Afghan probe says NATO fighting killed children

[StarfarerBill]

Source: Associated Press

KABUL – The head of a presidential delegation investigating the deaths of 10 people in eastern Afghanistan concluded Wednesday that civilians — including schoolchildren — were killed in an attack involving foreign troops, disputing NATO reports that the dead were insurgents.

Asadullah Wafa, a senior adviser to President Hamid Karzai, told The Associated Press by telephone that eight schoolchildren between the ages of 12 and 14 were among the dead discovered in a village house in the Narang district of Kunar province.

A NATO official has said initial reports from troops involved in the fighting on Sunday indicated that those killed were insurgents — all young males.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

[gratuitous]

1. They probably had it coming

After all, you know who else was once a child? Hitler. Case closed.

Can we get back to talking about those goddam terrorists and their irrational hatred of us? 'Cause I'm still kinda scared about the underpants bomber, I wet my pants, and somebody needs to be tortured, at the very least.

[boppers]

30. Was Hitler at a madrassa? eom

[midnight]

2. War kills children and is unsafe for families-End WAR NOW!

[L0oniX]

3. Well ...at least our troops didn't kill them. Everyone knows our troops are there to provide...

humanitarian aid ...er so some here have said and when joining the US military it may be soothing to ones conscience to have this mind set. The reality is that anyone that enlists in the US military will take part and or play a part in this machine that kills innocent people, babies included. Of course our honorable military will tell us the truth as to who got killed and we should trust them ...right?

:sarcasm:

[humbled_opinion]

4. Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children

Source: timesonline

American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead.

Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed.

Western military sources said that the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed the lives of countless soldiers and civilians.

“This was a joint operation that was conducted against an IED cell that Afghan and US officials had been developing information against for some time,” said a senior Nato insider. But he admitted that “the facts about what actually went down are in dispute”.


Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6971638.ece

---

And this keeps us safer, How?

I guess we have decided to continue winning hearts and minds by force.... Makes me physically ill. Petition the President to investigate this atrocity and get our troops out now.

[sabrina 1]

5. This is why we have underwear bombers trying to

get revenge. Just as we are doing in Afghanistan, or at least that was the reason for the support for this invasion. Someone killed our people, and now we've gone wild around the world, killing as many people as we can.

I don't know why it's so hard for Americans in general to understand that if you kill people's children and elderly parents, you can expect them to react the same way we did. Why don't wesee our reaction as the same as theirs? We call them terrorists, but to them we are far more successful terrorists.

More dead children. What is it for? I do NOT buy this 'they are Al Queda'. I remember the Zarqawi scam all too well. And airc, when Bush was in charge, we argued that you cannot kill them all and each time you kill more you are creating more enemies. Is that really what our government wants? Maybe it is. They have replaced the 'commie' scare with an enemy that can always be conjured up to make sure our deadly and profitable war machine is never idle.

[FarLeftFist]

6. I don't believe this propaganda.

[pundaint]

11. The report said Afghan Government Sources

If it's true, we've clearly worn our troops down past their humanity, if it's false we're propping up folks who wont back us up.

Lose or Lose, pick 'em, but get out now.

[Downwinder]

7. Do we really want the child killers back here? n/t

[chatnoir]

8. And is this in the US media at all?

Of course not.

[avaistheone1]

9. kick

[No Elephants]

10. I pray this is not true, but, true or not, we need to get out of there

[No Elephants]

12. Wars kill kids under the age of 18, The disabled and the elderly, too. Film at 11.

You want to stop the loss of people in those groups, innocent or not? Find a way to deal with problems, other than violence. It's been thousands and thousands of years since the Neanderthals, and two thousand since the Prince of Peace (or, depending upon your point of view, stories about a Prince of Peace). We've gone from invention of fire to using laptops to pass time on airplanes. But, we are still stuck on violence.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

13. "no direct evidence to substantiate the claims"

I'll await the findings of the investigation before buying into this one. After all, the Taliban have been known to kill civilians themselves and to make it appear as if coalition forces were to blame.

[BreweryYardRat]

23. Yeah, wait and see.

False flag ops have a LONG history, and unfortunately, the Taliban isn't stupid.

[laststeamtrain]

14. Afghans Protest Civilian Deaths

Source: WSJ

DECEMBER 30, 2009, 9:30 A.M. ET

Afghans Protest Civilian Deaths

By ANAND GOPAL

KABUL -- Protests erupted in Afghanistan Wednesday in response to a U.S. military raid that may have killed 10 civilians, including eight children, over the weekend.

Hundreds of demonstrators blocked streets in the eastern city of Jalalabad, chanting anti-U.S. slogans and burning an effigy of U.S. President Barack Obama.

"We went out to show our anger against the barbarity of the Americans," said Moharam Moeed, a 25-year-old protester from Nangrahar University.

Many of the demonstrators were university students, said Noor Agha Zwak, the provincial spokesman. Some shouted "death to Obama" and "death to the foreign troops," witnesses said.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126218273073510225.html

[laststeamtrain]

15. Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children

Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children
Jerome Starkey In Kabul


Afghan investigators today accused US-led troops of dragging ten civilians from their beds and shooting them dead during a night raid.

Officials said that eight children and teenagers were among the dead and all but one of the victims were from the same family.

The reports led to angry protests in Kabul and Jalalabad, with children as young as 10 chanting “Death to America” and demanding foreign forces leave Afghanistan.

President Karzai sent a team of investigators to Narang district, in Kunar province, after reports emerged of a massacre. “The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane on Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and 10, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said. ... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6971638.ece

[StarfarerBill]

16. Those who support our occupation of Afghanistan don't want to face this reality:

We are killing civilians there, and it isn't always bombs and bullets going astray; in cases like this, it's deliberate, wanton murder.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

24. Hey now...

shouldn't one wait until these claims are investigated before condemning these soldiers? As I stated earlier in this thread, the Taliban have, in the past, executed civilians and then planted the bodies to make it appear as if they were killed by coalition forces. I'm not saying, for a fact, that that is what happened in this instance, I'm simply stating that it's a very real possibility.

