Afghan withdrawal fiasco - drone strike coverup

Independent investigations by The New York Times and The Washington Post are calling into question the U.S. military claims that its Aug. 29 drone strike in Kabul destroyed a car operated by an ISIS-K sympathizer, which allegedly contained explosives destined for the Kabul airport.

The U.S. Central Command initial statement described the strike as a "self-defense" operation that eliminated an "imminent ISIS-K threat" to the airport. "Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material."

[...]

But the Times and Post investigations were unable to find evidence of any explosives in the car, which they say was driven by 43-year-old Zemari Ahmadi, an engineer working for the U.S. aid group Nutrition and Education International, which aims to eliminate malnutrition in Afghanistan. Family members told the Times that Ahmadi had applied for refugee resettlement in the United States.

[...]

Military officials had said the driver seemed to have loaded explosives into the car that day, but security camera footage obtained by the Times shows the alleged explosives were likely containers used to carry water home to his family. "I filled the containers myself, and helped him load them into the trunk," a guard told the Times.

[...]

Ahmadi's relatives told the Times that 10 members of their family were killed, including seven children.

[...]

U.S. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Bill Urban declined to comment on the allegations, citing an ongoing investigation.

The Centcom group that gathered the intelligence is reviewing all the information it had, although it's uncertain when or if any results will be made public. [...]

The Times and Post analyses also called into question military assertions of "secondary explosions" in the courtyard. Times reporters could find no evidence of a second explosion at the scene. Experts pointed to the lack of collapsed walls or destroyed vegetation. "It seriously questions the credibility of the intelligence or technology utilized to determine this was a legitimate target," security consultant Chris Cobb-Smith told the Times.

"My theory is: The [Hellfire] explosives themselves ruptured the gas tank, released the vapor, and because of the fire that happened a short time afterward, it detonated and caused something that may have been explosion-like," said Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Steven Kwon, president of California-based Nutrition and Education International, told the Post that the white sedan belonged to the organization. After Ahmadi met at the NEI compound to discuss an emergency food aid program for displaced people, he spent the rest of the day running errands, Kwon said.

Kwon denied that NEI has any association with ISIS-K. "We're trying to help people," he told the Post. "Why would we have explosives to kill people?"

  NPR

My guess is that it won't.

No objections here

I don't hear anyone screaming, "How are we going to pay for that?"

For the second time in the five months since he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden on Sunday ordered a U.S. bombing raid on Syria, and for the first time, he also bombed Iraq. The rationale offered was the same as Biden's first air attack in February: the U.S., in the words of Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region.” He added that “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.”

  Glenn Greenwald

Bullshit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Silence the reporting

The Israeli Defense Forces defended such strikes on Twitter, saying Hamas has "placed military assets" inside high-rise buildings for intelligence gathering, communication and other purposes.

  The Hill

Sure.

The AP reported about an hour earlier that Jawwad Mahdi, owner of the high-rise, said he received a call from the military warning that the building would be a target.

Madhi said he was told he had an hour to make sure everyone had left the building. After being told the warning, AP staffers and other residents of the building “fled in a panic,” the news outlet wrote.

[...]

According to CNN, more than 2,000 rockets have been fired toward Israel from Gaza since Monday.

Israel has launched a series of retaliatory strikes, with the AP reporting earlier Saturday that an air raid on a three-story house in a refugee camp killed 10 people, including eight children.