Did This General Bomb A Hospital ???

Here is yet another lesson from Vietnam we apparently have not learned:

Unfair blame has come down on the heads of American soldiers and allied Afghan forces over an attack on a civilian hospital in Kunduz last year, while the general in charge of the mission, Major General Sean P. Swindell, faced no consequences, according to an Army officer who spoke exclusively to Mondoweiss.

“This thing was his fucking fault. That general right there avoided all blame,” said “Frank,” - not his real name - of Swindell.

“It sets a really, really bad precedent,” but falls into a broad pattern in the Army: Generals can get away with almost anything.

“I wish the general in charge was prosecuted for this, but that’s my personal opinion. He should be taking ultimate responsibility for it, since he set up the conditions that something like this would happen.”

More disturbing, Frank said he sees the same pattern of self-serving lies and statistics rigging (even inventing targets) to please the chain of command. It’s what happened in Vietnam, with privates, sergeants, captains, majors all reporting body counts as a sign of success, instead of making any meaningful evaluation of whether the United States was winning or losing (because we weren’t). Now, in Afghanistan, it’s number of “targets actioned,” drone hits or false arrests made in raids, that officers try to inflate. It’s the reason we’re losing, Frank feels.

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Swindell would have been, or should have been, watching the plane destroy the building in real time from surveillance above, Frank said. The building had a Doctors Without Borders logo on the roof. He should have known what his soldiers were doing at a critical moment.

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From his perch at the SOJTF in Kabul, Swindell should have been aware of what was happening, with his men trapped in a two day firefight for a city just overrun by the Taliban. That he didn’t know where the M.S.F building was, one of the few with lights on in the city, was “negligence,” Frank says, that ended in injured people dying one of the most horrifying deaths imaginable: burned alive while trapped in a hospital bed. A doctor quoted by the Times recalls hearing their screams as he fled the destruction from above.


“Swindell made sure he was in charge of everything, but when it came time to being accountable for something that happened, he said ‘That wasn’t my fault! It was the guy on the ground.’ He was the one who wanted to be in charge of everything, but he passed the buck like the worst possible leader.”

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“This is war,” [Frank] said. “This is what happens in war.”

You can read the rest @
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/05/whistleblower-swindell-responsible/

No, Frank ... this is murder, not war.

Unfortunately, Frank provides no "smoking gun" evidence. Yes, the general should have known things and should have done things, but we really don't know what he knew or did. The most we can say at this point is that he was indeed negligent.

But isn't that the very reason (we are told again and again) all this is happening?

*Somehow negligence led CIA, FBI, NSA, and our other intelligence agencies to miss numerous clear signs of the pending 9/11 attacks.

*Somehow negligence caused our armed forces to be totally inept on that day.

*Somehow negligence led us to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for no good reason.

*And now somehow negligence is leading us to commit war crimes such as bombing hospitals.

Q: Have any of our "negligent" leaders or military forces been fired or otherwise disciplined?

A: Not at all; most of them have been promoted. Only the whistle blowers have been punished.

Does that make any sense to you?