Afghans Outraged at US Decision

[unhappycamper]

Afghans Outraged at US Decision
May 24, 2008
Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan officials expressed outrage Saturday at a decision by the U.S. military not to charge U.S. Marines involved in a shooting spree that left 19 Afghan civilians dead in 2007.

Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, the commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, made the decision not to bring charges after reviewing the findings of a special tribunal that heard more than three weeks of testimony in January at Camp Lejuene.

"I am very angry," said Kubra Aman, a senator from Nangarhar. "This is too much. They are killing people. First, they say it is a mistake, and after that they let them go without charges."

Afghan witnesses and a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission concluded that a unit of Marine special operations troops opened fire along a 10-mile stretch of road, killing up to 19 civilians and wounding 50 other people.

Helland, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, decided not to bring charges against Maj. Fred C. Galvin, commander of the 120-person special operations company, and Capt. Vincent J. Noble, a platoon leader, the Marines said.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/afghans-outraged-at-us-decision.html

[But....]

1. Well...

that's one way to "win hearts and minds". Close your mind and stop their heart.:sarcasm:
I swear to most the world we must seem so evil.:cry:

[JohnyCanuck]

2. They must figure that if the flyboys can get a pass,

so should the grunts on the ground.

It was 7.45am on 21 October. The headmaster of a school in the town of Khair Khana, Rasul had just finished eating breakfast with his family and had walked outside to chat to a neighbour. Inside the house were his wife, Shiekra, his four sons, aged three to ten, his brother and his wife, his sister and her husband. He looked up to see an aircraft weaving in the sky, then his house exploded in a fireball behind him. Nine people died in this attack by a US F-16 dropping a 500lb bomb. The only survivor was his nine-year-old son, Ahmad Bilal. “Most of the people killed in this war are not Taliban; they are innocents,” Gulam Rasul told me. “Was the killing of my family a mistake? No, it was not. They fly their planes and look down on us, the mere Afghan people, who have no planes, and they bomb us for our birthright, and with all contempt.”

There was the wedding party in the village of Niazi Qala, 100km south of Kabul, to celebrate the marriage of the son of a respected farmer. By all accounts it was a wonderfully boisterous affair, with music and singing. The roar of aircraft started when everyone was asleep, at about three in the morning. According to a United Nations report, the bombing lasted two hours and killed 52 people: 17 men, ten women and 25 children, many of whom were found blown to bits where they had desperately sought refuge, in a dried-up pond. Such slaughter is not uncommon, and these days the dead are described as “Taliban”; or, if they are children, they are said to be “partly to blame for being at a site used by militants” – according to the BBC, speaking to a US military spokesman.

http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=470

[OwnedByFerrets]

3. I am past ashamed.....It OUTRAGES me.....

the atrocities being done in the name of the Amerikan people.