New York Times has one version of the story. As US troops in Afghanistan go into their 6th year of having their resources (and reinforcements) robbed for the Iraq war instead, and as the anticipated Taliban offensive heats up, there will be more of these incidents. The NYT quotes from the original AP story posted below on this blog:
“They were firing everywhere, and they even opened fire on 14 to 15 vehicles passing on the highway,� said Tur Gul, 38, who was standing on the roadside by a gas station and was shot twice in the right hand. “They opened fire on everybody, the ones inside the vehicles and the ones on foot.�
Some of the wounded interviewed by The A.P. said the soldiers opened fire indiscriminately on passing cars and pedestrians on the busy main road.
“When we parked our vehicle, when they passed us, they opened fire on our vehicle,� said 15-year-old Mohammad Ishaq, who was hit by two bullets, in the left arm and right ear. “It was a convoy of three American Humvees. All three Humvees were firing around.
Now how could soldiers in Afghanistan get the impression that it was OK to kill civilians?
In Afghanistan, among Special Forces who are in the field, “media engagement training� can be pretty basic. After Green Berets confiscated some videotape from CBS News in December 2002, the top Special Forces commander issued a directive to his men saying that they did not have authorization to kill journalists “for the sole purpose of recovering film or videotape� unless it was in self-defense.
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