Said Samia Ahmadi, 21, quoted in
"A family says 10 of its members were killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul" (NYT).
Hours after a U.S. military drone strike in Kabul on Sunday, Defense Department officials said that it had blown up a vehicle laden with explosives, eliminating a threat to Kabul’s airport from the Islamic State Khorasan group.
But at a family home in Kabul on Monday, survivors and neighbors said the strike had killed 10 people, including seven children, an aid worker for an American charity organization and a contractor with the U.S. military....
The missile hit the rear end of the Corolla in the narrow courtyard inside the walled family compound, blowing out doors, shattering windows and spraying shrapnel. [Zemari] Ahmadi and some of the children were killed inside his car; others were fatally wounded in adjacent rooms, family members said.... Mr. Ahmadi was a technical engineer for the local office of Nutrition and Education International, an American nonprofit based in Pasadena, Calif.....
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54 comments:
Heckuva job Joey!
Well the story is behind a paywall. But I thought the military or some Biden spokesman said that the drone hit a vehicle and there were "secondary explosions" indicating that the car had a bomb inside. Now this story says no, there was a child inside. It's a puzzlement--who should I believe?
It's terrible. And now we have CNN's Jim Acosta, who attacked Trump every chance he could, come out and say now is not the time for Politics, and they need our thoughts and prayers...
(Jim Acosta
@Acosta
My thoughts on Afghanistan this week... now is not the time to score political points. Just imagine just this once if we simply offered our thoughts and prayers. Give it some thought. Pray on it.)
I remember Jim complaining about thoughts and prayers when Trump was President, and anything happened to Americans....Now he wants you to PRAY??? Hilarious. What a joke he and CNN are.
I know if I were ISIS or Al Quaeda in this situation, I would "leak" info making the American military think they were taking out a car bomb- no better way to garner a political victory at little risk to themselves. I am going to guess that this is what has happened here- it is either that, or the missile badly missed its target.
We need to see more actual news coverage of this.
But by not releasing any names, the US military hoisted a red flag...'just trust us' doesn't get it done anymore.
THIS I believe. To be expected when the attack is conducted from 10,000 miles away.
It's as if the grifting left are so greedy - they all stopped caring and now all we get is utter incompetence.
I'll take Trump's mean tweets, thanks.
We won't know what really happened until gadfly pops in with his superior mind-reading skills to explain how its really all Trump's fault the Installed *"president's" team have seemingly established a "one attack per day minimum against anyone in the area of Kabul for public relations purposes and Team Dementia then claims everyone whacked was an "important" ISIS-K/other "asset"" policy.
It's what happens when you flail away with your 'over the horizon' military strategy, while eating birthday cake back at the fort.
Blame Biden. If he had not decided to get out in a bum's rush this probably would not have happened.
The New York Slimes is calling this out???
Does anybody remember voting for Joe Biden??
Heartbreaking if true.
This "withdrawal" has been a true CF.
My confidence in NYT reporting isn't high either. After all, they originally reported a Capitol police office was killed after being struck by a fire extinguisher on Jan. 6th and failed to correct the story for several months. If they can get a story so wrong about an event with so much coverage inside the United States; I don't put a lot of credit in their reporting of events of a complex nature in Afghanistan.
I also recall previously we were told target. Now we are told the Defense Department was clear that it was a vehicle laden with explosives? How would they know those details? Particularly when they said previously this was just a planner?
It’s the thought that counts.
The Biden nightmare needs to stop.
“Oh, what a feeling… TOYOTA!!!”
"Mistakes were Made" seems the apt historical quote.
One more day
1945 Germany "I was never a National Socialist."
2021 USA "I never voted for Joe Biden."
John Henry
Leave President Johnny Bravo alone! Just leave him alone!!!
*runs out sobbing*
including seven children, an aid worker for an American charity organization and a contractor with the U.S. military
A list that checks a box for three types of people that Americans might especially care got hit. What a coincidence that they were all in a random house in Kabul that just happened to have a vehicle with a car bomb. You couldn't make it up and have it pull more heartstrings. Maybe if it also had a puppy in the truck.
Not that I'm accusing anyone of making it up. I'm curious about how the military is sure this truck had a bomb. Video surveillance or the word of an informant? Why blow it up as it's pulling into a courtyard? Are there no stretches of street on the way to the airport that wouldn't have civilians around?
The more things change the more they stay the same. If Trump had won his second term and followed through my guess is that he would have done a better job protecting the troops and greasing the right bad guys. We need to defund the military starting from the top.
I could easily see this having happened, given the chaos of the withdrawal - hit the wrong target, target placed himself around children as a sort of human shield, might have been the target's family, could have been fed false information, etc. I could also see this being a big lie on the Taliban/ISIS part, and what was hit was actually just a car filled with explosives - these kind of stories are faked all the time in the ME.
