US massacres civilian village, bombings escal

Nov. 7— Last week, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld summoned his top military brass to his office at the Pentagon. "The war isn't going well," he said, his voice rising as he complained at the lack of progress against the Taliban. "Either we have something spectacular this weekend or heads will roll."
Rumsfeld got his wish, although heads did roll, but not the ones of whom he was probably referring. US forces entered their fifth week of military assaults on Afghanistan, leaving a farming village and hospital in ruins and dozens of civilians slaughtered. Showing no sense of distraction by these events, the US continued with a dramatic escalation of its carpet-bombing campaign by further employing controversial weapons known for their ability to eliminate all forms of life within a mile radius.
The US deployed for the first time its fearsome 15,000lb "daisy cutter" fuel-air bombs, guided by scores of American special forces troops who were dropped on to Afghan soil over the weekend. US aircraft are now flying up to 120 sorties a day. Far from just trimming flowers, the blast impact of the misnomered, massive bombs is said to be similar to that from a small tactical nuclear weapon. General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: "They make a heck of a bang when they go off and the intent is to kill people."
The escalated bombings came as George W. Bush made a satellite address to a conference of 17 Eastern European countries. Without a trace of irony, Bush exhorted, "Freedom is threatened once again. These terrorist groups seek to destabilize entire nations and regions. They are seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually to civilization itself." Bush also said that countries that did not offer concrete military help in the war would be held "accountable for inactivity".
The decision for the increased bombing was made as Osama bin Laden, the fugitive leader of al-Qaeda, released another videotaped statement, broadcast by al-Jazeera television in which he accused the coalition of "annihilating villagers, women and children, without right".
The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said last Wednesday that 1,500 people had been killed in US raids on Afghanistan since the start of the attacks. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef told a news conference that
the United States was ignoring the principle of innocent until proven guilty in its demand that the
Taliban hand over bin Laden, the Bush administration’s chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on the
United States.

