Thursday, May 13, 2010

Americans murdering Afghans, says Seymour Hersh


HERSH: The purpose of my [Abu Ghraib] stories was to take it out of the field and into the White House. It's not that the President or the Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld, or Bush, or Cheney, it's not that they knew what happened in Abu Ghraib. It's that they had allowed this kind of activity to happen.

And I'll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan. They're being executed on the battlefield. It's unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn't necessarily get reported. Things don't change.

What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban. You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free. What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place. Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now.
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8 comments:

  1. ananMay 13, 2010 at 1:37 AM

    Many ANA and ANP hate the Taliban; which is a major reason they join the ANA and ANP in the first place.

    And yes the ANA and ANP sometimes execute Taliban. In view of how horrible the Taliban are; what would you say to an ANA soldier or ANP to convince them not to execute Taliban? It isn't easy.

    Recently, the ANA and ANP have expanded enormously, because training for the ANA has been reduced to 9 weeks and training for the ANP has been reduced to 6 weeks; and because the number of ANA and ANP being trained at any given time has been increased.

    There remains a large backlog of Afghans wanting to join the ANA (Afghan National Army.)

    TGIA, if you were part of the Afghan National Army Training Command; what would you do to determine what applicants were angry young men out for revenge against the Taliban versus young men who were motivated by service to country?

    I don't have to remind you how much most Afghans hate the Taliban.

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  2. vzaMay 13, 2010 at 5:24 AM

    I need more than just Seymour Hersh's claims. Where was he speaking, and to whom?

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  3. vzaMay 13, 2010 at 5:27 AM

    Oh. wait, I see it came from Michael Moore's website, that valiant fighter...er... participant in and beneficiary of evil capitalism.

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  4. ananMay 13, 2010 at 10:23 AM

    VZA, it is true. Have heard from ISAF ANSF advisors that the ANSF do this.

    Part of the reason is that it is difficult for the ANSF to arrest people long term; and they are afraid that the people they arrest will bribe their way to freedom. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are rich.

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  5. ananMay 13, 2010 at 10:29 AM

    VZA, one of the biggest challenges in Afghanistan is that neither ISAF nor the ANA have the authority to detain people long term. Only the ANP can do that.

    The ANP is 5 years behind the ANA; and disfunctional. Moreover, the ANP is under great pressure to respect people's civil rights . . . which means due process. Afghanistan has a huge shortage of judges and prosecuters and public defenders. Not to mention a huge shortage of educated forensics workers who can present evidence to judges to obtain court orders.

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  6. AnonymousMay 13, 2010 at 12:09 PM

    Michael Moore, dirty red. Don't believe a word he says. Stick with Fox News.

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  7. vzaMay 13, 2010 at 4:44 PM

    No my dear, Michael Moore is not a dirty red. He is a phoney, which is far worse in my book. I'd rather have an honest to goodness real Communist than Moore.
    As for Seymour Hersh...well, he has gotten some things right, but I am still waiting for George Bush to attack Iran...one of many of Hersh's predictions that failed to materialize. Maybe good old George will accomplish it while out of office, ya think?

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  8. vMay 14, 2010 at 12:22 AM

    The fact of the matter is that if you are not Taliban is not the issue,  it is if you are not sold out to American interest that rapes and bombs the country,  and if you do not support the fetid regime which has been propped up.  If this is the case,  and you are a true resister to hegemony,  you are dead. 

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