[samiam]

The Afghan parliament is demanding a public trial for a US soldier who went on a shooting rampage in Kandahar.

The Taliban has vowed to take revenge after the soldier went on a murderous rampage, killing 16 villagers including women and children in their homes.

...

But Prince Seraj says the shooting in Kandahar may not see the same response.

"The Koran incident was something completely different because Koran is the common religion in Afghanistan... it goes across boundary lines, it goes across ethnic lines," he said.

"As far as this incident in Kandahar is concerned, because it's localised to one province, we may see more of a reaction in Kandahar than we would say somewhere in Herat or somewhere in some of the other provinces.

"But nevertheless, we should not be surprised if there is reaction against this type of an action."

He says the US would be playing into the hands of the Taliban if it responded to the breakdown in relations between it and Afghanistan by bringing forward its withdrawal.

WASHINGTON — The outrage from the back-to-back episodes of the Koran burning and the killing on Sunday of at least 16 Afghan civilians imperils what the Obama administration once saw as an orderly plan for 2012: to speed the training of Afghan forces so that they can take the lead in combat missions, all while drawing the Taliban into negotiations to end more than a decade of constant war.

(KABUL, Afghanistan) — Afghans expressed doubt Monday that a single U.S. Army soldier could have shot and killed 16 civilians in houses over a mile (2 kilometers) apart and burned the bodies afterward. The killings in southern Afghanistan have reignited fury at the U.S. presence following a wave of deadly protests over Americans burning Korans.

Villagers told The Associated Press on Sunday that a single soldier roamed from house to house firing on those inside. They said he entered three homes in all and set fire to some of the bodies. Eleven of the dead were from a single family, and nine of the victims were children.

But Abdul Rahim Ayubi, a lawmaker from Kandahar province, said the houses that were attacked were over a mile (2 kilometers) apart, raising questions about how a single soldier could have carried out all of the shootings.

...

The suspect, from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., was assigned to support a special operations unit of either Green Berets or Navy SEALs engaged in a village stability operation, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still ongoing.

Sounds like a CIA + Jewlluminati conspiracy to me. What do you think?

[Aardwolf]

1. A soldier can walk two kilometers.
2. A soldier can kill everyone in a household.

[Scotty]

The people didn't start trying to avoid the sound of gunfire when it started, and before he walked two kilometers?

Yeah, not buying it.

[Bobboau]

 
this whole thing
 

[Aardwolf]

It says the distance was 2 km, and there were 3 homes involved.

(Srs question): If it's the year 2012 and you live in this part of Afghanistan, and you hear gunfire 2 km away, do you flee? Or are you "used to it" by now?

[samiam]

Sure, gunfire is a common occurrence in Afghanistan, but there's other problems.

Abdul Ghani, a local councilman in Panjwai district, said local villagers reported seeing two groups of soldiers.

"The villagers said they were hearing machine gun fire and pistol fire from different directions," said Ghani.

The fact that he burned the bodies also points to it being premeditated and intended to hide evidence rather than some random crazy doing this. Also, the Army hasn't released any names. They usually do that.

[NGTM-1R]

Simply burning the bodies is somewhat bizarre, as that requires some time and effort on its own which is at odds with the story reported.

[Aardwolf]

@samiam: Ah yes, that changes things.

Edit: Heard around the same time, or with enough time in between that a man could walk 2km?

[samiam]

Dunno man, go ask someone who was there.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident redux it looks like.

[BlueFlames]

The people didn't start trying to avoid the sound of gunfire when it started, and before he walked two kilometers?

When you live in a warzone, you get used to intermittent spats of distant gunfire.  Would you suggest that they leave the cover of their homes and go running, exposed, through the streets every time it happens?  It's better to hunker down, hope you're not a target, and let the walls catch any stray bullets, rather than run about and let your meaty bits catch those rounds.  (Around Chicago, in the 1990's, you also called the police, but I'm not sure how effective that step is in southern Afghanistan.)

With regards to the possibility of this event being a CIA hit, someone's going to have to present the significance of the families that were targetted.  I don't put it past western intelligence agencies to assassinate people, but I also don't put it past individual soldiers to have an emotional breakdown, resulting in a killing spree.  In the case of the former, though, there has to be a reason behind the killing.  What were the members of these families doing to warrant being killed?

[samiam]

With regards to the possibility of this event being a CIA hit, someone's going to have to present the significance of the families that were targetted.

There's probably no military reason at all. But destabilizing Afghanistan is all the militaryindustrially complex has left to try to keep the war going.

[Mongoose]

...you're really going that route?

[samiam]

It's happened several times before, why not now? If it turns out that there really were multiple groups of soldiers in the operation, what's your explanation?

[Klaustrophobia]

i don't know, but i'm going to go with literally ANYTHING over "the military industrial complex".... "mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!" (read that in stoned hippie voice)

[samiam]

Ok, space ponies. But space ponies also burned a bunch of korans for no apparent reason too.

Open your eyes and connect the dots. Maaaan.

[BlueFlames]

With regards to the possibility of this event being a CIA hit, someone's going to have to present the significance of the families that were targetted.

There's probably no military reason at all. But destabilizing Afghanistan is all the militaryindustrially complex has left to try to keep the war going.

I don't buy it.  There's enough other targets around the world, waiting to be attacked, including at least one (Iran) that is a riper target, the calmer things are in neighboring states (Iraq and Afghanistan).  For all the overt effort being put into stabilizing the region, and for all the reasons to keep the region stable, you don't have a convincing case to sell this as a conspiracy to stir the pot in the region.  Maybe back when Blackwater was doing this kind of thing on a semi-regular basis, you could have made a better case for the profit-motive dicating the course of war and peace in the Middle East, but not now, especially when the hotspots are Iran and the states undergoing revolution in the western part of the region.

[samiam]

I don't buy it.  There's enough other targets around the world, waiting to be attacked, including at least one (Iran) that is a riper target,

We don't have any troops in Iran. What's the CIA to do, throw rocks across the border at them or something? That wouldn't prompt us to increase our troop presence in Iran either. Since there isn't any.

To the rest: whatever, I'm not going to multiquote and it really doesn't change how some in the military might want to keep up the war.

[Bobboau]

Maaaan.

I like that you actually did that.

[Dragon]

I suspect that this was just another victim of PTSD who snapped and decided to "take revenge"  on Afghanis by killing random people.
He should be checked out by a psychiatrist and if he's sane (which I doubt), then he should be judged like he normally would if those people were Americans.
This should be dealt with quickly and decisively, or the whole war in Afghanistan would be for nothing.

[Bobboau]

honestly, he should be turned over to the Afghan government.