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nvm
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Aug 27, 2021 22:32
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| # ? Jun 9, 2024 11:43 |
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good choice, although if you would like to elaborate on your original post with actual content that would be much more welcome Edit: this sort of business is also why I try to have a general policy of allowing rethinking edits before I drop el hammero.
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Aug 27, 2021 22:34
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So was it one explosion or two? With death toll at ~170, just seems if it was one explosion it would have to be absolutely massive even if it was a very tightly packed crowd. Military was quoted today as saying original description was wrong about two explosions, and it was only one, but NYT still has their story up explaining it was two. Confusing. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/26/world/asia/kabul-airport-map-explosions.html
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Aug 27, 2021 22:37
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Inner Light posted:So was it one explosion or two? It was a densely packed crowd. The death number looks normal for this kind of attack which happens a lot in Afghanistan.
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Aug 27, 2021 22:40
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Thom12255 posted:It was a densely packed crowd. The death number looks normal for this kind of attack which happens a lot in Afghanistan. It would still have to be a massive bomb to kill that many people, even in a densely packed crowd. Bigger than just something on a vest or in a duffel bag. For example, the Boston Marathon bombings only killed a handful of people and it was literally shoulder to shoulder packed during the marathon. The 7/7 attack in London killed 56 people across three bombings and that was during rush hour in packed trains. To kill 170 it'd have to be enormous, probably transported in some sort of vehicle.
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Aug 27, 2021 22:54
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Those were both improvised explosives and given how long the US has been there and how much is getting left behind it could easily be high explosive
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Aug 27, 2021 22:59
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Something I don't think I've seen mentioned here is that ISIS really presents the Taliban with a bit of a conundrum in that they're caught trying to be moderate enough to keep foreign capital flowing (at least for now) while remaining extremist enough not to see massive defections to ISIS. It would be pretty miserable all around if the Taliban just ended up being another version of a corrupt loser government in Kabul being attacked by extremists in the provinces. As we've seen elsewhere, extremism can be a force multiplier, so if ISIS recruits believe in what they're doing more than a fractious Taliban believes in what they're doing, it can be a long term problem even if the Taliban has a clear advantage for now. I guess a key difference is that ISIS doesn't have Pakistani intelligence supporting them though.
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Aug 27, 2021 23:06
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gently caress, I don't like war. This was particularly gut wrenching to read. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/politics/marines-kabul-airport-attack.html We just launched the first of what I hope is the end of a reprisal and conflict, but at the same time I know that cannot be true.
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Aug 28, 2021 02:55
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https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1431417279439327235 Politico lied. What a shock.
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Aug 28, 2021 03:02
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at least politico is offering firm dimensions of what it will lie about and in the process, letting us know what it's all about
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Aug 28, 2021 05:25
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I was wondering what the odds were of the US formally recognizing the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government and found this blog post that tries to answer that question by going over the history of US-Afghan relations. The TLDR is “it depends” but it’s still a rather interesting read. https://www.lawfareblog.com/history-and-recognition-taliban
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Aug 28, 2021 06:02
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https://twitter.com/FrankFigliuzzi1/status/1431433675397238788?s=19
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Aug 28, 2021 08:39
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Seeing as the media is now basically the Old Gods from Cabin in the Woods I'd say that adding the "K" at the end of ISIS to signify that this is a sequel was a good start but I can already tell that "Planner" sounds like a pretty boring blood sacrifice. Maybe something like "ISIS-K Terror Strategist" might be better, but that seems almost a bit too on the nose. So maybe "ISIS-K Urban Combat Tactician".
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Aug 28, 2021 10:43
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Inner Light posted:So was it one explosion or two? Well, there's also this: https://twitter.com/SecKermani/status/1431517279859224579?s=20 https://twitter.com/SecKermani/status/1431517627139100674?s=20 Schmuckrat fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Aug 28, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 12:40
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Seph posted:
the reason Boston wasn't worse was because they left the devices on the ground. The ground absorbed most of the explosion and was mostly leg injuries.
