Biden resumes drone strikes in Afghanistan, 'it believed its strike killed no civilians'

[enhanced_deficit]

Hopefully politics & GOP pressure to impeach him over his incompetent handling of Kabul evac are not forcing hand of the former deputy of "drone president" Obama.
Timing wise, is it wise to launch drone strikes (with history of causing local backlash) from air just when US is giving Taliban names of Americans to be evac'd amid a very limited force protection situation and US officials fearing of hostage situations?
Drone strikes have been very controversial in Afghanistan due to high chance of innocent people being killed in "careful strikes" from air based on intel from local assets known to sometime steer US military actions to settle their own tribal rivalry scores.

US airstrike targets Islamic State member in Afghanistan

By LOLITA C. BALDOR and ROBERT BURNS 37 minutes ago

President Joe Biden listens as he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Aug. 27, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting swiftly on President Joe Biden’s promise to retaliate for the deadly suicide bombing at Kabul airport, the U.S. military said it used a drone strike to kill a member of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate Saturday.

The strike came amid what the White House called indications that IS planned to strike again as the U.S.-led evacuation from Kabul airport moved into its final days. Biden has set Tuesday as his deadline for completing the exit.
Biden authorized the drone strike and it was ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet publicly announced.
The airstrike was launched from beyond Afghanistan less than 48 hours after the devastating Kabul attack that killed 13 Americans and scores of Afghans with just days left in a final U.S. withdrawal after 20 years of war. U.S. Central Command provided few details; it said it believed its strike killed no civilians.

apnews.com/article/asia-pacific-evacuations-kabul-islamic-state-group-7f146c8ae5d9e9ab225025527e421226



Related

Ex-airman sentenced to 45 months for leaking drone info

GOP Congressional leader calls for permanent US military base in Afghanistan



Un-related

Wave of Republicans call for Biden impeachment
August 26, 2021 —
A wave of prominent Republican lawmakers on Thursday called for President Joe Biden to be impeached or to resign, arguing his decisions created..



Sudanese factory destroyed by US now a shrine
csmonitor
Aug 7, 2012 — President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike on the pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum in 1998..

In the Sudan, approximately 13 cruise missiles hit a pharmaceutical plant. The night watchman was killed. Days later, in the streets of Khartoum, Sudanese President al-Bashir led an anti-US march. Suddenly it seemed America was transformed from a victim of terrorism to an aggressor nation.

[Sammy]

Killing ISIS fighters is okay but killing civilians is not.

[phill4paul]

Not believing it for an instant. Biden needed to look like he was pro-active.

[TheCount]

If he needs an opinion poll boost he should just launch a hundred tomahawks at something.

[enhanced_deficit]

Killing ISIS fighters is okay but killing civilians is not.

Early reports tend to be foggy, may take a while before all the facts come out.
This report is about latest air strike today.

U.S. shoots down rockets aimed at Kabul’s airport
NYT, Aug 29, 2021

Samim Shahyad, a 25-year-old journalism student, said the strike killed his father, his two brothers, four of his young cousins, his niece and his sister’s fiancé. Three of the dead were girls 2 years old or younger, he said, and his aunt and uncle lost all three of their children.
“The American aircraft targeted us,” he said. “I do not know what to say, they just cut my arms and broke my back, I cannot say anything more.”
A doctor at a nearby hospital said four bodies were taken there, two of them those of children.

[charrob]

"US Drone Strike in Kabul Kills 9 Family Members, Including 6 Children: The US claims the strike targeted ISIS: A US drone strike in Kabul on Sunday killed nine members of one family, including six children, the brother of one of the victims told a journalist in the city working with CNN.

The US claims the strike destroyed a vehicle carrying “multiple suicide bombers” from Afghanistan’s ISIS affiliate, but witnesses said it hit two cars parked at a residential building. “We are not ISIS or Daesh and this was a family home — where my brothers lived with their families,” the brother said.

The brother said the youngest of the dead was a two-year-old girl. The journalist said family members told him that one of the cars that were hit contained a father and three of his children.

Earlier in the day, Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesperson for US Central Command, confirmed the drone strike and said the US is investigating if there were civilian casualties. “We are confident we successfully hit the target,” he said.

The US drone strike comes a few days after Thursday’s suicide attack claimed by ISIS killed at least 175 people, including 28 Taliban members and 13 US troops. Early Saturday, the US launched a drone strike in Nangahar province that the Pentagon claims killed two “ISIS-K planners.”

