The Democrats savaged Mitt Romney last night at the Democratic Convention for not even mentioning the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone thanking them for their service, during his speech at the Republican Convention last week.
Today, Romney was asked about that criticism, and he explained that he didn't talk about America's service members in harm's way because he only wanted to talk about "important things."
BAIER: To hear several speakers in Charlotte … they were essentially saying that you don’t care about the U.S. military because you didn’t mention U.S. troops and the war in Afghanistan in your nomination acceptance speech. … Do you regret opening up this line of attack, now a recurring attack, by leaving out that issue in the speech.
ROMNEY: I only regret you’re repeating it day in and day out. When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important and I described in my speech, my commitment to a strong military unlike the president’s decision to cut our military. And I didn’t use the word troops, I used the word military. I think they refer to the same thing.
What's particularly interesting about Priebus calling Reid a liar is that just yesterday, Priebus tweeted this outright lie that has already been debunked by Politifact, among others:
Actually, Obama is trying to open up voting for everyone, including military - but that particular truth would be inconvenient for the Republicans, so Priebus and Romney simply lie (which is something that apparently the Mormons in particular embrace as a part of their faith, it's called "lying for the lord" - and it's something the Mormons have used to confuse people about their ongoing attempts to forcibly convert the souls of dead Jewish Holocaust victims, among others).
Independent fact-checker Politifact calls Priebus' claim "simply dishonest." But that hasn't stopped Romney and Priebus from repeating the claim over and over again in the hopes to trick our members of the military into voting Republican. Because at their core, Romney and Priebus think our service members are stupid, gullible, and easily misled. Heck of a way to treat Americans in combat.
As Atrios points out, people who call for the reinstatement of the draft are invariably older than the upper-limit on the draft age they propose. And Matthew Yglesias points out that enslaving teenagers is hardly an equitable alternative to paying taxes. But what really offends me about the latest outburst of conscription nonsense from General McChrystal and Thomas Ricks is the idea that providing the military with more people would mean fewer wars rather than more.
Consider Ricks' piece in the New York Times:
Unlike Europeans, Americans still seem determined to maintain a serious military force, so we need to think about how to pay for it and staff it by creating a draft that is better and more equitable than the Vietnam-era conscription system.
Like much authoritarian logic, this argument begins with a stated premise that is completely untrue and several unstated assumptions that are false. The European military is a serious force. The French and British heads of government were sufficiently convinced of their military capability to begin planning an assault on Libya even if the US did not take part in the operation.
Even if the premise is assumed to be true, the conclusion only follows if it is assumed that (1) The US needs to increase its military to make up for the purported deficit left by the Europeans, and (2) The US needs a 'serious' military.
At root, authoritarians are cowards. They can't face the risk of disorder, it frightens them. So they desperately try to prevent change or disorder no matter how clear the evidence that their attempt is counter productive. So they will always want more guns, more tanks and more bombs and more people to carry them for them. And whenever they see a threat, their first reaction is to fire all that weaponry they collected over the years.
Speaking on a panel, McChrystal argued that bringing back the draft would make people more 'connected' to the war.
We've never done that in the United State before; we've never fought an extended war with an all- volunteer military. So what it means is you've got a very small population that you're going to and you're going to it over and over again," he said. "Because it's less than one percent of the population... people are very supportive but they don't have the same connection to it.
But here is the thing, how is sending our teenagers to fight in McCrystal's hunger-games going to make voters feel more connected when almost all of them are older than the proposed draft age? The only way that is going to be possible is if everyone knows that they might be drafted in the future. If we accept McCrystal's logic we should draft everyone, especially senior citizens.
In fact, drafting seniors has obviously superior benefits on every single one of the reasons given for conscription.
Seniors have experience, and so the free labor provided by the typical senior would be more valuable than that of the typical teen. Seniors are a powerful voting block, and governments would be even more reluctant to fight unnecessary wars. And seniors also have a shorter remaining life expectancy, so the social sacrifice is less.
So the next time someone starts talking about reinstating the draft, let's start with Dick Cheney.
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Be very afraid of an Obama re-election! Yes, the industry that has been about as fat and happy as the banking industry due to the modern US war machine state is preparing to send out emails to workers suggesting that an Obama win in November could mean their job is in jeopardy. Even more interesting is that they will be sending out the "vote for Obama and you're fired" emails shortly before the November election.
