from Chris Floyd:
[excerpt]
In the days following the attack, the American-backed Afghan government, local officials with long-standing relationships with American forces, and representatives of the United Nations declared that at least 90 civilians, most of them women and children, had been killed by American bombs in Azizabad. The Pentagon and White House adamantly denied the eyewitness accounts of their own allies on the scene. Washington claimed that "only" five to seven civilians had been killed in what the Pentagon claimed was a successful Special Forces operation against a Taliban stronghold. [Think of that: "only" five to seven civilians killed! How far have we become steeped in blood, when the obliteration of half a dozen innocent human beings can be dismissed as a trifle.]
What's more, the Pentagon then claimed that the reports of a wider slaughter were being faked by the villagers, at the behest of the Taliban. The American brass even accused the survivors of the attack of creating fake graves to fool the good-hearted U.S. military inspectors who, it was claimed, quickly visited the scene to ascertain the truth.
It is now evident that the Pentagon claims were a lie. There was no investigation at the scene by American forces. No American official has even spoken to the villagers. All of the documentary evidence -- including photos, videos, the eyewitness testimony of Afghan officials and NGO staffers closely associated with the American presence in Afghanistan, and the presence of dozens of fresh, genuine graves -- points overwhelmingly to the truth of the initial report: On the night August 22, American bombs killed approximately 90 people sleeping in their homes in the village of Azizabad, a village where the Taliban had no presence.
photo: Heathcliff O'Malley
Nato airstrikes target the Taliban in Northern Afghanistan
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