High Civilian death toll in latest U.S. Raid

[Cruelbreed]

Using the New York Times as my news source i'm growing to notice how stupidly biased the NYT is and how quick it is to advertise anything that is anti-US and troop.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

[napalmdeath1.0]

read this in our local paper this morning, don't see it as anti US propaganda, it is facts being investigated.

[Cruelbreed]

read this in our local paper this morning, don't see it as anti US propaganda, it is facts being investigated.

That's truth, except the NYT seems to place this kind of stuff as the most visible news. It's not propaganda but there are more curious cases reported by NYT that seem to skew things. What's their agenda, even their report on Mexican arms seemed pretty off. I'm just losing a little trust. Don't get me wrong the NYT and their Iht.com site (international herald tribune) are usually my primary sources for news, just lately it hit me.

We'll see the investigation turns out.

http://thesop.org/index.php?article=9103

[leahcimnosirrom]

if it is the same incident i saw on the news, which i think it is, it is under investigation by the u.s. military. some speculation that the deaths were caused by the taliban throwing grenades and or sustained RPG fire. war sucks any which way you cut it

[napalmdeath1.0]

if it is the same incident i saw on the news, which i think it is, it is under investigation by the u.s. military. some speculation that the deaths were caused by the taliban throwing grenades and or sustained RPG fire. war sucks any which way you cut it

true that

[Cruelbreed]

Also reports of the Taliban using civilians as human shields then purposely reporting everything as civilians killed by the U.S. People with shrapnel all over their bodies being used as human shields that is..

[ghost]

Also reports of the Taliban using civilians as human shields then purposely reporting everything as civilians killed by the U.S. People with shrapnel all over their bodies being used as human shields that is..


Yeah. The Taliban are notorious for doing this. They hide inside civilian houses(forcing the families to stay, as well), during raids by US troops. There can only be one outcome from that. This kind of thing has happened many times. And of course, the gullible media will be the first to fall for it.

[JToKKo]

Just read a news story that says the exact same thing you guys predicted.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090510/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

Check it out though, they use "blame" in the title like it is still the U.S. fault. They seem to give the Taliban the benifit of the doubt. I'm tired of the media.

[bobdina]

Taliban held to blame in airstrike

By Trista Talton and Andrew deGrandpré - Staff writers
Posted : Sunday May 10, 2009 8:36:33 EDT

Days before a May 4 U.S. airstrike allegedly killed Afghan civilians in Farah province, Taliban commanders met across the border in Quetta, Pakistan, to hatch a plot to turn Afghan public sentiment against U.S. forces, according to a military source in Afghanistan who is familiar with the incident.

By many accounts, their plan worked: Within hours of the airstrike, international media were reporting that upwards of 150 innocents, including women and children, had been killed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Adviser James Jones, the former Marine commandant, both expressed sympathy for the loss of life.

But evidence now shows that many of those civilian casualties appear to have been killed by Taliban grenades — after the airstrike — in a blatant effort to drive up the number of dead and stir public resentment of U.S. military power, the source said.

The Taliban killed 30 to 40 civilians, according to the source. An official count has not been released pending completion of a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation.

Army Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told reporters May 7, “We have some other information that leads us to distinctly different conclusions about the cause of these civilian casualties.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking during a news conference that same day in Kabul, said he had seen such reports but that nothing was confirmed. Neither McKiernan nor Gates elaborated.

What went down
The stage was set for the bombing May 4 in Gerani village when Taliban fighters publicly executed three civilians they accused of aiding the Afghan government, the military source in Afghanistan said. The executions, he said, were designed to draw out the Afghan and U.S. forces operating in the area and ambush them when they arrived.

It worked. By midday, a convoy of U.S. and Afghan soldiers headed to the Bala Baluk district, a known Taliban stronghold in southwestern Afghanistan that is home to more than 100,000 Afghans. When they arrived in the village, they were greeted by dozens of Taliban fighters armed with AK47s, rocket-propelled grenades and Russian PKM machine guns, the source said.

A massive firefight ensued. Outnumbered, the American and Afghan troops called for additional support. A group of Marines with Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command responded, said Army Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for U.S. Forces Afghanistan.

Once the Marines arrived, the fighting escalated substantially. Having identified several Taliban fighting positions, the Marines called in an airstrike, Julian said.

