McCrystal admits war crimes killings

[Magda Hassan]

Shocking Admission on Killing Civilians by Top US General Almost Completely Ignored by Corporate Media


"We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat," says Afghan commander McChrystal.
March 31, 2010 |





"We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat," says top American commander.
President Obama's sneak visit to Afghanistan this weekend, although shrouded in secrecy, still received lots of prime press coverage.
At the same time, an astonishing open admission of possible US war crimes by Obama's man on the ground in Kabul, senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan General Stanley A. McChrystal, was reported by Richard A. Oppel Jr. in the New York Times... and then promptly ignored by the rest of the mainstream media.
"We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat," McChrystal said during a recent video-conference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.
According to the military's own figures, American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but as McChrystal noted, none of the victims proved to be a danger to the troops.
Despite new rules put in place by McChrystal, aimed at reducing the killing of innocents, such shootings have not dropped off. Although fewer in number than deaths from air strikes or Special Forces operations, their continuance, as the Times noted, "has led to growing resentment among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate -- a friction that has turned villages firmly against the occupation."
These persistent "escalation of force" episodes have "emerged as a major frustration for military commanders who believe that civilian casualties deeply undermine the American and NATO campaign in Afghanistan."
A case in point: the murder of Mohammed Yonus, a 36-year-old imam killed two months ago while commuting to a madrasa where he taught 150 students. As Oppel noted, "a military convoy raked his car with bullets, ripping open his chest as his two sons sat in the car. The shooting inflamed residents and turned his neighborhood against the occupation, elders there say."
Although General McChrystal has reduced the number of civilians killed overall — deaths from aerial attacks, for example, fell by more than a third last year — shootings from convoys and checkpoints involving American, NATO and Afghan forces continue to plague the coalition. Shooting deaths caused by convoys guarded by private security contractors - not part of the calculation — make the total number of "escalation of force deaths" far higher than just those decried by McChrystal.
As noted by blogger Allison Kilkenny - one media observer who wrote about McChystal's statement — what the general admitted to may be a war crime:

“Military brass and the warmongering elite usually skirt war crimes accusations by saying the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations aren't conventional warfare. That is to say, the US is not at war with an official army, so anyone picked up on the battlefield (which is the entire world in the War on Terror) isn't a POW. They're an enemy combatant who does not have access to the protections afforded to enemy soldiers under the Geneva Convention.
This is a tricky way to circumvent accountability, but even this clever interpretation of international law can't cover the stink of McChrystal's admission. The US is occupying Afghanistan, and while there, they are killing innocent civilians, says the highest ranking military official in the country.

So, to recap: the President of the United States visits Afghanistan to deliver personally "pointed criticism to President Hamid Karzai in a face-to-face meeting," after flying in "for an unannounced visit that reflected growing vexation with Mr. Karzai as America's military commitment to defeat the Taliban insurgency has deepened."
The president's visit comes only days after his highest ranking military official confirms in the “Paper of Record” that his military forces have killed dozens of people, none of whom posed a threat -- and other media doesn't see fit even to mention that fact?
http://www.alternet.org/media/146251/sho...rate_media

[Dawn Meredith]

Because all the real threats are in washington D.C.

Dawn

[Keith Millea]

Commanders just don't say those things without there being some pretext.Maybe he's reacting to the upcoming release of the so called Crytome snuff film. :dontknow:

[Magda Hassan]

Commanders just don't say those things without there being some pretext.Maybe he's reacting to the upcoming release of the so called Crytome snuff film. :dontknow:

Good point Keith. I think that may have some thing to do with it.

[Keith Millea]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/05

Published on Monday, April 5, 2010 by TimesOnline/UK US Special Forces 'Tried to Cover Up' Botched Khataba Raid in Afghanistan

by Jerome Starkey, Kabul

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.

Relatives at the graves of five people killed, including three women, during the night raid. (TimesOnline/UK)

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as Nato admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night. It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies.
"Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men," said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Nato spokesman. The coalition continued to deny that there had been a cover-up and said that its legal investigation, which is ongoing, had found no evidence of inappropriate conduct.

The Kabul headquarters of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces, claimed originally that the women had been "tied up, gagged and killed".

A senior Afghan official involved in a government investigation told The Times: "I think the special forces lied to McChrystal."
"Why did the special forces collect their bullets from the area?" the official said. "They washed the area of the injuries with alcohol and brought out the bullets from the dead bodies. The bodies showed there were big holes."