How The CIA Used ISIS-K To Keep Its Afghanistan Business
This article provides mind-boggling information about the CIA's involvement with ISIS-K, which claimed credit for the bombing at the Kabul airport.
They should have blown up a Pinto.
It would have created plausible deniability.
It's a puzzlement--who should I believe?
Why would you believe either side? Both are highly motivated to lie. That we cannot trust the DoD under Joe Biden, Lloyd Austin, and Mark Milley is a given. But that does not mean one can automatically trust the other side, since they have their own agenda.
WSJ: Exclusive video shows the scene of an airstrike conducted by the U.S. military targeting suspected Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan.
https://www.wsj.com/video/exclusive-video-shows-aftermath-of-us-drone-strike-in-afghanistan/F5A59573-9284-4F13-AA93-EEB54708109B.html
I had no faith in the military/DoD/Pentagon around Afghanistan recently, but when they announced a successful drone strike against planners and refused to release their names I thought....
Hey, do I ever remember a time where our military/executive branch proclaimed they had successfully killed 1+ known terrorists, including their roles, where they refused to release the names of those killed?
I don't ever remember such a time before.
Is there a legitimate reason to both announce the drone strike and say you knew who you killed but not shared the names?
Not that I can think of...
And that's when it hit me. People are most dangerous when what they are most concerned about is how they are viewed rather than what the result is.....so yeah, we need some firings.
This keeps getting worse. Just stop, man.
Me, every time the Administration does anything
From Reason ...
U.S. military officials said Sunday that they had launched a drone strike destroying a car full of explosives and killing ISIS-K suicide bombers headed toward the international airport in Kabul. Also on Sunday, a family living in Khwaja Burgha, a neighborhood west of Kabul, said a drone missile struck the car of Ezmari Ahmadi, a civilian working with a food charity, in his driveway, killing him, two other adults, and seven children.
[ ... ]
Even when the U.S. government did provide data about drone strikes, the information was not trustworthy. Whistleblower Daniel Hale revealed that it was the practice of the United States to declare anybody killed by a drone strike to be a suspected militant or enemy until proven otherwise. And it was unfortunately very easy for these strikes to go wrong. Hale himself detailed a strike he was involved with that failed to kill the target, an Afghan man suspected of making car bombs, and instead killed the man's young daughter.
[ ... ]
In 2012, a former director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, pointed out the political advantages of relying on drone strikes: "Low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries."
https://reason.com/2021/08/30/was-it-a-u-s-drone-or-an-isis-attack-that-killed-3-adults-and-7-children-outside-kabul/
Drago said...
We won't know what really happened until gadfly pops in with his superior mind-reading skills to explain how its really all Trump's fault . . .
Drag - Why is your response to everything involve direct attacks on posters who simply do not understand your reasoning? In my case, I do my best to leave you alone even when you aim at me so I request that you find someone else to piss off.
Please note that I have not responded this comment stream because both sides have made their viewpoints available already.
BTW, I would hope that you understand that mindreading is as common as dirt among posters here and fighting among those of us in the bleacher seats could eventually bring about a return to restricted emails only (how about that piece of mindreading!).
I am praying, Jim Acosta, that you get rectal cancer. Does that count?
What Yancey said. I suspect Biden and the Generals are being played.
This story in the Sydney Morning Herald has a picture, said to be that of the destroyed car, which clearly shows rocket tubes in the back seat.
Considering the personnel and personalities involved I'm thinking they did well to have accomplished the cluster fuck that is. It could have been, and still might be, so much worse.
Fun fact:
The terrorists and taliban scum would trade phones with people or sell them and get new ones.
If I had to guess someone was told to blow something up, NOW!, and they skipped a step or two. That step is usually making sure the last person to use that phone voice matched the target and matching the same call patterns.
This is what you get when you have a piece of shit like Joe Biden or Barrack Obama as president. Everything turns political when they are in charge. They just don't care about anything but themselves.
Just like the people that vote for them.
Jeff, there is nothing in that story that indicates it was the car destroyed by the drone. There was a rocket attack on the airport that was beaten back by US forces.
Last Plane outta Dodge wheels up. Mission Accomplished.
Jeff,
Different vehicle. The image you are talking about is a car damaged by the rockets launched from the back of it. The car this post is talking about is the car the US claims contained a car bomb, not rockets and their launchers.
Althouse Blog self-anointed Carnac The Magnificet and LLR Chuck MiniMe gadfly "..why is your response to everything involve direct attacks on posters who simply do not understand your reasoning? In my case, I do my best to leave you alone even when you aim at me so I request that you find someone else to piss off."
