The New York Times has a web headline today (4/5/10): “U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women.”
The story explains that the “role” the U.S. played in the killing of the three women was that it killed them.
When this story first broke, NATO officials denied the killings, and tried to blame the murders on others. The Times storyincludes this gruesome detail: “Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the true nature of their deaths.”
As is often the case, the piece includes discussion of the political problems for the U.S.:
The disclosure could not come at a worse moment for the American military: NATO officials are struggling to contain fallout from a series of tirades against the foreign military presence by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has also railed against the killing of civilians by Western forces.
Reporter Jerome Starkey of theTimes of London had written about this incident for the Nieman Watchdog on March 22, explaining howhis own investigation (3/13/10) suggested a NATO cover-up. Starkey’s Nieman piece criticized the self-censorshipin Afghanistan–and the fact that writing critically can get you in trouble with military handlers:
I was thrown off a trip with the Marines Special Operations Command troops (MarSOC) last year when they realized I had written a story many months earlier linking their colleagues to three of Afghanistanâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s worst civilian casualty incidents.
The platoon commander boasted that his Special Forces were “a fusion of weapons and intelligence.” Two hours later he asked me what my name was. Then he booked me on the next flight out. At least we know the weapons work.
He adds: “NATO lies and unless we check them, they get away with it. If we check them, they attack us. It’s unpleasant but important.”
It is so true:…”NATO lies and unless we check them, they get away with it.”
I believe NATO was originally intended to protect the establishment in the west. That means protecting the media, the military/industrial complex, (the M/IC) the capitalist system from any rational criticism. The M/IC has propagandised to the extent they do not tolerate any new, creative, or alternative lines of thinking for fear that the weakness of their bully tactics and brutal violence will be revealed for what it really is – based on fear.
The sign that the general public in the west has been so completely brainwashed is that they do not even criticise the killing, torturing, and unjustified abuse of innocent civilians, even children, in the name of “terrorism.” It seems ironic all principle that the west supposedly stood for after WW2 has been distorted and ignored. Where do we see an outcry about the abuse and torture of the “innocent until PROVEN guilty”? We accept that they are no longer even called “suspects” by the media. If the military says they are terrorists, they are, and it does not matter what is done to them. All abuse, any killing is tolerated, unquestioned.