25 may have been killed in Afghanistan airstrike

[unhappycamper]

25 may have been killed in Afghanistan airstrike
(AP) – 3 hours ago

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — About 25 people may have been killed in a NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan on Monday, an Afghan official said.

NATO officials confirmed there had been an airstrike in Helmand province but said initial reports indicated that there were no civilian casualties. The coalition was continuing to look into the operation, the officials said.

The head of Helmand's provincial council, Fazal Bari, said local officials had told him that 25 people had been killed but that the casualty figures could rise because many bodies were still buried in the rubble.

He said the dead were inside a mosque in Baghran district, but NATO says it has no reports of a mosque being struck. Baghran is the northernmost district in Helmand, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.

"People are very angry," said eyewitness Salah Ayap, a 26-year-old driver in Maigan village where the strike took place. He said that foreign troops arrived in the village around 2 a.m. and there was a fierce gunfight before the airstrike.

[JonLP24]

1. Recommend

[Panaconda]

2. Imagine if, an hour from now,

Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and blasted it to pieces. The plane has no pilot. It is controlled with a joystick from 7,000 miles away, sent by the Pakistani military to kill you. It blows up all the houses in your street, and so barbecues your family and your neighbours until there is nothing left to bury but a few charred slops. Why? They refuse to comment. They don't even admit the robot-planes belong to them. But they tell the Pakistani newspapers back home it is because one of you was planning to attack Pakistan. How do they know? Somebody told them. Who? You don't know, and there are no appeals against the robot.

Now imagine it doesn't end there: these attacks are happening every week somewhere in your country. They blow up funerals and family dinners and children. The number of robot-planes in the sky is increasing every week. You discover they are named "Predators", or "Reapers" – after the Grim Reaper. No matter how much you plead, no matter how much you make it clear you are a peaceful civilian getting on with your life, it won't stop. What do you do? If there was a group arguing that Pakistan was an evil nation that deserved to be violently attacked, would you now start to listen?

... is in fact an accurate description of life in much of Pakistan today, with the sides flipped. The Predators and Reapers are being sent by Barack Obama's CIA, with the support of other Western governments, and they killed more than 700 civilians in 2009 alone – 14 times the number killed in the 7/7 attacks in London. The floods were seen as an opportunity to increase the attacks, and last month saw the largest number of robot-plane bombings ever: 22. Over the next decade, spending on drones is set to increase by 700 per cent.

...

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann--hari-obamas-robot-wars-endanger-us-all-2106931.html

[TBF]

3. Excellent post, and it is inexcusable that it is still occurring on Obama's watch. nt

[WinkyDink]

7. He isn't a stupid man, so is he a fearful one? I'm thinking of JFK and VietNam..

[JonLP24]

4. +1000

[malaise]

5. Another day, another slaughter

Democracy is wonderful. :puke:

[WinkyDink]

6. NATO is a criminal enterprise.