Dozens massacred in farming village 'with no military targets'
Rubble and fresh graves marked with the flags of martyrs are all that remains of a tiny Afghan village after a US bombing raid this week. Western journalists and human rights organizations published the clearest evidence yet of mass civilian casualties caused by the US military coalition. At least 60 people were killed on the night of October 22 in Chowkar-Karez, a small farming village, according to reports based on the accounts of journalists, eyewitnesses in the village and survivors ferried to hospital in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
The Pentagon reluctantly admitted that an AC-130 Spectre gunship attacked the village.
According to the villagers, however, there were several aircraft, not just one. Explosions from the attack pulverized the mud walls of houses and gouged craters 15 feet deep in the ground. The planes then
returned and opened fire on terrified villagers running through the streets, causing the worst of the casualties. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the first organization to publish the eyewitness accounts, the villagers were unanimous in saying no relevant target was in the area.
"If there were military targets in the area, we'd like to know what they were," said Sidney Jones, Asia director of HRW.
Visiting journalists counted 18 fresh graves but were told the villagers had not been able to sort out the many severed limbs and body parts to give each person their own final resting place.
Locals said about 20 villagers survived the attacks, when wave after wave of US jets pounded the community with heavy bombs and cannon fire, destroying everything in sight.
Foreign reporters saw the devastation first-hand: every house had been flattened and huge craters could be seen in the surrounding fields. The village was a scene of utter ruin. Long cracks had opened up in the ground where the bombs struck. Trees were broken and splintered, cars burned and torn. Even cooking pots were riddled with bullets holes. BBC journalist Simon Ingram reports: "What we found was a scene of total destruction. A number of houses, about 40 or 50 in all, completely destroyed," he reported.
In response to independent reports such as these, the UK and US are setting up a rapid reaction media center in Pakistan to aid the propaganda battle during military action.
"As we buried the dead, the planes came again," spoke an old farmer called Mangal, who said he lost 30 relatives including 12 women and 14 children.
Mangal could not understand why the United States had attacked an innocent farming village. "I'm not aware of our crime and why we were bombed. There were no Taliban here," he said.
The village was littered with the debris of village life, including children's clothes, women's sandals, and the rotting carcasses of dead sheep.
The Taliban says between 90 and 100 civilians, almost the entire population of the village, were killed in the attack.
The Pentagon says the community was supporting terrorists from the al-Qaeda network and deserved its fate.
That's where things might have remained were it not for an investigation by a Western human-rights group and a timely tour through Afghanistan by group of Western journalists. The bombing of Chowkar-Karez has become the best documented bombing of the war so far. It also has become something of a touchstone in the battle for credibility, and the Pentagon's handling of the information that has emerged has led some observers to wonder whether Washington really knows what is going on in the field. The US military can only guess at civilian deaths because it has no observers on the ground.
"It begins to make you question not only the credibility of the information that's coming back to us as members of the public but also the kind of information and intelligence that's going into the selection of
targets," said Sidney Jones, the director of the Asian division of HRW.
The New York-based organization has been interviewing civilians who end up in Pakistani hospitals, and has found that in almost all cases, survivors were forthcoming about the presence of Taliban or al-Qaeda military positions near where the bombs fell. Six survivors of Chowkar-Karez interviewed by HRW were all adamant that there was nothing in their remote village that ought to have attracted the interest of the US military. A detailed examination of the scene revealed no evidence that the village might have been used by Taliban fighters or any other reason for it to have been targeted.
Witnesses talked to by the Western reporters said that there were no Taliban troops in the village and that US planes opened fire on people as they attempted to flee the bombs.
The Pentagon has made no further statements, even though the attack was raised in three
different press briefings.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- asked again this week about the incident after the journalists visited the site -- professed ignorance. "I cannot deal with that particular village," he replied.
Later, unidentified Pentagon officials told CNN that "The people there are dead because we wanted them dead".
"I brought my family here for safety, and now there are 19 dead, including my wife, my two children, my brother, sister, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews and my uncle," Mehmood, a survivor, said.
Naseer Mohammed, 20, and his niece, Najia, 14, had nearly made it out of the compound when the bullets started raining down. One bullet caught Najia squarely in the chest, killing her instantly. The attack lasted an hour. By the time it was over, 18 members of his family were dead, five of them children. All were killed by gunfire after they ran into the open.
Without exception, what few villagers survived say the first bomb was dropped around 11pm, that most people immediately ran outside in fear and were then mowed down by gunfire from circling gunships.
"They were huge planes," Mohammed said. "If the Taliban and Osama bin Laden are the targets then why were they shooting at us?"
On the other side of Quetta, Sabir Ahmed — the smallest survivor from Chowkar Karez — lies limply on an outsized hospital bed. His tiny head is swathed in bandages after doctors operated to remove shrapnel from his brain. In pain, he cries out for his mother, tears collecting in his eyes. His sister Shaida is a poor substitute. "He just asks again and again for his mother," she said. "He does not understand where she has gone."

US jets damage Kandahar hospital
Just a few days before the attack on Chowkar-Karez, while US Attorney General John Ashcroft warned US citizens about an imminent terrorist outbreak on US soil, fifteen civilians including five women and children were killed when a US jet bombed an Afghani hospital and a neighboring house.
The Afghan Red Crescent Society clinic and the house were destroyed in the attack, one of two waves of bombing raids around dawn.
"This is an American atrocity. They are not hitting the Taliban or Osama bin Laden, they are hitting residential areas," said Kandahar resident Mohammad Ali at the scene of the attack.
Doctor Syed Abbas, who was slightly injured in the attack, told a group of foreign journalists that 15 people were killed in the house and 25 others severely injured in the assault on the hospital.
An AFP reporter said the small medical facility was in ruins and the house had collapsed. Earlier Wednesday he heard several loud explosions rock the city as US jets flew overhead.
"This is the worst type of state terrorism that the White House administration is perpetuating in Afghanistan," Taliban ambassador Zaeef said.