The official, who asked not to be named until the results of the investigation have been made public, said that the assault force sealed off the compound from 4am, when the raid started, to 11am, when Afghan officials from Gardez were finally allowed access to the house.

At least 11 bullets were fired during the raid, the investigator said, and the shooting was carried out by two American gunmen positioned on the roof of the compound. Only seven bullets were recovered from the scene.
"I asked McChrystal, ‘why did the Americans clean some of the bullets from the area?' They don't have the right to do that," the official said.
Haji Sharabuddin, the head of the family who were attacked, told The Times last month that troops removed bullets from his relatives' bodies, but his claims were impossible to verify. The hallway where four of the five victims were killed had been repainted and at least two bullet holes had been plastered over.

Video footage of the raid's aftermath, collected by Afghan investigators, shows close-up shots of one man's bloodstained and punctured torso and walls with blood on them. The Afghan official's conclusion that the bullets were removed is based on the testimony of survivors, analysis of the photographs and the missing bullets.

Nato promised a joint forensic investigation in a statement issued after the raid, but Rear Admiral Greg Smith, the coalition's director of communications in Afghanistan, said that this had proved impossible because the bodies were buried the same day in accordance with Islamic custom.

Instead Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior sent its top criminal investigator from Kabul, and a Canadian brigadier-general led a separate military inquiry.

The Afghan investigation differed in one respect from The Times' findings. Survivors told this newspaper that Saranwal Zahir, the police officer's brother, was shot when he tried to shout that his family was innocent. The women, who were crouching behind him, were killed in the same volley of fire. Afghan investigators believe that Mr Zahir was carrying an AK47 and wanted to avenge his brother's killers. The women were clustered around him, trying to pull him inside the house, when the second US gunman opened fire, killing all four of them.

Footage collected by the Afghan team also shows a man in United States Army uniform taking pictures of the bodies. The findings have not been made public. The Interior Ministry is expected to pass a report to the Attorney-General's office, which will decide whether or not it can press criminal charges.

The family had more than 25 guests on the night of the attack, as well as three musicians, to celebrate the naming of a newborn child.
"In what culture in the world do you invite ... people for a party and meanwhile kill three women?" asked the senior official. "The dead bodies were just eight metres from where they were preparing the food. The Americans, they told us the women were dead for 14 hours."

In a statement yesterday, Brigadier-General Eric Tremblay, a Nato spokesman, said: "We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt forever by the families.

"The force went to the compound based on reliable information in search of a Taleban insurgent, and believed that the two men posed a threat to their personal safety. We now understand that the men killed were only trying to protect their families."

© 2010 Times Newspapers Ltd.

[Jan Klimkowski]

And this one:

September 14, 2008

Playing with firepower

President Bush is taking a big gamble in launching overt attacks on Pakistani territory

By Christina Lamb

The Americans picked an inauspicious day to open a new front in the war on terror. It was 4am on the third day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and the villagers of Angoor Adda, a small Pakistani mountain town near the Afghan border, were lighting their stoves for breakfast before a long day of fasting.

Two US helicopters supported by a AC130 Spectre gunship landed close to the shrine of a local saint. Out jumped about three dozen heavily armed marines and Navy Seals from a crack unit called Detachment One. As they emerged from the churning dust onto the rock-strewn hills, they made for a terrifying sight in their night-vision goggles.

Within minutes the commandos had surrounded the mudwalled compound of Payo Jan Wazir, a 50-year-old woodcutter and cattle-herd. They believed an Al-Qaeda leader was hiding inside.

According to villagers, the troops burst in, guns blazing, killing Payo Jan, six children, two women and a male relation. Among the dead were a three-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy, they said.

The gunfire brought neighbours running out of their homes. As people headed towards Payo Jan’s house to see what had caused the commotion, the commandos opened fire, killing 10 more villagers.

The Americans fanned out, conducting house-to-house searches, before jumping back into the gunships and off into the sky. Stunned villagers were left to carry away the bodies left in the street.

The first known American ground assault inside Pakistan had left 20 people dead. US officials claimed they were suspected Al-Qaeda fighters; the Pakistan government said they were innocent civilians.

