U.S. Military Changes Its Story- Again- On Bombing Doctors Without Borders Hospital

As I covered in my previous essay (below this one), the U.S. military committed a vicious war crime on Saturday (October 2) when it unleashed an hour-long aerial bombardment of a hospital run by the French humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières- MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

Commencing immediately afterwards, the U.S. military has cycled through a number of bogus, sickening lies. This is the same behavior we see after every atrocity it commits. It starts with flat denials, then like a criminal under police interrogation, digs itself in deeper and deeper with changing versions that obliquely acknowledge bits of reality while twisting them to try and craft "innocent" explanations. But the contradictions and facts pile up and inevitably trap the lying criminal.

The latest story was trotted out by the U.S./NATO commander in Afghanistan, General John Campbell. The previous tale was that U.S. airpower was supporting U.S. Special Forces troops fighting the Taliban in Kunduz. Now he says it was Afghan soldiers who called in the air attack. (The U.S. at first denied it attacked the hospital at all. Who, us? Wasn't us!)

You'd think it wouldn't take several days to ascertain just who called in the strike. The whole thing stinks of slimy prevarication. Of course, when at first you deny the strike at all, that kind of dents your credibility.

Campbell, delivering the latest clumsy lies to reporters at the Pentagon, relegated the murders of medical personnel and patients to half a sentence- the last half too. And he refused to acknowledge they were medical personnel and patients, referring only to "civilians." Here's the quote, which has gotten wide play in U.S. media:

"We have now learned that on October 3, Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S. forces," he said. "An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat, and several innocent civilians were accidentally struck."

Yeah, that can happen when you attack a hospital. And get him: "We have now learned." Like the U.S. command are just a bunch of passive witnesses, not perpetrators who ordered the commission of a war crime. They're just trying to figure this out. What, somebody claims their hospital was bombed? When did you say this was? Couldn't have been us, because that's not who we are.

And Campbell still won't even admit it's wrong to attack a hospital!

"If errors were committed, we will acknowledge them. We will hold those responsible accountable, and we will take steps to ensure mistakes are not repeated."

IF errors were committed! (Forget about "crimes.")

Of course the MSF hospital wasn't a Taliban position. Although it apparently was an "enemy position," meaning that MSF is regarded as an enemy. Firing from the hospital is a complete fabrication, and probably no more than 1% of the world's population believe that.

MSF had a worthy reply to Campbell's smarmy, grotesque statement:

"Today the U.S. government has admitted [finally!]  that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff," the statement read. "Their description of the attack keeps changing -- from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government. 

"The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs. The U.S. hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The U.S. military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical."

This isn't going away as quickly as the U.S. military and it's Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama, no doubt calculated it would. That's because part of the international and even U.S. media aren't playing along. (Despicably, such propaganda fonts as NPR and Yahoo! "News" are acting as auxiliary propagandists for the Pentagon- for the most part in NPR's case, and entirely in Yahoo's, which actually rewrote a Reuters piece to drain it of all human detail for a coldly distant and exiguous account.) MSF has been able to get their people into the media. Even Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General who is supposed to be a U.S. puppet, has strongly denounced the attack.

Here's a key fact from MSF. The hospital is actually located in the middle of a compound, surrounded by other buildings. Only the hospital was attacked. Furthermore, the operating room and intensive care unit were specifically blasted. Helpless patients were burned alive in their beds.

This belies the claim of some kind of accident. It certainly puts the lie to the claim that the Taliban were firing from the hospital. They would have had to be in buildings along the perimeter of the compound. 

The New York Times already let slip in a map they published that the street fighting was nowhere near the hospital compound. (See essay below.) We also know from the surviving staff that there was no fighting in the vicinity.

General Campbell, man of great heart that he is, offered his "deepest condolences." This follows a statement concocted by Pentagon propagandists and dumped on the world in Campbell's name October 3:

"While we work to thoroughly examine the incident and determine what happened, my thoughts and prayers are with those affected."

You already know "what happened," because YOU DID IT. And "my thoughts and prayers are with those affected," is standard boilerplate of the most banal and common kind. In fact, the parents of the murderer who shot to death nine people at an Oregon community college last Thursday issued the exact same words, "our thoughts and prayers are with" the families etc. That exact language, "our thoughts and prayers are with," are routinely trotted out after tragedies and crimes in America. The fact that it is mere boilerplate proves the insincerity of the issuers of the statements.

And what could be more distincing and minimizing than referring to the victims as "those affected"? That sounds like people caught in a traffic jam: "We are doing routine maintenance and we apologize to all those affected and thank you for your patience" while we conduct our "investigations." 

The U.S. wants everyone to know that they're conducting not one, not two, but THREE, count 'em, three "investigations." (NPR Pentagon transmission belt Tom Bowman for one made sure we knew this.) So rest assured! The Pentagon is investigating (itself), NATO (which is just the U.S. and the ducks that line up behind it) is investigating, and the Afghanistan government is investigating. You know, the people who falsely claim the Taliban were shooting at them from the hospital. The ones who hate MSF, who planted pistols in another MSF hospital in Helmand province a few years ago and raided it with British forces in tow, arresting staff. That Afghanistan government. I'm sure they'll get to the bottom of this.

Campbell made sure to repeat to the assembled scribes at the Pentagon the news of the triple "investigations." So who can doubt their seriousness? And if three investigations all find the same thing, it must be right. Right?

I could list all the past Pentagon and U.S. whitewashes- OOPS, I meant to say "investigations"- that were, let us say, less than convincing. But an exhaustive list would take up quite a bit of time to compile. So we'll let that go.

I would just reiterate a point that should be too obvious to need making- accused parties shouldn't be investigating themselves. 

MSF has been repeatedly calling for an actually independent investigation.

Chiming in with the Pentagon killers, Obama's chief mouthpiece, Josh Earnest, emitted the predictable disgusting lies which are the precise opposite of reality, claiming, absurdly, against centuries of evidence, that:

"There is no country in the world and no military in the world that goes to greater lengths and places a higher premium on avoiding civilian casualties than the United States Department of Defense." 

Oh. You could have fooled me.

Let's see: the Iraq invasion (est. dead at least 105,000 up to 1 million), Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia (combined dead 4-5 million), razing of hundreds of cities in World War II, two atomic bombings- I think that's enough to make the point.

But that's funny. I thought the Israeli army has no equal in avoiding killing civilians. At least that's what the Israelis always say after every assault on Gaza. (Excuse me, I mean every time they "mow the lawn," as they call the culling of the Palestinian population.)

As for the destroyed hospital, that was the only trauma care facility in that part of Afghanistan. So far the U.S. hasn't offered to pay to rebuild it. Or offered to pay compensation for the 22 innocent people it murdered. (12 medical staff and 10 patients, including 3 children. Plus 37 people wounded.) So more people will die from lack of medical care in the future. (No victim of the U.S. ever gets a dime without suing. And of the tiny minority who manage to sue, most lose in U.S. courts.)

Nation-building, U.S. style!

[Quotations source: "Civilians 'accidentally struck' in Afghan hospital bombing, U.S. commander says," CNN, October 6, 2015.]