What do YOU think HAPPENED? I’ve quoted below some what I think is relevant information:
“As the death toll rises to 22 – including 12 MSF workers and 10 patients – the United Nations has tabled plans to investigate whether America is guilty of war crimes.” (Z: why?)
“Jecs describes the confusion as bombing continued for 30 minutes – long after the US military forces were alerted that the hospital had been hit.” (Z: why wouldn’t we stop?) From THIS article.
“With sporadic fighting continuing, a spokesman for coalition forces, Col. Brian Tribus, said the Saturday airstrike targeted “individuals threatening the force.” Carter said the area near the hospital “has been the scene of intense fighting the last few days” and that both U.S. forces and Taliban fighters were stationed nearby.” (Z: I also heard that Taliban fighters were getting hurt and in that hospital, or maybe not hurt and in that hospital?) From THIS article.
JUST A THOUGHT. a think?
AND…how could this happen? How COULD our military keep bombing for 30 minutes on innocent doctors and patients when they were told what was happening and where….even if my obvious conjecture is true?
Z
geeez2014
GeeeZ .... 
Perhaps to cause outrage so we will remove ourselves from the Middle East entirely.
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All the blather from the America-hating international types about war crimes, “we called and told them to stop but they kept bombing, etc” is just background noise…
It takes an entire process for the kill chain to work efficiently. Air support is much more than just dropping bombs. I don’t know how robust our airspace battle management is, and from what I understand, we don’t have JTACs on the ground, so it appears we are relying on Afghan forces to direct the bombing, so this is what we get. All part of Professor O’Bungle half-assing it, as usual.
Afghanistan is a failed project. Kunduz is hundreds of miles from the Pashtun Belt. The Taliban striking way up there is a great victory for them.
We need to get the hell out of there. Completely and definitively. The Afghanis and the Taliban deserve one another.
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SF explained it but I have to say that we brought some of this on ourselves. There is no such thing as a surgical strike and we ought to stop using such terms. The process of calling in air strikes is very complex and a dozen things can go wrong; it can be a ground controller error, a pilot error, or a mechanical error and by the time we get around to “investigating” what happened, people are already dead or seriously wounded. I’m not sure what aircraft was supporting the ground troops, but I doubt that the aircraft “dropped bombs” for 30-minutes. Sounds more like an AC-130 rigged with a howitzer–which could remain on station for a long time.
What is missing here is that the Taliban apparently lured the Afghan troops into a confrontation such that the hospital would be in the way. This is a very old trick and one that works (apparently). Among all of those now complaining about war crimes, let’s see how calm, cool, and collected they are when someone is firing at them. Background noise indeed … but typical of people who don’t know squat about air-ground coordination.
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What Mustang said. And SF…why we need to be in these 7th century rocks I’ll never understand. If all of the “stans” disappeared tomorrow…..what would we miss from our lives? Goat cheese?
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I can’t add much to what SF says, and long ago I realized that we rarely (if ever) get the straight skinny from gubmint. After all, whoever said that the first casualty of war is truth is in the 10-ring, fo sho’.
Looking at the overall situation somewhat obliquely, consider this:
Why are Syrian “refugees” fleeing to countries with cultural and political systems completely incompatible with their “religion”?
Why have almost none of them gone to the wealthy Muslim nations around them, such as Saudi Arabia?
Why is the mass migration happening now, after 5 years of the civil war?
Why is such a large percentage of the mass young men who should be defending their homes?
Considering the voting record of the UN where resolutions concerning Israel and the US are concerned, is it all simply another tactic in the inexorable spread of Islam?
Can you say “Trojan Horse”? I thought you could. Now let’s try “Propaganda.”
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bocopro; just got an email from Germany this morning re the ‘invaders’ coming in;
“90% of the invaders are young and strong men in the best fighting age, and considering that there are only 5 millions German young men under 35 you will see that the proportions are already shifting towards the invaders. One more year (or make it two) the possible fighting majority is with the invaders. They know this fact, all they need to do is wait until there is no major power against them anymore, and all of a sudden the africans and the islam assholes rule the public behaviour. It’s unbeliveable but it can go that fast. as soon as the islam reaches a certain level (20%) the people are not controllable anymore.”