What is not in doubt is that the attack provoked outrage in a country supposed to be America’s ally, which eight days ago completed its transition to democracy with the election as president of Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...748833.ece

[Ed Jewett]

US-Committed Atrocities in Afghanistan

by Stephen Lendman / April 7th, 2010
After General Stanley McChrystal took charge of US/NATO Afghan forces last June, systematic atrocities escalated sharply after promises of kinder, gentler killing (an oxymoron), winning hearts and minds, and fewer civilian casualties as a “paramount” objective – now much higher the result of more than a fourfold increase in night raids, targeting civilians, including children, while they sleep.
McChrystal’s resume exposed his history — death squad terror, mostly against civilians, the same counterinsurgency he waged throughout Iraq as Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), especially in Al-Anbar Province that increased violence to curb it.
It’s no surprise for a man this writer earlier called “a hired gun, an assassin, a man known for committing war crime atrocities as (JSOC) head” since 1980 comprised of Army Delta Force and Navy Seal units, killers to reign terror on vulnerable targets, mainly civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and earlier in Vietnam as part of Operation Phoenix. More on that below.
Rare On-the-Ground Reports
The London Times Kabul-based Jerome Starkey reports what major US media accounts suppress. For example, his March 15 commentary headlined, “Survivors of family killed in Afghanistan raid threaten suicide attacks.”
The incident involved the February 12 killing of two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a policeman and his brother. “No one has claimed responsibility (and) a US official in Kabul refused to” say for reasons of national security, the usual cover-up for high crimes and misdemeanors prohibited for any reason.
This time, survivors were paid off for their loss, but family head Haji Sharabuddin wants justice, not money, and to get it “will….do suicide attacks and (the whole province) will support us.”
Starkey debunked the official story about the raid being a mistake. These were targeted assassinations, the same kinds rampant daily on the ground and by drone-launched missiles, mostly against civilians called Taliban or Al Qaeda militants.
Sayed Mohammed Mal, Gardez University’s vice-chancellor, told Starkey that he once thought these type raids safeguarded Afghans, what he now knows isn’t so after members of his own family were killed. “I realize I was wrong,” he said. “Now I accept the things (other) people told me. I hate (foreign forces). I hate the Government” that tolerates them.
According to the dead policeman’s son, Abdul Ghafar, “My father was friends with the Americans and they killed him… I want to kill them. I want the killers brought to justice.” Another victim’s father, Mohammed Tahir, said “They teach us human rights, then they kill a load of civilians. They didn’t come here to end terrorism. They are terrorists.”
A March 8 Starkey article titled, “Karzai offers families ‘blood money’ for sons killed in raid” told a similar story about other victims — “nine children killed (aged 12-18) in a brutal night raid” called a mistake — a cold-blooded one murdering children while they slept, shot in their beds, or dragged to another room and killed. Also, Abdul Khaliq, a neighboring farmer, was gunned down when he ran out of his house during the raid.
During the February Marja campaign, Operation Moshtarak killed 19 civilians. US Special Forces bombed three minibuses in Oruzgan province, killing at least 27 more, at times apologizing when victims are revealed as noncombatants.
