Franklin's Focus 8/16/10

The Horrors Go On and On

One really has to scour the Net from time to time to locate true
stories of what is going on in Afghanistan. The use of death squads is
hardly surprising. Amerika used such squads in Indochina throughout
that genocidal American enterprise. The so called Green Berets were
glorified on the home front. What they were was war criminals on a
rampage totally wiping out any villages suspected of giving food to
Vietcong guerrillas. Men, women, children, babies, and old people were
lined up and murdered.

Oddly enough, the film industry is still making occasional films
glorifying the Green Berets. The brass in D.C. believed the war could
never be won unless the guerillas were cut off from food and other
supplies coming from countless villages. These villages were also
often fire bombed. A U.S. general, when asked about this fire bombing
of the villages and the conflagrations which incinerated babies,
little children, old people, and so forth, answered with these now
infamous words: 'Little children grow up to become Viet Cong.'

This country has glorified the massacre of civilians including
children. The dropping of the two atomic bombs over Japanese cities
was done at a time, when months before the Japanese had accepted
MacCarthur's terms for a Japanese surrender, was a genocidal act.
Truman simply wanted to scare Russia. The Dresden fire bombings were
also a genocidal act.

One is forced to assume that multiple horrors are going on all over
Afghanistan. Most, if not all, of the laws of warfare established by
the United Nations have been violated, and there is no reason to
believe any of those laws have been observed in Afghanistan. The
people of that forsaken land have doubtlessly been dehumanized by the
brass who brainwash the troops into seeing Afghans as less than human.
The U.S. propaganda machine makes sure this cold fact does not often
leak back to Amerika.

The appended piece printed in the Asian Tribune represents just one of
the many leaks that have occurred despite the efforts of the Pentagon
to conceal their crimes against humanity.

Today's Quotation

'We must renounce the barbarous tyranny and superstitions of Mexico.
It would be folly to tolerate the establishment of this ignorant and
fanatical colored population on the borders of the U.S.'

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker, 1846

Warmest regards,
Richard

=====================================================

Asian Tribune www.asiantribune.com/news 7/30/10

WikiLeaks US military logs reveal US ‘Death Squad’ in Afghanistan:
Task Force 373

Among many classified/secret military data brought in to light by the
organization WikiLeaks, other than the civilian killings which amount
to war crimes, is the revelation of a ‘death squad’ called the Task
Force 373 operating in the Afghanistan war theater which is going
about killings with impunity.

A 'black' Special Forces squad led by the U.S. targets Taliban and Al-
Qaeda figures in Afghanistan.

The team, Task Force 373, hunts for suspects on a 2,000 strong list to
kill or capture, known as Jpel.

The secret-classified military log allegedly reveals the unit has
killed innocent men, women and children and Afghan police officers who
got in their way.

An entry on June 11 2007 told how a taskforce set out with Afghan
Special Forces to capture or kill Taliban commander Qarl Ur-Rahman.

They crept up in the dark but opened fire when a torch was shone on
them. A AC-130 gunship was called in for back up and started shooting.

The report said: 7x ANP KIA, 4x WIA - meaning seven Afghan police
officers were dead and four wounded. The involvement of TF-373 was
never mentioned.

Previously hidden details of US-led unit sent to kill top insurgent
targets are revealed for the first time.

This Online Daily Newspaper closely scrutinized the WikiLeaks
revelations in its Website and agency reports based on the revelations
of those secret/classified logs.

Previously Asian Tribune carried the WikiLeaks revelations of US war
crimes or crimes against humanity.

Today, this Online Daily presents the ‘antiques’ of the previously
concealed US ‘Death Squad’ called the Task Force 373.

The NATO coalition in Afghanistan has been using an undisclosed
"black" unit of Special Forces, Task Force 373, to hunt down targets
for death or detention without trial. Details of more than 2,000
senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a "kill or
capture" list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritized effects list.

In many cases, the unit has set out to seize a target for internment,
but in others it has simply killed them without attempting to capture.
The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and
children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path.

The United Nations' special rapporteur for human rights, Professor
Philip Alston, went to Afghanistan in May 2008 to investigate rumors
of extrajudicial killings. He warned that international forces were
neither transparent nor accountable and that Afghans who attempted to
find out who had killed their loved ones "often come away empty-
handed, frustrated and bitter".

