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US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - Magda Hassan - 06-10-2015
Media Are Blamed as US Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up
By Ben Norton![[Image: NYTUSBombsHospital.jpg]](http://fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/NYTUSBombsHospital.jpg)
A New York Times headline corrected Photo: Twitter user @onekade
A US-led NATO military coalition bombed a hospital run by international humanitarian aid organization Doctors Without Borders (known internationally as Medecins Sans Frontières, MSF) in Afghanistan, killing at least 22 people12 staff members and 10 patients, including three childrenand wounding 37 more.
AFP, the first network to report the story, in the early hours of October 3, quoted NATO saying, "US forces conducted an air strike in Kunduz city…. The strike may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility."
MSF promptly issued a statement (10/3/15), revealing that it had been "hit several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged." In an update hours later, MSF said it "condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, which was full of staff and patients."
The humanitarian organization also indicated multiple timesand in bold capital lettersthat "all parties to the conflict, including in Kabul and Washington, were clearly informed of the precise location (GPS Coordinates) of the MSF facilities in Kunduz, including the hospital, guesthouse, office and an outreach stabilization unit." MSF says the US "repeatedly and precisely" hit the hospital.
The hospital was repeatedly & precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched #Kunduz
MSF International (@MSF) October 4, 2015
Morever, the aid group explained that the "bombing in Kunduz continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed by MSF that its hospital was struck." That is to say, the US persisted in bombing a hospital that it explicitly knew before and during the attack was a hospital.MSF International (@MSF) October 4, 2015
If you read US corporate media coverage of this incident, however, US culpability would likely not be evident. Instead, readers would learn that a hospital was bombed in Afghanistan, and that people died. Who exactly carried out the bombing would not be clear.
![[Image: cnn-us-air-attack.jpg]](http://fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cnn-us-air-attack.jpg)
"Air Attacks Kill at Least 19 at Afghanistan Hospital; US Investigating," wrote CNN (9/3/15). Who carried out those attacks? Never asked is who else could possibly have bombed the hospital. What other air forces are attacking Kunduz? Did the bombs magically fall from the sky? CNN provides no answer.
"Aerial bombardments blew apart a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the battleground Afghan city of Kunduz about the time of a US airstrike" CNN said. The blowing apart of the hospital just appears to be a temporal coincidence.
![[Image: fox-us-investigate-airstrike.jpg]](http://fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/fox-us-investigate-airstrike.jpg)
Fox News headline (10/3/15) reads "US Officials Investigate Airstrike in Afghanistan That Killed at Least 19 at Doctors Without Borders Hospital."
The New York Times completely rewrote and changed the title of its report on the bombing seven times. Early on October 3, the Times published an article headlined "Airstrike Hits Hospital in Afghanistan, Killing at Least 9." Minutes later, it changed the headline to "Airstrike Hits Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan." Two hours after, it became "Afghan Hospital Hit by Airstrike, Pentagon Says." Then "US Investigates After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital," before finalizing as "US Is Blamed After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital."
The over 20 versions of the article published in the Times website can be seen at the website NewsDiffs, which monitors edits to pieces published in large new outlets. Because the Times changed the web URL for the article when changing the headlines, there are three separate entries on NewsDiffs.
![[Image: newsdiffs-nyt-us-bombs-afghan-hospital.jpg]](http://fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/newsdiffs-nyt-us-bombs-afghan-hospital.jpg)
Not one of the five New York Times headlines indicated that the US was responsible for the bombing. The final title, "US Is Blamed After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital," which was published in print, fails to acknowledge that it was the US who dropped those bombs, which explains why it is blamed.
The New York Times other story (10/4/15), "Doctors Without Borders Says It Is Leaving Kunduz After Strike on Hospital," was also substantially edited and rewritten numerous times. It's likewise full of weasel words and quotes from the US government.
The Washington Post (10/4/15) also changed headlines and URLs for its reporting, making it difficult to track. It did choose a title acknowledging the US role in the attack, but attributed it to MSF, writing, "Doctors Without Borders Says US Airstrike Hit Hospital in Afghanistan; at Least 19 Dead."
AP headlined an article (10/4/15) updating the death toll, "Doctors Without Borders Leaves Afghan City After Airstrike." The piece says, "A deadly airstrike destroyed its hospital and killed 22 people, as the US and Afghan governments vowed to get to the bottom of the carnage." Not mentioned is that the US government is responsible for the carnage.