As always, very classy move by the industry that loves war and bribes hires top Pentagon brass with high paying jobs upon retirement. Bloomberg:
Companies led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), the world’s largest defense contractor, say federal and state laws may require them to send out blanket notifications of potential job cuts before the election unless President Barack Obama and Congress act by October to avert automatic defense reductions of $500 billion over a decade that would start on Jan. 2.
To employment-law attorney Margaret Keane, giving mass dismissal warnings in such uncertain conditions looks more like a lobbying tactic by corporations trying to ward off the cuts than an effort to follow the letter of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
“I just don’t think you need to do that,” said Keane, a partner with Littler Mendelson PC who advises employers on meeting the notification law’s requirements. “Are we really talking about complying with the WARN Act, or are we talking about political pressure being applied?”
Americans are fed up with being asked to accept cuts while fat cats like the military industry lines their pockets and destroys the economy. Remember that the majority of budget issues today are a result of the Bush tax cuts and wars. We need to shift money from the war machine over to business that actually benefits Americans, such as infrastructure.
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Lee Fang is on fire. And this is red hot conscienceless stuff. As you read, the name to remember is Thomas MacKenzie.
Now consider. You're a lobbyist/vice-president for Northrup Grumman, the people who help bring you — well, all those wars.
I know, this is a huge stretch — you actually have a conscience. You don't want to eat breakfast food made from napalmed children. But for the sake of argument, bear with me.
So, you've shed your conscience like a skin, you're a war-industry lobbyist, and you're about to go to work for a bought Congressman — Rep. Buck McKeon, by the way — heard of him?
But darn the luck, to do it, you're going to have to take a serious pay cut. Can't do the public good without a pay cut.
How do you keep your pockets lined while working for the public good? How about an upfront, lumpsum two-year bonus from your ex-employer — say, $250,000 per year — to tide you over? (Two years is a congressman's term of office.)
Would a half million dollars keep your present mind on your once-and-future job?
If you have no conscience about how you earn your keep (because, in fact, you are definitely kept) you say "Thank you, Master; I'm here."
Which brings us to Lee Fang's story at the heroic Republic Report. In it, Thomas McKenzie says, in effect, "Thank you, Master; I'm here" (my emphasis and paragraphing):
Northrop Grumman, the fourth largest weapons maker in the world, follows the actions of Congress very closely. The F-35, which may cost over $1.45 trillion because of unprecedented cost overruns, an expensive surveillance drone program criticized as unnecessary, and even a new fleet of nuclear bombers are among the Northrop Grumman products that may be in jeopardy as the Pentagon is forced to trim fat from the military budget.
But luckily for Northrop Grumman, which made $2.12 billionin profits last year, the firm essentially has a man on the inside of Congress with wide sway over how the government spends money on national defense.
In 2011, after Republicans seized the House of Representatives in a landslide victory, the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the military, gained a new chairman, Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA).
As with most leadership changes, McKeon and his committee hired new professional staff. Thomas MacKenzie, a vice president at Northrop Grumman, was tapped to work for the committee beginning in March of 2011. [MacKenzie is the lobbyist perp, in case you haven't noticed.]
There are many examples of lobbyists burrowing into government to work in policy areas that impact their former employers. Theselobbyists, as Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, an expert on lobbying, has explained, seem happy to accept low-paid public service salaries, perhaps because they can expect extremely high pay once they return to K Street [the "once-and-future job" noted above].
In MacKenzie’s case, Northrop Grumman made sure he had extra cash before he went to work writing policy on the defense budget. Republic Report viewed a recently filed ethics disclosure form, and found that Northrop Grumman paid MacKenzie a $498,334 bonus in 2011, just before he went to work under McKeon as a committee staffer. ...
As a congressional staffer, MacKenzie now makes close to $120,000 a year. Representative McKeon, by far the biggest recipient of Northrop Grumman campaign contributions in Congress, has defended billions of dollars in questionable projects for MacKenzie’s former employer. ...
To see how much MacKenzie made at Northrup Grumman per year, check out Lee Fang's piece; it would be a shame not to send you there for that.
Humans rendered into profit. You read that correctly; supply the substituted noun and you got it.
This is a neat story. My friend Dave Stirpe was on business in Belgium recently and decided to bring along some photos of his dad who served in Belgium (and I suspect other places) during WWII building floating bridges. Dave had one picture in particular that he wanted to recreate.
As I arrived in Namur, I stopped at an information booth near the train station to obtain a map. A young lady pointed the way to the River Meuse and the wrought iron fence that she saw in the picture. I walked past a beautifully restored city center and arrived at the river. I was shocked to see the same elaborately detailed wrought iron fence that was clearly visible in several pictures that I had taken along with me. I could identify a string of buildings across the river that were also in the picture, even though taller buildings had been constructed over the decades.
