Thursday Night Open Thread: Not Particularly Funny

Even the New York Times is reporting this:

US drone strike that Pentagon said killed Kabul suicide bomber actually ‘killed aid worker and seven children who ran to greet him when he arrived home’: Video allegedly shows he filled car with water not explosives
Daily Mail | 10 September 2021 | Keith Griffith

The drone strike that the Pentagon claimed killed an ISIS-K suicide bomber in Kabul actually targeted an aid worker who had filled his car with water jugs, rather than explosives, according to a shocking new report.

Zemari Ahmadi, 43, was driving the 1996 Toyota Corolla that was destroyed in the August 29 drone strike, killing him and nine family members, including seven children, according to a New York Times investigation.

The Pentagon still maintains that only three civilians died, despite the family now detailing in the new report how their 10 relatives were killed in the blast.

Days after the attack, President Joe Biden gave a speech in which he marked the withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan by the August 31 deadline. He touted America’s ability to strike terrorists and targets without boots on the ground. But he failed to mention the high civilian casualty rate from the August 29 drone strike, and he failed to mention that children had been killed.

Ahmadi worked for US-based aid group Nutrition and Education International, and spent the day running routine errands for the group, loading nothing into the car other than jugs full of water to bring home to his family, the Times reported, citing witnesses and surveillance video footage. 

‘All of them were innocent,’ Ahmadi’s brother Emal told the newspaper, noting that Ahmadi had sought refugee status with the US based on his international aid work. ‘You say he was ISIS, but he worked for the Americans.’  

Witnesses say he and his co-workers went to a Taliban-controlled police station that morning to request permission to distribute food to displaced refugees living in a nearby park. 

They returned to the offices at around 2pm, and surveillance footage shows that Ahmadi began filling up water jugs with a hose, which his family say he brought home from the office after water service was cut off in their neighborhood.

‘I filled the containers myself, and helped him load them into the trunk,’ a guard at the office told the Times.

US officials say that operator of the Reaper drone quickly scanned and saw only a single adult male greeting the vehicle, and therefore assessed with ‘reasonable certainty’ that no women, children or noncombatants would be killed.

A Hellfire missile struck the Corolla before its engine shut off. 

Ahmadi’s brother Romal was sitting on the ground floor with his wife when a sudden blast blew out the windows. They ran outside to discover a scene of devastation and death.

Six of those who died were inside the car, the others were in the garden of the home in the tightly-packed Khajeh Baghra neighbourhood. 

‘This was a righteous strike,’ said Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark A. Milley last week, claiming that Ahmadi was an ‘ISIS facilitator’.

‘It seriously questions the credibility of the intelligence or technology utilized to determine this was a legitimate target,’ Chris Cobb-Smith, a British Army veteran and security consultant, told the Times

Makes one want to throw up.

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6 Comments

  1. Pentagon Acknowledges Aug. 29 Drone Strike in Afghanistan Was Tragic Mistake
    New York Times | 09/17/21 | Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper

    The Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan on Aug. 29 that officials said was necessary to prevent an attack on American troops was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children.

    The explosives the military claimed were loaded in the trunk of a white Toyota sedan struck by the drone’s Hellfire missile were most likely water bottles, and a secondary explosion in the courtyard in a densely populated Kabul neighborhood where the attack took place was probably a propane or gas tank, officials said. In short, the car posed no threat at all, investigators concluded.

    Senior Defense Department leaders acknowledged that the driver of the car, Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group, had nothing to do with the Islamic State, as military officials had previously asserted. Mr. Ahmadi’s only connection to the terrorist group appeared to be a fleeting and innocuous interaction with people in what the military believed was an ISIS safe house in Kabul, an initial link that led military analysts to make one mistaken judgment after another while tracking Mr. Ahmadi’s movements in the sedan for the next eight hours.

    ‘This was a righteous strike,’ said Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark A. Milley last week…

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