Pentagon Debates Whether To Squelch Report On Afghan Attack

McClatchy:

WASHINGTON -- Defense Department officials are debating whether to ignore an earlier promise and squelch the release of an investigation into a U.S. airstrike last month, out of fear that its findings would further enrage the Afghan public, Pentagon officials told McClatchy Monday.

Read the whole story: McClatchy

Comments

[longtimegone]

02:05 AM on 06/17/2009

The longer the list grows of things we think we'd better not reveal lest the rest of the world get the wrong idea about us, the more it seems that it's us that has the wrong idea about us.

[Gewyne]

02:16 PM on 06/16/2009

This was on TV last night http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/catch-up#2924823

It is dispicable - there are not enough US / Nato forces so small teams of Speical forces are sent out, they hire gangs of gun men and then target anyone the gunmen say are taliban. Time and time again the targets are business competitors, rival villages, marriage disputes. The US is acting like a personla army to thungs.

Then you have the bombings that are routinely bought down without any real thought process - if your Afghan, you have a gun your Taliban - if you are found dead and are male fighting age you are a Militant - there is absolutely no thought process going on -

[1differentdrummer]

12:01 PM on 06/16/2009

Are we winning their hearts and minds?

[KCFreedom]

10:57 AM on 06/16/2009

This argument doesn't hold water either for Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan for that matter.

The people in those countries already know what was done to them.

All this "squelch" accomplishes is keeping AMERICAN public opinion in check.

Do they not know how dumb all of this is?

These wars have lasted longer than WWII. It's time to support the troops and bring them home.

[kitkatborn]

10:21 AM on 06/16/2009

The truth will out. If they try to squelch this it will leave them in a bad position when it does. Why are they so stupid?

[Austintatious]

10:03 AM on 06/16/2009

The Obama Administration is constantly trying to decide whether to release or squelch some damning report, photos or video having to do with its foreign policy. You'd think they'd have figured out by now that carrying on the Bush/Cheney foreign policies is a really bad idea and that, just maybe, getting out of the quagmires Bush/Cheney left for them might be the smart thing to do.

All this is not reassuring.

[Dr Scott]

09:18 AM on 06/16/2009

Look, we've been doing this kind of thing since day one in OEF. I was there in 2002. Back then, the main method used by warlords to eliminate their rivals was to tell us that his rival was Taliban or al Qaida and was planning a meeting. We'd drop in a surveillance team, wait for a large gathering of people, and then call in an air strike. Then we'd haul out the dead and broken children and fly them to our hospital. We never seemed to catch on that the Afghans were playing us.

[AbstractImp]

08:11 AM on 06/16/2009

In other words . . .
We Really Messed Up!

[oldedinthailand]

07:15 AM on 06/16/2009

If the report is released or not the AF people know what happened, Though each side will differ in who & how many died. This war was screwed from the beginning. Had the US & NATO spent a few $s digging wells & creating an infrastucture in a 5th world country, we would now have hearts & minds. Instead we have a government that says the military will be our diplomats. Oh, by the way I was there & heard the hopes of people that the US was going to help.
It was uplifting when the EM would give me their old clothes & sneakers to distribute to the locals while the politicians gave nothing but speeches about democracy and spent more on killing.
olded never submits unless he is drunk.

[mamacat]

07:02 AM on 06/16/2009

"It has been reported that Taliban fighters fled into a building which also housed women and children. U.S. forces dropped a 2,000 bomb on the building, which killed most of the Taliban fighters still inside, but also killed most of the civilians in the building.

"In an unrelated story, gunmen in New York City ran into an apartment building, after allegedly robbing a bank. Shortly afterward, New York police dropped a 2,000 pound bomb on the residence, killing some of the bank robbers and most of the inhabitants of the apartment complex.

"In both instances, the authorities responsible for dropping the bombs said that their actions were justified because of the need to insure public safety."

This is of course a satirical piece, but illustrates the double standard and fallacious logic of American forces in Afghanistan, as they continue to justify the large numbers of civilian deaths caused by American bombing by the need to protect Afghanis from the Taliban. If American forces inside our own borders routinely killed large numbers of American civilians in order to get at criminals hiding among them, the outcry would be immediate and very loud.

[dphilip]

07:13 AM on 06/16/2009

Why don't you dems tell your contacts in Afghanistan to quit hiding behind women and children and come out and fight like honorable men?

[mamacat]

07:18 AM on 06/16/2009

Like the honorable men who bomb women and children?

[gaydm]

07:26 AM on 06/16/2009

We dems do not have any control over you repugs and your "traditional family values" like hiding behind women and children.

[Nyland8]

08:38 AM on 06/16/2009

And needless to say, that double standard is applied to everything we do. One of the most under-reported stories of Bush the Elder's reign was the Panama invasion to capture Noriega. Hundreds of civilians were killed. If the biggest drug dealer in the galaxy were in St. Louis, would we kill hundreds of innocent bystanders to capture him? We are hypocrites of the first order - or New World Order. Right now our own FBI has plenty of intelligence on militias, supremacists and other would be McVeighs across the country - but does anybody think we're willing to torture Americans to find out when and where the next "Oklahoma City" bombing will take place?

It is exactly that double standard that most of our enemies in the world point to - our hypocrisy - when they drum up support for their violence against us. We don't practice what we preach.

[Rog49Thomas]

06:35 AM on 06/16/2009

Many may recall the first question from their first university philosophy course?

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?"

And now a new one, from your national ethics/morality course.

"If a bomb falls on a village and we don't report it, was anyone killed?"

[CigarGod]

02:40 PM on 06/16/2009

Have a cigar, with me. I need to recover from that thought.

[morgan1]

06:04 AM on 06/16/2009

This is one of those situations where the military is in a lose-lose--Refusing to release the video and report is admission of serious mistakes (And known before hand); releasing the information only verifies what everyone already knows. Secrecy makes the issue worse while transparency puts the issue to rest. The US just doesn't get it.

[mamacat]

07:11 AM on 06/16/2009

More important than the releasing of the video is the reporting in the press of what was on the video. Perhaps, finally, American commanders will stop the practice of accepting large numbers of civilian casualties as justified by the killing of a few enemy combatants. If we ever get to the point in Afghanistan, as we did in Vietnam, where we believe that the majority of the inhabitants of the country are our enemy, then we will have reached the point where we are doing more harm by staying than we would be doing by leaving.

[SmolderingRuin]

03:12 AM on 06/16/2009

Just more of that old-time transparency. Hearts and minds, guys. Hearts and minds.

[WierdWookie]

01:30 AM on 06/16/2009

I think we already know. Why bother? Besides, we need "light of Day" in this country.

[billw8017]

03:18 AM on 06/16/2009

Yeah. The Afghans already know civilians are being killed. Before the Taliban was driven from Kabul, the press quoted a truck driver, "Matters were continuing as normal in Kabul: Weddings, marketing and ... funerals."

I'm not saying we were careless about this, but we did attack Canadian troops part of our alliance and kill four of them.

[Rog49Thomas]

06:36 AM on 06/16/2009

Yes, but it kept us safe.

Since that incident it is an incontrovertible fact, that Canada has not attempted a sneak invasion of the USA.