While 68 years had passed, it was eerily similar. I used my bad French to ask passing strangers to snap pictures of me in the same pose that “mon pere” had made along the fence until I finally approved of a picture that was nearly identical. The locals were interested in my collection of pictures and in the story that my Dad had served there in WWII.
Dave, at the same location, nearly 70 years later.
Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war.
The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.
The numbers reflect a military burdened with wartime demands from Iraq and Afghanistan that have taken a greater toll than foreseen a decade ago. The military also is struggling with increased sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other misbehavior.
I've worried for a while about the cost of war on individual servicemembers over all these years. How do you live every minute of every day worrying about being killed, and not have it takes it toll after a matter of days, if not months and years?
I had and interview with Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz about the financial cost of war, which includes the cost of treating wounded (both physically and psychologically) servicemembers. Stiglitz estimated that Iraq and Afghanistan will end up costing the US more than $3 trillion. Here's that interview:
In yesterday's post I described the key facts that we now know about the Stuxnet cyber attack. We now know that Stuxnet was developed by the US and Israeli governments to attack the Iranian uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. What we do not yet know is what the consequences were and will be.
Available evidence strongly suggests that the Stuxnet attack delayed the Iranian nuclear program by many weeks if not months. The Iranian government has confirmed that the plant was affected by a cyber attack and the IAEA has reported a sudden increase in the rate at which replacement of certain centrifuge parts. But it is also clear that the attack did not permanently incapacitate the plant.
Even if the reports of damage are true, these do not mean that there actually is an Iran nuclear bomb making program as alleged or that it was damaged. The Natanz plant is a civilian plant monitored by the IAEA whose purported purpose is to enrich uranium for use in Iran's nuclear power program. According to the reports produced by the monitors, the enriched uranium produced at Natanz to date is only suitable for power generation and not for bomb making.
If Iran is in fact diverting material from Natanz to a weapons program they must have at least one other enrichment facility that is not publicly known, or be planning to withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaties and use their civilian facilities to produce weapons grade uranium.
If the purpose of the attack was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb it has to be considered a predictable failure. It is hard to see how causing premature failure of a few centrifuges would stop anyone. Short of an actual invasion there is nothing the US can to to prevent Iran getting the bomb if they make it a national priority. Iran has far more wealth, expertise and technology available to it in 2012 than the US had when it built the first bomb in 1945.
The best that can be said for Stuxnet is that it has caused much less damage than a 'kinetic' attack. 'kinetic' being the euphemism that the military people engaged in this field have decided on for the old fashioned approach of bombs and bullets. They also refer to the field as 'cyber-engagement' rather than cyber-warfare and there is a good reason for that which I will get to in the next part. The response from Iran has been minimal and as far as we know, Stuxnet has not killed anyone.
Admitting responsibility for Stuxnet certainly does Obama no harm as far as domestic politics are concerned. The Stuxnet news gives the lie to Romney's debate claim: "Look, one thing you can know and that is if we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if we elect Mitt Romney, if you elect me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon."
The difference between the Republican party approach to national security and the Obama administration policy is clear: Bush started two wars and failed to win either. Obama has ended the Iraq war and eliminated Bin Laden and Iran still does not have a nuclear weapon.
Equally clear is that what Obama is really offering is a competently executed version of the policy Bush attempted incompetently. Being better than the alternative does not mean a policy is good. While some of the comments on my first post claimed Stuxnet was 'terrorism' what the attack really amounts to is some petty vandalism and comes with some very significant costs.
Some of those costs are short term: Iran now has a pretty good excuse to leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the US admission that it was behind Stuxnet is going to give Russia and China a lot of leverage in their attempt to change Internet standards to make it easier for governments to control. I will deal with both of those issues in future posts. First however I want to focus on the longer term problem: Stuxnet has opened up a Pandora's box.
Oh please, Mitt. As if it's not amusing enough that Romney replaced his military service during the Vietnam war with a few years living in the posh and flashy 16th arrondissement. (It's the new money, flashy part of Paris on the western edge of town.) Somehow service in the neighborhood of nannies and sports cars has made Romney certain that what the already bloated Pentagon needs is more money. Uh huh.
Maybe Romney math is different from real math, but US defense spending already dwarfs the rest of the world and it's not even close. One would need to add countries ranked second through fifteenth to slightly pass the annual US military spending so spare me the story about how damaging cuts would weaken the US.