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Aug 28, 2021 13:15
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https://mobile.twitter.com/iosalman/status/1431600457869316096 US Marines firing wildly into a crowd and killing almost as many civilians as a terrorist attack if not more is this whole war in a nutshell. Why do they hate us
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Aug 28, 2021 14:07
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So the explosions killed 12 marines but fewer than 25 civilians, and the rest got shot? Not impossible but I'd see if there's something more than some rando on twitter
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Aug 28, 2021 14:17
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VitalSigns posted:US Marines firing wildly into a crowd and killing almost as many civilians as a terrorist attack if not more is this whole war in a nutshell. Don’t post random loving Twitter accounts with 10 followers who are accusing the US of killing 100+ people? Maybe wait for someone more reliable? Where do you people even find these tweets?
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Aug 28, 2021 14:24
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Slowpoke! posted:Don’t post random loving Twitter accounts with 10 followers who are accusing the US of killing 100+ people? Maybe wait for someone more reliable? Where do you people even find these tweets? mobby_6kl posted:So the explosions killed 12 marines but fewer than 25 civilians, and the rest got shot? Not impossible but I'd see if there's something more than some rando on twitter the source is literally a news organization with 40k followers who works for the loving BBC https://twitter.com/SecKermani/status/1431517279859224579
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Aug 28, 2021 14:30
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Mooseontheloose posted:the reason Boston wasn't worse was because they left the devices on the ground. The ground absorbed most of the explosion and was mostly leg injuries. The ground always absorbs energy from the blast except when it's an air burst. I doubt someone launched this bomb above the crowd before detonating it. Regardless, even if you 10x'd the casualties from the Boston Marathon it would still be a fraction of the one at Kabul airport. VitalSigns posted:US Marines firing wildly into a crowd and killing almost as many civilians as a terrorist attack if not more is this whole war in a nutshell. Yeah I'm gonna wait until there's a more credible source than some random people on the street to conclude the US military went open season on 150 civilians. That would be the biggest massacre in US history since My Lai in Vietnam.
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Aug 28, 2021 14:30
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A big flaming stink posted:the source is literally a news organization with 40k followers who works for the loving BBC Do you not understand the difference between that Tweet and the one VitalSigns posted? He literally found a reply from a rando and posted it saying Marines were “executing brown people.” The story, if true, is huge. Just like the “Biden gave a list of US allies to the Taliban” story, which is now refuted and possibly made up. All I’m saying is don’t post random hot takes on Twitter like it’s news.
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Aug 28, 2021 14:35
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Yeah i pasted in the reply link not the BBC correspondent link, sorry about that, but come on bitching that random people are allowed to reply to BBC affiliates' news and that this somehow invalidates the news is absurd
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Aug 28, 2021 14:42
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Seph posted:Yeah I'm gonna wait until there's a more credible source than some random people on the street to conclude the US military went open season on 150 civilians. That would be the biggest massacre in US history since My Lai in Vietnam. the My Lai massacre is infamous because it was so cold-blooded and deliberate Troops open up on civilians out of fear and paranoia all the time, that's just not notable to Americans who ignore it if they're even told about it unless they actually kill someone an American would care about like Pat Tillman. But ya know there's a reason why people in countries the US occupies get tired of having the troops around and start joining the Taliban E: for example quote:I arrived in Afghanistan in the scorching hot summer of 2002, just after the U.S. Air Force had bombed a wedding party in the countryside. At least that’s what survivors said. The U.S. military spokesmen countered that gunmen onboard the U.S. aircraft had fired in self-defense after having been targeted from the ground. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Aug 28, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 14:47
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I'm not denying the US has far too much innocent blood on its hands. But there's a big difference between mistakenly attacking a compound you thought was occupied by the Taliban and opening fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians. One is within the fog of war while the other is a war crime. To be clear I'm not saying it's impossible the US did it. However for something that egregious I'd like to wait for a better source than some unknown, unverified people on the street saying it happened.
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Aug 28, 2021 14:57
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Yeah I'm going to wait for actual legitimate reporting and not breathless Twitter takes.