When it appeared that the Taliban were backing off, the air support was called off and the U.S. and Afghan forces returned to their bases.

Making sense of it all
Within hours of the fighting, the Taliban launched an aggressive information campaign, claiming that between 100 and 300 civilians had been killed, the source in Afghanistan said. Indeed, those figures have appeared in various media reports.

That’s where the Taliban commanders’ original planning session comes in, the military source in Afghanistan said. In advance of the battle, he said, they ordered Taliban foot soldiers to use grenades, if possible, to execute the civilians they had corralled into the compounds during the ambush, and then present their bodies to the villagers as “evidence” that U.S. warplanes bombed innocent civilians.

“In the chaos of a firefight, they figured no one would know the difference,” the source said.

Then the Taliban mingled its own dead with the civilians, to make the number of dead appear larger, he said. Taliban corpses were buried with the civilian bodies to give the appearance that they were part of the civilian death toll, the source said, adding that latest estimates put the number of Taliban dead around 50.

In Gerani, the lone gravesite contained 60 bodies “at most,” the source said, and an employee at the provincial hospital reported staff there treated 11 patients as a result of the fighting.

“If 200 people were killed, you would think there would have been a lot more wounded,” he said. “Even if 60 were killed, it seems like that would have been the case — unless, of course, most of those 60 people were executed ... after the fact. Two hundred killed and 11 wounded? You do the math.”

Moreover, he added, intel suggest that some of the dead civilians had wounds consistent with fragmentation and bullet holes — rather than the burns and tissue damage commonly found on victims of a bombing.

During a meeting with coalition forces and Afghan government officials after the airstrike, villagers — some of whom were held hostage by the Taliban — confirmed that the Taliban rounded up some of the civilians and killed them, the source said. Most of the villagers understood it to have been a calculated plan carried out by the Taliban to blame the entire incident on U.S. and Afghan forces, he said.

This is not the first incident in which the military has rejected claims of mass civilian casualties resulting from U.S. airstrikes. Last year, following a series of investigations, coalition officials concluded that the Taliban killed most of the civilians who were claimed to have died as a result of an airstrike in Azizabad, a village in the Shindand district in Herat province.

In 2007, a company with MarSOC was kicked out of Afghanistan after claims that a platoon of Marines indiscriminately fired on and killed civilians following a suicide bomb attack on their convoy. After an investigation, Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, head of Marine Corps Forces Central Command, determined the Marines acted appropriately.
This is from Todays on-line version of the Army times

[StrangeGuY]

Shit happens... people dont understand that in Afghanistan it's war and not Disneyland!

[Cruelbreed]

Thanks Bobdina, great follow up to the situation. Let us here more when it's available :D Taliban fucking up big time.

[JToKKo]

Now another story, U.S. war crimes because some of the people have burns, maybe from Phosphourus. Why does the media try and work against us?

[napalmdeath1.0]

Now another story, U.S. war crimes because some of the people have burns, maybe from Phosphourus. Why does the media try and work against us?

WP is fucking banned, end of story

[Cruelbreed]

Now another story, U.S. war crimes because some of the people have burns, maybe from Phosphourus. Why does the media try and work against us?

Almost guaranteed to have been used by the Taliban to start more bs. Just as investigations are now showing the taliban blew up and shot civilians. It works though, you have a good amount of people looking for this kind of stuff to blame on the U.S. Some on this very forum and site. It's part of the Taliban war effort to make the U.S. look poor, and it works.

[bobdina]

It is not banned by any treaty the U.S. is a signatory to. The taliban has used it 4 times in the last 2 years and the U.S. uses it for illumination at night.

[napalmdeath1.0]

It is not banned by any treaty the U.S. is a signatory to. The taliban has used it 4 times in the last 2 years and the U.S. uses it for illumination at night.

lol, the rest of the civilized world signed treatys to bann it, like land mines and nukes, the yanks always have some story, but it must be said they make good TV series :)

[JToKKo]

lol, the rest of the civilized world signed treatys to bann it, like land mines and nukes, the yanks always have some story, but it must be said they make good TV series :)

Hey, I have a great idea! Why not just ban bombs and grenades and guns too. I hear those can cause death in some gruesome ways. We'll just make some treaty, every army must only use pillows to kill, however the tags must be removed so as not to catch anyone in the eye. That way no one will have get hurt when they die in war.

