Doctors Without Borders: In US Attack, Doctors and Medical Staff Shot while Fleeing

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Robert Barsocchini

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/11/doctors-without-borders-in-us-attack-doctors-and-medical-staff-shot-while-fleeing.html 

Doctors Without Borders has released its report on the US attack on their hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
HuffPo:

At least 30 people were killed in the airstrikes, led by U.S. forces, the report said. “Patients burned in their beds,” it added, and “medical staff were decapitated and lost limbs.”

The organization found that “a patient in a wheelchair attempting to escape from the inpatient department … was killed by shrapnel from a blast.”

The report also revealed that pilots shot at staff members fleeing the hospital.

“Many staff describe seeing people being shot, most likely from the plane, as people tried to flee the main hospital building that was being hit with each airstrike,” the report said. “Some accounts mention shooting that appears to follow the movement of people on the run. [Doctors Without Borders] doctors and other medical staff were shot while running to reach safety in a different part of the compound.“

US Rejects Hospital Bombing Investigation, Instead Smashes into Hospital in Tank, Destroying Evidence

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Robert Barsocchini

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/us-rejects-investigation-instead-smashes-into-hospital-in-tank-destroying-evidence.html 

After changing its story many times, the US now admits that it intentionally threw bombs, for more than an hour, at the now famous Doctors Without Borders hospital, proving accurate the assessment of DWB staffer Meinie Nicolai, who said the US attack was “a premeditated massacre.”
Since initial US claims that the protected DWB hospital was a “Taliban stronghold” and so forth have been debunked as stupid, the US now claims it targeted the hospital because one man, a “Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence spy”, was inside.
However, Glenn Greenwald points out that the US puppet government in Afghanistan has had it out for DWB for some time because they treat patients indiscriminately, whereas US allies like Israel, for example, discriminate between patients, treating Al Qaeda fighters while targeting members of the UN-recognized Syrian government: “Israel has opened its borders with Syria in order to provide medical treatment to Nusra Front and al-Qaida fighters wounded in the ongoing civil war, according to The Wall Street Journal.”
On October 14th, an “international panel” announced that it was “ready to investigate the deadly US [hospital] bombing”, but would need “assurances from Barack Obama and the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, that their governments [would] comply.”
The US rejected the initiative for the investigation, and instead, on October 15th, sent soldiers to smash up the bombed hospital with a tank, “destroy[ing] potential evidence” for the war crimes investigation.
To explain this, the US announced that the tank was carrying the US’s own “investigators”.
In the mean time, a whistle-blower has released classified documents on Obama’s global assassination ring that illustrate gross recklessness and confirm that almost one hundred percent of the people being killed are not actual targets – though targeting people and executing them is also criminal.
Author focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. 

That Awkward Moment When One Nobel Peace Prize Winner Bombs Another

Posted on October 9, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/that-awkward-moment-when-one-nobel-peace-prize-winner-bombs-another.html

By Dan Sanchez, theAntiMedia.org

US/NATO planes bombed a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan on Saturday. The attack lasted an hour, and continued even after medics “frantically phoned NATO and Washington” to tell them what they were bombing.

It was no use. The attackers already knew full well what their target was. Doctors Without Borders had long ago provided them with the GPS coordinates of their facilities. And the US-installed Afghan government, which had raided that very same hospital in July of this year, had requested the strike, claiming the hospital was being used by insurgents.

The attack killed 22 people, including 12 medical workers and 10 patients. Three of the patients were children. The first bombardment targeted the Intensive Care Unit, where an eyewitness nurse said,“Patients were burning in their beds.” And a hospital caretaker said that he could hear women and children, “screaming for help inside the hospital while it was set ablaze by the bombing.”

Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. President Obama was awarded his in 2009. As Commander-in-Chief of the military that bombed the Doctors Without Borders hospital, this makes Obama perhaps the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to bomb another Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Or maybe not? Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, and he masterminded the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos for President Nixon around that time. Shortly thereafter, it came to light that in that campaign, hospitals were routinely targeted for bombing. As The Nation recently reported:

“A letter from former Army captain Rowan Malphurs said that in 1969 and 1970, he analyzed aerial photographs where B-52 bombs (the ones ordered by Kissinger) fell on Cambodia: “I saw on several occasions where possible hospitals had been bombed…. On another occasion I observed a red cross on a building that was partially destroyed by bombs.”

By then, the Red Cross had already been awarded its three Nobel Peace Prizes.

Sorry, Obama, it looks like that’s one “historic first” you can’t claim. That old fox beat you to it.

If it makes you feel any better, Kissinger seems to think your mass-murder record actually beats his. (I know this will warm your heart, since you once bragged, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people.”) When confronted about bombing Cambodia on a recent book tour, Kissinger said in his own defense:

“I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerrilla-type wars, that the Obama administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon administration ever did. (…)

And I bet if one did an honest account, there were fewer civilian casualties in Cambodia than there have been from American drone attacks.”

Whether that dubious claim is true or not, it’s the thought that counts. Consider it a compliment: a gold star from teacher. Or even an elder statesman’s passing of the torch: from one peace-prize winning war criminal to another.