Ambiguous, misleading and even downright dishonest language abounds throughout the coverage. US media spin the story to reflect positively on the culprit; they report that the US is investigating the atrocity, while failing to acknowledge that the US itself is responsible for the atrocity.
This technique is very reminiscent of the loaded language police departments use to downplay police brutalitylanguage that is often repeated verbatim by journalists who just uncritically quote government press releases.
Not all media were as biased in the interest of the Pentagon, however. Even some US news outlets were clear and honest in their reporting.
![[Image: slate-us-airstrike.jpg]](http://fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/slate-us-airstrike.jpg)
Slate (10/3/15) was one of the few publications to report without the equivocation. "US Airstrike on Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan Kills at Least 19," it said. The next day, Slate (10/4/15) followed up with the piece "Doctors Without Borders Says US May Have Committed War Crime."
US: We Accidentally Bombed Hospital to Kill Taliban
After the attack, MSF released a statement saying "All indications currently point to the bombing being carried out by international Coalition forces"that is to say, NATO.As details became clearer, the media narrative began to shift from one of obfuscation or even denial of the US bombing to one of apologism and justification. When it was obvious that the US and NATO were responsible for killing and wounding scores of people at a hospital, the US and Afghan governments began to fall back on the "human shields" excuse.
A Washington Post article (10/4/15) first titled "Afghan Official: Hospital in Airstrike Was a Taliban Base,'" and subsequently changed to "Afghan Response to Hospital Bombing Is Muted, Even Sympathetic," quotes Afghan government officials who claimed the "hospital has a vast garden, and the Taliban were there." Yet MSF's aforementioned statement makes it clear that the US "repeatedly and precisely" bombed the hospital, not the surrounding areas, which were "left mostly untouched."
The aid organization also explicitly denied fighters ever being anywhere inside the hospital compound.
Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the hospital compound prior to the US airstrike on Saturday morning #Kunduz
MSF International (@MSF) October 4, 2015
In a statement titled "MSF Response to Spurious Claims That Kunduz Hospital Was A Taliban Base,'" the aid organization wrote:MSF International (@MSF) October 4, 2015
MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present.
This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as "collateral damage."
There can be no justification for this abhorrent attack on our hospital that resulted in the deaths of MSF staff as they worked and patients as they lay in their beds. MSF reiterates its demand for a full transparent and independent international investigation.
MSF also made it clear that its hospital "is the only facility of its kind in the whole northeastern region of Afghanistan," and that its "doctors treat all people according to their medical needs and do not make distinctions based on a patient's ethnicity, religious beliefs or political affiliation."This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as "collateral damage."
There can be no justification for this abhorrent attack on our hospital that resulted in the deaths of MSF staff as they worked and patients as they lay in their beds. MSF reiterates its demand for a full transparent and independent international investigation.
Despite MSF's explicit denial of the allegations, US media continued to reiterate the claims of US and Afghan government officials.
Anonymous US military officials told Fox News (10/3/15) they "regret the loss" of scores of innocent lives, but "say the incident could have been avoided if the Taliban had not used the hospital as a base, and the civilians there as human shields."
But wait, which was it? Was the bombing an accidental incident of "collateral damage," as the government claimed at first, and as the media reverberated? Or was it a deliberate attack on the Taliban, who were supposedly firing from the hospital? It can't be both; the two explanations contradict each other.
The fact that, when MSF's pointsand not just those of the US and Afghan governmentsare considered, the human shields argument does not withstand close scrutiny aside, a blatant contradiction emerges in this narrative. The answer to this critical question remains unknown; the government, and the media that so obediently echoes it, do not clarify.
![[Image: Kunduz-hospital-on-fire-e1444054186865.jpg]](http://fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Kunduz-hospital-on-fire-e1444054186865.jpg)
MSF's Kunduz hospital on fire, after being bombed by the US/NATOPhoto: MSF
Striking, too, are the similarities to US reporting on Israeli airstrikes. In order to justify bombing hospitals in Gaza, the US-backed Israeli government often claims Palestinian militants use the medical facilities as bases. Israel's militarywhich has itself used human shields many timesthen says it is justified to bomb hospitals, UN shelters and other civilians areas.
US ally and NATO member Turkey borrowed Israel's hasbara (public relations) tactic and claimed the same about leftist Kurdish militants in order to justify its killing of Kurdish civilians.
