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U.S. drone strike that killed Afghan civilians will go unpunished, officials say
Review concluded strike was tragic mistake and not caused by misconduct or negligence
The Associated Press ·
Posted: Dec 13, 2021 3:56 PM ET
No U.S. troops involved in the August drone strike that killed innocent Kabul civilians and children will face disciplinary action, U.S. defence officials said Monday.
Officials said that Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has approved recommendations on the disciplinary matter from the generals who lead U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command, based on the findings of an independent Pentagon review released last month.
The Generals got to recommend their own discipline. How cool is that?
The review, done by Air Force Lt.-Gen. Sami Said and endorsed by Austin in November, found there were breakdowns in communication and in the process of identifying and confirming the target of the bombing, which killed 10 civilians, including seven children. But he concluded that the strike was a tragic mistake and not caused by misconduct or negligence.
And yet, the breakdowns somehow were either unnoticed, or were ignored, and the command to strike was given anyway. Who was responsible for the breakdowns? Does that not qualify as negligence?
By holding no-one responsible, at least in part, for this travesty, the Generals make sure that it will happen again, and again. Military madness!
Austin asked Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of Central Command, and Gen. Richard Clark, head of Special Operations Command, to review Said's conclusions and come back to him with recommendations. The two commanders agreed with Said's findings, and did not recommend any discipline, officials said, adding that Austin endorsed their decisions. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss decisions not yet made public. Austin's latest endorsement was first reported by The New York Times.
Strike killed 7 children
The Aug. 29 drone strike on a white Toyota Corolla sedan killed Zemerai Ahmadi and nine family members, including seven children. Ahmadi, 37, was a longtime employee of an American humanitarian organization.
The intelligence about the car and its potential threat came just days after an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. troops and 169 Afghans at a Kabul airport gate. The U.S. was working to evacuate thousands of Americans, Afghans and other allies in the wake of the collapse of the country's government.
Said concluded that U.S. forces genuinely believed that the car they were following was an imminent threat and that they needed to strike it before it got closer to the airport. He concluded that better communication between those making the strike decision and other support personnel might have raised more doubts about the bombing, but in the end may not have prevented it.
He made a number of recommendations, including that more be done to prevent what military officials call "confirmation bias" — the idea that troops making the strike decision were too quick to conclude that what they were seeing aligned with the intelligence and confirmed their conclusion to bomb what turned out to be the wrong car.
And he said the military should have personnel present with a strike team, and their job should be to actively question such conclusions. And he recommended that the military improve its procedures to ensure that children and other innocent civilians are not present before launching a time-sensitive strike.
It's hard to believe that they don't already do that.
Officials said that McKenzie and Clarke largely agreed with Said's recommendations.
The U.S. is working to pay financial reparations to the relatives and surviving family members, and potentially get them out of Afghanistan, but nothing has been finalized.
US nuclear sub pulls in for repairs after collision in South China Sea
13 Dec, 2021 17:32
May 27, 2021. © AFP / US Navy / Mack Jamieson
The US Navy submarine that stoked international tensions after colliding with an underwater mountain in the South China Sea pulled into the California coast on Sunday, bearing visible surface damage from the crash in October.
The USS Connecticut nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine arrived at San Diego Bay with significant damage to its bow. Defense news outlet The Drive reported that the Seawolf-class vessel was missing its entire bow sonar dome, which would have made the 6,200-mile (9,950-kilometer) journey across the Pacific “extremely unpleasant.”
According to the US Naval Institute (USNI), the “inoperable” sonar dome would have made it “unsafe” for the stricken submarine to make the transit underwater. The outlet also added that the ballast tanks and forward section of the vessel had been damaged as well.
Following an initial damage assessment at Guam, the ship was scheduled to undergo additional repairs at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Washington, the outlet reported – adding that it was unclear why the boat was directed to San Diego instead.
It is also not known how long the repairs will take – or how much they will cost. The Navy has not commented on potential repairs, but Naval News has suggested that a new sonar dome would need to be a “custom repair job” if the submarine is deemed “worthy and cost-effective.”
US Pacific Fleet Submarine Force spokesperson Commander Cindy Fields would only tell The Drive that the vessel is in port and “remains in a safe and stable condition.”
Nearly a dozen members of the crew were injured during the collision, though none of their injuries were thought to be life-threatening, the USNI reported, adding that the submarine’s nuclear reactor and propulsion systems had not been affected.