President Biden has vowed that airstrikes against ISIS-K would continue, so the US will likely continue to bomb Afghanistan as it wraps up the evacuation and withdrawal. The Pentagon said Saturday that it has begun withdrawing troops, which needs to be completed by the approaching August 31st deadline."

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/08/29/...ng-6-children/

For the first time, Pentagon officials publicly acknowledged the possibility that some people killed outside the airport on Thursday might have been shot by American service members after the suicide bombing. [...] Also a man claiming to be an Afghan soldier blames the U.S. for shooting at the crowd from above. He says only 20 people were killed by the bomb and the rest by American bullets. [...] BBC reporter Secunder Kermani in Kabul, in a video report on Friday, interviewed an eyewitness who said he saw U.S. and Turkish military men firing from a tower into the crowd. Kermani pointed it out in this tweet on his personal account: "Our report from last night on the awful ISIS attack outside Kabul airport as families still search Kabul's morgues for their loved ones... Many we spoke to, including eyewitnesses, said significant numbers of those killed were shot dead by US forces in the panic after the blast."

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/08/2...wd-at-airport/

[enhanced_deficit]

https://news.yahoo.com/us-handed-bla...110000814.html

[Invisible Man]

Killing ISIS fighters is okay but killing civilians is not.

Should this be done after the alleged ISIS fighters have been proven guilty of crimes deserving of the death penalty through due process?

Or does it take nothing more than some bureaucrat picking out a person they want dead and claiming they're a terrorist?

[PAF]

Should this be done after the alleged ISIS fighters have been proven guilty of crimes deserving of the death penalty through due process?

Or does it take nothing more than some bureaucrat picking out a person they want dead and claiming their a terrorist?

Shoot to kill first, ask questions later.

Take the guns first, due process later.

[Ender]

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/08/29/...ng-6-children/




https://consortiumnews.com/2021/08/2...wd-at-airport/

Smells like a false flag to me.

[enhanced_deficit]

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/08/29/...ng-6-children/

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/08/2...wd-at-airport/

If he needs an opinion poll boost he should just launch a hundred tomahawks at something.

Opinion polls in Kabul may see the opposite effect if this UK media report is confirmed by more reliable media outlets like Foxnews, CNN etc.





Ten members of one family, including several children, killed following US drone strike in Kabul, family says

The US military says it is still investigating reports of civilian deaths after it launched a drone strike on a vehicle believed to be an imminent threat heading to Kabul airport.

Monday 30 August 2021 22:01, UK


Image: Malika Ahmadi, two, died in the drone strike, her family says

Ten members of one Afghan family were killed following a US drone strike in Kabul, according to relatives.

Six of his nieces and nephews are also said to have died; a boy and girl both aged two, girls aged five and seven, a six-year-old boy and a 28-year-old man.

The family said Mr Ahmadi had worked with a foreign organisation in Kabul for 10 years as a technical engineer.

The brother of one of the victims, Aymal Ahmad, told Sky News that "one of my brothers was working with westerners".
"My demand from the international community is justice, whatever has happened shouldn't happen again, I don't care about President Biden or anyone else," he added.
"I lost 10 family members we used to eat together, what shall we do now? And our financial supporter was our brother who died in the attack."
US Army spokesman Major General William "Hank" Taylor described the drone strike as an "unmanned, over-the horizon airstrike on a vehicle known to be an imminent ISIS-K threat".

Image: Aymal Ahmad lost 10 members of his family to the drone strike
"This self defence strike successfully hit the target near Kabul airport," he said at The Pentagon on Monday.
"We are aware of reports of civilian casualties and we take these reports very seriously and we are continuing to assess the situation."

sky.com/story/afghanistan-ten-members-of-one-family-including-several-children-killed-following-us-drone-strike-in-kabul-family-says

[TheCount]

Opinion polls in Kabul may see the opposite effect if this UK media report is confirmed by more reliable media outlets like Foxnews, CNN etc.

One side probably thinks he's being too aggressive and the other things he's not aggressive enough.


There's absolutely nothing that he could do to please people on this issue.

[charrob]

Smells like a false flag to me.

There sure seems like a lot of witnesses saying that many killed were from bullets coming down at an angle (from where armed U.S. and Turkish military were standing in towers looking down on crowds trying to enter the airport) into their skulls. The angles with which bullets entered people's bodies prove the attack was from above not from members of ISIS standing in the crowds.

