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US military courts handed down their judgment to Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales -
17 counts of murder for the massacre of innocent Afghans. Bales, 38,
will be formally charged today. Another lone gunman charged, and we are
told that this horror story is meant to end there, with ‘closure’ for
all sides.
The said slaughter of defenseless Afghan civilians was the worst of
its kind since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began in 2001. It
comes just weeks after copies of the Koran were burned at a US military
base, an event which set off mass riots across the country.
Sgt. Bales could be a fall guy for this incident, and clearly he
possesses a suitable back story necessary to pin the entire incident on
one man – uses antidepressant pharmaceuticals as well as a chequered
‘stressful’ financial history – all of which paints the picture of ‘a
soldier on the edge’, snapping in the line of duty. A nice clean, open
and shut case.
Predictably, and asking no questions, the US mainstream corporate
media has marched to the beat of the US military press department,
relying solely on military reporting of the incident and dutifully
ignoring multiple other reports coming out of Afghanistan, reports which
point to a very different conclusion.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has gone on record, slamming the US
military of not cooperating with a team he appointed to investigate the
killings. Considering Karzai serves as President at the pleasure of
Washington and its NATO allies, his remarks on this matter make it all
the more compelling.
The reality outside of the US military’s press office points towards
something completely different – a revenge attack involving a conspiracy
numbering at least 10 US soldiers who left the US base in Panjwai
district of Kandahar province, gunning down nine children, four men and
three women on the morning of March 11 in the villages of Balandi and
Alkozai. AP reports confirmed as much yesterday:
In accounts to The Associated Press and to Afghan government officials, the residents allege that US troops lined up men from the village of Mokhoyan(in Afghanistan) against a wall after the bombing on either March 7 or 8, and told them they would pay a price for the attack.
The appeal of the lone gunman theory has always been popular with
Americans and the US media, and in this case, the rest of the world are
meant to swallow an implausible story that a single US soldier
single-handedly walked off the base, visiting not one, but two villages,
carrying out his solo slaughter going home to home, and
then proceeded to set fire to some of the victims’ bodies.
The awkward, official US military account of events only furthers
speculation of a cover-up on the part of the US military, a cover-up
which is now being steered by a White House who quite understandibly –
but not excusably – is at pains to come clean on yet another military
scandal with a public suffering from conflict fatigue.
The AP report continues:
“The soldiers called all the people to come out of their houses and from the mosque,” he said.
“The Americans told the villagers ‘A bomb exploded on our vehicle. … We will get revenge for this incident by killing at least 20 of your people,”‘ Mr Rasool said. “These are the reasons why we say they took their revenge by killing women and children in the villages.”
… Mr Mohammad said a US soldier, speaking through a translator, then said: “I know you are all involved and you support the insurgents. So now, you will pay for it – you and your children will pay for this’.”
Mr Mohammad’s neighbour, Bakht Mohammad, and Ahmad Shah Khan, also of Mokhoyan, gave similar accounts.
The US soldiers arrived in the village with their Afghan army counterparts and made many of the male villagers stand against a wall, Mr Khan said.
“It looked like they were going to shoot us, and I was very afraid,” said Mr Khan. “Then a NATO soldier said through his translator that even our children will pay for this. Now they have done it and taken their revenge.”
Several Afghan officials, including Kandahar lawmaker Abdul Rahim Ayubi, said people in the two villages that were attacked told them the same story.
Reports of drunken soldiers
Additional reports place
several intoxicated US soldiers at the scene of the crime, shooting and
pouring chemicals over the bodies of dead Afghans:
“They were all drunk and shooting all over the place,” Reuters cites Agha Lala, a villager in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district.
Lala’s neighbor Haji Samad lost all of his 11 relatives in the rampage, including children and grandchildren. He claims Marines “poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them.”
Twenty-year-old Jan Agha says the gunfire “shook him out of bed.” He was in the epicenter of the horrible shooting, witnessing his father shot as the latter peered out of a window to see what was going on.
“The Americans stayed in our house for a while. I was very scared,” the young man told reporters.
Should the US public come to realize that America’s crusade in
Central Asia has reached a point where their boys overseas are carrying
out bloody reprisals on unarmed villagers- it would all but kill the
public will at home. A cover-up would therefore be essential for
Washington. If the story broke about a reckless, drunken revenge attack
involving approximately a dozen or more US soldiers (officers in command
of the base should have been aware of a platoon leaving the base),
aside from being a PR epic fail for NATO allies in US and Europe, it
would almost certainly spark off a massive rebellion against an
increasingly unpopular US-led NATO occupation of the country. And
history has not been very kind at all to such military misadventures.
Of course, the military or even the Afghan police could put our minds
at rest and clear up this case by simply carrying out a forensic
ballistic test of all the spent ammunition and then match it to the
weapons on the base.
(Excerpt taken from Patrick Henningsen's article written for InfoWars)
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