Posted on 06/22/2002 9:02:51 AM PDT by Kermit
Batten the hatches ladies and gents. It looks like that propaganda storm that's been a-brewing on the horizon is getting ready bust loose. Prepare yourselves for the arrival of Massacre at Mazar, a "documentary" that tells the honest-to-God, true-to-life, tell-it-like-it-was, no-holds-barred story of American G.I.'s gunning down innocent Talibanis during that prison uprising last year in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. You want war crimes? You can't handle war crime!! Witness this lede from the Guardian:
A former chairman of Amnesty International yesterday called for an independent investigation into claims that US troops tortured Taliban prisoners and assisted in the disappearance of thousands of others in the war in Afghanistan.
Andrew McEntee said that "very credible evidence" in a British documentary film needed to be investigated. He was speaking after the first showing in Berlin of the film, "Massacre at Mazar".
"This film raises questions that will not go away," said Mr McEntee, who led Amnesty International UK in the 1990s and is now an international human rights lawyer.
But wait, it gets worse than that. This from the German version of that lunatic-fringe stalwart Indymedia:
American soldiers have been involved in the torture and murder of captured Taliban prisoners, and may have aided in the "disappearance" of up to 3 000 men in the region of Mazar-i-Sharif, according to Jamie Doran, an Irish documentary film-maker.
Doran's latest film, Massacre At Mazar, was shown on Wednesday in in the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin, and there were immediate calls for an international commission to be set up to investigate charges made in the documentary. Andrew McEntee, a leading international human rights lawyer, who has viewed the film footage and read full transcripts, believes there is prima facie evidence of serious war crimes having been committed by American soldiers in Afghanistan.
'The Americans did whatever they wanted' McEntee, who was in Berlin for Wednesday's special screening, said war crimes had been committed not just under international law but, also, "under the laws of the United States itself".
Much of the footage shown in Doran's 20-minute documentary was taken secretly, and although witnesses were said to be living in fear of reprisal from within Afghanistan itself they had all agreed to appear at any future international war crimes tribunal to give evidence, it was claimed. One witness in the film claimed he had seen an American soldier break an Afghan prisoner's neck and pour acid on others. "The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them," he alleged.
Neck-snapping, acid-pouring, disappearing-making American Special Forces soldiers on a wilding rampage in Mazar-i-Sharif!?! Bring out the international commissions and committees and blue-ribbon panels. Get to work with the investigations and keep those judges on standby at the Hague for the war crimes trials. Oh, by the by, what's your evidence for these supposed horrific war crimes, Mr. Irish Filmaker Doran? (from an interview at the World Socialist Web Site)
World Socialist Web Site: Regarding the US involvement in what took place, could I ask about the witnesses who appear in the film?
Jamie Doran: Three members of the Afghan military appear in the film, two ordinary soldiers and one general. Then there is one taxi diver who witnessed three containers with blood pouring from them. He said his hair stood on end and that it was horrific. Then two of the truck drivers testify who were forced to take the containers into the desert. Based on the statements of the witnesses, the total number of those transported was at the very least 1,500, but more likely the total is up to 3,000.
WSWS: Is there any other evidence, apart from the testimony of these witnesses, on the involvement of the American military in the deaths of these 3,000 prisoners?
JD: Absolutely not. The reason the story has been released early is that I received a warning from Mazar-i-Sharif that the graves in the desert were being tampered with. All the evidence is in the graves, and it is essential that those graves are not touched! [....]
WSWS: Is there any evidence to point to the participation of American soldiers in shooting victims in the desert?
JD: I have absolutely no evidence that American troops were involved in the shooting that took place in the desert. At the same time, there are other witnesses to the mass grave in the desert. There are human rights activists who found the mass grave in the desert even before me, and they now describe my film as “the missing link.” They found the grave and, under the auspices of the UN, dug up a small section of earth containing 15 bodies. They estimate that in that one section of the desert there were about a thousand bodies. They too are calling for the grave to be protected, because at the moment it is being protected by no one. So the evidence can be easily tampered with.
Wait just a goshdarn second here. In the words of the filmmaker there's "absolutely no evidence" that American troops were involved in the Mysterious Massive Massacre at Mazar? But, but, but that's not what the Indymedia man said. Toni Maroni's lede began American soldiers have been involved in the torture and murder of captured Taliban prisoners...
What's up with that, Indymedia man dude? Where's that journalistic objectivity for which your organization is so well known?
I hereby proclaim myself the first to officially call bullshit on the whole "Massacre at Mazar" affair.
By the way, you want a real massacre at Mazar? Check out this 1998 document from the organization Human Rights Watch.
On August 8, 1998, Taliban militia forces captured the city of Mazar-i Sharif in northwest Afghanistan, the only major city controlled by the United Front, the coalition of forces opposed to the Taliban. The fall of Mazar was part of a successful offensive that gave the Taliban control of almost every major city and important significant territory in northern and central Afghanistan. Within the first few hours of seizing control of the city, Taliban troops killed scores of civilians in indiscriminate attacks, shooting noncombatants and suspected combatants alike in residential areas, city street sand markets. Witnesses described it as a "killing frenzy" as the advancing forces shot at "anything that moved." Retreating opposition forces may also have engaged in indiscriminate shooting as they fled the city. Human Rights Watch believes that at least hundreds of civilians were among those killed as the panicked population of Mazar-i Sharif tried to evade the gunfire or escape the city.
In the days that followed, Taliban forces carried out a systematic search for male members of the ethnic Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek communities in the city. The Hazaras, a Persian-speaking Shi’a ethnic group, were particularly targeted, in part because of their religious identity. During the house-to-house searches, scores and perhaps hundreds of Hazara men and boys were summarily executed, apparently to ensure that they would be unable to mount any resistance to the Taliban.
Oh, right. That massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif doesn't count, since it was carried out by Talibs intent on ethnic cleansing, backed up and verified by hard evidence, and doesn't invlove any supposed American evil-doing.
Women watch from roofs, as other whip themselves and touch the flagpole battle standard,
held above them. It is from the battle which lead to the death of Imam Hussein,
which split Shiites from Sunnis.
At the Shibirgan prison, the Red Cross full of money from Americans
who THOUGHT they were donating to the victims of families murdered in the 911 Atrocities,
have the gall to give the money to the Taliban.
In this picture, a Taliban fighter receives money from Red Cross, in Shibirgan.
Commercial journalism is superficial and negative towards the institutions upon which we-the-people depend. That makes commercial journalism inherently anticonservative.What this article describes is no different from the editing of the Rodney King arrest video down to only those parts which made the LA police look bad. In both cases, ironically, the target is safe to attack precisely because the charges are not true, or are grossly atypical of the target.
If you were attacking the LAPD and it routinely did the worst of what the video indicated, you'd be sweating bullets over the idea of broadcasting it for fear of the personal consequences. I somehow doubt that the journalists in question were particularly worried about that, tho . . .
Say it three times real fast and see if it becomes relevant .
I really despise these leftist,anti-American journalist pukes.
It's not anything like the Massive Massacre of Innocent Americans in New York and Northern Virginia.
You're either with US or you're against US, Your choice!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.