by Susie
I don’t know whether to believe this story. But then, I don’t know whether to believe the official U.S. version, either. We’ve seen so many fabricated stories come out of our Mideast excursions (Jessica Lynch, anyone?), that I simply don’t know. But I do think it’s important to at least note the continuing insistence both by villagers and the Afghan parliament’s investigation team that there were more than a dozen troops involved in the Kandahar massacre.
The incongruous stories surrounding the March 11 massacre on Afghan civilians in two villages took another turn today, with reports from witnesses in Mokhoyan, one of the two villages targeted, that they were threatened by U.S. troops just days before the massacre.The witnesses say that troops rounded up all the men from the villages after a roadside bombing, lined them up against a wall, and told them they would “pay a price” for the attack.The witnesses put the date of the bombing at either March 7 or 8.
Previous stories had massacre suspect Robert Bales supposedly “upset” about a bombing in which one of his friends lost a leg.The military would neither confirm nor deny any bombings in the area, only insisting that they would investigate anything that might be related to the shootings. They likewise gave no comments about the threats in Mokhoyan.
If confirmed, the threats would also appear to support the Afghan probe’s version of the massacre, which had an organized group of over a dozen U.S. troops carrying out the massacre, as opposed to a lone man, as the U.S. maintains.
One guy or twenty guys…what difference does it make? Hillary’s war in Afghanistan is a loser. It was a loser when Hillary and Bob Gates bribed the militray into backing them on their “go big, nation building” strategy. And it’s a loser now. When will this God-awful Secretary of State retire?
But I do think it’s important to at least note the continuing insistence both by villagers…
actually, it’s not clear at all what the villagers say. in the M&C article linked above, it says that naheem lalai hameedzai, an afghan MP, said that villagers say that 15-20 people were involved. however, local elders claim that isn’t what the villagers say, and they accuse hameedzai of “lying for political gains.” the article also notes that hameedzai’s version “conflicts with statements from US officials, as well as with separate testimony from some people present during the attacks.”
everyone claims to know what the villagers say. but all we have are second hand accounts from other people about what the villagers said, and those accounts contradict one another. everyone has an incentive to lie for their own political interests.
frankly, the lone crazy gunman makes more sense to me simply because the u.s. military had nothing to gain by massacring those people, especially right after the qur’an burning fiasco. the military’s explanation, that villagers may have misunderstood the number of people involved in an attack when they saw the helicoptors and soldiers that came to evacuate the victims to a military hospital after the attacked ended, also is plausible. that’s not to say it is true, but until villagers themselves come forward and speak for themselves (rather than through the mouths of politicians), it’s hard for me to believe those alternative theories.
Imhotep — I don’t think Afghanistan can be called Hillary’s War, especially since Obama so closely embraced it as his war.
I somehow think that one guy doing everything that was done is unrealistic. Perhaps Bales is trying to take one for team, and protect his men from prosecution. And the US from having even more names to be hated by the Afghan population.