No escape from the ‘daisy cutter’
Afghanistan is now being attacked with huge 15,000lb fuel air bombs that kill every creature within a square mile radius of the impact point.
The first of these weapons, sometimes called "daisy cutters", were dropped on Sunday with the aim of terrorizing Taliban troops opposing Northern Alliance forces.
Short of nuclear weapons, fuel air explosives are the most powerful weapons in the US arsenal.
Eleven of these BLU-82s were used to devastating effect during the 1991 Gulf war, with one attack alone killing an estimated 4,500 Iraqi troops.
According to one British Army expert: "lethality to personnel is 100 per cent" - which is military speak for saying anyone caught by the explosion dies.
The weapons are a combination of warheads, which first explode and spread a kerosene vapor into the atmosphere. A secondary explosion then ignites the fuel vapor, creating a massive pressure wave. Anyone caught in the conflagration is incinerated and the blast wave sucks out oxygen behind it, creating a vacuum that ruptures lungs.
"Personnel near the ignition point are obliterated," added the expert. "Those on the fringes are likely to suffer internal injuries - burst ear drums, crushed organs, ruptured lungs, severe concussion and possibly blindness."
One US Special Forces soldier added, "It is a very violent and painful way to die."

Allies set for ferocious escalation of ground war
Some military planners say a winter of heavy commando raids is imminent and will be followed by a spring offensive in which 20,000 troops or more will be put on the ground.
However, British military officials suspect that America is drawing up contingency plans for something even more substantial: a full invasion, on the scale of Desert Storm, using the equivalent of three military corps - up to 300,000 troops.
Some politicians are beginning to call out for the immediate deployment of ground troops - ranging from John McCain, the Republican senator, who last week urged that a powerful force be used, to Tom Daschle, the Democrat Senate leader, who said he would tolerate deploying a substantial force if it proved necessary.
Geoff Hoon, the UK Defense Secretary, held talks in Washington this week with Rumsfeld, his US counterpart. Speaking after yesterday's talks, Rumsfeld said that, while the numbers of US special forces now on the ground were nowhere near those used in the Second World War or Korea, "we have not ruled that out". Hoon added: "Nor have we."
British Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defense Staff, said last week that the war in Afghanistan was the toughest military operation since the Korean War and could last several years.

The Pentagon has been rethinking its use of ground forces inside Afghanistan in the wake of near-disaster during the October 20 Special Forces assault on Taliban leader Mullah Omar's complex.
The intensity and ferocity of the Taliban response "scared the crap out of everyone" according to a senior military officer. The Delta team stormed Mullah Omar's complex near Kandahar, but found little of value, and then, "as they came out of the house, the shit hit the fan. It was like an ambush." The team immediately began taking casualties and evacuated.
One Delta Force soldier said that military planners "think we can perform f***ing magic. We can't. Don't put us in an environment we aren't prepared for. Next time, we're going to lose a company." Twelve Delta members were wounded, three of them seriously.
One military man reports that Delta Force officers were "still outraged" last week as after-action arguments over how best to wage a ground war continued.
The report by respected US journalist, Seymour Hersch, said the Pentagon could not give details "because it doesn't want to appear that it doesn't know what it's doing". Another senior officer said: "I don't know where the adult supervision for these operations is. General Franks (Central Commander of the Army) is clueless."
Meanwhile, the CIA prepares for a new phase in the war on the ground as the issue of torture comes to the fore in Washington.
Behind the scenes, reports from Washington say that the agency is now short of agents who know how to torture or to extract information. The CIA was amply staffed with people who developed torture expertise during the 'dirty wars' in Central and South America, but these agents have gone into retirement.
Now the agency is trying to redevelop and retrain agents in "rough" interrogation techniques. Among them are the use of high-decibel music, and recordings of dying people and animals.
One intelligence source told UK newspaper, The Observer, that former agents are being drafted back to advise the CIA on how to conduct "interrogations involving an element of physical pressure".
The US war so far has racked up a bill of at least $400 million, and could rocket up to $1 billion tax dollars a month for the duration of the conflict, according to defense budget analysts.
The White House has reiterated that bombing will escalate during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins in mid-November.
Since it began, up to 130,000 Afghan refugees have fled into Pakistan to escape US military action in Afghanistan.

Sources: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, BBC News Service, The Guardian (UK), The Independent (UK), In These Times, The New Yorker, The Observer, The Scotsman (UK), Scripps Howard News Service, Sunday Herald (UK), The Telegraph (UK), The Times (UK), Toronto Globe & Mail, Washington Times

Orig. text/photos: Asheville Global Report: http://www.agrnews.org