Kandahar Massacre: Developing Story - Helicopters, Burned Evidence, and Multiple Soldiers Being Reported

by Scott Creighton

UPDATE: Obama supporting fauxgressive online rag Huffington Post edits a picture of one of the victims then plays the “crazed lone gunman” card. Photos at the end of this article.

—— original ———

Why would a crazed “lone gunman” bring an accelerant along with him to destroy the evidence of his crimes then rush back to the base and confess?

Leave it to the American government to come up with another “lone gunman” scapegoat.

Disturbing information is trickling out about the recent massacre in Kandahar, the midnight raid into two nearby villages that took the lives of 16 civilians including 9 children and 3 women.

But the official Kandahar Massacre “lone gunman” story is as full of holes as JFK’s limo was.

Official “lone gunman” Pentagon story:

The alleged “lone gunman” is a regular Army Staff Sargent father of two assigned to  either Green Berets or Navy SEALs engaged in a so-called “village stability operation”. He’s part of what they call a “hearts and minds” campaign. I guess he kinda misunderstood the phrase. He was supposed to win “hearts and minds” not collect them like trophies and hang them on his wall.

“This was not part of a night raid or any operation,” the senior officer told The New York Times. “All the signs point to a lone person acting alone.” MSNBC

According to the official “lone gunman” story, the Staff Sargent returned to base where he was promptly placed under arrest.

“He returned to the base after the incident and was taken into custody straight away, and the investigation is ongoing, which will include what was the reasoning and what was the circumstances of his doings.” Isaf spokesman, Brig Gen Carsten Jacobson

How the officials at the base knew to put him under arrest for the attacks that they clearly could not have known about at that time is a mystery to me.

The developing story from eye witnesses:

1. Multiple assailants

One young man, Jan Agha whose father was shot in the face through a window right beside him, played dead while his family was literally wiped out. He claims that more than one soldier entered his home and were involved in the murders.

“The Americans stayed in our house for a while,” he said. “I was very scared.” BBC

Other neighbors and witnesses have made the same claim, that it was several soldiers who were there during the massacre.

“Neighbors and relatives of the dead said they had seen a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district at about 2 a.m., enter homes and open fire.

An Afghan man who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies.” Reuters

Afghan President Karzai has called the massacre an intentional act and also echos the claim that more than one “lone gunman” committed these war-crimes. He is demanding an explanation. I guess he doesn’t know that Obama is facing a re-election bid and needs to break yet another promise to his base.

“Afghan President Karzai condemned the rampage as “intentional murders” and demanded an explanation from the United States. His office said the dead included nine children and three women.

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.“” Reuters

2. Destroying evidence

Perhaps even more troubling than assassinating young children with a single shot to the head after waking them up first, is the fact that whoever did this, brought along chemicals, an accelerant, to pour on the bodies and burn the evidence of his (their) crimes.

“The farmer, who had been away from the village when the attack happened, said he believed that chemicals had been poured over the bodies and set alight.

Photographs show at least one child’s body partially charred, while a pile of ashes lay on the floor of a room in one of the houses with what appeared to be bloodstains close by.

Images of the bodies also suggest that at least some were killed by a single shot to the head.

One photograph shows the body of a small girl in a red and green dress, with a bullet hole in the middle of her temple.” BBC

The photos speak for themselves.

“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.” Reuters

THEY were drunk. THEY poured chemicals on the bodies and burned them.

If you look at that photo you see a completely burned body. Normal fire won’t do that, you have to have an accelerant that burns extremely hot to achieve that kind of result. Obviously someone didn’t want an autopsy performed on the victims.

But if that is the case, why did the “lone gunman” return to the base and immediately confess like the spokesman said he did? Why destroy the evidence and then confess? Why would a “crazed” man take the precaution to bring an accelerant along with him to the massacres, burn the bodies after murdering so many people, then go straight back to the base and confess his crimes? And if he brought the accelerant with him to hide his crimes, doesn’t that by definition mean he knew they were crimes and therefore he wasn’t insane?

3. Helicopters?

Several witnesses stated that it was an odd night because at first they heard a plane flying low overhead and then a bit later they heard helicopters nearby right before the shooting started.

“”We have been restricted by the government and Taliban not to move around during the night,” he said.

It had already been an unquiet night, he added. Around midnight, aircraft were heard overhead and, some time between 01:00 and 01:30, there came the sound of helicopters and gunfire.

A female eyewitness, who withheld her name in line with local custom, told BBC News she had heard gunshots at 02:00.

A barking dog, she said, was shot dead by the gunman.”  BBC

Sunday timeline (from the BBC)

• 00:00 Aircraft heard by eyewitness over villages
• 01:00-01:30 Helicopters heard, followed by gunfire
• 02:00 Witness says she hears shooting in one of the villages
• 03:00 Time at which soldier is said by Afghan officials to have left US base

Conclusion:

Does the official Pentagon version, the “lone gunman’ make sense in this case? I think not. The shear amount of carnage conducted in two separate villages plus the fact that he supposedly took the time to burn the bodies with an accelerant he brought with him… that does not point to a crazed individual.

But given the rest of the information and the need to create a Taliban resurgence in order to justify Obama’s failure to start bringing troops out of Afghanistan, is another explanation for this incident more likely?

UPDATE:

Fake progressive “news” webzine, the Huffington Post, published a story about this incident in which they push the temporary insanity/ lone gunman excuse pretty hard and they remarkably edit a photo of one of the child victims so their readers can’t see her burned leg.

“The U.S. soldier who allegedly attacked and killed 16 Afghan civilians Sunday may have experienced a relatively rare state of mental derangement characterized by a blind killing rage, a disregard of pain and danger, and a total disconnection from his fellow troops, military mental health specialists said.” Huffington Post

This pleasant fiction is completely contradicted by the facts of the case. Several witnesses reported more than one assailant. They deliberately burned the bodies to hide the evidence of their crimes. They seem to have brought an accelerant along with them indicating they knew exactly what they were doing and that it was wrong. And even according to the military spokesman, the “lone gunman” got back to camp and immediately confessed to his crimes. That is not a “total disconnection from his fellow troops”.

This is the photo that the Huffington Post used with this article.

This is the actual photo taken from the associated press.

As you can see, all they did was crop the bottom of the photo. This was not done by resizing it to fit any screen. Obviously they cropped it so their Obama worshiping readers wouldn’t see the horribly burned leg of the young child. Would the Huffington Post have done that under the Bush administration during the 2004 election campaign? Doubtful.

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