Friday, November 30, 2007

The Vietnamization of Afghanistan is going well

A few days ago a NATO air strike killed 14 Afghans sleeping in tents beside the road they were building in Afghanistan. Afghan officials said they were road workers at a construction site and NATO claimed they were Taliban at a training camp.

Their employer, an Afghan-Korean construction company, insisted that all the 14 killed in the International Security Assistance Force attack late Monday had been identified as his employees :
"We have 14 names, we know their families, we have their photos and post-bombing photos of their bodies."

The ISAF spokeman said, "It is entirely possible that the construction workers are also Taliban fighters. It is very possible that they are posing as construction workers or that they are construction workers in the day and Taliban fighters at night."

"Very possible". Oh well then.
Link

To be fair, the G&M have posted about these 14 casualties before; nonethless the link above where I found the ISAF spokesman's quote is titled : Attack kills 30 Taliban militants

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel ill.

Anonymous said...

Apparently "tactical perception management" isn't limited to Iraq.

Alison said...

Very interesting link, Mattt, thanks.

And no, it isn't. If you click the link, the G&M Nov 30 headline I got this from reads "Attack kills 30 Taliban militants"

Actually I think I'll post that.

PS I thought you were going home to bed for some much-needed rest, not reading depressing shit in the middle of the night.
Mom out.

Havril said...

Ah yes, "possible" (with our without the "very"): the official risk assessment standard in this trigger-happy age of pre-emption.

I'll have to re-watch that Tom Cruise flick Minorty Report now that it qualifies as a documentary.

Anonymous said...

Woke up 'round 0415am (ET). Felt more awake and refreshed than I have all week, so I thought I'd catch up on some of my reading.

Really have been trying my damndest to take it easy, mom (even if I wasn't able to completely avoid teh politics. Information = my precccciousssssss). 0:)

RossK said...

He said/she said obfuscatory journalism is bad enough in the political realm but when it is also used to cloak the dead in a shroud lies it is downright criminal.

Why can the editors of the Globe and Mail not, given that they have now published both the 'he' and the 'she' sides of this tragedy now take a stand and denounce, clearly and explicitly, a demonstrable falsehood?

.

Anonymous said...

Have we defeated terror yet?

It's not fair when they disguise themselves as normal hard working people...

Freedom is messy, war is peace...

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