The Wall Street Journal (10/4/15) boldly steered clear of any posturing and openly justified the US bombing of the hospital. The unsigned editorial justified the mass killing of MSF aid workers by shifting the blame onto the Taliban insurgents. It even brought up the specter of Hamas, writing, "Like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the terrorists hide near civilians. These Taliban tactics put the medical personnel and patients at risk." The piece waxes poetic, and hagiographic; in a moment of undiluted American exceptionalism on blast, the Journal claimed that "no force in the history of warfare has done more to avoid civilian casualties than the American military."
Remove references to the US and the Taliban in such media coverage, replace it with blanks, and you have a template media can use any time a US ally bombs civiliansA Guide to Defending War Crimes Committed by US Allies: "[Ally] did not actually want to bomb [civilian area], but [enemy] forced it to."
Double Standards
When US enemies like Russia carry out airstrikes, all nuance is thrown out the window; US media drop their standards and gleefully accuse the enemies of war crimes. Yet when the US and NATO carry out airstrikes, journalists suddenly have a newfound skepticism. Their language immediately becomes ambiguous, their writing unclear; murky passages written in the passive voice are ubiquitous.Official international bodies have not minced words about the bombing, nevertheless. The UN says the US attack on the Kunduz hospital was "inexcusable and possibly even criminal" (Australia's ABC, 10/4/15). UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein remarked, "If established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime."
![[Image: Kunduz-bombing-wounded.jpg]](http://fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Kunduz-bombing-wounded.jpg)
Wounded MSF staff after the US/NATO bombing of its Kunduz hospitalPhoto: MSF
MSF said the attack "constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law." The aid group called the bombing a "war crime" and "a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law."
The humanitarian organization is demanding an investigation "by an independent international body," not by the US, noting that "relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient."
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald (Intercept, 10/3/15) pointed out the hypocrisy of the US warning about civilian casualties of Russian airstrikes while it bombs scores of doctors and patients in Afghanistan, a country it has militarily occupied for close to 15 years.
When Russia denies killing civilians in its airstrikes on Syria, US media are suddenly skeptical and thorough; yet when the US government makes the same claims, journalists just recycle its press releases.
Is the job of the media to just uncritically report what favored governments say? Or is it supposed to examine the truth of official claims? If it is supposed to be the latter, US media have abysmally failed in their duties in reporting on the US bombing of MSF's Kunduz hospital.
http://fair.org/home/media-are-blamed-as-us-bombing-of-afghan-hospital-is-covered-up/
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - Magda Hassan - 06-10-2015
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - David Guyatt - 06-10-2015
Magda Hassan Wrote:
It's enough to make one puke...
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - Michael Barwell - 06-10-2015
Seems an odd one that they'd said (paraphrasing-) "Our (US) troops were in danger, so we bombed" where now it's "Oh, no, it was Afghan troops". And I gather there's three separate inquiries going-on, so that'll be clear as mud. And all the while, they knew what it was, and where it was, 'cos there was only one (hospital) in the place. Shit certainly happens, and when it does, it's best to stir it.
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - Drew Phipps - 06-10-2015
The new official story from the military is that the Afghans asked for the strike, claiming they were taking fire from that position. I assume the Afghans will deny that.
Starting to look to me like someone out-foxed the US military (fake military signals traffic?) into bombing a hospital.
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - Peter Lemkin - 06-10-2015
Drew Phipps Wrote:The new official story from the military is that the Afghans asked for the strike, claiming they were taking fire from that position. I assume the Afghans will deny that.
Starting to look to me like someone out-foxed the US military (fake military signals traffic?) into bombing a hospital.
While someone certainly could send fake signals traffic with those coordinates, though no such evidence has been advanced yet, it hardly matters. The US Military KNEW that those coordinates were a hospital....and they are supposed to match whatever coordinates they get, using computers, with known places at those same coordinates - and not just fire away because someone [real or spoofing signals] calls in a strike to that location. They never should have started the attack, but they had 30 odd minutes to stop it and they didn't, after being told (reminded) over and over that it was a hospital and under attack! Its a clear War Crime no matter how it comes out in the wash, but I doubt we'll hear the truth anyway. Its got to be a very ugly story as a lie or as the truth. Sadly, the USG has NO love for MSF, but must know how they are so very highly respected around the World. They are doctors that treat either side and non-combatants too. They take their Hippocratic Oath seriously. The USA seems to prefer the hypocrite oath.
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - David Guyatt - 07-10-2015
Drew Phipps Wrote:The new official story from the military is that the Afghans asked for the strike, claiming they were taking fire from that position. I assume the Afghans will deny that.
Starting to look to me like someone out-foxed the US military (fake military signals traffic?) into bombing a hospital.
