Discussion for article #243706
The fog of war can have disastrous results. This is one reason I believe we should pulled out of this insane fight long ago.
I imagine a politician would have âquestionsâ. Convenient ones too I imagine.
Lets go over this by the numbers. The MSF guys had notified Military Forces their location was a hospital. No one disputes that. The hospital was struck my a US AC 130. No one disputes that. MSF did NOT notify the crew on that AC 130 of their locationâs nature and the Command and Staff guys that should have did not. The strike happened because the folks on that AC 130 did not have a grid restriction on that location. That is a Command error. A serious one but an error.
The Afghan forces that asked for the support had claimed the location was a Taliban C and C location and had done so well before the strike. It is possible they received fire ( in that past ) from that location by Taliban that entered it against the rules of MSF. MSF is very quiet on this.
But no the story seems to becoming clear. Afghan ground troops claimed to be under small arms assault from that location. Not disputed. They called their American counterparts for assistance. Not disputed. Those Americans, also ground forces, opted for an air strike and called it in to USA forces. Not disputed. The location was struck because the crew on the AC 130 had not been told of its nature. Not disputed.
It was not a deliberate strike on a hospital by USA forces and MSF can go fuck themselves for saying it was. But way back in the beginning of this mess there was an idea that Afghan troops may have called the location in with full knowledge of its nature because of past events. I am combat experienced and fought with 3rd world troops. Nothing surprises me. But if thatâs the case MSF owes America an apology and they fucking owe it right now. And a bunch of Liberal goody two shoers that love to rag on all things American can go fuck themselves. And a bunch of Conservatives that milked this for anti-Administration anti-Obama purposes can join in that self fucking.
The Airmen on that AC 130 crew are probably sick over the killing those innocents. Iâve done it and it still bothers me 45 years later. But the garbage that was spewed by âpoliticians with questionsâ, MSF and other holier than thous at that crew was just fucking disgusting.
8 Likes
That âsensors ⌠malfunctionedâ has been sufficiently clarified, over several rounds of effort by the Pentagon to âclarifyâ, that we now know there was in fact no such hardware malfunction at all.
We KNOW from the previous media outreaches that the gunship was provided with specific coordinates for the target.
We KNOW the CLAIM is that those coordinates were to site of a previous bomb run by US forces and that all that was left thereafter was âan empty fieldâ; indeed it appears it was the very same US gunship that had bombed the building that used to be in that field.
We KNOW the CLAIM is that the gunshipâs crew âlooked aboutâ for a building that fit the description of the target - even tho thereâs been absolutely no description of the allegedly earlier-bombed-out building for us to allow a reasonable âtestingâ of that claim - which is somehow supposed to be âexcuseâ why the gunship then proceeded to make multiple attacks on the hospital over the course of more than 45 minutes, including straffing runs at civilians trying to escape the hospital while it was under attack.
The ONLY other reference to the computerized and night-vision-enabled targeting system in the course of the entire pathetic effort to âexplainâ this atrocity is that apparently at some point OUTSIDE the systemâs DESIGN limits, or so goes the claim, someone on the gunship tried to get a long-distance âlookâ at the target, or a target, or SOMETHING, and of course failed to do so because THATâS NOT HOW THE SYSTEMâS DESIGNED TO WORK!
What Rep Hunter is doing here is, I would think, a pretty clear attempt to interfere with the pending courts martial that are looking into the atrocity. Hunterâs dad, the former duck or earl or whatever weâre supposed to call the heirs to congressional seats passed from parent to child, was dumber than a box of defective nails, yet heâs a freaking theoretical maths and physics supergenius compared to junior here, so I put the odds on current Rep Hunter getting anything right on this and having any meaningful contribution to make other than further noise and bullshit at 1 part in a kabillion cubed.
3 Likes
I donât think this was âfog of warâ at all: that US airshipâs crew is currently under investigation for courts martial.
I call bullcrap on your little fantasy here. MNF has NOT been âquietâ on this at all: in fact, THEY are who initiated the complaint that led to the reports that are screwed up deliberately by Afghani and US forces and has since been put under further investigation aimed at potential proceedings in the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
Yes, the US is not a formal signatory to the ICCâs jurisdiction, but this is a UN operation so US forces are legally under UN joint authority here. The REASON the Pentagon has been hinting at courts martial here is because they want to pretend their way past some US-specific limitations date in hopes of politically bluffing the International Raporter.
Every site where this gets discussed, some sock puppet clowns show up to scatter further fairy dusty in hopes of obfuscating what happened here.
2 Likes
Manipulated again. Just as they were when they leveled the offices of Al Jezeera.
2 Likes
To: @ottis @RichardinJax @Avattoir @tiowally
An appalling tragedy in the middle of the fog of war. I make my comments and observations from the emotional standpoint that my late father was a volunteer doctor with MSF / DWB in Kurdistan after the first Gulf War in 1991.
