The March 11, 2012 massacre of the 17 Afghan citizens was just one of several hundred committed by US armed forces according to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Obama’s deliberate lies about the events surrounding the massacre and the fundamental responsibility of the high military command for the crimes committed by its troops underscores the breakdown of the occupation of Afghanistan. The President of the United States has personally played a major role in the cover-up.
According to the US military and the Obama regime, at 3 am on March 11, 2012 a deranged soldier walked off a Special Forces Base in rural Kandahar Province and without command authority entered two villages (two miles apart), shot and killed 17 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children and wounded an unspecified number of villagers; then he doused their bodies with gasoline, set them on fire and hiked back to base to surrender himself to his commanders.
This surrender, the Pentagon claims, was recorded on video. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, vouched for its authenticity as conclusive proof of a lone mass murderer. The military command quickly whisked the initially unnamed murderer out of the Afghanistan to the maximum security federal prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and only then identified him as a 38-year old, multi-decorated, 11-year army veteran, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.
However, according to an independent Afghan parliamentary investigation led by Sayed Ishaq Gillami, and initial investigations by General Sher Mohammed Karimi of the Afghan Army, who interviewed residents of the two villages, there are significant contradictions in the US military’s and President Obama’s story. Eye witnesses have testified that up to 20 soldiers were involved, aided by a helicopter. What they described was a US Special Forces’ night time raid, which involved the systematic breaking down of doors, rousing the sleeping families and shooting Afghan victims.
The villages, where the murders occurred, were two miles apart, making it highly unlikely that a lone, fully armed solder could haul a multi-gallon can of gasoline from his base to the first sleeping village, break down the doors of one or more homes, commit the murders, douse and burn his victims and then proceed on foot two miles further on to the second village, shoot, kill and burn the next set of unarmed villagers and then walk back to his base and surrender.
When the implausibility first official story became evident, the Obama public relations crew released a new version on March 26: According to the revised version of events, the lone, deranged Sgt. Bales committed the first massacre in the early morning hours of March 11, walked back to base for breakfast and lunch and then walked out again to a second village for another round of mass murder – before returning and turning himself in to his commander posing for the video.
Obama has tried to sell the confession video as proof of the official version of events to a skeptical Afghan President Karzai who contemptuously demanded the video be turned over for a detailed examination for authenticity. Obama has refused to release the video.
Title: The Massacre of the Afghan 17 and the Obama Cover-Up
Author: James Petras
Source: Information Clearing House March 27, 2012
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30922.htm
Student Researcher: Dane Steffy, Sonoma State University
Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips, Sonoma State University