Despite being pro-life and pro-family, the United States government continues to bomb weddings

Terrorists

America and her allies
Take one thing for granted:
Any bomb that's dropped
Is nicer than one planted.

DC Dave

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The United States has dropped more bombs on other people
than any other nation on earth.  We hold the title of "World's
Most Prolific Bomber."  The bombs we're dropping now are
just icing on the cake.

Bombs away!

"We begin bombing in ten minutes."
--Ronald Reagan


20 Dead Taliban, 80 Dead Villagers
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05252006.html
Bombing Without Regrets

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40 Afghan civilians killed as U.S.-led air strike hits wedding party
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/06/content_10313627.htm
www.chinaview.cn  2008-11-06 01:45:43

By Zhang Yunlong

KABUL, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- At least 40 Afghan civilians have been
killed and 28 more injured as an airstrike of the U.S.-led Coalition
forces hit a wedding gathering in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar
province, officials and local villagers said Wednesday.

The U.S.-led troops called in gunship helicopters Monday afternoon
to retaliate on militants who earlier that day attacked them at Wech
Baghtu village in Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar. However, the air
bombing hit a wedding party being held near the hilly area where the
Taliban insurgents' firing came from, according to locals.

Condemning the incident, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was
saddened by "the killing of 40 civilians and injuring of 28 others in
a Coalition air strike," a statement from his office said. "President
Karzai has stressed repeatedly in the past that civilian casualties
should be avoided but the Coalition forces usually carry out bombing
without planning."

Haji Roozi Khan, owner of the house where the wedding ceremony was
held, earlier told Xinhua that at least 37 civilians including10
women, 23 children were killed and 35 others including the bride
wounded in the bombing and firing of Coalition forces which lasted
from 2 p.m. Monday until late that night.

A Xinhua reporter at the scene Wednesday afternoon saw many locals
there were still searching the debris for their relatives' dead
bodies. Locals said the casualties' figure was expected to rise.

The Afghanistan-based U.S. forces said it had initiated an
investigation and dispatched coalition personnel to the site.

"Though facts are unclear at this point, we take very seriously
our responsibility to protect the people of Afghanistan and to avoid
circumstances where noncombatant civilians are placed at risk," said a
U.S. military statement.

While congratulating Barack Obama on his victory in Tuesday's U.S.
presidential elections, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the
new leadership of the U.S. at a press conference earlier on Wednesday
to prevent from harming civilians in their military operations in
Afghanistan, where some 70,000 U.S. and NATO troops are fighting
Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.

"Our first demand is to avoid harming civilians in Afghanistan,"
Karzai said.

Civilian killings are sensitive and continuous happenings in the
past years have spurred common Afghans' anger, if not hatred, towards
U.S.-led foreign troops and undermined the popularity of the
Western-backed Karzai administration.

A bloodiest one in years was on Aug. 22 when a U.S. airstrike in
Shindand district of western Herat province, according to the UN and
Afghan government probe, claimed over 90 civilian lives, which
prompted the Afghan cabinet to pass a historic resolution asking for a
re-regulation of foreign troops' presence in the post-Taliban nation.

Though the Afghan authorities repeatedly ask for better
coordinated operations of foreign troops and an end to civilian
casualties, the Western troops, mostly relying on air bombing to fight
insurgents, continue to pound civilian targets, either due to
misleading information, aimless firing, or self-protection in cases of
so-called "escalation of force."

In several reported cases, the result of the probe done by the
foreign troops usually came late and the figure of civilian deaths
they confirmed was much smaller than reported from locals.

Obama, the new U.S. president-elect, has said before that he, if
got elected, will send 7,000 more troops to the Afghan battlefield. He
also threatened to launch uni-lateral attacks across the Afghan
border, conditionally if Pakistan is "unable" or "unwilling" to
contain the reported escalating cross-border militant violence.

Karzai in his Wednesday talk also demanded from the U.S. a change
of its Afghan war strategy, saying, "The war on terror should be
conducted in areas where the sanctuaries of terrorists and their
training centers exist."

