Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
Zabihullah Mojahid, the Spokesman for the Taliban, claimed Monday that they caused another helicopter to crash, resulting in the death of 33 U.S. troops.
This reportedly occurred in the city of Zarmat in Eastern Afghanistan, within the Paktia Province.
The scene was cordoned off by American-led NATO soldiers after the incident took place.
This information was reported to Press TV, the Iranian state-funded news agency, but NATO claimed that the helicopter merely made an emergency landing.
NATO announced they are going to investigate the incident, but denied that anyone was injured or killed in the crash.
The cause of the crash was not revealed by the almost entirely American NATO coalition or by the Taliban Spokesman Mojahid.
This is a strangely timed incident, if it is true.
The last attack on an American helicopter resulting in numerous casualties before the incident that took the lives of many Special Operations soldiers including some members of SEAL Team 6 was in 2005.
If indeed the Taliban downed another helicopter and killed more than 30 Americans in the process, this would be an unprecedented wave of violence at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
We must proceed with caution at this point as there has yet to be independent verification of the Taliban’s claims and one must take reports coming from any single news agency with a grain of salt.
I would assume that NATO and the United States would want to say it was a Taliban attack if possible, because it could be easily used to justify delaying troop withdrawals.
Yet the alliance is vehemently denying any deaths as a result of the helicopter crash today.
The Guardian reports, “The Taliban often exaggerates, although it correctly identified the number killed in Friday’s Chinook crash in Wardak.”
This gives a bit of credence to the Taliban’s claims, although I can’t see why exactly NATO would want to cover up these deaths unless they were attempting to hide their extreme incompetence.
Regardless of if there were deaths as a result of the second crash, the number of civilian deaths as a direct result of the presence of foreign troops continues to rise.
The United Nations has reported that 1,462 civilian Afghanis were murdered in “conflict-related incidents” during the first half of 2011. In 2010, the record was set for deaths of American and foreign armed forces personnel as well, at 711 killed.
With all of these deaths on both sides of the conflict and no progress being made, how can we honestly justify the continuance of this war effort?
It seems pretty clear to me, and likely to anyone who isn’t solely informed by the mainstream media and government, that this war is being prolonged solely for economic purposes.
Not for the American economy, or the Afghan economy for that matter, but instead for the criminal defense contractors that have been reaping the profits of this war for 10 years.
As I detailed in the article, The black hole of war: where is the money going? the funds we are sinking into Afghanistan and Iraq will not see any returns for at least a decade.
Furthermore, with the recent spike in American deaths, it would not be out of the question for our government to attempt to push back the withdrawal date of 2014 even further.
The previous tragic attack is already being utilized to pull heart strings and demand support for the unnecessary war in Afghanistan.
Some have been questioning the actual events and already pointed out many a hole in the official story. It lends even less support to the official account of events when it is immediately used by Leon Panetta to promote a continued presence in Afghanistan.
Panetta said, “As heavy a loss as this was, it would be even more tragic if we allowed it to derail this country from our efforts to defeat al Qaeda and allow them to establish a safe haven in Afghanistan. We conduct this change of command at a time of great loss and here today reaffirm our great resolve and commitment to complete the mission still at hand.”
I find it deeply troubling that our so-called leaders will continue to allow well-intentioned Americans to be slaughtered in the name of the fraudulent “War on Terror.”
How long will we continue to allow our brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers to be killed when the people of Afghanistan don’t even want us to be there?
When will we realize that without the United States meddling in Afghanistan decades ago, there would be no al Qaeda or Taliban to begin with?
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