Posted on 10/16/2015 1:07:52 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Days before the Oct. 3 U.S. air attack on a hospital in Afghanistan, American special operations analysts were gathering intelligence on the facility — which they knew was a protected medical site — because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity, The Associated Press has learned.
It's unclear whether commanders who unleashed the AC-130 gunship on the hospital — killing at least 22 patients and hospital staff — were aware that the site was a hospital or knew about the allegations of possible enemy activity. The Pentagon initially said the attack was to protect U.S. troops engaged in a firefight and has since said it was a mistake.
The special operations analysts had assembled a dossier that included maps with the hospital circled, along with indications that intelligence agencies were tracking the location of the Pakistani operative and activity reports based on overhead surveillance
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted2.ap.org ...
So what?
If rounds are coming from the hospital, then the doctors and nurses in there, who can hear the firing, need to get out.
Counter-battery fire does not look at the target, it just goes to where the rounds came from.
All of the patients were Taliban wounded and the Afghan Army called in the coordinates to hit it.
It’s good to have your input, having been there. Will this incident make it even more difficult to deal with the Afghani population?
The Taliban is given “plausible deniability”. The cover of being under the Doctors Without Borders was to insure that international blame would be shifted to the US “occupiers”.
Given what Taliban and other Muslim Jihadists throughout the Mideast have done to their "volunteers" this was a very unwise decision on their part.
The Afghani population will agree with whoever is standing there with the weapons or the money. Our absence allows the Taliban to offer them and force them to do anything the Taliban wants. When we were controlling entrances on the Pakistan and Iranian borders, we had a much better handle on what happened within AF. Our minimal presence is allowing total access to the populace by the Taliban. Who knows what is going on outside of our direct view.
Other than an assertion that analysts knew the site was a hospital, there is absolutely no other substantiation. No quotes stating that it was a hospital, anonymous or otherwise.
My understanding is that it was not clearly marked out as a hospital with distinctive Red Crescent or Red Cross painted on its roof. Even one of the ground combatants, who described the firefight as the worst in his life, didn’t identify the place as a hospital.
Another Obummer effort to demoralize our warriors. If this was a C-130 gunship our men darn well knew the threat target. This administration’s jumping in to take the side of the enemy versus our fighters is so disheartening I just want to scream.
It’s probably a silly thing to make mention of, but can you imagine if this took place under Bush instead of the rich boy from Honolulu? There would be wall to wall coverage from the media and late night comedians demanding Bush to be drawn and quartered publicly for this incident.
Fighting our enemies (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) by getting our guys pointlessly killed in Afghanistan and Iraq was military malpractice on an historical scale.
Actually Saudi Arabia is our and Israel’s ally. They are just mad at us because we are being to friendly with Iran and aren’t stopping ISIS enough for them.
yep
SURE they are...
They knew the GPS coordinates. The cockpit crew questioned the legality of their orders.
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