As for the reported successful US offensive, New York Times writer Richard Oppel’s April 3 article headlined otherwise, saying: “Violence Helps Taliban Undo Afghan Gains,” explaining “how little (control) Marines (have) outside their own outposts,” the Taliban as dominant as ever. So much so that “Even the Marines admit to being somewhat flummoxed,” Brig. General Larry Nicholson saying “Most people here identify themselves as Taliban,” stopping short of acknowledging widespread hostility to occupation.
Starkey’s April 19, 2009 article headlined “Botched Afghan raid kills mother and (her brother-in-law and three) children (one a new-born)” in Khost province — another “mistake” the Pentagon conceded, the same kind made daily, always against civilians, admitted only as damage control, the official lie, when cover-up doesn’t work.
A late December Kunar province massacre killed 8 children, dragged from their beds and shot in cold blood, some of them handcuffed. The Pentagon called them terrorists, making improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They were kids, students, in grades six through 10 (aged 11-17), eight from the same family. After speaking to their school headmaster, a government investigator said:
“It’s impossible they were Al Qaeda. They were children. They were civilians. They were innocent. I condemn this attack.”
In late February, nine more children were killed, aged 12-18. Most were “shot at close range while they slept,” another dragged from his bed and murdered, NATO initially alleging their involvement in IED making, then saying they entered a village and took fire so returned it, and finally admitting they were civilians saying:
“Knowing what we know now, it would probably not have been a justifiable attack. We don’t now believe that we busted a major ring,” something known all along but only acknowledged as damage control.
On March 22, Starkey headlined “US-led forces in Afghanistan are committing atrocities, lying, and getting away with it,” saying McChrystal-led forces “are rarely called to account because most reporters are too dependent on access, security and the ‘embed culture’ to venture out” and learn the truth. Worse still, they’re paid to lie, cover up, or be fired.
For example, New York Times writers CJ Chivers and Rod Nordland’s February 14 article headlined “Errant US Rocket Strike Kills Civilians in Afghanistan.” It quoted Hamid Karzai expressing “regret (for) this tragic loss of life.” Neither he or the writers acknowledged the cold-blooded murder of 10 Helmand province civilians, including five children, verboten admissions in major US media reports.
Nor by a puppet leader. Yet fearing national opposition to his regime, he’s begun openly criticizing Washington saying, “They wanted to have a puppet government,” virtually admitting that US/NATO forces are invaders.
Paid Lying: What Major US and Western Media Do
Like in America, the entire Western media, including BBC and so-called National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting, scrupulously suppress the truth. They rarely mention “embarrassing” incidents, and when they do it’s dismissively. They won’t say raids terrorize, bomb homes and wedding parties, massacre civilians, their wives and children, noncombatants called Taliban or Al Qaeda, to save villages by destroying them, to pacify Afghans by killing them, to bring tyranny papered over as democracy. If reporters did, they’d be fired.
What they suppress, Starkey reports in his latest April 5 article headlined, “US special forces ‘tried to cover-up’ botched Khataba raid in Afghanistan,” saying:
“US special forces dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened….”
The victims — two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother, those killed in the above-mentioned February 12 raid. After initial lies and cover-up, NATO finally “admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night,” yet continuing to deny a cover-up and saying no evidence showed inappropriate conduct. In other words, murdering civilians in cold blood is acceptable and appropriate. Apparently so as it’s ongoing daily.
Extrajudicial Killings: Predator Drones Target Civilians
On March 16, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit:

