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| Afghanistan |
| More on the Kunduz Hospital and Doctors without Borders Story |
| 2016-04-30 |
| [WAPO] Declassified military documents released Friday detail not only how the United States mistakenly struck a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan last year but also frustrations among Special Operations troops. The strike, which killed at least 30 people at the hospital, occurred in the city of Kunduz, which the Taliban had seized in previous days and U.S. Special Operations troops were working alongside Afghan forces to take back. One officer, whose name, rank and unit were redacted from his witness statement, launched into a diatribe in which he blamed what happened on senior leaders. The officer wrote that he was going to provide unsolicited opinions, and that "these words may well be the greatest contribution of my career for one simple reason: the words I speak are the truth." The officer wrote that the enemies of the Kunduz operation were "moral cowardice" and a "profound lack of strategy." Army Green Berets on the ground in the city at the time asked for guidance "no fewer than three times" during the multiday battle and heard nothing other than crickets -- "though those were hard to hear over the gunfire," he alleged. "How have we as a force, as a group of officers, become so lost from the good lessons that our mentors taught us," the officer asked. "I will tell you how. It is a decrepit state that grows out of the expansion of moral cowardice, careerism and compromise devoid of principle, exchanged for cheap personal gain. We owe the man on the ground more than that, because for him, the decisions that he makes hopefully lands him somewhere between the judge's gavel and the enemy's bullet." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 moral cowardice, careerism and compromise devoid of principle, exchanged for cheap personal gain. This sounds like the job requirements for any job in the Obama White house. Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2016-04-30 13:36 |