Christine Sidenstricker” included.
If I may quote a former pastor of a current president: “god damn the united states.”
You mean “buy” in place of “by”
All this and much much more for billions of your treasure.
Flesh is burning.
God bless Amurika.
I’m not sure how big the village is, but I am willing to bet that the percentage of villagers killed is larger than the percentage of NY area residents killed on 9/11. Why don’t they love us?
Yup!
The description tell it all doesn’t it? An “Air Strike” was needed to stop two trucks carrying fuel in Afghanistan. If this doesn’t tell you who is in command on the ground, (hint, it ain’t us) and Karzai’s blue finger gang making up votes, what will?
A single sniper with a .50 cal sniper rifle using armor piercing shell could have taken out both tankers for about $50 bucks. But no, they had to call in an air strike because no one was around to do a simple job?
What the hell kind of brains are working this thing? It sounds more like a clinical experiment on how weapons work so they can spend money to test someone’s product. Gotta bomb. Costs $50,000 to get an air strike up, and they kill non combatants with mass overkill bombing. Brilliant. The new bombs they used probably added another 50K to the total cost of the matter. They could have shot out the freaking tires and stopped the highjacking, but they don’t even consider that?
The people in charge need to prove they aren’t morons, but they can’t. They show no progress after all these years, and still they want money for a war that can’t be won. Tell you anything kids?
Ah yes, was it Monday that General McChrystal said the primary directive in Afghanistan was to protect the civilian population in Afghanistan?
By the way, I am certain that the rightwingers will now be outraged about civilian casualties.
-G
From what I’m hearing the trucks were stuck in a ravine when the fly boys showed up. Sitting ducks either way.
Once there are no civilians left the military won’t have to worry about them.
This was going on in Iraq as well, and may still be. I believe this has to do with american casualties. Better to bomb and destroy the entire house (or block) on Beirut St. in Bagdad than send troops in there to take it–and take casualties.
It sounds more like a brigand operation. Snatch the trucks, sell the fuel. But to put this in context, we have had this week the story of
the ongoing fallout from the blatantly rigged election in one of the most corrupt countries on the planet which kept Karzai in power but has trashed his legitimacy
how the military used a notorious contractor to determine which reporters were sufficiently pro-Pentagon to be allowed to accompany US troops as embeds
the delay in the release of McChrystal’s Afghanistan report indicating that what he wants is considerably in excess of what even the escalation minded Obama can accept
and now another in a long series of counterproductive airstrikes that cause a large number of civilian deaths and casualties.
I would say this equates to a policy that is unraveling, except there is no policy to unravel.
There is now a controversy over an AP photo of a wounded and dying young US soldier now too.
While I am in favor of press openess, I do find it quite interesting that the media has decided that now is the time to begin broadcasting pictures of the horrors of war.
AP for that matter.
-G
Thanks for bearing this burden by posting this.
Why shouldn’t GOD damn america and destroy it’s war economy? Duh
And God damn Presidents Obama’s finger on the trigger of these remote control death platforms or drones to, drone on about this senseless slaughter.
The Washington talk about “counterinsurgency” (COIN) is the usual bait-and-switch. If practiced as described in the manuals and only under the conditions specified in the manuals, COIN probably would work and pretty much without non-combatant casualties. But, in that case, a COIN force would be the same thing as a really enlightened civilian police force. In real life, it is never that way.
Of course, at this point, no one is even trying. COIN is just another word for what we were doing before: bombing as usual and hoping that something will turn out differently this time.
What no one will admit is that you cannot win a war against a popular insurgency that just has to not lose. You can kill lots of people if you have the stomach for it. But killing people is not a viable military objective. Without SOMETHING to win–an enemy leadership that will surrender or a capital to capture or a grateful populace to liberate–you can’t win a war. It will just go on as long as the insurgents have the popular suppot to go on.
End the stupid, criminal, hostile military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Purity of Arms” internalization is complete, in the holy name of self defense.
You’re right, except it’s worse than that – they were in place and disclosed by March 2001
Jane’s Defense Weekly
More here
PS the link to the Patriot Act being written prior to 911 in the above link is dead so I reprinted it in full here
i knew what he meant too
This was before 911, also.
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“A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, “Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program,” dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.
Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: “Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.” The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:
The Bush administration put COG plans into operation for the first time in U.S. history in the hours directly following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They have never been rescinded.
Their implementation involves a rotating staff of 75-150 senior government officials and others from every Cabinet department in two “secure, undisclosed locations” on the East Coast. However, key congressional representatives have been kept out of the loop and House and Senate leaders have said they were not informed the “shadow government” had “gone live.”
So secretive are Bush administration plans that Peter DeFazio (D-OR), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, was denied access in 2007 to the classified version of the COG plans contained in top secret Presidential Decision Directive annexes. This too, is unprecedented. ”
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Rums…..efore_9/11
The Patriot Act..how Orwellian. Its full name has nothing to do with being a patriot…”Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (Public Law Pub.L. 107-56)”.Some of it is due to expire in December.
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http://www.ombwatch.org/node/9886
bb, any idea how long that staff of “75-150 senior government officials” will be kept rotating?
Only the shadow government knows and they aren’t telling.
One of them is probably Mt. Weather
Wow..that’s a lot of taxpayer money being spent to save the so called elite. FEMA is interesting; not at all what people think it is.
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“FEMA was created in a series of Executive Orders. A Presidential Executive Order, whether Constitutional or not, becomes law simply by its publication in the Federal Registry. Congress is by-passed. Executive Order Number 12148 created the Federal Emergency Management Agency that is to interface with the Department of Defense for civil defense planning and funding. An “emergency czar” was appointed. FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic. “
http://dmc.members.sonic.net/sentinel/gvcon6.html
From Peter DeFazio’s one minute speech.
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“Congressional Record: August 2, 2007 (House)
But now they’ve denied the entire Homeland Security Committee of the United States House of Representatives access to their so-called detailed plan to provide for continuity of government. They say, trust us. Trust us, the people who brought us Katrina, to be competent in the face of a disaster? Trust us, the people who brought us warrantless wiretapping and other excesses eroding our civil liberties? Trust us?
http://fas.org/sgp/congress/2007/cog.html
Well ’said’ and points mentioned are deservedly so.
Great observation.