[ghost]

May as well just ban guns.

[bobdina]

KABUL — The U.S. accused Afghan militants Monday of using white phosphorus as a weapon in “reprehensible” attacks on U.S. forces and in civilian areas.

The accusation comes two months after an 8-year-old Afghan girl named Razia was wounded by white phosphorus in a battle between militants and NATO troops. Razia has received 10 skin grafts at the U.S. military hospital at Bagram. A U.S. military spokeswoman said her injuries could have been caused by either side.

U.S and NATO troops frequently use white phosphorus to illuminate targets and create smoke screens. But human rights groups denounce its use as a weapon, or over populated areas, for the severe burns it causes.

The U.S. military declassified documents Monday showing at least 38 instances where militants had used white phosphorus in attacks or where weapons had been found in eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. primarily operates. The NATO-led force supplied information on six other instances in the country.

The U.S. said militants used white phosphorus in improvised explosive attacks at least seven times since spring 2007, some in civilian areas. The documents showed 12 attacks where militants used white phosphorus in mortars or rockets, the majority of which came the last two years.

The most recent militant attack came Thursday, when a NATO outpost in Logar was hit with two rounds of indirect white phosphorus fire, the documents said. Most troops in Logar, just south of Kabul, are American.

Afghan authorities have also said Taliban fighters may have used a burning agent — possibly white phosphorus — in a major battle May 4, after doctors discovered unusual burns among the dead and wounded. President Hamid Karzai has said up to 130 civilians died in that battle; the U.S. blamed militants for deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way.

Doctors are treating 16 patients with severe burns from that battle, said Nader Nadery, an official with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Col. Greg Julian, the top U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said the U.S. didn’t use white phosphorus in last week’s fight in Farah province.

Farah’s governor told the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission that many of those killed in the battle had severe burns, Nadery said. The governor said that Taliban fighters may have attacked the villagers with a flammable material, though not necessarily white phosphorus, Nadery said.

The militants’ use of white phosphorus as a weapon could cause “unnecessary suffering” as defined in the laws of warfare, U.S. spokeswoman Maj. Jenny Willis said.

“This pattern of irresponsible and indiscriminate use of white phosphorus by insurgents is reprehensible and should be noted by the international human rights community,” she said.

Willis said the military doesn’t necessarily know militants are using white phosphorus deliberately, but that its use is still “indiscriminate.”

Militants find white phosphorus rounds in old weapons stores left over from decades of war, she said, but also get newer rounds from “neighbors,” a reference to militant networks in Pakistan.

A Taliban spokesman couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The U.S. allegations come after Human Rights Watch last week called on NATO to release information into a March 14 battle in Kapisa — one province northeast of Kabul, where many French troops are stationed — in which Razia was burned by white phosphorus munitions.

Willis said the NATO-led force can’t be certain which side fired the round that wounded Razia.

“Either scenario is possible, and equally regrettable. One thing is certain: Razia will have the best care that we can give her,” she said.

White phosphorus may have been used by NATO troops as a smoke screen or to mark targets, Willis said. The release of information about militants’ use of white phosphorus was not meant to refute the Human Rights Watch statement, she said.

“We declassified it because there seems to be a general lack of awareness that insurgents are in fact accessing and using white phosphorus, so this is an effort to correct the record,” she said. “We’re not trying to exonerate ourselves for what happened to Razia, because we just don’t know. It could have been our fault.”

White phosphorus is not banned by any treaty that the United States has signed. By the way if you rip the tags off the pillows it's against the law. LOL

[bobdina]

In your eyes I guess the U.K. , India, Isreal , rusia , Pakistain , China , France are not civilized countries, also in 2005 the U.K. used w.p. in Iraq and I did not hear any bitching about that. Oh and yes we make some cool T.V.

[ghost]

In your eyes I guess the U.K. , India, Isreal , rusia , Pakistain , China , France are not civilized countries, also in 2005 the U.K. used w.p. in Iraq and I did not hear any bitching about that. Oh and yes we make some cool T.V.


Well, the US is the most scrutinized country in the world. Go figure...