You are ridiculously moronic in your unthinking and failed cut and paste jobs within which you routinely offer up sweeping and hilariously incorrect "hot take" characterizations of those on the conservative side as well as your child-like "understanding" of current events combined with your galactic-scale smugness and amusing "mind-reading-based" "analyses" (snort) which no doubt stems from a truly astonishing degree of "Dunning-Kruger-ness" deserves to be mocked.
In every way possible.
At all times.
And I am not surprised in the least that you react precisely towards much warranted and much justifed criticism and ridicule as does a certain LLR, given how you have modeled your blog "contributions" on his ludicrous and rather psychotic assertions and behavior.
But hey, if it "works" for you....
"Big Mike said...
Why would you believe either side?"
Agree. Whatever we hit was a car filled with terrorists with rockets and bombs in it. There wouldn't anything left but a hole in the ground. Maybe The Taliban blew up somebody's car for one of their reasons (somebody was hiding the aid worker, a woman was driving, somebody was listening to music, whatever) and then they throw the blame on us.
Let's see: a shit-show at the border, a shit-show in Afghanistan and a shit-show domestically with Covid-19/20/21. And the prevailing sentiment is that the government (and businesses) should force all citizens to get vaccinated.
I'm very pessimistic about our future.
Three drone strikes in Kabul recently:
1. ISIS "planner" and friend.
2. Family car at house full of children.
3. Mortar tube car.
Two out of three ain't bad.
If there are explosives in the car, there will be collateral damage. That's on the would-be bombers. Lots more would have died had they not been killed.
'They should have blown up a Pinto.'
Ha!
Jeff said...
This story in the Sydney Morning Herald has a picture, said to be that of the destroyed car, which clearly shows rocket tubes in the back seat.
8/30/21, 2:41 PM
That is a different vehicle than the white truck that was blown up. The truck was in a courtyard area, not on the street. That's why I was questioning the choice of location for striking it. The NYT article also had a photo of that car, but the truck was only shown in a video.
"Mistakes were Made" seems the apt historical quote.
Damn those Mistakes, they're like cockroaches hiding under your refrigerator -- you never see the roaches when the lights are on, but at 4 am they come out to lick your flatware and hold miniature ice capades shows in your T-Fal omelet pan. Mistakes are like that but they hide under desks in the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA HQ, and every other agency and department of the national government. They come out at night and devour intelligent and effective orders and policy directives, such as the one demanding the retention of Bagram AFB until the absolute conclusion of American involvement in Afghanistan. Like many others that one never got sent became of those Mistakes.
Mistakes should be banned. Trump tried to deport Mistakes, but his executive order was nullified by an injunction ordered by a Federal district judge of Mistaken lineage. I understand he was appointed to the bench by a president who was notable for the large number of Mistakes in his administration.
Like I said, Mistakes should be banned, or at least sterilized so that they don't multiply.
Last Plane outta Dodge wheels up. Mission Accomplished.
Americans left stranded: "Hey! What about me?"
Joe Biden looks at his watch: "Sorry. They tell me that I have to take a nap now".
It is disturbing that 50-60 million people voted for this guy.
Howard: "Last Plane outta Dodge wheels up. Mission Accomplished."
$80 Billion+ gifted by the dems to the Taliban in aircraft, armored vehicles, weapons galore. Biden has officially armed the Taliban nation state...and delivered hundreds of American hostages to the Taliban to deliver $billions more in ransoms.
Democratical/LLR-democratical Mission Accomplished.
ChiComs on the move, increased Russian control of energy sales to Europe, Iran Mad Mullahs gifted 10's of billions in dollars with which to pay their terrorist pals and their ChiCom and russki benefactors the US once again an energy importer and begging OPEC to increase production to send more US dollars to the middle east.
Inflation raging, American hostages in muslim countries....and all that in just 8 months.
Super Duper Democratical/LLR-democratical Mission Accomplished.
All you saw was an Obamaesque strike. No doubt Biden got advice from Obama, and the 'yes' Generals said 'great'!
A drone strike here, and drone strike there.... yea that will show them as the Taliban do mass executions around Afghanistan and take US citizens hostage.
Under Biden we have lost far more than just 'prestige'. We have lost our soul.
For others know now we will abandon all, even our own citizens.
To Paraphrase Winston Churchill...
"You had a choice between dishonor and war. You chose dishonor and thus we shall have war (again in Afghanistan when another 9/11 comes.)"
Creating future terrorists while getting out of Dodge.
"The Biden nightmare needs to stop."
Be accurate: the Bush/Cheney, Obama/Biden, Trump/Pence, Biden/Harris nightmare.
"Creating future terrorists while getting out of Dodge."
It has been our presence in Afghanistan (and Iraq) that has been creating enemies of America. How do you think Americans would react if a foreign nation planted its troops in our cities and towns and were killing Americans via shooting and bombings?
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