What is weakening the US is too much war spending and not enough spending at home. But for the Romney class, spending on social programs that benefit the 99% is a waste of money. The real waste of money in the US these days is giving away tax cuts to people like Mitt Romney, who hasn't worked in years yet still makes millions each year thanks to GOP tax cuts.
Dear god, the man has all kinds of money but can't buy a clue.
Echoing portions of his stump speech in which he cites the threat of a resurgent Russia, a nuclear Iran and a rising China as obstacles to an "American Century," Romney closed his speech at this Memorial Day tribute to veterans with a political message about a choice between divergent military philosophies this November.
"We have two courses we can follow: One is to follow the pathway of Europe. To shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs. And they of course rely on the strength of America and they hope for the best. Were we to follow that kind of course, there would be no one that could stand to protect us," Romney told an audience his campaign said numbered roughly 5000 people.
"The other is to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world. We choose that course. We choose that course for America not just so that we can win wars, but so we can prevent wars."
The only surprise is that the Senate wasn't sent hush moneycampaign contributions from the defense contractors to kill the report. Not only have the US defense contractors been fleecing Americans with the normally bloated defense contracts but they're also ripping off Americans and putting US military in danger by selling cheap ripoff products, probably at the same price as the real thing.
WWhy do Americans defense contractors want to put US soldiers at risk with inferior products? BBC News:
A year-long probe found 1,800 cases of fake parts in US military aircraft, the Senate Armed Services Committee found.
More than 70% of an estimated one million suspect parts were traced back to China, the report said.
It blamed weaknesses in the US supply chain, and China's failure to curb the counterfeit market.
The failure of a key part could pose safety and national security risks and lead to higher costs for the Pentagon, the committee said.
I hate to keep harping on this, but it's unavoidable. Our testosterone-drunk nation is now (apparently) just fine, as in totally on board, with Obama using drones to kill the unknown, based only on a "signature" — a pattern of data in the intel matrix.
Soon these deaths be telecast live on their very own cable network — The Coliseum Channel.
I hate to say it, but I do think Krugman is right, but for a different reason. There will be a Night of the Krell, when all of this mayhem turns against us. The dawn of that understanding will be dark indeed.
According to the public account the US and allies would very much like to take a more active role (i.e. start a war) against Syria and the only thing holding them back is the opposition of Russia and China in the UN security council. This has led Russia to put pressure on Syria which has in turn led the Syrian government to agree to a ceasefire which few people expect to last. Meanwhile Turkey is mobilizing its army in case the Syrian civil war spills further into their territory. There have already been shots fired across the border with Turkey and Lebanon and three people are dead as a result.
Now consider an alternative explanation of the same facts. Let us assume that the last thing Obama wants right now is to become involved in a new war at the start of a general election campaign. It was not Obama's idea to take action Libya, that was the work of Cameron and Sarkozy. Nor has the liberation of Libya been an unqualified strategic success for the US. It is certainly good for the war on terror, Gadaffi supplied bullets and bombs to terrorists while Bin Laden was still wearing diapers. But as with the fall of East Germany, the loss of a strategic enemy is always a disaster for the military-industrial complex: how can they justify their existence if peace were to accidentally break out?
The fall of Syria is certainly an unqualified lose-lose proposition for Iran, Israel and Russia. Iran would lose their principle regional ally and their post Iraq war claim to being the emerging regional super power. While this part would be good for Israel, the regime that replaces Assad is almost certain to be more hostile to Israel. Either it will be a democratic regime and the people will demand that it takes a hostile position or it will be a dictatorship and picking fights with Israel will be the likely method of distracting those discontented with the regime.
Russia would lose as the wave of governments being toppled by popular discontent spreads northwards towards the corrupt ex-Soviet satellites surrounding the Caspian Sea. Also the Russia faces the embarrassing position of having been on the losing side of every major international engagement they have been involved in since the defeat in Afghanistan. Since then they lost control of Western Europe, watched the breakup of the Soviet empire and picked the losing side in the Bosnian war and in Libya.
A war in Syria is the last thing any party would want right now. The outcome can only damage the interests of every party other than Turkey which is re-emerging as the real regional super power in the wake of the Arab Spring. But even in Turkey the civilian government cannot exactly be sure of the loyalty of the military which not so long ago was running the country as a dictatorship.
So another explanation of what we can observe is this: The Russian veto currently allows the US and allies to be vocal in their support of the Syrian opposition without the need to take any action against it. The government of Turkey is looking for excuses to avoid being dragged into the war and has agreed to overlook the insult to their territory in return for the current temporary ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered into Homs.