I doubt that.
But either way it's a war crime under the 4th Geneva Convention.
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - Peter Lemkin - 07-10-2015
The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification
Glenn Greenwald
Oct. 5 2015, 4:11 p.m.
(updated below)
When news first broke of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the response from the U.S. military was predictable and familiar. It was all just a big, terrible mistake, its official statement suggested: an airstrike it carried out in Kunduz "may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility." Oops: our bad. Fog of war, errant bombs, and all that.
This obfuscation tactic is the standard one the U.S. and Israel both use whenever they blow up civilian structures and slaughter large numbers of innocent people with airstrikes. Citizens of both countries are well-trained like some tough, war-weary, cigar-chomping general to reflexively spout the phrase "collateral damage," which lets them forget about the whole thing and sleep soundly, telling themselves that these sorts of innocent little mistakes are inevitable even among the noblest and most well-intentioned war-fighters, such as their own governments. The phrase itself is beautifully technocratic: it requires no awareness of how many lives get extinguished, let alone acceptance of culpability. Just invoke that phrase and throw enough doubt on what happened in the first 48 hours and the media will quickly lose interest.
But there's something significantly different about this incident that has caused this "mistake" claim to fail. Usually, the only voices protesting or challenging the claims of the U.S. military are the foreign, non-western victims who live in the cities and villages where the bombs fall. Those are easily ignored, or dismissed as either ignorant or dishonest. Those voices barely find their way into U.S. news stories, and when they do, they are stream-rolled by the official and/or anonymous claims of the U.S. military, which are typically treated by U.S. media outlets as unassailable authority.
In this case, though, the U.S. military bombed the hospital of an organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)) run by western-based physicians and other medical care professionals. They are not so easily ignored. Doctors who travel to dangerous war zones to treat injured human beings are regarded as noble and trustworthy. They're difficult to marginalize and demonize. They give compelling, articulate interviews in English to U.S. media outlets. They are heard, and listened to.
MSF has used this platform, unapologetically and aggressively. They are clearly infuriated at the attack on their hospital and the deaths of their colleagues and patients. From the start, they have signaled an unwillingness to be shunted away with the usual "collateral damage" banalities and, more important, have refused to let the U.S. military and its allies get away with spouting obvious falsehoods. They want real answers. As the Guardians Spencer Ackerman put it last night: "MSF's been going incredibly hard, challenging every US/Afgh claim made about hospital bombing."
In particular, MSF quickly publicized numerous facts that cast serious doubt on the original U.S. claim that the strike on the hospital was just an accident. To begin with, the organization had repeatedly advised the U.S. military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF personnel at the facility "frantically" called U.S. military officials during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a "sustained" manner for 30 more minutes. Finally, MSF yesterday said this:
All of these facts make it extremely difficult even for U.S. media outlets to sell the "accident" story. At least as likely is that the hospital was deliberately targeted, chosen either by Afghan military officials who fed the coordinates to their U.S. military allies and/or by the U.S. military itself.
Even cynical critics of the U.S. have a hard time believing that the U.S. military would deliberately target a hospital with an airstrike (despite how many times the U.S. has destroyed hospitals with airstrikes). But in this case, there is long-standing tension between the Afghan military and this specific MSF hospital, grounded in the fact that the MSF true to its name treats all wounded human beings without first determining on which side they fight. That they provide medical treatment to wounded civilians and Taliban fighters alike has made them a target before.
In July just 3 months ago Reuters reported that Afghan special forces "raided" this exact MSF hospital in Kunduz, claiming an Al Qaeda member was a patient. This raid infuriated MSF staff:
The French aid group said its hospital was temporarily closed to new patients after armed soldiers had entered and behaved violently towards staff.
"This incident demonstrates a serious lack of respect for the medical mission, which is safeguarded under international humanitarian law," MSF said in a statement.
A staff member who works for the aid group said, "The foreign doctors tried to stop the Afghan Special Operations guys, but they went in anyway, searching the hospital."
The U.S. had previously targeted a hospital in a similar manner: "In 2009, a Swedish aid group accused U.S. forces of violating humanitarian principles by raiding a hospital in Wardak province, west of Kabul.""This incident demonstrates a serious lack of respect for the medical mission, which is safeguarded under international humanitarian law," MSF said in a statement.
A staff member who works for the aid group said, "The foreign doctors tried to stop the Afghan Special Operations guys, but they went in anyway, searching the hospital."