An investigation by the US Seventh Fleet, which operates in the western Pacific, stated that the vessel had struck an “uncharted seamount” but China criticized the “ambiguous” statement as not a sufficient explanation of the events during a period of escalating tensions.
Last month, Seventh Fleet commander Vice Admiral Karl Thomas fired the boat’s commanding officer, executive officer and chief sonar technician “due to loss of confidence.” Thomas had determined that the incident could have been prevented by “sound judgment, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning, watch team execution and risk management.”
Iran releases Israel map with multiple targets marked
15 Dec, 2021 11:58
Iran has decided to bolster its traditional threats against archrival Israel with visual materials, publishing a map of the Jewish state marked with numerous possible targets Tehran could hit in response to its foe's aggression.
An article with the attention-grabbing headline “Just one wrong move!” appeared in state-run English-language newspaper the Tehran Times on Tuesday.
“An intensification of the Israeli military threats against Iran seems to suggest that the Zionist regime has forgotten that Iran is more than capable of hitting them from anywhere,” the authors of the piece suggested.
Alongside the warning was a map of Israel, almost entirely covered with red pins symbolizing possible targets Iranian missiles could strike.
“At the strategic level, we do not intend to strike anyone, but at the operational and tactical level we are ready for a decisive response and a quick and tough offensive against the enemy,” he stressed, apparently referring to Israel.
The Iranian ballistic missile attack on a US base in western Iraq in January 2020 and the downing of an American Global Hawk drone over the Strait of Hormuz in June 2019 have proven Tehran’s capabilities, Bagheri insisted.
The Tehran Times pointed out that Israel has intensified its activities, as talks to revive the landmark 2015 Iranian nuclear deal between Tehran and the world powers restart after a break in Vienna.
The moves by Israel the paper considered the most concerning were: continuing Israeli air raids on targets in Syria, which relies on Tehran’s help in fighting terrorists; the reported calls by Israeli military and intelligence for the US to clamp down on the Iranian ballistic missile program; and the planned IDF drills in the Mediterranean that would simulate an attack on Iran.
“Keep your hands off!” the authors of the article wrote in conclusion.
NATO dismisses Russia’s call for moratorium on missile deployment
15 Dec, 2021 01:41
NATO has rejected Russia’s call for a ban on the deployment of nuclear-capable intermediate-range missiles in Europe, while blaming Moscow for violating the INF treaty that was scrapped by the US.
Responding to a Russian suggestion for a moratorium on the deployment of such missiles in Europe on Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg dubbed the idea “not credible.”
Of course not! How can NATO keep the American-made missile inventory moving if there's a moratorium on them?
“The proposal from Russia on a moratorium is not credible because we had a ban and they violated that ban,” Stoltenberg said, referring to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), a landmark 1987 security agreement that the US unilaterally withdrew from back in 2019.
He repeated the bloc’s accusations that Moscow had run afoul of the now-defunct treaty by deploying missile systems prohibited under its scope, demanding Russia dismantle them before offering to negotiate a moratorium.
So unless Russia in a verifiable way destroys all its SSC-8 missiles, which are those missiles that violated the INF treaty, then it is not credible when they now propose a ban on something they actually have already started to deploy
NATO's secretary general was referring to the 9M729 missile, also known under NATO’s reporting name SSC-8 Screwdriver. The 9M729 is a ground-launched cruise missile, designed to be used with mobile launchers. Washington and NATO have repeatedly claimed the missiles were created in violation of the INF Treaty, which banned land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of 500km to 5,500km. The 9M729 missiles were ultimately cited by the Trump administration as the pretext for scrapping the INF agreement.
Moscow, however, has maintained that the munitions have been created in “full compliance” with the treaty, and could fly up to 480km.
Russia has also claimed that the US had been in violation of the now-defunct treaty itself, pointing to the Mk-41 Aegis Ashore systems, which are deployed in Europe.
While Washington portrays the systems only as a part of its anti-missile defense, Russia has repeatedly pointed out that the Mk-41s can be used to launch cruise missiles such as Tomahawks, which are currently carried exclusively by US naval vessels.
In recent weeks, Russia has called for the creation of a comprehensive security agreement, with the proposed restrictions on missile deployment coming as part of it. Moscow also signaled that it has no trust in NATO’s promises on the non-deployment of such missiles, insisting that such assurances must come in a legally binding form. The stance was reiterated by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, who warned that Moscow might ultimately be forced to deploy such weaponry in Europe itself.
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