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America's "Lone Gunman" in Afghanistan: "I Did It". . . .
Joe Giambrone
Global Research
March 17, 2012
"It appeared you had a lone gunman who acted on his own." - Barack Obama
We have two very, very different stories coming out of Afghanistan, regarding the killing spree and nine murdered children out of 16 slayings in Kandahar. On the one hand we have the surrender and confession of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales dressed up in an Afghan robe and allegedly surrendering on videotape with the words "I did it" on his lips. No doubt he did.
"He acknowledged the killings, then asked for an attorney within minutes of being captured and isn't cooperating with the investigation," according to military spokespersons. Since then Bales has been spirited out of Afghanistan.
But, when exactly was this little surrender filmed, and after what negotiations or deals had been struck? It has the appearance of being a staged event.
The alleged "lone nut" Bales did not act alone, according to multiple eyewitnesses, family members of the slain, as well as an official Afghan parliamentary investigation. No, there were up to 20 participants at multiple locations. The assault looks a lot like a night raid, which is standard practice in the Afghanistan war theater, only this time with added "payback" inflicted on local families. Perhaps this payback was related to another soldier in their company who lost a leg the day before.
So when Obama uses imprecise language like "it appeared," we have to wonder if there is more to this qualified assessment than meets the eye, and if Obama knows full well that he may need to backpedal some day into what "appears" in a week, or a month from now.
The lone-nut spree killer is an easy sell when non-white, non-American, non-English speaking witnesses can't get their stories told in the US mainstream media. There is only the official version, the uniformed, English language version, the government approved thinking on the matter. All else is simply the dreaded "conspiracy theory" which we all know can't possibly exist in the face of official "reports."
An investigatory team, which included eight Afghan lawmakers, spent two days at the Panjwai district crime scene gathering evidence. “We closely examined the site of the incident, talked to the families who lost their beloved ones, the injured people and tribal elders,” one of the officials said. They reported that "their investigation showed there were 15 to 20 American soldiers, who executed the brutal killings."
So why is this news not on the front page in the United States?
After going to the trouble of finding out the truth, the Afghan lawmaker Hamidzai Lali expressed his view of the matter: "If the international community does not play its role in punishing the perpetrators, the Wolesi Jirga would declare foreign troops as occupying forces, like the Russians." This story seems newsworthy enough, given the grave implications of turning Afghanistan officially against the US/Nato occupation. Yet, it has not been what's "trending" in the news feeds, not at all. There is only one version of the killing spree that is permitted in our "free" press. It's the one that excludes the testimony of the eyewitness family members.No My Lai this time. Sgt. Robert Bales will get the Lee Harvey Oswald storyline. In exchange for his cooperation and his taking the fall alone, it "appears" he will be handled with kid gloves.
"Witnesses told Reuters they saw a group of US soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar's Panjwayi district at around 2am, enter homes and open fire."
"Haji Samad said 11 of his relatives were killed in one house, including his children... 'They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them.'"
A neighbor of the massacred family, Agha Lala, said, "They were all drunk and shooting all over the place... Their bodies were riddled with bullets."
Joe Giambrone is a filmmaker and author of Hell of a Deal: A Supernatural Satire He edits The Political Film Blog, which welcomes submissions. polfilmblog at gmail.
And had you heard that the wife of the admitted seriously-disturbed "killer" had put their two houses on the market three days before the massacre?
Sounds like a pretty well-orchestrated plan.
3 comments:
"US soldiers were alleged to have sexually assaulted two female victims before they were killed in the Panjwai massacre in southern Kandahar last Sunday, a high-level Afghan probe team revealed.
The Wolesi Jirga’s, or lower house of Parliament, delegation investigating the Kandahar shootings by US troops said besides killing 16 civilians, the soldiers sexually assaulted them.
On the ill-fated Sunday, US troops shot 16 civilians, including nine children and three women, and injured five others when they opened fire on houses in Zangabad village, in Panjwai district.
Some of the victims’ bodies were later set on fire."
So let me try to get this story straight from the various pieces reported.
A group of US soldiers together with their local domestic helper soldiers got drunk, went down to the nearest town, raped two women, killed them and several children, tried to hide their crimes by burning the bodies.
As an N.American I am totally ashamed and speechless.
GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN ALL AMERICAN SOLDIERS NOW - YOU HAVE DISGRACED YOURSELVES AND ALL OF AMERICA FOR 100 YEARS!
I saw that article about an hour after I published, M. Thanks for the update.
The military-approved articles coming fast and thick today reek of the "he was such a quiet guy" and "no one would have ever suspected him of being a bad guy" PR pieces reminiscent of the Lt. William Calley subterfuge put out quickly after the My Lai pictures and report by Seymour Hersh were published in 1969 (the event occurred in 1968 and would have never been made public without Hersh's and others' reporting).
Calley, as you may remember, said his commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, ordered him to have his men kill everyone in My Lai. He was charged with murder, convicted and given a life sentence, which was commuted in 1974. Five-year life sentence? Then a job selling life insurance according to PBS.
Any bets on what happens to the aptly named Bales? (Almost Bates?)
You almost wonder, don't you, if these types of planned "engagements" with the helpless enemy don't serve to bond the troops to ever-higher levels of war atrocities. (After all, we're not leaving; we're never leaving.)
Horrible, yes. But what else can you think now in a country where the "change" President has claimed the right to kill anyone suspected of the poorly-defined crime of "terrorism," and daily drone bombings of civilians continue to be ordered?
Oh yes, women were raped at My Lai too before the "mindless" machine-gun mowing down of over 300 women, children and old people by troops bent on revenge against a populace already under attack. And they also tried to cover up their crimes before for months before Hersh's exposure.
It's pretty hard to blame this type of event on the replacement of military draftees with thug criminals (as some are arguing now), isn't it?
Seems like they're all thugs over there. It's become the American way.
Ask anyone in Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya or Syria.
And, yes, I'm sorry for everyone bound up in this "hunger game."
I'm there too.
Not to put too fine a point on the history of the 1968 My Lai massacre by the U.S. Army, but . . . you may decide for yourself whether President Obama's opinion of how they are not the same type of event has much credibility (or leaves you incredulous at the word games still being trotted out for what they hope is an ignorant population).
As the BBC coverage below makes clear, the lies started at the top with the commanding officer claiming 20 were killed in action when over 500 had been officially reported to him (and every superior officer in his line was exposed during the trial as being aware of the details and doing nothing to further the investigation). General William Westmoreland instigated the Army's investigation of the obvious war crimes, but later acquiesced in a whitewash that let all the perpetrators go except for Calley.
And it was over a year before the real story of rape, sodomy, maiming and murder of babies was published (allowing the public to know the facts), arising from a report by a soldier from another company (Ron Ridenour), who had heard the inside info and alerted people stateside.
Asian History site
PBS Coverage
BBC Coverage
Entirely different occurrence.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
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