Saturday, February 6, 2010

So, Um, About Those Afghan Children Who Were Executed ... ?

Yeah, I hate to be, like, you know, a pest or anything, but still ... I can't help but think that if Hugo Chavez's, or Fidel Castro's, or Vladimir Putin's, or Kim Jong-Il's troops had killed ten civilians (two adults and eight students), execution style, I don't think the MSM would collectively shrug their shoulders and/or assume that there was probably a good reason for this:

“The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.

That was reported last month. Some of you may remember that.

What the hell is going on? The US military offered its standard initial denials followed by gradual semi-confirmations.

The long and the short of it is that it appears that U.S. special-forces or U.S. mercenaries (perhaps Blackwater) entered a village, hand-cuffed two peasants and 8 high-school students accused of making bombs, and shot them all in the head. If it was the latest incarnation of Blackwater, let's recall that this is an organization headed by a radical Christian-fundamentalist who believes he is on a crusade to kill as many Muslims as possible.

The fraudulently-elected President of Afghanistan is outraged, and wants those US forces responsible handed over for trial.

And "poof"! it's gone from the news. Of course, in today's "War on Terror" we have headlines like this:

Legal Experts Slam 'Targeted Killings' of US Citizens


There's "hope" and "change" for you folks! In the days of the bush II regime, people complained about the loss of habeas corpus. Now, under Obama, they're complaining about the president wanting to kill them.

In the face of such madness, what's the point of dwelling on the execution of a few teenagers? What a sickening, disgusting, nauseating, revolting world this is.

Anyway, here's the Facebook Group for people who do think this is an important story and don't want it to get lost in all the excitement about the Olympics, or Brangelina or whatever.

3 comments:

no_blah_blah_blah said...

This is yet another example media's double standard, with a gap so large that you need a starship to cross it.

There are times I just have to throw my hands up in exasperation... this is one of them.

thwap said...

It's stuff like this that has turned me into a total cynic about the media.

There are lots of great reporters out there, but anytime any of them start going on trashing internet analysts, I just think about a system that is capable of such blindness, such inability to connect the dots.

Stuff like this has been happening since forever, but we still give the USA and our own fearless leaders the benefit of the doubt.

At least the msm does.

Sir Francis said...

...it appears that U.S. special-forces or U.S. mercenaries (perhaps Blackwater) entered a village...

Blackwater changed its name to "Xe Services" shortly after that unpleasant incident a few years ago in which its employees slaughtered over a dozen Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack.

I'm going with the special forces part of your surmise. The perpetrators are described as "non-military Americans on a sanctioned operation", "sanctioned" being the key word here—as in "official". They could have been part of any number of sub rosa agencies operated by the NSA/CIA.

It's very possible that the U.S. has been running a kind of latter-day Phoenix Program over there. If so, God only knows how many innocents have already been exterminated by now.