The situation is a house of cards and there are numerous triggers that could bring it down. China is already disengaged and Russia is getting visibly tired of its role. The incursions into Turkey are becoming more frequent and at some point the Turkish government is going to find it hard to persuade the army to ignore the insult. If we get to that point, Turkey is almost certain to invoke the NATO charter under article 4 (consultation). But they may have the right to invoke article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all) which would render the UN discussion moot.
We appear to be facing a long, slow slide into war against the will of almost every government concerned and it is very hard to see how it can be stopped. The one positive note is that it is highly unlikely that Russia would engage to protect the Assad regime but it will be yet another blow to their dignity.
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In an appalling new low, [GOP] Congressman Joe Walsh today slammed his opponent Tammy Duckworth's military service. Walsh told Politico, "What else has she done? Female, wounded veteran ... ehhh." Duckworth served as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in Iraq in 2004, and lost her legs and part of the use of her right arm. She was awarded the Purple Heart for her combat injuries and is still active as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Illinois National Guard.
VoteVets.org PAC, the largest group of progressive veterans responded in a statement, demanding an apology to Duckworth, and putting Walsh's own record up against Duckworth's service to the country and veterans.
"Just when you think Congressman Joe Walsh couldn't sink any lower, he insults the service and sacrifice of our Veterans, particularly one like Tammy who lost her limbs in the line of duty. Congressman Walsh owes Tammy Duckworth and all Veterans an apology for his outrageous disrespect for their service," said Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org PAC. "But it's not just that. If you think working for America's veterans at the VA both in Washington and Illinois is nothing, if you think working to improve the economic lives of veterans is nothing, then Joe Walsh's record is below nothing. He represents the do-nothing, obstructionist, extreme Tea Party wing of the GOP, not the values that Tammy stood up for."
This is an excellent must-watch report, with witness interviews, of the Kandahar massacre story (h/t Steve Hynd via Twitter for the link).
I suspect this is CNN's international feed, the highly respected one you can't get at home. The British accent of the anchor suggests as much, as does the content.
Reporter Yalda Hakim of Australia’s SBS network has become the first western journalist to visit the villages where a U.S. soldier allegedly killed 17 people.
In a remarkable report she talks with some of the survivors and some Afghan guards on duty at the military camp from where Staff Sgt. Robert Bales left on his alleged killing spree. The video at the top of this story is Hakim’s account of her journey to the remote villages near Kandahar and what she was told.
A short rundown:
▪ Starting at 4:05, there's an excellent recreation of the events of that night, begnning with the layout — the relative locations of Camp Belambai and the two villages, Alkozai and Najiban. This provides an excellent sense of place, what those villages look like, what the houses feel like inside, how barren the countryside. An excellent job by this reporter and her team.
▪ The discussion of the number of shooters starts at 5:55. Note that it's the U.S. military that initially blocks interview (7:15). Interviews themselves start at 7:45.
▪ At 8:50, there is a clear eyewitness who saw more than one soldier performing the killings, in what an Afghan official said earlier looked like a helicopter-supported operation.
▪ Near the end of the CNN wrapper to the SBS segment, you'll see an interview with John Henry Browne, the accused lone gunman's attorney. That's a name to remember and watch for.
This is a terrific watch. Please do if you have the time. Ms. Hakim, the reporter, is the one in the green hijab, or headscarf.
(To see this report larger and in a new tab, click here.)
One final note: When Ms. Hakim describes Sgt. Bales' movements, she's taking the American view of events ("lone shooter") since she has no witnesses to his movements in or near the base to the contrary. (In other words, no one is saying "A group of men left the base at this or that time that night.")
When she describes the events in the villages, she lets the witnesses speak for themselves. Thus the apparent discrepancy.
This was a story I came across yesterday. It think it's important to remember that our service members are human beings too. War is not a pretty thing. And regardless of our feelings about the mission, or its aftermath, our troops are real people, and they're not all bad, by a longshot. This story, below, is as about as human, and heartbreaking, as you can get.
According to the Rhode Island National Guard and the U.S. Army, Weichel was in a convoy a week ago with his unit in Laghman Province, in northeast Afghanistan. Some children were in the road in front of the convoy, and Weichel and other troops got out to move them out of the way.
Most of the children moved, but one little girl went back to pick up some brass shell casings in the road. Afghan civilians often recycle the casings, and the girl appeared to aim to do that. But a Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle was moving toward her, according to Lt. Col. Denis Riel of the Rhode Island National Guard.
MRAPs, as they are known, usually weigh more than 16 tons.