![[Image: reuters1-540x222.png]](https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/10/reuters1.png)
News accounts of this weekend's U.S. airstrike on that same hospital hinted cryptically at the hostility from the Afghan military. The first NYT story on the strike while obscuring who carried out the strike noted deep into the article that "the hospital treated the wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked Afghan security forces." Al Jazeera similarly alluded to this tension, noting that "a caretaker at the hospital, who was severely injured in the air strike, told Al Jazeera that clinic's medical staff did not favour any side of the conflict. We are here to help and treat civilians,' Abdul Manar said."
As a result of all of this, there is now a radical shift in the story being told about this strike. No longer is it being depicted as some terrible accident of a wayward bomb. Instead, the predominant narrative from U.S. sources and their Afghan allies is that this attack was justified because the Taliban were using it as a "base."
Fox News yesterday cited anonymous "defense officials" that while they "regret the loss' of innocent life, they say the incident could have been avoided if the Taliban had not used the hospital as a base, and the civilians there as human shields." In its first article on the attack, The Washington Post also previewed this defense, quoting a "spokesman for the Afghan army's 209th Corps in northern Afghanistan" as saying that "Taliban fighters are now hiding in people's houses, mosques and hospitals using civilians as human shields.'" AP yesterday actually claimed that it looked at a video and saw weaponry in the hospital's windows, only to delete that claim with this correction:
![[Image: ap-540x202.jpg]](https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/10/ap.jpg)
The New York Times today in a story ostensibly about the impact on area residents from the hospital's destruction printed paragraphs from anonymous officials justifying this strike: "there was heavy gunfire in the area around the hospital at the time of the airstrike, and that initial reports indicated that the Americans and Afghans on the ground near the hospital could not safely pull back without being dangerously exposed. American forces on the ground then called for air support, senior officials said." It also claimed that "many residents of Kunduz, as well as people in Kabul, seemed willing to believe the accusations of some Afghan officials that there were Taliban fighters in the hospital shooting at American troops." And this:
Still, some Afghan officials continued to suggest that the attack was justified. "I know that there were civilian casualties in the hospital, but a lot of senior Taliban were also killed," said Abdul Wadud Paiman, a member of Parliament from Kunduz.
So now we're into full-on justification mode: yes, we did it; yes, we did it on purpose; and we're not sorry because we were right to do so since we think some Taliban fighters were at the hospital, perhaps even shooting at us. In response to the emergence of this justification claim, MSF expressed the exact level of revulsion appropriate (emphasis added):"MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present.
"This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as collateral damage.'
"There can be no justification for this abhorrent attack on our hospital that resulted in the deaths of MSF staff as they worked and patients as they lay in their beds. MSF reiterates its demand for a full transparent and independent international investigation."
From the start, MSF made clear that none of its staff at the hospital heard or saw Taliban fighters engaging U.S. or Afghan forces:"This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as collateral damage.'
"There can be no justification for this abhorrent attack on our hospital that resulted in the deaths of MSF staff as they worked and patients as they lay in their beds. MSF reiterates its demand for a full transparent and independent international investigation."
But even if there were, only the most savage barbarians would decide that it's justified to raze a hospital filled with doctors, nurses and patients to the ground. Yet mounting evidence suggests that this is exactly what the U.S. military did either because it chose to do so or because its Afghan allies fed them the coordinates of this hospital which they have long disliked. As a result, we now have U.S. and Afghan officials expressly justifying the consummate war crime: deliberately attacking a hospital filled with doctors, nurses and wounded patients. And whatever else is true, the story of what happened here has been changing rapidly as facts emerge proving the initial claims to be false.
* * * * *
Just as this article was being published, NBC News published a report making clear that even the latest claims from the U.S. and Afghan governments are now falling apart. The Pentagon's top four-star commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. John Campbell, now claims that "local Afghans forces asked for air support and U.S. forces were not under direct fire just prior to the U.S. bombardment" of the hospital. As NBC notes, this directly contradicts prior claims: "The Pentagon had previously said U.S. troops were under direct fire."
See also from today: CNN and the NYT Are Deliberately Obscuring Who Perpetrated the Afghan Hospital Attack
UPDATE: Responding to the above-referenced admission, MSF has issued this statement:
"Today the US government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff. Their description of the attack keeps changingfrom collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government. The reality is the US dropped those bombs. The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the US and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical."
The U.S. seems to have picked the wrong group this time to attack from the air.
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - Magda Hassan - 25-11-2015
Hey guys, the report is in now. US absolves itself of bombing a hospital. Just a mistake. Hit wrong building. Meant to hit the other one. Moving on now....Go back to sleep.
