With myriad stories about the US attack on the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz already discredited, Afghan claims of coming under fire from the site, which officials are still referring to as a “Taliban base,” are also out the window, with officials now conceding that there is no evidence of any fire coming from the hospital.
US officials are also shifting gears on their narrative too, presenting the special forces units deployed outside of the hospital, and who ultimately okayed the strike, as “new” to the area, having been deployed from elsewhere in Asia. Pentagon officials referred to the incident as a “hasty response” to an Afghan request.
The officials didn’t offer too many details on where the troops came from, though the First Special Forces Group, which is where the unit was from, has been conducting a lot of training operations in southeast Asia, Iraq, and the Philippines. There was no explanation for their sudden deployment to Afghanistan.
But even excuses potentially make somebody look bad, and other officials were quick to dismiss the notion that the newly deployed troops were in any way unprepared for the war, saying 15 years into Afghanistan the troops are “fungible” and that couldn’t have been the reason for the strike.
The first preliminary internal report on the strike is likely to be finished by the Pentagon soon, though officials are continuing to downplay the chances that anyone in particular did anything wrong, while simultaneously presenting their internal probe as all-encompassing and above reproach, important since the White House is desperate to avoid an international investigation.
Must keep the Afghans terrorized, that's what I always say.
Just keep throwing BS at the wall and maybe some of it will stick.
The usual. They found/made up some rookies to take the fall.
A C130 was shot down a few days before this incident.Any connection,as in revenge attack?
A screw-up always seemed the most likely cause. This takes the wind out of the "war crimes" scenario but we still don't know whether there was a Pakistani intelligence agent operating out of some part of the enormous building. The fact that MSF is being so cagey suggests that they may well have been aware of his presence and that he was using their hospital's presence as cover. That would explain why they are avoiding any claim that Red Cross flags were flying on the building.
"That would explain why they are avoiding any claim that Red Cross flags were flying on the building."
The likelihood of there being Red Cross flags flying on a hospital in Afghanistan approaches zero. In Muslim countries, it's not the Red Cross, it's the Red Crescent.
For a lie to work you have to tell repeatedly and stick to it. You can't keep coming up with less and less credible lies.
“We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong.” US government agent