Doctors Without Borders airstrike: US alters story for fourth time in four days
Source: The Guardian
Doctors Without Borders airstrike: US alters story for fourth time in four days
Commander of war in Afghanistan tells Senate panel that US forces had called in airstrike at Afghan request an admission of a war crime says MSF chief
US special operations forces not their Afghan allies called in the deadly airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, the US commander has conceded.
Shortly before General John Campbell, the commander of the US and Nato war in Afghanistan, testified to a Senate panel, the president of Doctors Without Borders also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said the US and Afghanistan had made an admission of a war crime.
Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a tenacious fight to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead.
Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires, Campbell told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday morning.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/06/doctors-without-borders-airstrike-afghanistan-us-account-changes-again
Alittleliberal
(528 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Did anyone ask us? Of course not. Ask Obama and his storm troopers.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)Demeter:
randys1
(16,286 posts)think
believe them
bemildred
(90,061 posts)forest444
(5,902 posts)In the same way the brass didn't like having UN Envoy Sérgio Vieira de Mello poking around so much in Iraq.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/08/20/sergio-vieira-de-mello/
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/19/un-failed-to-properly-probe-baghdad-bombing-de-mello-partner/
bemildred
(90,061 posts)It's not new, it's not different, and it what to expect in war. The problem is the pretense that war is something sanitary and precise and that it has anything at all to do with ethics or morality.
al bupp
(2,262 posts)cpwm17
(3,829 posts)uhnope
(6,419 posts)I can't imagine what kind of deranged thinking actually thinks that US forces, in fighting the Taliban, want to intentionally bomb hospitals. I'm wondering what such a mindset thinks is the benefit for the US is to be gained from the horrible publicity and anger now coming onto the US forces due to this incident. What conspiracy theory says that MSF was somehow in such an adversarial relationship with the USA that the USA would intentionally bomb a MSF hospital, no matter what the repercussions?
bemildred
(90,061 posts)uhnope
(6,419 posts)inquiring minds want to know
bemildred
(90,061 posts)uhnope
(6,419 posts)I can't imagine what kind of deranged thinking actually thinks that US forces, in fighting the Taliban, want to intentionally bomb hospitals, and I would like to know.
I'm wondering what such a mindset thinks is the benefit for the US is to be gained from the horrible publicity and anger now coming onto the US forces due to this incident. Could you shed some light on that?
What conspiracy theory says that MSF was somehow in such an adversarial relationship with the USA that the USA would intentionally bomb a MSF hospital, no matter what the repercussions?
Response to uhnope (Reply #31)
Post removed
underthematrix
(5,811 posts)first news report came out about this incident. I don't see anything in here that's different. There's an investigation that has been launched by DoD. Of course any subsequent stories are going to require some degree of reading comprehension otherwise the reader could be manipulated.
uppityperson
(115,724 posts)On Sunday, it said that the strike took place in the vicinity of the hospital and suggested it had been accidentally struck. On Monday, Campbell said that the Afghans requested the strike and said US forces in the area were not threatened.
On Tuesday, he clarified that US forces called in the airstrike themselves at Afghan request.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)atreides1
(16,285 posts)...to the 500 pound gorilla in the room!
"Addressing Tuesdays committee hearing, Campbell confirmed that he has recommended to Obama that the US retain thousands of troops in Afghanistan beyond Obamas presidency reversing a plan to reduce the force to one focused on protecting the US embassy in Kabul.
He argued for strategic patience
Campbell wants boots on the ground to continue this delusional debacle!
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)coming from a number of different places: pilots, Afghanis, special forces, hospital staff, civilian eyewitnesses.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Tarheel_Dem
(31,412 posts)By Lydia Tomkiw @lydiatomkiw L.Tomkiw@ibtimes
Reports that Russian warplanes in Syria are not targeting positions held by militants of the Islamic State group are unfounded, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly said Thursday. Lavrovs comments, made after Wednesdays meeting with his U.S. counterpart John Kerry, came in response to fears that Moscows airstrikes in Syria were aimed at targets other than ISIS and had killed civilians.
Talk began that civilians were hurt by airstrikes. We have no such data, Lavrov reportedly said. We carefully make sure that these target strikes are precise.
Russia, which has long supported Syrian President Bashar Assads bid to remain in power in the war-torn nation, launched airstrikes in the country Wednesday -- its first overseas military engagement in nearly four decades. However, while Lavrov said that Russia was conducting an air operation with surgical strikes on ground targets of the terrorist group ISIS, U.S. and its allies expressed concerns that Moscow was, in fact, targeting Western-backed Syrian rebels fighting Assad.
