Child witnesses to the massacre of 17 Afghan civilians by Staff Sgt. Robert Bales say there was more than one U.S. soldier party to the crime, contradicting the story told by the Pentagon.
Yalda Hakim, a journalist for SBS Dateline in Australia, was born in Afghanistan and immigrated to Australia as a child. She is the first international journalist to interview the surviving witnesses, which she was able to do after American officials tried to prevent her contact with the village witnesses.
An 8-year old Afghan girl named Noorbinak, according to the MSNBC, “told Hakim that the shooter first shot her father’s dog. Then, Noorbinak said in the video, he shot her father in the foot and dragged her mother by the hair. When her father started screaming, he shot her father, the child says. Then he turned the gun on Noorbinak and shot her in the leg.”
“One man entered the room and the others were standing in the yard, holding lights,” Noorbinak said in the interview.
A brother of one of the victims said the children who witnessed saw many soldiers. “They don’t know whether there were 15 or 20, however many there were,” he said in the interview.
Army officials have repeatedly denied that others were involved in the massacre, maintaining that Bales acted alone.
Who to believe, the army or the children……. I think I'll take the children…. The army has a bad record
That's why TEAM USA is trying desperately to sanitize the PR as well as screw with their patsy Bale's story as much as possible. The bigger and more intricate the lie the more time it buys them until the next distraction takes everyone's attention.
Oh, and yeah, I'd take the kids story over the Death Stars vomitus any day.
What a nifty take on press-use strategy.
Americans have much to answer for. It will be the curses of Afghan orphans which will do in this collectively sociopathic nation.
This is what troubles me the most. There is definitely an aura of darkness hovering above us. Based on many comments I saw in CNN, there is a great deal of disturbed people out there, thinking this is all funny. And it seems that people are blissfully unaware of the Nemesis that our Hubris invites.
Well, we have done the exact same thing in the past with the My Lai Massacre.
What makes anyone think we wouldn't do it again.
"the My Lai Massacre" was not one thing. It was an countrywide extermination action to destroy all villages and kill all the people, even babies for humanitarian reasons, since they can not left allone with their dead parents.
This has been confirmed by young US soldiers (with tears) in a veteran conference in the USA explaining how new comers were psychologically influence to do this against the official regulations.
(this was 16mm film about this conference I saw)
The aim was to destroy shelter and food for vietcongs.
The Romans maintained discipline in their army via decimation.
Very Likely !
If the U.S. military is going to such great lengths to lie about this incident it leads to evidence that in fact the military is employing a new tactic of intimidation in their night raids as punishment for the relentless IED attacks against U. S. soldiers.
I wonder who this Kabuki is really for? I mean, when the exposure of abu Ghraib went down, the outcry was considerably more tepid than it should have been…given the scope and nature of the atrocities. Consider if that had been American prisoners who had been treated this way…egads…the roof would have come off the place. And when the Marines leveled Fallujah in 2004 because 4 Blackwater mercenaries thought they were invincible and got themselves killed, there was righteous jubilation across the land. And when reports of rape and other misogynistic crimes by Americans against Americans in Iraq started being reported, there was little attention. And now, in Afghanistan, when reports of wedding parties being "droned" and kid collecting wood for cooking fires are "droned" – well, little concern from the complacent American.
So, it doesn't surprise me that the Pentagon might try and push a fictional account of another atrocity committed by the occupiers because the American people (the unenlightened masses mostly) are pretty much conditioned to believe what they are told regardless of the level of fabrication…because they really don't care and really don't want to be seen as being "against the troops" as that is how the manipulators will label them if they complain too much.
Sorry for the convoluted missive. The point…the American people are tired of it but not tired enough to admit that the adventure "over there" had revealed that there is a rot at the core of the American society – be it the ability by the military to commit these atrocities – or – the ability of the American people to ignore such atrocities. Even now, there is very little commentary on the media regarding the Bales incident – and as time moves along, there will be less and less. The national discussion of who we've become will not happen…the Revolution WILL NOT be televised…
We can only thank our d**k-less media whores for turning a blind eye. If someone is not motivated or knowledgeable enough to look for the truth themselves you could never count on the propaganda organs to ever tell you anything or hold the guilty parties responsible.
Deciding what to hyperventilate over, or repeat over and over again, with leading and emotional language, or not, is a huge power. Sort of like the huge power prosecutors have in deciding what to prosecute (think UN tribunal), or of the US Supreme Court in deciding what to hear.
You never have to answer for something if it's not really discussed.
Where is UN ICC and its “justice” leader from South Africa and where is the UN half-moon to speak about and for mankind and human rights violation, war crime and all other judicial matters that is about ICC.
There is a tendency in ICC which indicates that everything is about Arab Nationals and or falsified documents about a regime which US and NATO don't like and they want to replace it, this simply a racist or if you will act of the neo fascism where even the UN ICC is cooperating with. Iraq document regarding WMD was falsified, so all other wars conducted by EU and US, thus far non of these regimes and its leaders such as George W. Bush and his gang of many including Rasmussen of Denmark and his involvement in Libya been asked to provide information or been threaten to be prosecuted by ICC, yet ICC is up to its teeth want to prosecute every other nations leader just for fun. That child not only telling the truth but will remember America as its enemy for rest of its life, one who killed his loved ones, one who give this child a life to live, one who could be the feature of Afghanistan… ICC how many years you want to side with those whom don't have any respect for laws protecting them and disrespecting the ethics in ICC and International law.
17-20 Soldiers and Helicopters do make the headline he "Did Not Act Alone" ???
…why two weeks later … when the one man story has been pushed out for weeks? Despite having here heard from the Afghan parliament investigation group two days after the incinent ?