Now, for the first time, the leaked war logs reveal details of deadly
missions by TF 373 and other units hunting down Jpel targets that were
previously hidden behind a screen of misinformation. They raise
fundamental questions about the legality of the killings and of the
long-term imprisonment without trial, and also pragmatically about the
impact of a tactic which is inherently likely to kill, injure and
alienate the innocent bystanders whose support the coalition craves.

On the night of Monday 11 June 2007, the leaked logs reveal, the
taskforce set out with Afghan Special Forces to capture or kill a
Taliban commander named Qarl Ur-Rahman in a valley near Jalalabad. As
they approached the target in the darkness, somebody shone a torch on
them. A firefight developed, and the taskforce called in an AC-130
gunship, which strafed the area with cannon fire: "The original
mission was aborted and TF 373 broke contact and returned to base.
Follow-up Report: 7 x ANP KIA, 4 x WIA." In plain language: they
discovered that the people they had been shooting in the dark were
Afghan police officers, seven of whom were now dead and four wounded.

The coalition put out a press release which referred to the firefight
and the air support and then failed entirely to record that they had
just killed or wounded 11 police officers. But, evidently fearing that
the truth might leak, it added: "There was nothing during the
firefight to indicate the opposing force was friendly. The individuals
who fired on coalition forces were not in uniform." The involvement of
TF 373 was not mentioned, and the story didn't get out.

However, the incident immediately rebounded into the fragile links
which other elements of the coalition had been trying to build with
local communities. An internal report shows that the next day
Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Phillips, commander of the Provincial
Reconstruction Team, took senior officers to meet the provincial
governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, who accepted that this was "an unfortunate
incident that occurred among friends". They agreed to pay compensation
to the bereaved families, and Phillips "reiterated our support to
prevent these types of events from occurring again".

Yet, later that week, on Sunday 17 June, as Sherzai hosted a "shura"
council at which he attempted to reassure tribal leaders about the
safety of coalition operations, TF 373 launched another mission,
hundreds of miles south in Paktika province. The target was a
notorious Libyan fighter, Abu Laith al-Libi. The unit was armed with a
new weapon, known as Himars – High Mobility Artillery Rocket System –
a pod of six missiles on the back of a small truck.
The plan was to launch five rockets at targets in the village of
Nangar Khel where TF 373 believed Libi was hiding and then to send in
ground troops. The result was that they failed to find Libi but killed
six Taliban fighters and then, when they approached the rubble of a
madrasa, they found "initial assessment of 7 x NC KIA" which
translates as seven non-combatants killed in action. All of them were
children. One of them was still alive in the rubble: "The Med TM
immediately cleared debris from the mouth and performed CPR." After 20
minutes, the child died.

The coalition made a press statement which owned up to the death of
the children and claimed that troops "had surveillance on the compound
all day and saw no indications there were children inside the
building". That claim is consistent with the leaked log. A press
release also claimed that Taliban fighters, who undoubtedly were in
the compound, had used the children as a shield.

On 18 June, 2007 the Reuters carried the following report:

(Begin Text) At least seven children were killed in a U.S.-led
coalition air strike on a religious school in Afghanistan, the
coalition said on Monday, amid rising anger over civilian deaths from
foreign military operations.

Up to 60 civilians have been killed in the past three days in the
southern Uruzgan province alone, a senior provincial official said.

Some 50 Taliban and Afghan forces were also killed in the battles in
Chora district of the rugged province, the head of the provincial
council, Mawlavi Hamdullah, told Reuters.

A NATO spokesman in Kabul, Major John Thomas, said he knew that a
large number of "insurgents" were killed in the battle in the district
but said he was aware of only 11 civilians being wounded.

Earlier on Monday, the U.S.-led coalition force apologized for the
deaths of the children at a madrasa in southeastern Paktia province at
the weekend but said they had no idea children were present when the
premises were attacked.

"We are truly sorry for the innocent lives lost in this attack," said
Army Major Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman, in a statement. "We
had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there
were children inside the building."

The statement said children who survived Sunday's raid said insurgents
had forced pupils to stay inside the madrasa. The White House accused
the Taliban of using human shields. (End Text)

- Asian Tribune -