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[Июл. 27, 2010|11:21 am] |
Article by: Yahoo News
WASHINGTON – When it comes to war, killing the enemy is an accepted fact. Even amid the sensation of the WikiLeaks.org revelations, that stark reality lies at the core of new charges that some American military commando operations may have amounted to war crimes.
Among the thousands of pages of classified U.S. documents released Sunday by the whistle-blower website are nearly 200 incidents that involve Task Force 373, an elite military special operations unit tasked with hunting down and killing enemy combatants in Afghanistan.
Denouncing suggestions that U.S. troops are engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan, military officials and even war crimes experts said Monday that enemy hit lists, while ugly and uncomfortable, are an enduring and sometimes unavoidable staple of war.
Some, however, cautioned that without proper controls that mandate the protection of innocent civilians, such targeted hits could veer into criminal activities.
Buried in the more than 91,000 documents are descriptions of Task Force 373's missions, laying bare graphic violence as well as mistakes, questionable judgments and deadly consequences — sometimes under fire, other times not.
In June 2007, the unit went in search of Taliban commander Qari Ur-Rahman. According to the files, U.S. forces, under the cover of night, engaged in a firefight with suspected insurgents and called in an AC-130 gunship to take out the enemy.
Only later did they realize that seven of those killed and four of those wounded were Afghan National Police. The incident was labeled a misunderstanding, due in part to problems with the Afghan forces conducting night operations.
In another mission, members of Task Force 373 conducted a secret raid, hoping to snag al-Qaida commander Abu Laith al-Libi, who was believed to be running terrorist training camps in Pakistan's border region. Five rockets were launched into a group of buildings, and when forces moved into the destroyed area they found six dead insurgents and seven dead children. Al-Libi was not among the dead.
The summary of the incident says initial checks showed no indications that children would be there. And it quotes an Afghan governor later saying that while the residents there were in shock, they "understand it was caused ultimately by the presence of hoodlums — the people think it is good that bad men were killed."
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who organized the release of the classified documents, said he believes these are among "thousands" of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan that could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, although he acknowledged such claims would have to be tested in court.
But even activists well versed in the realm of investigating war crimes would not go that far.
"I don't think this incident rises to the level of a war crime, but it disturbs me greatly that seven children were killed," said Tom Parker, policy director at Amnesty International USA.
The Afghanistan war, with its terrorist hit lists, counterinsurgency battles and high-tech battle gear, presents difficult questions. "It is really hard to know where assassination ends and war starts," said Parker.
Targeted military strikes, he said, are on the fringe of accepted military practice during an armed conflict.
"This is a relatively new form of warfare that we're seeing now," he said. "The technology takes you to a different place and raises questions that just weren't there 20 years ago. A lot of these questions don't have answers — they have a test of acceptability."
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| Praha 3 |
[Авг. 22, 2007|09:29 pm] |
| [ | Настроение |
| |  content | ] |
перерыв...
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| Just Married |
[Июл. 30, 2007|07:17 pm] |
| [ | Настроение |
| |  drunk | ] |
Вернулись... Дома...
Муж...
Жена...
Гип Гип...!!!
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| ... |
[Май. 6, 2007|05:23 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | alex, photos | ] |
| [ | Музыка |
| | Metallica - The Unforgiven II | ] |
(900*600, 143 кб)
...Дошли всё таки руки и до фильма "Сволочи", ожидал, конечно, немного другой концовки, но режиссёр наверное сказал - "и так сойдёт!" |
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| шАшлыК. |
[Май. 6, 2007|04:09 pm] |
| [ | Музыка |
| | Metallica - The Unforgiven II | ] |
Одни из немногих трезвых физиономий с прошлой субботы.
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| Конь. |
[Май. 4, 2007|11:10 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | alex, photo | ] |
| [ | Настроение |
| |  bored | ] |
| [ | Музыка |
| | Nirvana - Lithium | ] |
Картинка про старость... и не хватку сена
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| הקיץ בדרך... |
[Апр. 24, 2007|10:29 pm] |
Привет всем - кто не забыл, кто читает...
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chameleon20