Sadly there's no doubt a cover up is going on as we speak. U.S. employed snipers standing on top buildings killing both protesters and Ukrainian police during the illegal U.S. overthrow of Ukraine's government in 2014 come to mind as does the sarin gas attacks in Syria which we later learned had nothing to do with Assad but rather the "rebels" the U.S. Military and CIA supported in the U.S. proxy war to overthrow Assad. Since the U.S. government is now freezing the bank accounts of Afghanistan in their economic war against these impoverished people that the lunatics in the U.S. Military and CIA have been bombing for 20 years, no doubt this will be their "leverage" to ensure the Taliban never reveals the whole story of how 170 people died at the Kabul airport.

A new BBC report shows eyewitnesses at the scene of the deadly Kabul airport explosion on Thursday saying that a significant number of the 170 Afghans killed in the attack actually died from gunfire by the US-led alliance in the chaos following the blast.

“Many we spoke to, including eyewitnesses, said significant numbers of those killed were shot dead by US forces in the panic after the blast,” the BBC’s Secunder Kermani said on Twitter.

More here: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/08...r-kabul-blast/

Americans have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban's return to power in their country—and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops.

More here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2...on-and-poverty

[enhanced_deficit]

Many (former) US allies in Afghan cities are now accusing us of "breaking hearts and minds".

May be we need a paradigm shift, our drone air warfare strategies are pretty bad at so called war to "win hearts and minds" and almost certainly boosted insurgency.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/naming-...ughters-alike/

Naming the Afghan victims, sons and daughters alike


A mourner cries over the bodies of Afghan civilians, allegedly shot by a rogue U.S. soldier, seen loaded into the back of a truck in Alkozai village of Panjwayi district, Kandahar province, March 11, 2012. JANGIR/AFP/Getty Images CBS News Jere Van Dyk. He is the author of "In Afghanistan," Coward McCann, 1983, and "Captive," Times Books, 2010.

One side probably thinks he's being too aggressive and the other things he's not aggressive enough.


There's absolutely nothing that he could do to please people on this issue.

Maybe sometimes educating people is more important than "pleasing people"; the right question would be, is Biden less or more blunderous than Bush, Obama, Trump wrt Afghan war policy?

Least number of American troops and Afghan civilians have been killed & US taxpayers money spent on wasteful CIC on Prez Biden's watch. But no one is so far rushing to nominate him for Nobel Peace award.

[enhanced_deficit]

Sep 10, 2021

US Kabul drone strike appears to have killed an Afghan who worked for a US aid group: report

Report cast doubt on the Biden administration account of the strike
By Andrew Mark Miller | Fox News

Joe Kent: US government a 'disgrace' to the lives lost in Afghanistan

The United States’ account of a drone strike launched against a suspected terrorist in Afghanistan toward the end of the military withdrawal from Kabul is being challenged by a report suggesting the victim was not a threat to the United States.

According to a New York Times report, the drone attack that American officials said killed an ISIS terrorist carrying a bomb in a car toward U.S. troops may have killed a man with no ties to ISIS and who was carrying water to family members.

foxnews.com/politics/last-act-in-afghanistan-biden-drones-the-wrong-guy

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1456067077039697921

[enhanced_deficit]

A glimpse of bold Trumpsque leadership from current Commander-in-chief:


No U.S. troops behind a drone strike that killed Afghan civilians will be punished

December 13, 2021
Vanessa Romo

"The secretary's not approving or calling for additional accountability measures," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington on Monday.
Andrew Harnik/AP

The Pentagon said it would not punish the military team behind the errant drone strike that was intended to hit the masterminds of an attack on the Kabul airport but insteadkilled 10 civilians, including seven children.
Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby on Monday confirmed reports that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III approved a series of recommendations following an investigation into the deadly incidentin August. Those did not include disciplinary action for the military service members involved in what officials have called a "tragic mistake."

"The secretary's not approving or calling for additional accountability measures," Kirby told reporters during a briefing.
"I do not anticipate there being issues of personal accountability to be had with respect to the August 29th airstrike," he added.

npr.org/2021/12/13/1063880137/no-punishment-troops-afghanistan-kabul-strike-civilians




Related

You've Created Hundreds Of New Terrorists': Rand Grills Blinken On Afghanistan Drone Strikes


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_30in0A-H28