Weichel saw the massive truck bearing down on the girl and grabbed her out of the way. But in the process, the armored truck ran him over, Riel said.
The little girl is fine. Weichel died a short time later of his injuries.
I offer this to square the circle on the Kandahar massacre story. With this information, you're up to date.
The other news recently — other than radio silence from both the British and American press on the multiple eyewitness accounts opposed to the "lone gunman" thesis — is the weekend payments by the U.S. military to the victims of the slaughter and their families.
The families of 16 [sic] Afghan villagers killed this month in a massacre blamed on a US soldier [sic] were given $50,000 by the United States for each of their slain relatives, Afghan and US officials said.
The payments were made Saturday by US military officers at the office of the governor of Kandahar Province, where the killings took place. Those wounded in the violence were each given $11,000, said Haji Agha Lalai, a member of the Kandahar provincial council.
Haji Jan Agha, who lost cousins in the killings, said he and other relatives of the deceased were invited to the governor’s office by foreign and Afghan officials, according to the Reuters news agency. “They said this money is an assistance from Obama,’’ Agha was quoted as saying.
Lalai also described the payments as “assistance’’ to the wounded and the families of the dead, not as any kind of traditional compensation that would absolve the accused of responsibility for the crimes.
Interesting parsing. This Guardian story, which covers the payments near the end of the article, characterizes the U.S. as seeking "to appease Afghans by providing assistance".
About the number of victims, the Globe adds in the same piece:
Bales, who was flown out of Afghanistan soon after the killings, was formally charged on Friday with 17 [sic] counts of murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder. He is being held at a military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
According to Afghan and US officials, Bales walked off his small combat outpost in a rural area of Kandahar in the early hours of March 11 and shot and stabbed at least 16 [sic] people to death. ... Neither Afghan nor US officials have explained the discrepancy between the official Afghan government death toll of 16 and the 17 counts of murder that Bales was charged with by the US military.
Two things to note: First, that story syncs up with Marcy Wheeler's work, which we discussed here. Second, the Globe has both U.S. and Afghan "officials" holding to the "lone gunman" story, which we first discussed here.
Let's see if it sticks — not the "lone gunman" story; the media's failure to report the eyewitness accounts. So far, the silence makes my ears hurt.
UPDATES:
1. Even Al-Jazeera is walking the "alleged lone gunman" line with no report of the Afghan commission finding that I could locate. Here's their latest — note the parsing. Not a whitewash exactly, but no offsetting reporting either. Try a search of their site yourself; see if you get different results. Silence is all I hear.
1. Will it get near-term media traction? Let's see if the British independent press picks it up, or some prime American source. These are critical hours for the story in the U.S.; the fruit is still unripe, still vulnerable to the frosty stare of the next missing news-blonde.
2. In the U.S. what will be the response? At some point there will be a trial. That in itself could rekindle awareness. After all, if one or more people had gone on a midnight killing spree of 16 women and children in Kansas, we'd be inundated with it, drowning in it.
3. In Afghanistan, this could change the political equation. Yes, we're talking about maybe exiting the war. But there's now more on the table for honor-focused tribal leaders than just our leaving.
■ The U.S.–DoD side of the story (point 2 above) is being ably followed by Marcy Wheeler — including the difference in the number of victims claimed, and the implications of that discrepancy. Do check that out, especially her speculations near the end of the post. (And see also this, then this to get her long-range projections for this story's arc. I'm guessing she's right.)
The rest of this looks at the media side (point 1) — including differences between the villagers accounts of the number of shooters and the U.S. military's account — and also at the Afghan side (point 3).
■ The media side of the story is fairly quiet. However, there's this fascinating article from the Global Post, headquartered in Boston, which casts doubt on the stories of the Afghan witnesses.
But read on; they did a lot of original reporting, including their own interviews with eyewitnesses, and turned up some great results (my emphases and some reparagraphing):
Conflicting reports from eyewitnesses, US officials and local leaders show, if anything, how little is known for certain about what happened in the early morning hours of March 11, when Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly massacred 16 Afghan civilians [amended by the U.S. to 17], including nine women and children. ...
“ISAF is looking into all the witnesses accounts who are deemed credible and we will investigate that,” Lt. Brian Badura said. Credible is the key word. Most of the “witnesses” so far interviewed are from the villages, or are family or friends of the victims. But very few actually saw the shooting unfold.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who summoned several villagers to Kabul to get their side of the story, has ardently supported their claims. GlobalPost, however, interviewed the same people in Kandahar before they flew to meet Karzai, and found that either they didn’t see the shooting or that they couldn’t recall key details.
