US Is Still Stonewalling an Independent Review of Why It Bombed a Hospital

[marmar]

US Is Still Stonewalling an Independent Review of Why It Bombed a Hospital

Monday, 02 November 2015 00:00
By Nazish Kolsy, Foreign Policy in Focus | News Analysis


"Even war has rules," said Doctors Without Borders head Dr. Joanne Liu as part of her response to the devastating US bombing of the organization's hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan earlier this October.

After a series of different explanations and excuses - four separate accounts of the incident over the first four days, by The Guardian's count - the United States still hasn't provided a concrete explanation as to why and how the hospital was targeted, killing 22 doctors and patients. The attack was the worst on any Doctors Without Borders hospital in its 44 years of operating.

But it wasn't all that different from other recent US attacks on civilian infrastructure. Since as far back as 1991, the US has been "accidentally" blowing up medical and humanitarian facilities in a range of places, resulting in high civilian casualties and other "collateral damage."

To name but a few, in 1991 the US targeted an air raid shelter in Baghdad, killing 408 Iraqi civilians. (A US general claimed the shelter was "an active command-and-control center.&quot In 1998 the Clinton administration attacked the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which the US claimed was associated with the bin Laden network and was "involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons." As a result, according to The Intercept, "tens of thousands of people have suffered and died" from "treatable diseases" in the country since then. In 2001, the US attacked the complex that housed the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul - not once but twice, destroying storage warehouses that held food and supplies for refugees.

The incident in Kunduz, unfortunately, just adds to the list.

While past incidents have often failed to elicit serious calls for accountability, Doctors Without Borders - also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF - responded with an outraged press release demanding an independent, impartial investigation of the incident. Appalled by the lack of responsibility taken by either the Afghan or US government, MSF characterized the strike as an attack on the Geneva Conventions. "This cannot be tolerated," the statement explained. "These Conventions govern the rules of war and were established to protect civilians in conflicts - including patients, medical workers, and facilities. They bring some humanity into what is otherwise an inhumane situation." .............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33482-us-is-still-stonewalling-an-independent-review-of-why-it-bombed-a-hospital

[Octafish]

1. Why don't you post about Russia bombing all them hospitals in Syria?

You know, divert, deflect, deceive...

Thank you for posting this news, marmar. The government of the United States -- or its military, whichever runs the place -- has waged war on Afghanistan continually and cruelly since 1979.

http://www.businessinsider.com/astonishing-photos-of-prewar-afghanistan-show-everyday-life-in-peaceful-kabul-2013-2

Why? To fight the greedy communists, that's why.

[KG]

2. funny how all them russkie commies became muslim terrorists, almost overnite.

[Octafish]

4. You know, I was just folding the cash from End of the Cold War into my wallet when all of a sudden..

...this hulking man came along and said he needed the dough for fighting the War on Terra. And he said it was a war that would not end in my lifetime, and so I gave it to him, seeing how he put a special emphasis on "my lifetime" when he sneered at me.

My bad. He said, "our" as he took my money.

"It is different than the Gulf War was, in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime," Mr Cheney told the Washington Post.

He did sneer big time.

[MisterP]

7. what we said about the Commies 50s-90s we'd been saying about the Yids in the 20s

what we say about the Moo-slims since the 1970s we said about the Chinese in the 1870s and 80s

what we blamed the Irish for we blamed the Masons for in the 1830s

[Blue_Tires]

3. The U.S. is under no obligation to comply with some "independent" review

And even if they did, the investigators would still need the cooperation of the Afghans to get the full story -- Good luck with that shit...

[Downwinder]

5. In 1983 US bombed Mental Hospital in Grenada.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/22/opinion/l-mental-hospital-remains-a-casualty-of-the-grenada-invasion-100465.html

[Octafish]

6. Kick for hospital patients burned to death in their hospital beds.

Not to belabor the point that this is a war crime or anything, but whatever happened to the gunship video and audio?

Betcha America's secret police superspies who erase the heck out of that never even heard of Rose Mary Woods.