demanding that the government disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas. In particular, the lawsuit asks for information on when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, the number and rate of civilian casualties and the other basis information essential for assessing the wisdom and legality of using armed drones to conduct targeted killings.

At issue is using them against civilians, Admiral Dennis Blair, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), saying US citizens will be targeted.
The ACLU sued the Defense, State, and Justice Departments after each provided no requested information “nor have they given any reason for withholding documents. The CIA answered the ACLU’s request by refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any relevant documents.” CIA wasn’t sued because the ACLU will first appeal its non-response to the Agency Release Panel.
Killer drones were used in Bosnia in 1995 and against Serbia in 1999. America’s new weapon of choice is now commonplace in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, perhaps elsewhere, and virtually anywhere targeted attacks are planned globally.
Officially known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or remote piloted vehicles (RPVs), they’re used, among other purposes, for surveillance and combat equipped with Hellfire or other missiles for targeted killings.
At issue is their legality, given their use outside traditional battlefields for extrajudicial assassinations, a practice US and international laws prohibit. Yet reports confirm the Obama administration ramping up their use — why the ACLU and other human rights groups express concern.
A December 2009 Social Science Research Network-published Notre Dame Legal Studies Paper titled, “Unlawful Killing with Combat Drones: A Case Study of Pakistan, 2004-2009” said the following:
“First drones launch missiles or drop bombs, the kind of weapons that may only be used lawfully in an armed conflict. Until the spring of 2009, there was no armed conflict (in Pakistan). International law does not recognize the right to kill without warning outside an actual armed conflict. Killing without warning is only tolerated during the hostilities of an armed conflict, and, then, only lawful combatants may lawfully carry” them out.
CIA members “are not lawful combatants and their participation in killing persons — even in an armed conflict — is a crime.” US military forces may be “lawful combatants in Pakistan” only if its government requested them. It did not.
Further, beyond targeted individuals, collateral killing is commonplace. “Drones have rarely, if ever, killed just the intended target. By October 2009, the ratio has been up to” 50 civilians for each militant. As a result, drone use violates “the war-fighting principles of distinction, necessity, proportionality and humanity.”
Yet they happen daily in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and have escalated dramatically under General McChrystal for extrajudicial killings. Along with bombers and helicopter gunships, their use in Afghanistan (and North Waziristan, Pakistan) is so pervasive that anyone in the open or near targeted sites risks being killed — civilians, including women and children, most vulnerable.
Spiegel online (spiegel.de March 13, 2010) calls killer drones the “Lynchpin of Obama’s War on Terror… the weapon of choice…. But the political, military and moral consequences are incalculable.”
One report said in the past two years the Air Force Research Laboratory embarked on a program to “build the ultimate assassination robot (described as) a tiny, armed drone for the US special forces to employ in terminating ‘high-value targets’ ” that most often are noncombatants.
On April 4, New York Times writers Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah headlined, “Drones Batter Qaeda and Allies Within (North Waziristan) Pakistan,” referring to a “stepped-up campaign… over the past three months (casting) a pall of fear over an area (by) fly(ing) overhead sometimes four at a time, emitting a beelike hum virtually 24 hours a day, observing and tracking targets, then unleashing missiles on their quarry…” The ferocity of strikes got one “militant” to say, “It seems they really want to kill everyone…”, civilians, of course, most vulnerable.
Vietnam’s Operation Phoenix: Prototype for McChrystal’s War
From 1968-1973, the CIA ran the Phoenix Program with US Special Forces’ Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Special Operations Group (MACV-SOG), involving covert missions to crush the National Liberation Front (NFL resistance Viet Cong or VC).
It was a depersonalized murder program to remove opposition elements and terrorize people into submission — now used against Iraq, Afghanistan, North Waziristan, Pakistan, elsewhere, and perhaps one day coming to a neighborhood near you.
In 1975, Counterspy magazine called Phoenix “the most indiscriminate and massive program of political murder since the Nazi death camps of world war two.” Included were security-risk US military personnel and members of the South Vietnamese government. Before it ended, around 80,000 people were killed, yet it failed.
In the mid-1960s, it began as a CIA Counter Terror (CT) program that recruited, organized, supplied and directly paid CT teams whose function was to use Vietcong techniques, kidnappings and intimidation against the Vietcong leadership.
By 1968, it was expanded and called Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation (ICEX), then Phoenix, to neutralize the VC as top priority, much like McChrystal’s counter-terrorism in Afghanistan and North Waziristan, and earlier in Iraq.
In Vietnam, a Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) organization was established overseeing Phoenix. It was a gimmick doomed to fail, much like current Iraq and Afghanistan occupations aren’t sustainable in countries known historically as foreign occupier graveyards.
Phoenix was called Vietnam’s “grand illusion of the American cause,” the same miscalculation today no matter how long current wars continue, whatever amounts are spent, or how much more terror, mass killings and destruction lie ahead for people determined to resist and prevail. Given their past successes, odds are they’ll do it again, no matter the price.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM-1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening. Read other articles by Stephen.
This article was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 9:00am and is filed under Afghanistan, Assassinations, Children, Crimes against Humanity, Disinformation, Iraq, Military/Militarism, NATO, Pakistan, Terrorism, Vietnam, War Crimes.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/04/us-com...ghanistan/

[Keith Millea]

Thanks for keeping this information alive Ed.I find the killings by the SF,and the cover up by all(McChrystal)to be even more explosive than the Wikileaks video.The SF raid is classic Phoenix Ops,targeted killings(asassinations).All premeditated,and with destruction of evidence(removing bullets from bodies).The media should be focusing on this case instead of the Wiki.video.One is a clear case of murder,the other can be refuted because there were weapons(RPG) carried.

[Magda Hassan]

Thanks for keeping this information alive Ed.I find the killings by the SF,and the cover up by all(McChrystal)to be even more explosive than the Wikileaks video.The SF raid is classic Pheonix Ops,targeted killings(asassinations).All premeditated,and with destruction of evidence(removing bullets from bodies).The media should be focusing on this case instead of the Wiki.video.One is a clear case of murder,the other can be refuted because there were weapons(RPG) carried.

I understand that Wikileaks also has a video of this and will be releasing it soon.

[Keith Millea]

I understand that Wikileaks also has a video of this and will be releasing it soon.

The American Press stopped reporting on the realities of war after Vietnam.The people need to see REAL war and REAL death.Wikileaks is shoving the war in peoples faces.That's just where it needs to be.

The last I looked there was over 4 million viewed the Wiki video.That tells me people are looking for the truth.