[For example,] Habibullah, a 28-year-old farmer who saw parts of the massacre unfold, was one of those who met Karzai. He told GlobalPost he saw several soldiers in his compound when his father was shot. But he also admits he can’t remember everything that happened. “My mind is too confused,” he said. ...
Note that the article's disclaimer ("they didn’t see the shooting or ... couldn’t recall key details") is belied by this direct testimony from later in the same article:
After the soldier with the walkie-talkie killed her husband, [Massouma] said he lingered in the doorway of her home. “While he stood there, I secretly looked through the curtains and saw at least 20 Americans, with heavy weapons, searching all the rooms in our compound, as well as my bathroom,” she said. ... An Afghan journalist who went to Massouma’s home in the days after the shooting and spoke with one of her sons, aged seven, said the boy told him he looked through the curtains and saw a number of soldiers — although he couldn’t say how many.
Massouma's husband is Mohammad Dawood according to Wheeler, who is attempting to coordinate all these names, lists, and versions.
Do read the rest. It would be easy to dismiss this as a U.S.-based media outlet doing DoD laundry. But the detail is credible, even though (or because) it doesn't support the lede.
So shame, I suppose, for bending (if that's what they did), and kudos for going, asking, and reporting what they heard.
■ On the Afghan side we feared retribution. Well, it's happening. First The Guardian, reporting on an Afghan-on-British forces shooting:
Two British soldiers were killed on Monday when an Afghan soldier turned his gun on them at the gates of a UK military base. The attacker was also killed during an exchange of fire which may have started after security guards stopped a truck as it tried to enter the heavily fortified compound in Helmand's capital Lashkar Gah. ...
Massoud Khan Nourzai, an MP from Helmand, said: "These kinds of attacks have increased lately and maybe they will continue to increase in the future.
"They have increased because of the incidents like the one in Kandahar. If an incident like Kandahar happens, people are not sitting quietly. In every Afghan family they are talking about it and saying they committed a cruel action."
Afghan security forces shot and killed three international troops Monday, one of them an American, in two attacks. They were the latest in a rising number of attacks in which Afghan forces have turned their weapons on their foreign partners.
Causes are given in both papers as the Kandahar massacre, the "burning of Muslim holy books at a U.S. base, and uncertainty about Afghanistan's fate."
Note this from the Guardian article:
Tensions have been running high in Afghanistan because of the burning of Qur'ans by US forces inside an international base, and then the shooting dead of 17 [sic] Afghan civilians in Kandahar province by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.
So the independent British press is following the DoD line, at least for now — no mention in this story of offsetting witness accounts. The Guardian article closes with a quote supporting Cameron's decision to remain in Afghanistan, so the media "lone gunman" story is a joint trans-Atlantic op, at least in appearance.
There you have it, a three-legged update on the three-legged stool of this story. More as it develops. In the meantime, keep an eye on emptywheel.net for more of her coverage — Wheeler is following aspects not found elsewhere.
We've been covering the recent Afghan murder spree — the horror of the massacre and the question of the number of troops involved.
The latest face-off has an Afghan parliamentary inquiry finding that 15–20 soldiers were involved (based on numerous eye-witness interviews) vs. the U.S. military (and most of the press) holding to a "lone gunman" explanation.
I've also written that until the multiple-troops story is debunked, simple assertions by the U.S. military don't carry sufficient offsetting weight.
Let's now consider, in general, the situation of an Afhgan-based platoon when one of its sergeants has gone over the edge, become "a hater" (in the words of another sergeant who "wanted nothing to do" with him).
This story, from the American Scholar, will set you back. Its title:
Afghanistan: A Gathering Menace Traveling with U.S. troops gives insights into the recent massacre
You can see where it's going, and what its value is. It contains both mitigation and indictment. I'll reprint the mitigation. The indictment I'll discuss, but you should read it for yourself — I don't want to put the detail in these pages.
First, the mitigation, from near the middle (my emphasis everywhere):
Since 2006 I have written off and on about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nearly all of my work in those countries has been done embedded with NATO, mostly American military units. Many times I have watched soldiers or Marines, driven by boredom or fear, behave selfishly and meanly, even illegally, in minor ways. In a few searing moments I have wondered what would come next, what the men would do to prisoners or civilians or suspected insurgents. And I have wondered how to describe these moments without reporting melodramatic minutiae or betraying the men who allowed me in.