ALL: As for the hospital situation, I still think they were doing a human shield thing of sorts…..and that, I think, is why there is any hesitation by the UN not to blast America’s actions immediately…”tabled plans” to insult US? Since when?
I have to say I disagree about getting totally out of those regions. My stance has always been that we have to hit HARDER….not worry about collateral damage any more than Islam has ever worried about it with the West…as if they care? Collateral damage is THEIR GOAL.
I believe that threats to US will only get stronger and better supplied should we leave the region to its own devices.
I agree that letting them fight each other is the perfect solution … and there’s little worry that they’d all band against the West; they haven’t the discipline and pride is too important for them to suddenly put down centuries-old Hatfield/McCoy hatred within tribes……………
BUT……I worry for us if we don’t stop them THERE.
We’re weakening ourselves toward Islam here….in ways we’d never have dreamt, kowtowing to them only SINCE 9/11…..
That’s what’s always in the back of my mind: Who gave a S*** about Islam and who cared if muslims lived down the street before 9/11? Nobody. Nobody hated anybody before 9/11. They hit US and then it’s all about US not hating them, US not being quite so patriotic, and US being more welcoming. I still think that’s insane….and heavy with meaning we haven’t grasped quite yet.
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I don’t know if you guys are aware of Bret Stephens but HE ROCKS and I LOVED how the WSJ quotes him below: SO SMART, I love that statement about denigration; how many times have I mentioned the withering ,loathsome way Obama smears anybody who doesn’t agree with him? But Stephens always says it better:
“Our columnist Bret Stephens writes that at the President’s Friday press conference, Mr. Obama described alternatives to his Syria policy as “mumbo-jumbo,” “half-baked ideas,” and “as-if” solutions. “So it is with this president. It’s not enough for him to stake and defend his positions. He wants you to know that he thinks deeper, sees further, knows better, operates from a purer motive. His preferred method for dealing with disagreement is denigration,” says Mr. Stephens.”
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America used to be apathetic, now it just doesn’t care. Obama invites “global police” into our cities to keep us in our proper place: not a peep from the press, not a peep from Congress, and not a peep from the American people. Maybe America doesn’t matter any more.
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Mustang, what “global police?”
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Z: The United States has no strategic interest in Afghanistan and they are not a threat to us. They are the problem of Pakistan, Iran, India, China and others in their neighborhood. The Taliban knows how to run the place, and if they don’t get too greedy and instead spread it around, the non-Pashtun north will tolerate them.
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SF: So you don’t believe Islamists from that region are planning anything new for us? Where do the Islamic threats come from?
I just heard that some witnesses are saying that Taliban fighters were shooting FROM the Kunduz hospital. Who knows……as Kid emailed me, it’ll take days to know the truth, IF IF IF that ever happens. Ash Carter has taken on the total blame and is apologizing…which should be done if this really did happen as doctors and other witnesses are saying.
One thing for sure is that Americans DID always know that was a hospital…there is no doubt about it.
If you want to watch an American so eager to run us into the ground with shame and blame, make sure you watch Shepard Smith on FOX. He’s hating on AMerica like nobody does on CNN.
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I read what Mustang and Silverfiddle wrote and their info about guided strikes sounds more informed than my view on the matter. I don’t think we’re getting the full story. At this point I don’t trust anything that comes from our government and our media and I never thought I would think that.
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Re: Shep Smith… I remember his lies in New Orleans during Katrina… you know, the hurricane that Bush’s weather machine inflicted onto Louisiana & Mississippi.
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The more I read the sadder I get for America….Fast & Furious, Benghazi, IRS, NSA, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, The entire ME, Cuba, Ovomit, Holder, Jarrett, Rice, Killary, Email gate, Boehner gate, McConnell Gate, Reid Gate, Pelousy, Fem-a-nazis. Russia, China, “reset failures”, Obamacare, illegal fatigue, mooselem fatigue, attacks on straights, Gay mafia, Jeb Bush, black militancy, Ferguson, Baltimore, BLM, cop killers, the Pope’s a dope, EPA, attacks on the second amendment….maybe we have reached our pinnacle 20 years ago…and we’re in a deep, steep decline to the point where we’ll never come back.