The Afghan leader is apparently referring to the reported militant
hideouts in neighbouring Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas, which
he has emphasized must be dismantled for ending insurgency inside his
own country.

The U.S. forces in Afghanistan had conducted several bombing
attacks into Pakistani side which was said to target militants but
sometimes killed civilians. Islamabad categorically condemned the
uni-lateral cross-border attacks, saying it has the capability to
handle militants on its sovereign soil.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Forwarded post:)
Uncle Sam has bombed four weddings (that we know about).

http://www.boneill.blogspot.com/2002 07 01 boneill
archive.html#78425581

Breaking reports claim that a US bombing raid has killed or injured
more than 120 people  at a wedding party in southern Afghanistan.

According to a BBC report,  A witness from a village in Uruzgan told
the BBC there had been an overnight air raid on a wedding party which
left scores of people - many of them women -- dead .

The US military admits that  it dropped bombs in southern Afghanistan
after an aerial patrol came under attack from artillery fire , but
claims that  one of the bombs was "errant" , accidentally hitting the
wedding party.

There are no Taliban or al-Qaeda or Arabs here. These people were all

civilians, women and children , says one of the survivors, asking  so
why did they bomb us? .

In fact, despite America s claims of an  errant  bomb, this isn t the
first time allied forces in Afghanistan have attacked wedding parties.


On 29 December 2001, a wedding in the Qalai Niazi village in eastern
Afghanistan was bombed, killing dozens of civilians.

The UK Guardian claimed that the wedding guests had been  vapourised .


The UN says that 62 civilians were killed in the December wedding
bombing, while others put the figure as high as 107.

On 10 January 2002, the Washington Post told the story of this earlier

wedding attack:

Burhan Jan's 15-year-old son, Inzar, married a local girl about his
age, and people came to Qalai Niazi from miles around for the wedding.

About 3:30 a.m., while the family and their guests slept in the
largest house after an evening of celebration, the U.S. planes
attacked. After an initial series of blasts in which men, women and
children died, people fled in panic out of Qalai Niazi, which is
located north of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province. Then

more bombs fell, killing a dozen other people as they moved across the

barren landscape.

Then in early May 2002, Britain s Royal Marines launched Operation
Condor after Australian troops had allegedly come under fire from
al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, and called in American bombers to launch
an attack.

But according to an Afghan press agency based in Pakistan, the men
engaged  by the Australian troops and later bombed by US forces in
fact  belonged to a wedding party, whose traditional AK-47 firing
celebrations had been mistaken for offensive fire .

And now there is another wedding party bombing -- and US forces expect

us to believe that a bomb simply went astray.

In fact, the American military s penchant for bombing wedding parties
seem to capture a couple of home truths about the war in Afghanistan.

First it illustrates the dearth of intelligence.

After the December wedding bombing, US forces claimed they were acting

on  reliable intelligence  from Afghan sources which showed that
al-Qaeda and Taliban forces were in the vicinity.

There were multiple intelligence sources that qualified that target ,

said US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld in January 2002, claiming
that  the multiple secondary explosions  that followed the bombing of
the wedding party suggested that there were, indeed, arms dumps in the

area.

But where did US forces get this  reliable intelligence ?

From the same Afghan sources who have duped the US military into
bombing their enemies by falsely labelling them al-Qaeda forces?

From the same intelligence sources who openly admit that they have
their own battles to fight, and that defeating al-Qaeda takes second
place?

The wedding party attacks also capture the sense of fear and loathing
with which America views Afghanistan as it flies overhead (America
rarely engages the enemy on the ground for fear of sustaining
casualties and getting bogged down -- a fear which also explains its
lack of intelligence).

For US forces that are fearful of getting too stuck into this
dangerous, alien territory, any large gathering of people is
immediately suspect -- and any large gathering of people that fires
AK-47s in celebration may as well have signed their own death
warrants.

US forces cannot tell one  towel-head  from another, and sometimes
just opts to blast them all.

All of this illustrates an important point: the fact that the Afghan
war has little coherence or direction doesn t make it any less bloody
than traditional warfare.

Indeed, as hundreds discovered today, a war without aim fought from on

high is a dangerous and deadly affair.
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