We simply donât know what happened yet. A footnote in MSFâs official report to date acknowledges that the Taliban unloading their wounded at the hospital had sidearms on their persons upon arrival but that MSF policy was followed to get them to leave the building once the patient was transferred to MSF custody. Here is that quote from page 6 of the report:
â11 Since the KTC opened, there were some rare exceptions when a patient was brought to the hospital in a critical condition and the gate was opened to allow the patient to be delivered to the emergency room without those transporting the patient being first searched. In each of these instances, the breach of the no weapon policy was rapidly rectified.â
It certainly doesnât seem that the hospital had been taken over by the Taliban as a command center.
The report also says that it appeared that higher ranking Taliban (officers) had recently been brought in. We certainly can imagine that the local government forces had their observers and spies within the hospital who may have brought this to the attention of their higher ups outside the facility.
This is not the first time that soft, humanitarian aid facilities have been targets, whether by accident or manipulation of information and events by the ground adversaries to attain tactical and / or logistical goals under the cover of the fog of war.
For the personal reasons with which I prefaced my comments, I truly hope they can get to the truth of this particular incident. Here is the link to the MSF / DWB report download:
reporthttp://kunduz.msf.org/
3 Likes
âThe fog of war can have disastrous resultsâ
I understand where you are coming from, but experience shows that 1/2 mile is a long, long way off target to be the fog or war. Those ships are using targeting that is accurate to within a meter of where they want it to go. Furthermore, all of those strikes are approved through the command and control from an orbiting AWACS aircraft. The AWACS aircraft would have had the coordinates of the hospital entered into its database, This alone should have been enough to set off alarm bells in the C&C. No, this went beyond mere pilot/crew error. I hate to say it, but the chain of events had to be so improbable that mere unfortunate chance would not account for the error. Which would explain why the US (all of it, up to the Commander in Chief) had to know where this was going and were using it as a âteachingâ moment. Teaching who and what remains the crux of the matter and has never been addressed by the Pentagon. And never will be addressed.
If you are going to call âbull crapâ do it on what was said and not what you believed before you read my post. I said, That the Afghan forces claimed that hospital was a point of hostile resistance in the past. When MSF was confronted with that allegation they went all over the place but their defense centered on âwe donât refuse anyone into our hospitalââŚthat presumably as patients. If you wish to call âbull crapâ you need to direct that at MSF not me.
Like I saidâŚno one EVER denied the USA struck a hospital despite whatever MSF had to say. But the argument has always beenâŚALWAYSâŚdid the USA deliberately strike a hospitalâŚwith knowledge aforethoughtâŚthat is was a hospital. Thatâs the ticket. USA forces never denied that they struck that hospital or that they killed those people. NEVER!. But was that their intention? Give me your proof.
What the USA has said is it was a C and C fuck upâŚshould not have happenedâŚand that it was regrettable. What non combatant assholes like you have said was the USA deliberately killed innocent people. Fuck you by the way.
Trhs new revelation, that Afghan forces may have called this in knowing it was not a legitimate strike perfectly explains to meâŚan ex combat soldierâŚwhat went down. Itâs also is what I thought probably happened soon after I began to read up on this mess.
This is a combat fuckup. Where in the hell do you think the word fubar came from? You cannotâŚnot even your perfect sweet little assâŚfight a clean war. Itâs not that nature of the mess. But Iâd like to offer a big Fuck You to youâŚMSF and all the rest that want so desperately to believe those men on that AC 130 wanted to kill innocent people in a hospital.
2 Likes
Do shut the fuck up until you have been in the âfog of warâ. Really;;just STFU!. No one ever said that strike was 1/2 a mile off other than assholes like you. It was right on target. The point is who made that hospital a target and the article above clears that up a bit.
Well by God why donât youâŚall knowing oneâŚwrite a White Paper on how to avoid this in the future? You comment suggests you have an âabove it allâ conception of what went down so we are waiting for you lofty advice.
Thatâs Terrorist America for you. If itâs not civilians or cops committing mass murder itâs the US military. And they all have their cheap little excuses.
Thank you for the coherent summary of what we know and donât know. I was looking for this in the story and you laid it out clearly.
If what you say is true, it seems to me that itâs the Afghan forces, not MSF that owes the Americans an apology. And much more than an apology, because they manipulated the Americans into bombing that hospital for reasons of their own that had nothing to do with active combat, knowing full well that they were involving the Americans in a war crime.
Another place fault should be laid is with the American commanders who didnât place safeguards on that location as you suggest. There are enough hints in the story that the Americans knew (or should have known) they were being played with, since Afghans had already told them there was Taliban there and they had already checked with MSF, who assured them the hospital was still an active hospital and the claims were false. So as soon as those coordinates came up again for any reason, there should have been red flags in the system that would have caused everyone to step back, take a deep breath and say, âIs this really what we want to do?â before pulling the trigger.