[daleo]

28. Karzai's people made the claim

Karzai is our guy, unless you think he is secretly Taliban.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

29. Karzai has his own game to play, a major part of which entails

lashing out against the U.S. from time to time in order to give the appearance he's more independent than he truly is. The fact that his people are jumping to conclusions before an investigation has taken place isn't surprising, nor should it change anyone's desire to wait until all the facts are in before condemning the coalition forces.

[daleo]

32. We all want the facts

But is anyone motivated enough to give them to us?

My hunch is that this was a special ops assassination squad that hit the wrong house. In the dead of night, and with soldiers that don't speak the local language, it wouldn't be surprising. It shows how this tactic is doomed to political failure.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

34. Possibly, but

don't you think they'd tend to notice that the house was full of children versus people actively involved in the resistance?

[daleo]

35. It was night

The age of teenage children can be quite ambiguous.
They didn't speak the language.
They were pumped with adrenaline.
Maybe dogs were barking crazily.
Someone thought they heard a gunshot...
Maybe innocent people in the house did fire a shot, since their home was being invaded by strangers in the dead of night.

All kinds of possibilities.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

36. You're speculating an awful lot

The only thing you know for certain is that it was night time, which, frankly, doesn't mean a whole lot between night vision, the fact that these guys were executed, not killed in a scatter shot, etc. etc.

[daleo]

37. You are speculating too

That's all anyone can do at the moment. What should be done to get to the bottom of this?

Is an investigation by the U.S. military good enough? They obviously have a lot of motive to cover up a mistake.

A U.S. civilian investigation? Consider how the Blackwater killings investigation just ended.

How about an Afghanistan government investigation? Can they be trusted to give an unbiased account?

Should there be a U.N. investigation?

Maybe a disinterested third party, like China, should investigate? Or is any party capable of being considered neutral anymore?

And after all is said and done, will people in Afghanistan care what any investigation says? My hunch is that they have already made up their minds and they won't believe any story that comes from us.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

38. It's not speculation to state that special forces are trained to operate at night...

...with that said, the investigation will be conducted by NATO, as I understand it. If you feel they're an untrustworthy source, I'd be happy to hear why.

[undeterred]

17. Put pictures of this destruction of life on the MSM news

and see how fast this war loses support.

[ixion]

18. We need to get out of our hostile occupations now.

not years from now. Now.

[Flaneur]

19. Funny, we seem much more outraged by deaths in Teheran.

Than the ones for which we are directly responsible.

[laststeamtrain]

20. "We're" herded to do so by the friendly TV set.

[totodeinhere]

22. There should be enough outrage to go around, right? n/t

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

25. Seems to me, we know very little about this instance, so to insist "we are directly responsible"

seems a bit premature.

[bemildred]

21. Afghans Claim Second Case of Civilian Deaths

KABUL, Afghanistan — The second episode of civilian casualties within a week was under investigation Thursday by the Afghan government and NATO officials after reports that seven civilians were killed in Helmand Province in a NATO missile strike.

The allegations follow charges earlier this week by the Afghan government and villagers in Kunar Province that a nighttime raid by international forces last weekend resulted in 10 civilian deaths, 8 of them school-age boys. NATO officials have launched an investigation after initially saying that they believed all those killed were insurgents.

The case in Kunar, if proved true, could be explosive and has already prompted Afghans to protest. The United Nations special representative to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, in a statement released Thursday, cautioned that the facts of the Kunar incident were in dispute, but that the organization’s own preliminary investigation corroborated some aspects of the version given by local people to the Afghan government.

“Based on our initial investigation, eight of those killed were students enrolled in local schools,” the statement said. “There is also evidence to strongly indicate that there were insurgents in the area at the time.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/world/asia/01kabul.html

[New Dawn]

26. So much for "humanitarian intervention".

[bemildred]

27. Hamid Karzai demands US hand over gunmen who killed children

President Karzai’s security chiefs have demanded that America should hand over the gunmen behind a night raid in eastern Afghanistan that government investigators and the United Nations say killed at least eight schoolchildren.

It was the Afghan Government’s most aggressive response yet to an alleged attack on civilians. But the US insisted that its men had come under fire and that all the victims were part of an Afghan cell manufacturing bombs.

The call heightens a war of words between the Afghan Government and its powerful military backers. It is the first time that Mr Karzai has tried to hold foreign forces directly accountable for killing civilians, although he has issued impassioned responses to civilian casualties that threaten to undermine Nato’s mission in Afghanistan.

It also reflects the growing assertiveness of a Government that precariously held its position after fraudriddled elections in August and open criticism from Nato countries over corruption.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6973001.ece

[CaliCompadre]

31. Poor children. This is one of the worst consequences of war

The most defenseless get caught in the crossfire.

[bemildred]

33. UN says Afghans slain in troop raid were students

KABUL -- The United Nations said Thursday that a weekend raid by foreign troops in a tense eastern Afghan province killed eight local students and warned against nighttime actions by coalition forces because they often cause civilian deaths.

The Afghan government said its investigation has established that all 10 people killed Sunday in a remote village in Kunar province were civilians. Its officials said that eight of those killed were schoolchildren aged 12-14.

NATO officials initially said all the dead were insurgents, but later backed off by saying there was no evidence to substantiate the claims that they were civilians. They requested a joint Afghan-NATO investigation to reach an "impartial and accurate determination" of what happened.


http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation_world/story/265084.html