US War Crime Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up - Magda Hassan - 09-12-2015
If This is Not "Newsworthy", What Is?
By Joe Clifford
December 09, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - The 24-hour coverage of the terrible massacre in France only ended with the beginning of the nonstop coverage of the San Bernardino murders, and we will be inundated with nonstop coverage until the next headliner occurs. It is truly amazing at what gets covered with round the clock intensity, and it is even more amazing at what does not get coverage.
So you decide which of the two following stories should get intensive media coverage. On the one hand, use the current San Bernardino story, horrific as it is. On the other hand, imagine a "terrorist" attacks a hospital, kills doctors, nurses, and patients, and then ran outside. When survivors try to flee, the "terrorist" waits for them and kills those who trying to flee the disaster. For the sake of illustration, let's assume the number of dead and wounded in the hospital terrorist attack is double that of San Bernardino. Should one story get more coverage than the other? Should the hospital terrorist attacker be completely ignored by media, while the San Bernardino massacre gets nonstop coverage? Have you read or heard anything about the terrorist hospital attacker?? No! Why is that?
Could it be that the second story went uncovered because the "terrorist" was not an insane white person, or radicalized fundamentalist religious nut, but the US government? Yes folks, our government bombed a hospital. Let me repeat, the US government bombed a hospital, which is considered a despicable crime by all civilized nations and has therefore, been declared as a "War Crime". Yet the US government bombed a hospital, and you did not even hear about it. Where is the outrage and the mashing of teeth, and the grief for the innocent killed in that horrific act? Where are the tears for the two children who were burned alive in their hospital beds by the US bombing of that hospital? Where are the flower memorials for the dead doctors, nurses, and patients of the hospital bombing? Do you even know about this incident?
But wait there is more. The US at first denied its role, then changed its story four more time before the evidence of the dead bodies became impossible to ignore. Then the US claimed they simply made a "mistake," even though the hospital had given their exact coordinates to the US military on numerous occasions. When the bombing attack began, the hospital quickly called the US military to tell them they were bombing a hospital, but the bombing continued for an additional half hour. When survivors tried to run away, the US strafed the hospital grounds killing fleeing people. Why not round the clock coverage and wailing for the innocent dead by "news" commentators?
But wait there is even more. After getting caught by the overwhelming facts and evidence that surfaced, the US military decided to investigate itself. You read correctly, the US military decided they would investigate themselves in an attempt to get to the bottom of this and punish those guilty. They investigated, and to no one's surprise, no one has been jailed, brought to trial, or even charged. Imagine that, a despicable "war crime" was committed and no one was held accountable.
But wait there is even more. Many argued the US could not investigate themselves, as ridiculous as that sounds, and demanded an impartial investigation, but the US has done all it can to sabotage any outside nonpartisan investigation. Where are the "news" outlets on efforts of the US to stifle any investigation? Perhaps the "news" outlets should conduct their own investigation of the hospital bombing? Get it? Get the joke?
Some might argue this happens in war, and so let's not make a big deal of this. Those people would be correct, things exactly like this do happen in war with little news coverage. This is not the first hospital bombed by the US. Among our bombed trophies is a "pediatric hospital"! Yup you read correctly, a pediatric hospital was bombed by the US government. You mean you never heard that on the "news"? Let me repeat, bombing hospitals is a "War Crime", and yet there was no coverage of that event either. What gives? Does media provide cover for atrocities committed by own government? Or perhaps yet another "mistake" was made, and we really did not mean to bomb a children's hospital. Well how about the "maternity" hospital we bombed? Was that just another mistake by a "smart bomb"? Yup; you read correctly. We also bombed a "maternity" hospital. At the risk of redundancy let me repeat, bombing hospitals is a "War Crime", and yet not a peep from the 24-hour cable and news outlets. Heavens, could we be the victims of "filtered" news?
OK, some deniers might still argue we are just making mistakes, and in war such things happen. Well how about bombing a funeral procession killing all the participants? Yup; we did. Well how about bombing weddings? Yup at least 7 or 8 at last count. You mean you never heard about any of these things from our great "news" stations? If an individual went into a hospital and murdered doctors, nurses, children patients, and staff workers, we would all cry terrorism, but when such an act is committed by our own government you are not even allowed to hear about it. Isn't killing doctors, nurses, child patients, in a hospital an act of very brutal "terrorism"? Isn't such an illegal and barbaric act worthy of "news" coverage.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43657.htm