The other place blame should be laid is with General Campbell for signing off on a report that apparently lays down a line of total bullshit, not even plausible given the logic of what we know. And Ash Carter and Obama should never have let that report go out unchallenged. Now our high command is covering for someone, apparently the Afghanis and itâs not clear why, since they were far from our friends in this scenario.
I completely agree that the men on that AC 130 did not want to kill innocent people. They should not have been over there in that mess.
Fog of war? I donât think so. The contradictory stories coming out suggest to me that multiple people are lying to cover up their own culpability.
3 Likes
You are posting what you want to believe, not anything that bears on the facts. Fatuous, head-buried-in-sand, and faithy is no way to contribute to a thread on an atrocity committed in our name.
Hereâs just one example among the many problems with your attitude of dismissiveness, one which is not in any dispute. Due to the fact that US forces are in Afghanistan under a UN-authorized exercise, when the French arm of DoctorsW/OBorders complained to the UN about the hospital being attacked, that invoked UN regional command responsibility to investigate and report to the authorizing body - which no one argues. The UN protocol where multinational forces have been involved is to require each involved nation to provide the UN with is report, along with the full details, including names and dates of those questioned, when, where and with full interview records attached - which no one argues is so.
What happened here is that each of the two countries involved in the attack pointed an unequivocal finger away from the their side. The Afghans went first simply because the tact they chose was so facile: they denied the attack was wrong, claiming simply that the target was properly identified as housing active Taliban attackers, that all relevant info was shared between Afghani & US forces, that the target was jointly determined and settled on, that it was the US gunship that led the attack, with Afghani forces assigned to area security and so placed at some significant remove from the attack itself, that Afghani forces had no control over or input into how the gunship carried out its mission, that, based on all that was known at the time the decision to launch the attack was made it was a legitimately based attack, and that it could add nothing more to the process since the US controlled the gunship and DWB(fr) controlled all information on who was in the hospital at that point and the identification of who were killed or wounded (the implication being that Afghani forces expected DWB to lie).
This report strategy threw the impetus entirely on US command in Afghanistan, who then proceeded to protest that theyâd simply responded to an Afghani forces request and were in a subservient position, providing preliminary cover so Afghani ground troops could advance on the target. UN command however insisted on a full detailed report and were able to use the US forces chain of command above US active forces command in Afghanistan to pressure local command into both carrying out investigation in accordance with the UN request protocol and providing all data to UN command - again, there is no controversy about ANY of this having happened. Itâs what happened thereafter thatâs fraught with manipulation.
By the time Gen Campbell and his PR team held the initial media event on the US forces investigation, more than a month already had passed since that investigation had ended, yet US command STILL had not reported to the UN authority. The UN authority made constant complaint about that lateness, with the response being that the Pentagon sent in an independent investigation team to see WTF was going on, to ensure completion of the reporting obligation, and to attend to whatever else might be in order - mainly, a hedge against the possibility of there being US forces disciplinary proceedings or official US forces input into a possible investigation by the UN raporteur - that is, the opening steps into war crimes prosecution.
Now consider what exactly was going on with Campbell and his assistants putting on the initial media presentation at the Pentagon. Thereâs NO obligation or requirement for that; it was purely a PR move, and one in which just above every detail provided either fell apart by the end of the presentation or thereafter.
It is not in the least unreasonable to be concerned that the crew of the US gunship was acting on orders by US local command in Kabul where US local command was in control of all the known facts pertaining to the protocol but chose arbitrarily to override, and that the gunshipâs own crew knew of and APPROVED of the override. It is not at all irresponsible to be concerned that these two possible realities completely explain the US forces conduct from the night of the attacks on the hospital and since, and that NO OTHER rational explanation has yet been advanced.
The resort to âfog of warâ in this context is particularly heinous, given how often that excuse, such as it is, can be raised âlegitimatelyâ. Raising it here is not just completely inappropriate but smacks of desperation.
1 Like
As a whiny Liberal I love your post. If the MSF wants a safe environment they should set up shop in Western Europe ⌠France is a lovely spot. This sort of thing is bound to happen in a war zone. What are the requirements for organizations whose property is used by enemy combatants ⌠is there anything required in a case such as that in international law? The MSF does Godâs work but they do it in the Devilâs backyard ⌠they have to deal with what is and not what they want it to be.
The requirements for not bombing hospitals are pretty ironclad. Killing wounded soldiers after a battle has been recognized as an act of barbarism pretty much since people started making distinctions between civilized people and barbarians. (Yep, there have been exceptions, but theyâre not remembered with pride.)
Using a hospital or a civilian population as a shield is a separate war crime, but one that must be adjudicated after the fact. Not one that gives you carte blanche to take it out on noncombatants.
And if you think that having rules like this in a war is stupid, thatâs fine. As long as you agree that means itâs OK for the other side to ignore such rules as well.