Most soldierly stupidity does not amount to crime; most soldiers never commit atrocities. U.S. soldiers shooting at goats, for example, or pilots getting drunk on base, or guards threatening the lives of prisoners, all things I have seen, defy military rules and erode efforts to win hearts and minds. But how bad is it, really? Do we care? ...
We tend to ignore such problems unless they are connected to a crime. ...
Now the indictment. The bulk of the essay describes the writer's time embedded with a platoon he calls "Destroyer". Among the sergeants is a man he calls "Givens" and describes thus:
He was in his mid-20s, charismatic and quick, a combat veteran. He threw down declarations like a hip-hop star—respect yourself and no one else; f**k bitches, get money—and the younger infantrymen revered him. Even officers appeared to defer to his humor, efficiency, and rage.
Platoons are often structured like high school cliques, and Givens stood at the apex of his, setting the tone and example. A list of characteristics scrolled through my mind as I listened to the men, traits I probably learned from episodes of Law & Order, or Lord of the Flies. Pop-culture sociopathy. Sexualized aggression. The displays of wolves.
There are tales of what Givens and his men do during house-to-house Taliban searches (which turn up nothing). The behavior will not be described here, but it's bad enough that the Afghan soldiers working with them...
...at first tried to stop them, then grew angry, sullen. ... I imagined the Afghan soldiers standing by, helpless, while Destroyer destroyed. I thought of attacks over the past several years in which Afghan policemen or soldiers had suddenly turned on their NATO allies and opened fire. Such betrayals have been increasing.
This is not an indictment of all U.S. troops — far from it. As I mentioned, some of the other sergeants would have nothing to do with "Givens" and almost hated him. But the writer also makes clear there is more than one Givens serving in Afghanistan:
I have heard [Given's] words [which I will not quote] in many variations, from many American combat troops. But he and some of his men were the first I had met who seemed very near to committing the dumb and vicious acts that we call war crimes.
About the Given's quote alluded to above — it's the most startling sentence in the piece. If you want to see it, go here. Steve Hynd uses it as his title, in his own examination of this remarkable American Scholar essay.
We asked earlier, "How many shooters were involved in the Afghan killings?" Afghan lawmakers are asking the same question, and have settled on an answer — as many as twenty.
The Kabul-based Pajhwok Afghan News agency — Afghanistan's largest independent news service — is reporting on an Afghan parliamentary probe into the murder of 16 civilians by one or more U.S. soldiers over the weekend. According to the report (h/t Steve Hynd via Twitter; my emphasis and reparagraphing):
A parliamentary probe team on Thursday said up to 20 American troops were involved in Sunday’s killing of 16 civilians in southern Kandahar province.
The probing delegation includes lawmakers [eight MPs listed]. ... The team spent two days in the province, interviewing the bereaved families, tribal elders, survivors and collecting evidences at the site in Panjwai district. Hamizai Lali told Pajhwok Afghan News their investigation showed there were 15 to 20 American soldiers, who executed the brutal killings.
“We closely examined the site of the incident, talked to the families who lost their beloved ones, the injured people and tribal elders,” he said. He added the attack lasted one hour involving two groups of American soldiers in the middle of the night on Sunday.
“The villages are one and a half kilometre from the American military base. We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time, and the 16 civilians, most of them children and women, have been killed by the two groups.”
A stunning development, if true. The U.S. military is holding to the "lone gunman" theory, and has flown the soldier who has reportedly confessed out of the country. Some of the lawmakers wanted the perpetrator(s) tried in Afghanistan.
There are several implications to this report. Just a few:
1. Will it get near-term media traction? Let's see if the British independent press picks it up, or some prime American source. These are critical hours for the story in the U.S.; the fruit is still unripe, still vulnerable to the frosty stare of the next missing news-blonde.
2. In the U.S. what will be the response? At some point there will be a trial. That in itself could rekindle awareness. After all, if one or more people had gone on a midnight killing spree of 16 women and children in Kansas, we'd be inundated with it, drowning in it.
3. In Afghanistan, this could change the political equation. Yes, we're talking about maybe exiting the war. But there's now more on the table for honor-focused tribal leaders than just our leaving. The report includes this:
The lawmaker said the Wolesi Jirga would not sit silent until the killers were prosecuted in Afghanistan. "If the international community does not play its role in punishing the perpetrators, the Wolesi Jirga would declare foreign troops as occupying forces, like the Russians," Lali warned.
As Rachel Maddow reported, our troops are already being "fragged" by their Afghan "partners." This could turn into a very different war than we asked for, and the Afghans seem determined to follow this through.
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