12 March 2012 — Veterans Today

Sixteen Dead, Nameless “Lone Gunman,” We Have Heard It All Before

 by  Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

The village is Balandi, outside Kandahar in Afghanistan.  Thus far the dead are 16, shot in their homes, not just said to be “women and children” but actually infants murdered in their mother’s arms and set afire.

The US claims the perpetrator to be an unnamed “Army Staff Sergeant who has turned himself in.” There are inconsistencies.

This is the report from Reuter’s today:

Afghan officials also gave varying accounts of the number of shooters involved. Karzai’s office released a statement quoting a villager as saying “American soldiers woke my family up and shot them in the face.”

“They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them,” Samad told Reuters at the scene.

Neighbors said they had awoken to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, who they described as laughing and drunk.

“They were all drunk and shooting all over the place,” said neighbor Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where killings took place.

“Their (the victims’) bodies were riddled with bullets.”

The village is outside the gate of an American base.  A single soldier without a vehicle would have had to evade security and tunnel under the wire and walls to reach the village or, much more likely, this was more than one man?

This is how CNN has it as for the morning of the 12th.  Story embellishment, as you will note involves a “bed count” and a “search patrol.”  I believe the next story will include rocket flares and bloodhounds.  We will wait for this one.  To impart credit to the Army, their belated response is much more creative but as full of holes as a sieve.  A minor thing to add here, of course, is that a Staff Sergeant, as the perpetrator or suspect, whichever you choose, “patsy” if you will, is a Staff Sergeant, rank E 6.  At 3:AM, those of such rank typically do not “stand watch” on towers or in bunkers.

Then, of course, we will return to the forgotten jerrycan, taken off the nonexistent vehicle to burn the bodies of the dead.  I did, however, feel a need to get this response added in so that readers in the Western Hemisphere would be better informed.  Another minor error in the report below, noted in our earlier evaluation and reiterated here, above that text, is the nature of the armed response team.

They “came a runnin’” based on someone missing from a bed rather than from gunfire, screams and flaming bodies a short distance away.  As is so easily noted, as one begins lying, one lie ties to another, one absurdity to another and, in the end, it is always a “malcontent” and “lone gunman.”  By now we would have seen a list of antipsychotic medications but “legal” was already informed by pharmaceutical companies that there is already a rash of murder/suicides for those on medications the military and Departmetn of Veterans Affairs has prescribed for those suffering from combat stress ( or misdiagnosed as suffering from “personality disorders” or “pre-existing trauma”).

In order to leave the many “blameless,” this will have to be a singular occurrance of magical proportions, no pre-indications, no signs of any kind, no diagnosis and medical records entering shredders, being wiped from hard drives, flaming in trash cans as we speak.  But for how many, one or four or perhaps more?  CNN:

“We call this an intentional act,” Karzai said. He said the dead included four men, three women and nine children, calling the killings “acts of terror and unforgivable.” Another five people were wounded, he said.

 

Capt. Justin Brockhoff, an ISAF spokesman, said the wounded Afghans were being treated in ISAF facilities. The allied command did not give its own estimate of casualties.

 

Brockhoff said officials do not yet have a motive for the shooting, which is under investigation by both NATO and Afghan officials. And Maj. Jason Waggoner, another ISAF spokesman, said the soldier “was acting on his own.”

 

There were no military operations in the area, either on the ground or in the air, at the time, according to two senior ISAF officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. They said only one soldier, an Army staff sergeant, is believed to have been involved.

 

A U.S. military official told CNN later Sunday that the suspect is from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. The official said the soldier is assigned to a Special Forces unit.

 

A third ISAF official said Afghan troops spotted the soldier leaving his combat outpost around 3 a.m. Sunday and notified their American counterparts. The U.S. military did an immediate headcount, found the soldier was missing and dispatched a patrol to go look for him, the official said.

 

The officials said they have no knowledge at this point whether he had any previous medical or mental health issues in his record.

 

The patrol met him as he returned and took him into custody. He said nothing, and it was unclear whether they knew what had happened, the official said.

 

“We don’t know what motivated this individual, and we’re not sure where this is going to take us,” Capt. John Kirby, an ISAF spokesman, told CNN. But he said ISAF’s commander, Gen. John Allen, “has made it clear this investigation is going to be thorough. It’s going to be done rapidly, in an expeditious way, and we’re going to hold the perpetrator of these attacks to account.”

Why? Only a vehicle with more than one man, one that could claim it had been tasked with some sort of “rendition” or “search and destroy” mission could have been allowed out by security.

Otherwise, it would have been identified as a criminal operation or, more unlikely, a single individual, driving into what the Army told the Associate Press was “a Taliban infested area” on a private mission of “passion and lust.”

I think that highly unlikely.

Thus, this is what we can safely assume:

• More than one American was involved as no single soldier would have been allowed outside the compound, heavily armed with a vehicle.
• Gate security received authorization for the “mission” from the watch officer at the “Combat Operations Center” at the base, the 24 hour nerve center than coordinates both offensive and defensive missions for even the smallest commands.
• No “reaction force” was sent to investigate though this was right outside the gates.  Radio contact would have been attempted, and there would be recorded records of this and all other activities, as required by normal procedures.

Again, we repeat, authorization at the gate, obviously more than one person, a vehicle, radio communications, gunfire overheard, all things that make the story we have received not just unlikely but childish, superficial and an obvious lie to anyone with experience in the military, something 30 million Americans have.

Then, so recent in our minds, is the supposed killing of Osama bin Laden, the contradictory stories, the convenient death of those involved, and, of course, the singular similarity between both operations.  Don’t Americans’ throw Muslim dead into the sea?

As this act was so criminal and barbaric in nature, the murder of small children, setting bodies on fire and the reports of multiple soldiers involved, we are beset with questions.

The fire is proof, started with gasoline from a jerrycan.  Vehicle means gate which means vehicle which means team which means radios and authorized operation.

It isn’t just that we have so many exhausted soldiers suffering from PTSD in Afghanistan, this isn’t the problem.  As in Vietnam, such troops more often turn on their officers and senior NCOs, not local women and children, at least with one exception, My Lai, and that was under direct military command from Captain Ernest Medina.

Who commanded this fiasco?