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Oh…and our military is now a social experiment…and has been vilified and gutted.
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Dr. Ben Carson deserves a “‘coon of the year’ award,” says a tweet from Anthea Butler, a University of Pennsylvania religious-studies professor and a frequent MSNBC guest.
Butler’s revealing invective was in response to a tweet from Daily Beast editor-at-large Goldie Taylor. That tweet highlighted a Sports Illustrated article in which Carson championed Americans’ right to fly flags — including the Confederate flag — that other Americans see as a symbol of hate.
Prof. Justin McDaniel, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania’s religious-studies program, did not respond to Butler’s tweet but said she is a “valued colleague and faculty member.”
We are…so screwed.
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Z: People all over the world hate us. Afghanistan is no more a threat than any other unstable place full of jihadis who want to blow us up (Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran…)
We need to get out, and learn how to stay out.
We haven’t won a war in 70 years. Until we learn how to win them again, we need to stay out of them.
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@SF….Our Military has never lost a war. We never lost one battle in Viet Nam…we won in Iraq…The Military needs the Military to be put back in charge. Civilian pols, wimps, scumbags that use our troops as fodder for their PC bullshit, ROE’s and other PC restraints are not a part of how a killing machine should operate. Ask Putin if he has any ROE’s….or gays in his military….or women in combat.
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SF…that’s my point. We didn’t go in TO WIN. And we held back. Remember when our soldiers were told not to shoot at mosques because they’re so holy? Yes, except gunfire was coming out and killing our kids FROM those ‘holy’ mosques…..or remember when they were told to approach private houses with care, giving bad guys time to get out the back door instead of breaking in?
Or how they actually considered reading the Mirandas to terrorists over THERE in OUR armed services?
It’s unbelievable what America’s doing to itself……….we should have just gone in and WON, and we could have. Not sure what we would have won, but………..
Tell me how winning would look over there, come to think of it; I’d like to know..really.
IMP: that a prof can say THAT and get away with it? Picture a Conservative ever using that language in that situation?
I happened on THE VIEW this morning…Joy Behar was awful to Carson…she’s back doing that twitchy hand thing and ugly grimaces when she thinks the conservative is such a neandrethal….and then asks for Carson’s authograph on his new book!
CUBE: Smith’s like the Alan Colmes of FOX now….
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@Z…I’m hoping Joy would contract a disease….she’s a very foul, ugly “woman”. But..I pity the guy who’d give it to her. He too must be a moron. Looking at her….I need a shower and think being celibate is a better answer than lying with one of these “new, free, modern women”. The real man on the View…is Whoopi.
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Imp…ya, I saw that ‘real man is Whoopi’ mention…and it’s true.
I posted on Joy the other day when I heard she was back after a couple of years; Anybody here think it’s JUST A COINCIDENCE that this awful, foul progressive b**ch is BAAAACK suddenly on THE VIEW with that HUGE an audience a year before THE ELECTION?
Oh, she was VILE today…the ‘knowing’ looks, the condescension to Dr Carson. it was truly disgusting…totally predictable from her, of course.
I think this is a HUGE set up…she doesn’t need that show…she’d left it..she has a radio show.
This is POLITICAL
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Imp. I’m with you on the malign influence of civilians on military operations, but your first statement requires a very cock-eyed reading of history. We surrendered and retreated in Vietnam, and I say that with sickness and bitterness because I know many Vietnam vets, and they will say the same. The fought heroically, but DC lost that war.
We lost in Iraq. That country is now a client of Iran. We lost in Afghanistan. The Taliban still roams free and controls the drug trade and the facts on the ground. And it pains me to say that because I served in both theaters.
Z asked the Million Dollar Question: “Tell me how winning would look over there”
Indeed. Bush and Ol’ Rummy said it would be women and children throwing roses at our feet, and Iraq turning into the Germany of the Middle East, and Afghanistan becoming a little America…
All BS.
There is no “victory” in places like that. Grand schemes don’t work. If someone is plotting something, you go in, eradicate them, and get out, and spare us all the nation building, chest thumping BS…
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Given the way this administration has behaved from the beginning, can you blame the French for investigating? The big question is: What do they do if they find it was due to either being careless or intentional? THEN what?
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