On the night of October 3, when a US warplane attacked the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 30 civilians within, neither US forces nor the Afghans who called in the attack had eyes of the hospital itself, new evidence reveals.
The US special forces who called in the strike were at a provincial governor’s compound over half a mile away, fighting with Taliban forces there, and simply took the word of the Afghan government that the Taliban were using the MSF hospital as their base of operations, without any evidence.
The Afghan government has been hostile to MSF, and many other international aid groups that run hospitals, for allowing all patients access irrespective of what faction they belong to. But the Afghans had been claiming this to US forces for awhile, and the US had already asked MSF about it, and was told that no Taliban were present at the hospital just a day prior to the attack.
Pentagon leadership conceded, before the investigation even began, that even if Taliban had been present it wouldn’t have justified attacking a functioning hospital. So much the worse for them, that after a month of investigation not a single shred of evidence emerged that this even might’ve been the case, making the already unjustified attack even worse.
MSF has demanded an independent investigation into the attack, which the White House has opposed. The Pentagon’s own internal investigation appears to continue, though preliminary reports on their findings have been withheld and there appears to be no timetable for any public release of anything on the attack.
The drip, drip of damning information keeps coming and the US military will try to slow walk this investigation quite like so many others.
A habit of firing that blind could be the bigger deal than managing to hit a hospital this time.
What's striking, as usual, is MSF's caginess: no Taliban were present "at the hospital". They rather too carefully avoid claiming that there were no Taliban anywhere else in the large complex of buildings and, of course, the justification for the attack was not the presence of Taliban but of a Pakistani intelligence agent who was said to be working with the Taliban. In addition, we have never been shown the huge flags MSF initially claimed were flying at the time of the attack. If they were Red Cross flags, why not say that? If they weren't, MSF has some explaining to do, as it would imply that they knew that the complex housed more than just their hospital. In addition, the fact that MSF is making such a fuss about this attack while sweeping an attack by Putin's planes on one of their hospitals in Syria tends to confirm their already bad reputation for political bias. Thus, the more this incident is harped upon, the more doubt is cast on MSF's bona fides. In other words, the US has won the propaganda war or rather, it has had victory handed to it by MSF.
The main goal of our Empire is to keep the Middle-East terrorized into submission, the only motivation for our bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospitals in Afghanistan and Yemen.
As has been the case in previous faux pas by the Pentagon, they're planning on running the "investigation" until they've determined the American people have gotten over the atrocity and have moved on to the next headline grabber. Problem is this time it's going to be harder for the American people to get over it. So be on the look out for a really colossal event to "refocus" the eye of the American public.