Many Afghans Alive After No Air Strike!

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Fri, 2009-05-08 16:01

contrarianna

Many Afghans Alive After No Air Strike!
This the headline of a balanced new story that YOU WILL NOT SEE in the bleeding -heart -blame -the -invaders -liberal -press.

Tacked onto the end of a TIME article unfortunately titled:
Losing Hearts and Minds and Lives in Afghanistan
I was taken aback by the wisdom and irrefutable logic of Canadian Forces Gen. Richard Blanchette, spokesman for the US-led Coalition:

Quote:
Since last summer, he explained, the decision-making process down the chain of command has been "reviewed numerous times" to minimize risk to civilians, resulting in more operations cancelled. "But," he pointed out, "you never hear news reports of an airstrike not taking place."

Not only do we shamefully not hear of every airstrike that didn't take place, the biased, bleeding-heart-press does not print the names of Afghan civilians who were NOT Killed or maimed by coalition forces (and there are still millions of 'em!)

Even worse, we never see a list of Afghans whose homes have been destroyed, relatives maimed and killed--and yet still have not joined the insurgency!
What is going on here?

Fri, 2009-05-08 16:29

remind

Oh my!

Fri, 2009-05-08 17:46

CalmCalm

Record bombs dropped in Afghanistan in April
By Bruce Rolfsen
May 04, 2009

Air Force, Navy and other coalition warplanes dropped a record number of bombs in Afghanistan during April, Air Forces Central figures show.

In the past month, warplanes released 438 bombs, the most ever.

April also marked the fourth consecutive month that the number of bombs dropped rose, after a decline starting last July.

The munitions were released during 2,110 close-air support sorties.

The actual number of airstrikes was higher because the AFCent numbers don't include attacks by helicopters and special operations gunships. The numbers also don't include strafing runs or launches of small missiles.

Over Iraq, 26 bombs were released during 767 strike sorties.

Transport crews airdropped 1.8 million pounds of supplies, mostly in Afghanistan, and tankers off loaded 85 million pounds of fuel.

Reconnaissance aircraft flew 1,402 missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/05/airforce_april_airstrike_050409w

And of course, the reason is quite simple. We live, they die. We don't risk our brave lads on the ground - not for civilians. Not for anything.

And if we kill some gunmen at the same time - "terrorists", of course - then it is the same old "human shield" tactic and ultimately the "terrorists" are to blame.

The reality is that international law forbids armies from shooting wildly in crowded tenements and bombing wildly into villages - even when enemy forces are present.
And "human shields". And terror, terror, terror. Something else I notice. Innocent or "terrorists", civilians or Taliban, always it is the Muslims who are to blame.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-civilians-pay-price-of--war-from-above-1680408.html

Sun, 2009-05-10 11:32

contrarianna

Patrick Cockburn, always interesting for the rare on the ground reports, has the US/NATO slaughter spin cycle described perfectly in his latest Independent article.
It is a pattern of murder-from-above followed by orchestrated deceit--which Canada is so proud to play an active role in.

Quote:

Patrick Cockburn: Who killed 120 civilians? The US says it's not a story

Letter from Herat: Whatever the truth about the latest Afghan atrocity, in Bala Baluk, it will be slow to emerge

Sunday, 10 May 2009

...there were craters everywhere; the villages had been plastered with bombs; bodies had been torn to shreds by the blasts; there were mass graves; there were no signs of damage from bullets, rockets or grenades.
...
The local governor and surviving villagers said that more than 120 civilians had been killed. The US military denied that anything like that number had died and, if they had, it was the Taliban who had done it by hurling grenades into houses.
...
I suspected that the US military's claim that the Taliban had run through the village hurling grenades, supposedly because they had not been paid their cut of profits from the opium poppy crop, was just a delaying tactic. Usually the US military delays admission of guilt until a story has gone cold and the media is no longer interested. "First say 'no story'," runs an old PR adage, "and then say 'old story'." By the end of the week the US was admitting that the grenade-throwing Taliban story was "thinly sourced"....

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-who-k...

Wed, 2009-05-13 19:31

contrarianna

Following up on Cockburn's observations, FAIR has further comment on the inconsiderate slaughtered civilians who shamefully detract from the PR war:

Quote:
The Bad PR of Dead Civilians
Afghan airstrikes and the corporate media

5/11/09

Early reports of a massive U.S. attack on civilians in western Afghanistan last week (5/5/09) hewed to a familiar corporate media formula, stressing official U.S. denials and framing the scores of dead civilians as a PR setback for the White House's war effort.

Scanning the headlines gave a sense of the media's view of the tragedy: "Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War" (New York Times, 5/7/09), "Claim of Afghan Civilian Deaths Clouds U.S. Talks" (Wall Street Journal, 5/7/09), "Afghan Civilian Deaths Present U.S. With Strategic Problem" (Washington Post, 5/8/09)....

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3781

Thu, 2009-05-14 12:53

contrarianna

Our Story So Far:

--We are very restrained in any bombardment of the enemy and take extreme care and planning to make sure civilians are avoided.

--We don't know what, if anything, happened.

--The Taliban did it with, er, grenades, yeah, that's it, grenades.

--It is possible we might have done something,

--We are investigating.

--The number we slaughtered is grossly exaggerated, and those worthless villagers are just trying to get our generous 2000 bucks per corpse payout.

Quote:
Afghan Govt: 95 Children Killed in US Strike
Military Spokesman Says Civilians Exaggerating for More Money

The fallout from last week’s US air strikes in the Farah Province, which an Afghan commission concluded had killed 140 civilians, continued today as an Afghan MP involved in the investigation said that 95 of the dead were actually children
....
The military has yet to present its final report on how many civilians it killed, but calls the reports from Afghan officials, which are all in the realm of 130-150 civilians killed, “extremely over-exaggerated.” It took several days before the military was willing to admit that it had killed anyone at all, previously suggesting the whole incident was manufactured by the Taliban....

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/05/13/afghan-mp-95-children-killed-in-us-st...