"'We mourn every civilian death,' Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a recent Pentagon briefing, responding to news reports that scores of Afghan civilians were killed by U.S. bombs in villages near Tora Bora.  Rumsfeld then discounted those reports as mere "Taliban accusations," even though they had been based on the accounts of local anti-Taliban officials (who were working with American forces), civilian eyewitnesses and actual victims. U.S. regret met U.S. denial.

"In the end, even if that regret is sincere, what use is it to those who have lost family members, limbs or homes to U.S. bombs? If Washington truly cares about innocent people killed by its weaponry in Afghanistan, it needs to forthrightly acknowledge the damage done and offer compensation".--David Corn.

See Donald Rumsfeld: A Man of Constant Sorrow by Hardly Waite.

Donald Rumsfeld: "We mourn every civilian death (although none of them really happened)."

At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 27th, a U.S. bomb and missile fired from a F-18 hit the village of Khan Agaha at the entrance of the Kapisa Valley, some 80 kms northeast of Kabul. The U.S. planes dropped 35 bombs in the area. Ten civilians were reportedly instantly killed said an ambulance driver who had gone to the village. A nearby hospital to which victims were rushed, run by the Italian relief agency, Emergency, said up to 16 people had been killed in Saturday's attack on Khan Agaha.16 Television photos taken by Britain's Sky News showed footage of the F-18 dropping bombs, hitting a mud and timber family home. The TV report said ten members of a family were missing under the rubble and another twenty were injured. A five year-old girl lay in a wheelbarrow with a bloodied face.

Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire.

US. Bombs Fall on Kapisa

Some 65 tribal elders traveling in a convoy to attend the installation of the new government in Kabul were killed in an vicious attack by US warplanes on Dec. 22, 2001.

Professor Marc Herold comments:

"This recent incident follows a pattern well-established over the past 10 weeks of U.S. bombing: First come the initial reports of civilian casualties from regional news agencies, then, denials by the Pentagon, and finally further details about the specifics of the attack, which get ignored by the U.S. military, political elite and domestic mainstream media, though are widely reported in the foreign press."

 

In a U.S. bombing raid at Jalalabad that killed some 200 civilians and injured hundreds on Oct. 14, 2001, this young girl escaped with only minor injuries.

Not So Fortunate

This young girl survived the Oct. 21 US bombing of Kabul, but both her parents and two sisters and a brother were killed.

The strike killed 18 civilians and wounded 23.

Americans and Afghans United in Grief

We should feel much safer now with this threat to American security out of action.

For a personal look at some of the people we have been bombing, please read Howard Zinn's article "The Others" in the Feb. 11, 2002 The Nation.

"We live here like animals. I'm afraid we also may die like animals in a hole," sobbed 40-year-old widow Momogul, crouching Monday outside the narrow slit that provides the only light for her family's cramped underground chamber. Four of her six children squatted silently in the semi-darkness.

This family and countless others, driven from their villages by U.S. bombing, live in caves only in hope that food aid will somehow reach them.  Bombing interrupted food deliveries last fall, and  winter makes food aid deliveries almost impossible.

President Bush boasted in an address to the nation that America has saved the Afghanistan  from starvation.  Tell that to Momogul.

A very careful reader of the national press could discover the estimate by the UN that "7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter -- 2.5 million more than on Sept. 11," a 50% increase as a result of the threat of bombing, then the actuality.  In other words, Western civilization was basing its plans on the assumption that they might lead to the death of several million innocent civilians -- not Taliban, whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of slaughtering Taliban recruits and supporters, but their victims. Meanwhile its leader, on the same day, once again dismissed with contempt offers of negotiation for extradition of the suspected culprit and the request for some credible evidence to substantiate the demands for capitulation. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food pleaded with the U.S. to end the bombing that was putting "the lives of millions of civilians at risk," renewing the appeal of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who warned of a Rwanda-style catastrophe. Both appeals were rejected, as were those of the major aid and relief agencies. And virtually unreported.--Noam Chomsky, Speaking in New Delhi, Dec. 2001.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? " -- Mahatma Gandhi
 

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