Ninety Percent Of Petraeus's Captured ''Taliban'' Were Civilians

[DeSwiss]

Source: COMMON DREAMS (Inter Press Service)

Ninety Percent Of Petraeus's Captured ''Taliban'' Were Civilians

COMMON DREAMS
Published on Sunday, June 12, 2011 by Inter Press Service
by Gareth Porter


Gen. David Petraeus

WASHINGTON - During his intensive initial round of media interviews as commander in Afghanistan in August 2010, Gen. David Petraeus released figures to the news media that claimed spectacular success for raids by Special Operations Forces: in a 90-day period from May through July, SOF units had captured 1,355 rank and file Taliban, killed another 1,031, and killed or captured 365 middle or high-ranking Taliban.

The claims of huge numbers of Taliban captured and killed continued through the rest of 2010. In December, Petraeus's command said a total of 4,100 Taliban rank and file had been captured in the previous six months and 2,000 had been killed. Those figures were critical to creating a new media narrative hailing the success of SOF operations as reversing what had been a losing U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

But it turns out that more than 80 percent of those called captured Taliban fighters were released within days of having been picked up, because they were found to have been innocent civilians, according to official U.S. military data. Even more were later released from the main U.S. detention facility at Bagram airbase called the Detention Facility in Parwan after having their files reviewed by a panel of military officers.

The timing of Petraeus's claim of Taliban fighters captured or killed, moreover, indicates that he knew that four out of five of those he was claiming as "captured Taliban rank and file" were not Taliban fighters at all.

Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/12-5

---

- Out. Out. Out!!!

DeSwiss




"The President does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a
situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cost-of-libyan-intervention/2011/03/22/ABYfx8CB_story.html">~Barack Obama, December 2007

[OnyxCollie]

1. K&R. nt

[SoapBox]

2. WELL of course...

they just picked up nobodies.

Not even a surprise, knowing what we know today.

BushCo. and their Crooked Ilk, lied, lied, and then lied some more...they spent trillions and killed thousands (or more).

Disgraceful.

[EFerrari]

3. I smell a presidential run!

[DeSwiss]

5. As long as you're sure he's up to it.....

Maybe what America needs in a president, who when faced with a crisis, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tjFKGM2IHY">faints and pretends he's dead.

- Until the troubles (questions) have passed him.....

[deacon_sephiroth]

7. But I'll bet he passes his PT test.

Give em that old razzle dazzle General, razzle dazzle em.

[mike_c]

4. Round up some more villagers, dammit....

eom

[DeSwiss]

6. Old movie...

...http://framework.latimes.com/2011/05/24/photography-at-war/">same script.

[Kolesar]

9. That puppy photograph really captures it

I was going to post something about "the inflated body counts" from that war.

[Taft_Bathtub]

8. General Betray Us

Sounds exactly like the numbers cooked up during the Vietnam war.

Also Moveon.org took down their Betray Us website so it must be ok that he's a lying scumbag because he's Obama's lying scumbag, right? *vomit*

[indepat]

18. Sounds like a good pub presidential candidate for 2012

:patriot:

[2Design]

10. sooo we here have known this and no one did anything Only care about weinergate

[No Elephants]

11. Good thing he doesn't head the CIA. Oh, wait........

Remind me how many lives, limbs and minds on all sides the war in Afghanistan has cost and how many dollars it has cost (and will cost for decades, as for VA hospitals and other benefits), not to mention creating more and more people who hate us "for our freedoms."

Of all the lousy appointments Pres. Obama has made, this one may take the cake.

[Vidar]

12. Vietnam & Westmorland all over again. Plus cela change, plus cela meme chose.

[somone]

16. Exactamente

[JJW]

13. Who got the contract to build prisons?

Follow the money. Nancy Pelosi, how about some investigation into war crimes instead of Weiner's weenie.

[awoke_in_2003]

23. she wouldn't start any investigations....

whe she was Speaker, what makes you think she would start any as minority leader?

[HopeHoops]

14. They were the lucky ones who stayed alive. I remember wingnuts yelling "kill them all and let God..

...sort them out."

If I responded at all, I'd just say, "don't you mean Allah?" and ignore the idiots from that point on.

On Edit: It was, and still is, a stupid fucking war - almost as stupid as the invasion of Iraq. The shrub never intended to capture or kill bin Laden.

[myrna minx]

15. K&R n/t

[QuintanarooBoy]

17. Our Warrior Hero!

:sarcasm:

[Martin Eden]

19. Begs the question ...

... how many of those listed as KILLED were innocent civilians?

[Old and In the Way]

20. Can't run a GWOT without terrorists.

Gotta show some ROI. So we spent trillions and got dirt farmer terrorists? Kind of makes you wonder if this whole farce was engineered to gibe a little cover to the looting of the US Treasury. A shame we don't have a media who informs us instead of being useful cheerleaders for the corrupted.

[Blue Owl]

21. Q: What do Al Queda and the Tea Party have in common?

A: They are mostly M$M fabrications, like the rest of their manufactured "news"

[bitchkitty]

22. What about the ones who were killed?

How many of them were innocent civilians?

[DeSwiss]

24. I wondered the same thing. n/t