TF 373 dedicated thread

[Jan Klimkowski]

I've also performed several searches of the New York Times coverage of the wikileaks material

TF 373 is conspicuous by its near total absence.

Here's what I could find - a passing mention as part of a section attempting to play down the wikileaks material:

The archive is a vivid reminder that the Afghan conflict until recently was a second-class war, with money, troops and attention lavished on Iraq while soldiers and Marines lamented that the Afghans they were training were not being paid.

The reports — usually spare summaries but sometimes detailed narratives — shed light on some elements of the war that have been largely hidden from the public eye:

• The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

• Secret commando units like Task Force 373 — a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives — work from a “capture/kill list” of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.

• The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone’s weaponry.

• The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan’s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.

Over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements — attributing the downing of a helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos.

White House officials vigorously denied that the Obama administration had presented a misleading portrait of the war in Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/....html?_r=3

As I wrote in another thread:

There is zero chance that the US govt, the UK govt, or NATO will ever officially admit to "running death squads".

Any politician or military leader sanctioning a death squad is prima facie guilty of a war crime.

Any "killings" (to use a neutral word) committed by such a "death squad" constitute extra judicial killing, and hence a war crime.

The killing of any civilian by a US, UK or NATO-approved "death squad" would be an aggravated war crime.

The documents provided by a courageous whistle-blower, and made available by wikileaks, are incredibly important evidence substantiating the claim that "TF 373", which appears to be code for covert US, UK and NATO special forces operations, does indeed include extra-judicial killings of both "human targets" and entirely innocent civilians.

It appears that "TF373" often behaves like a "death squad".

This will NEVER be officially admitted by the political and military leaders who have approved the operations of "TF 373".

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...01&page=19

In my judgement, the NYT's near total lack of coverage of TF 373 is partial confirmation of my suspicions.