This is not the kind of behavior that we should expect professionally from the Russian military, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter reportedly said during a Pentagon press conference Wednesday, adding that Moscows actions were tantamount to pouring gasoline on the fire.
Khaled Khoja, leader of the Syrian National Coalition -- the country's main opposition group -- also denounced the airstrikes, which, he said, killed 36 civilians in areas free from ISIS or al Qaeda control.
http://www.ibtimes.com/russia-rejects-unfounded-accusations-civilian-deaths-syria-airstrikes-2122321
The U.S. has owned up to it's mistake, while Russia is in full denial mode. The Kremlin and it's online propagandists are out in force to deflect from Russia's brutal and widespread attacks in Syria.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)any credible witnesses?
Until you do, (like, say, the entire organization of MSF screaming for help in real time) don't go projecting US war crimes on another.
Tarheel_Dem
(31,412 posts)"Moscow is financing legions of pro-Russia Internet commenters. But how much do they matter?"
"Russia's campaign to shape international opinion around its invasion of Ukraine has extended to recruiting and training a new cadre of online trolls that have been deployed to spread the Kremlin's message on the comments section of top American websites.
Remember when Putin consistently denied that there were Russian troops inside Ukraine?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and as for "Russian trolls", I wouldn't worry about it. They won't make any more difference than you will.
Response to Demeter (Reply #32)
Tarheel_Dem This message was self-deleted by its author.
riverbendviewgal
(4,300 posts)o now were into full-on justification mode: yes, we did it; yes, we did it on purpose; and were not sorry because we were right to do so since we think some Taliban fighters were at the hospital, perhaps even shooting at us. In response to the emergence of this justification claim, MSF expressed the exact level of revulsion appropriate (emphasis added):
MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present.
This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as collateral damage.
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/the-radically-changing-story-of-the-u-s-airstrike-on-afghan-hospital-from-mistake-to-justification/
riverbendviewgal
(4,300 posts)n particular, MSF quickly publicized numerous facts that cast serious doubt on the original U.S. claim that the strike on the hospital was just an accident. To begin with, the organization had repeatedly advised the U.S. military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF personnel at the facility frantically called U.S. military officials during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a sustained manner for 30 more minutes. Finally, MSF yesterday said this:
The hospital was repeatedly & precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched #Kunduz
MSF International (@MSF) October 4, 2015
Demeter
(85,373 posts)to stop in the name of all that's holy...
I am disgusted with the Obama administration and coverup.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Can they send someone who speaks English?
Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires.
So, U.S. military aircraft carry sentient fires on board and regularly drop them off to burn down buildings? When did this start?
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(12,792 posts)The article says, "AC-130 gunships, which fly low, typically rely on a pilot visually identifying a target."
The AC130 is a lot more sophisticated than that. There is a suite of sensors (radar, infrared, laser, etc.) each of which has its own highly trained operator. These sensors let the AC130 target and fire 105mm shells with pinpoint accuracy during day or night.
This wasn't a building being hit by a single bomb -- it was a continual bombardment of death for a half hour.
Someone has got to be held accountable.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)What is Obama going to do about it?
uhnope
(6,419 posts)This doesn't "alter" the story, it's a clarifies it:
He's saying of course the Afghans don't communicate directly with the plane, they communicate with US forces on the ground who then communicate with the plane.
WTF is up with the Guardian twisting this into some kind of change of story? The Guardian headline is as bad as anything Greenwald ever wrote. Oh yeah I forgot, the Guardian published all his BS twisting of factoids into sensational headlines too.
The Guardian should be ashamed for this kind of lying clickbait that simply feeds the western-hating trolls who want to turn a horrible mistake by NATO/US forces into a fucking Mai Lai massacre. The same fellow travelers who refused to ever admit that Russia made a horrible mistake and shot down a commercial airliner are now all over this horrible mistake--which the US admits was a horrible mistake--and wants to turn it into some kind of intentional bombing of a hospital at the moment they bombed it, as if it somehow helps the US in its fight against the Taliban to bomb a hospital intentionally. Whacked out deranged thinking by haters. WTF
azmom
(5,208 posts)in afghanistan?
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Gotta' keep up the demand for more - don't you believe in the Invisible Hand?
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)When we incinerate a wedding party killing dozens, the victims, are easily dismissed by the media stenographers. Dismissing the claims of MSF is going to be harder to do.
The change is who called in the strike, and claims of shooting from the hospital. Special forces on the ground, calling in AC-130 attacks is bad optics since the war is over and we're no longer there.