NATO Air Strike In Afghanistan Kills 90 - Bloomberg
Gates: It's Not Time to Leave Afghanistan
NATO said they made sure there were no civilians in the area in Kunduz after 2 fuel tankers were hijacked by the Taliban and attacked by NATO warplanes as they were being emptied by civilians supposedly recruited to help the Taliban unload them. We first heard 90 civilians were killed in our latest effort to win hearts and minds NATO admitted to zero with promises of an investigation meanwhile alliance chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen later acknowledged that some civilians may have been killed. NATO officials are investigating. A village wiped out by NATO is a far cry from "some civilians may have been killed" The Afghan village devastated by Nato strike on Taliban
This kind of "success" as we supposedly search and destroy in our battle to win hearts and minds of course has been reaping rewards since day one and is only getting worse like everything else there with the passing of every year there and despite an increased call from the public to get out we keep adding troops with the promise of more to come as this continues to get worse and Obama vows to see it through!
* Civilian casualties (2001-2003) between 3,100 and 3,600 civilians were directly killed by U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom bombing and subsequent Special Forces attacks between October 7, 2001 and June 3, 2003. This estimate counts only so called "impact deaths" deaths that occurred in the immediate aftermath of an explosion or shooting, That number does not count deaths that occurred later as a result of injuries sustained or deaths that occurred as an indirect consequence of the U.S. airstrikes and invasion. We continue to parse numbers and facts to get the results officials want. I am sick of this crap!
* Civilian and overall casualties (2005) An estimated 1,700 people were killed in 2005 according to an AP count. Everyone is lumped together this time. We are including civilians, insurgents and security forces members. Some 600 policemen were killed between Karzai's election in early December 2004 and mid-May 2005.
* Civilian and overall casualties (2006) A report by Human Rights Watch said that 4,400 Afghans were killed in 2006. More than 1,000 of them were civilians. Some 2,077 militants were killed in Coalition operations between September 1 and December 13 and we have to assume another 1,100 or 1,200 were Afghan security forces. Things are not getting better here!
* Civilian and overall casualties (2007) More than 7,700 people were killed in 2007, including: 1,019 Afghan policemen, 4,478 militants; 1,980 civilians and 232 foreign soldiers. Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated in September 2007 that between 5,700 and 6,500 Afghan civilians had been killed so far in the war by American and NATO military forces He stressed that this was an "absolute minimum" and probably "a vast underestimate" because the figures do not include what I consider to be the whole wider scope of the nightmare known as life in Afghanistan. I invite you to look at what is a majority of deaths ignored to get more pleasing numbers at the link below!
* Civilian and overall casualties (2008) The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that 2,118 civilians were killed as a result of armed conflict in Afghanistan in 2008. It is getting higher but until 2009 this is the highest civilian death toll since the end of the initial 2001 invasion and represents an increase of about 40 percent over UNAMA's figure of 1,523 civilians killed in 2007.
* Civilian and overall casualties (2009) For the first half of 2009 UNAMA recorded 1,013 Afghan civilian deaths for the six months from January 1st to June 30. This represents an increase of 24% over the same period in 2008, when 818 civilians were killed.
Civilian casualties of the War in Afghanistan (2001–present ... Last weeks civivian deaths if they happened go a long way in making this worse for the civilians than last year or any year prior.
US Official Reaffirms Need for Afghanistan Society Building
* I will only ask how much more of this search and destroy, winning hearts and minds Nation building will Afghani's tolerate before...
James Joiner
Gardner,Ma
www.anaveragepatriot.com
15 comments:
"....attacked by NATO warplanes...
The two F-15s were American planes. Do you think describing them as 'NATO warplanes' somehow relieves us from any wrong-doing?
Our "mission" in Afghanistan has been clear all along. We will continue killing people until they stop hating us.
We've proven al-qaeda is a small time terror outfit compared to the US Government. The numbers tell the story.
"... attacked by NATO warplanes . . .
The German military called in the air strike, so I suppose it could be called a NATO operation.
The number of innocent Afghani and Iraqi civilians killed, dwarfs the number of innocent civilians killed on 9/11. In the past nine years, the death toll has kept on climbing, they are ceasing to be tragic, they are becoming statistics.
Afghanistan is a no win situation for the average Afghan. Side with the Taliban and get the wrath of the U.S. Side with the U.S. and face the wrath of the Taliban. Side with no one and face the wrath of both sides. Then of course there's the damage to the infrastructure which causes more deaths. Not that they had much to begin with in the first place.
NATO-SCMATO It matters not who called in the airstrike. What matters is who carried it out. If the Germans called for us to immediately withdraw from Afghanistan, would we listen to them then?
Hell, if all the other members of NATO called for us to withdraw, would we listen?
We are some ruthless b*stards, and that is NOT a good character trait.
The Americans are magnanimous enough to call operations, coalition or NATO operations, even though they call the shots.
This mess needs to end. There is no difference in being there now and being in Iraq.
difficult, difficult indeed!
Larry-
Or when we were in Viet Nam. We take a grade-school bully and hype him up as some kind of souped-up, mega-Ghengis Kahn, only to satisfy the lusts of the Military/Industrial Complex.
*sigh* Such a useless disregard of life.
The US now isolated and alone in Iraq, and the way that public opinion is running in Europe, one could predict that very shortly, the NATO countries will start to withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving the US alone, a long way from home, and suurounded.
It`s almost as if Europe has planned and plotted with the rest of the world to lure the US forces to a place where they can be totally destroyed...forever.....and would that be a bad thing?
I think that most sane americans recognise that their "military industrial complex" is a grossly swollen parasite that needs to be removed from the planet.
brother I had to spend the day working outside yesterday and probably today too so I won't get a story or much else done. I was wondering why they did not identify the planes origins. I am so sick of the information control!
Give us our way do what we want or we will kill you in the name of peace. I am so sick of this crap and I see no end for generations.
Landsker We usually agree but I have believed from day one that we better unite as a world against this so called terrorism or we are screwed. This is not going to go away it is just starting. Whoever backs out now will be had later. I do not see the US military being lured in and destroyed unless by Russia and China and a concerted effort. You and the rest of Europe better hope that does not happen because you will be next and you will go down! Remember what we are up against here.
Ah well Jim, we will have to agree to respect each others views, I guess, but I can assure you, that globally, in my humble opinion, there is far more support for the defeat of the "coalition" than for their victory.
I do not see a battle in military terms, but rather a collapse of the dollar and US finances, (now 9 trillion in debt, and no solution to hand), which will lead to internal dissent, and thus a violent upheaval within the United States... a scenario foreseen by many Chinese and European/ Russian pundits.
As for terrorism, let`s not forget, that apart from their alleged involvement in the attack of 9/11, the Muslims have only ever attacked NATO/US forces on their own soil.
We are the invaders, the thieves, the aggressors, and we are the ones using airborne warfare, chemical weapons, cluster bombs etc, we are the ones who killed over one million civilians in Iraq, and thousands more in Afghanistan.
Let`s not forget too, the bare-faced arrogance of Bush, who admitted that invading Iraq was to secure oil supplies, and had nothing to do with terrorism.
As for Chinese and Russian complicity, well, Russia has oil and gas, and uses that as a stick, and China now holds so much US debt, that they can initiate global currency swings that will cripple the US financial markets.
The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had little to do with protecting the rights of women, tens of thousands have been killed by OUR TROOPS... would you in America fight without relent or remorse an invader who had bombed your wife and children into a bloody tangled mess?
Of course you would, and so would I.
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