What About the Hundreds Who Were Suffocated at Kunduz?

[acmavm]

America's Srebrenica

http://www.counterpunch.com/jones05082004.html

<snip>

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio commentator, has likened the abusive and humiliating treatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, contractors, and CIA personnel to "a college fraternity prank" (New York Times, 6 May 2004). Anyone with a grain of empathy who has seen images of the degradation inflicted on hapless Iraqi men can only be appalled by the comment. In a sense, however, Limbaugh has a point. The brutal mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison is small potatoes, compared to what appears to have been a U.S.-sponsored atrocity -- the mass murder of thousands of prisoners of war -- in Afghanistan less than three years ago.

After the surrender of the fortress of Kunduz, at the tail end of the Afghan war in November 2001, hundreds of Taliban prisoners -- "young men who had expected the protection of the Geneva conventions" after surrendering to U.S. and U.S.-backed forces -- "instead died horribly" at the hands of the U.S.'s Northern Alliance surrogates, either by suffocation in the container trucks used to transport them towards the Shebarghan prison, or by outright execution in killings fields around Shebarghan.

<snip>
Doran went further still. He claimed that U.S. soldiers were present when the containers were opened, and ordered the destruction of the ghastly evidence inside. "When the containers were finally opened, a mess of urine, blood, faeces, vomit and rotting flesh was all that remained ... As the containers were lined up outside the prison, a soldier accompanying the convoy was present when the prison commanders received orders to dispose of the evidence quickly." He cites witness testimony to the effect that "In each container maybe 150-160 had been killed. ... The Americans told the Shebarghan people to get them outside the city before they were filmed by satellite."

<snip>

Witnesses to the grim events also alleged that "600 Taliban PoWs who survived the containers' shipment to the Shebarghan prison ... were taken to a spot in the desert and executed in the presence of about 30 to 40 U.S. special forces soldiers" (The Globe and Mail, 19 December 2002). Other U.S. soldiers are said to have involved themselves directly and enthusiastically in the "dirty work" of prisoner torture and the disposal of corpses. "The Americans did whatever they wanted," stated one Afghan witness. "We had no power to stop them. Everything was under the control of the American commander."

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I've been wondering where the hell this story went, and how it got swept under the carpet so easily. Well, here it is again.

[indepat]

1. I hate to be cynical and jaundiced, but what do the American people,

in general, care?

[toddzilla]

2. maybe if we made it a fucking gamewhow...

?

[truth2power]

3. Yes, and Rummy gave them their orders.

Around this time, I think the article was dated 12/01, Rummy stated that we had no facilities to take prisoners, or something close to that.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that he was telling the military what they were expected to do. Get rid of these guys, somehow. Shortly after, they were found suffocated in the shipping containers.

I believe this atrocity can be directly traced to Rumsfield. Sickening, rotten, soulless bastard! :puke:

I wish I could find that article. Had it saved somewhere, but can't remember where.

[Merlin]

4. I'm glad somebody is raising this important atrocity again.

It's vital that we never let our own people get away with this kind of crap. How many GIs will die, just fer'instance, because of the rightful outrage of the families, friends and fellow citizens of the men who were the object of these crimes? How much more impossible does it make the "winning of hearts and minds"? It's incalculable.