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Aug 28, 2021 15:03
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Seph posted:I'm not denying the US has far too much innocent blood on its hands. But there's a big difference between mistakenly attacking a compound you thought was occupied by the Taliban and opening fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians. One is within the fog of war while the other is a war crime. The immediate aftermath of the bombing where nobody knows who did it or how many there are, and the occupying army is confused and scared and pretty much believes the local population are all terrorists anyway is exactly the kind of fog of war situation where lots of innocent people get shot Nobody is saying the troops went "all right finally a chance to do 2021 My Lai"
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Aug 28, 2021 15:03
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How are u posted:Yeah I'm going to wait for actual legitimate reporting and not breathless Twitter takes. is the BBC not legitimate reporting anymore
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Aug 28, 2021 15:23
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Also a BBC journalist interviewing eyewitnesses to the attack is "opinions of random people on the street" now?
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Aug 28, 2021 16:14
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I would not be surprised if some people were killed by bullets, but there's just something off saying 12 US soldiers died to a single bomb and also most of the civilians were shot, because unless they all decided to give the bomber a group hug that would need to be a pretty gently caress off powerful bomb to get 12 soldiers.
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Aug 28, 2021 16:14
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Yeah, there’s a WAY higher density of Afghans around the Kabul airport than Americans, so if the bomb killed 12 US soldiers it’s hard for me to imagine that most of the civilian deaths weren’t due to it too.
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Aug 28, 2021 16:32
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Even if most of the civilians were shot that's still a lot of civilians killed by the bomb, the BBC is obviously not saying that the bomb killed zero civilians. Weird strawman.
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Aug 28, 2021 16:33
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soldiers brains and livers are made of the same fatty jelly as the rest of us. Twelve soldiers in a relatively small area holding back a crowd seems reasonably likely.
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Aug 28, 2021 16:34
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I don't doubt a story that the troops went death blossom in panic in the immediate aftermath and killed people. The scale being presented here is ludicrous though and I'll have to see some more solid evidence to believe "most" of the deaths were from US fire. Killing that many people with bullets requires some serious effort at sustained and directed fire. I would not be shocked if we found out a dozen or so people were killed by panicked "return fire".
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Aug 28, 2021 16:39
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VitalSigns posted:Also a BBC journalist interviewing eyewitnesses to the attack is "opinions of random people on the street" now? All of this is based off the BBC quoting two people who claim to have been there. We have no idea who these people are, if they were actually there, or if they have some sort of ulterior motive. Also, even if the witnesses were being 100% genuine, witness reports of chaotic situations are notoriously unreliable. The second guy is basing his statement purely on conjecture from the fact that a guy he knew had a hole in the back of his head, which could have come from shrapnel or gunfire from anyone else in the crowd. If the US army truly did kill 150 people by shooting a crowd, it would have taken dozens of soldiers firing hundreds of rounds to do that much damage. There would be hundreds more injured on top of those killed. We'd be seeing reports from hospitals of hundreds of people with mysterious bullet wounds. There would be more than two eye witnesses speculating that US soldiers did it. The much more likely scenario in my opinion is during the chaos a handful of people got shot and now it's being extrapolated that the US shot and killed almost everyone in the area. Until we see more evidence of a widespread shooting it is indeed just "opinions of random people on the street" since we're not seeing much else to corroborate their story.
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Aug 28, 2021 16:44
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So you're better at determining who was there than the BBC, and your personal investigation determined that the witnesses are all lying. Okay. Heck maybe those civilians shot themselves to make the Americans look bad, those Afghans will stop at nothing to embarrass our troops.
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Aug 28, 2021 16:56
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VitalSigns posted:So you're better at determining who was there than the BBC, and your personal investigation determined that the witnesses are all lying. Okay. That's not at all what I'm saying, which perhaps you might have picked up on if you read past the first sentence of my post. I'm saying maybe we should hold allegations of war crime to a higher standard than two random people making uncorroborated claims and wait for more evidence to come out.
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Aug 28, 2021 17:04
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I don't think you have to be particularly conspiracy minded to see how an organization like the US armed forces, famous for committing massacres might have killed a lot of innocent people in the aftermath of a bombing.
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Aug 28, 2021 17:06
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Seph posted:That's not at all what I'm saying, which perhaps you might have picked up on if you read past the first sentence of my post. I'm saying maybe we should hold allegations of war crime to a higher standard than two random people making uncorroborated claims and wait for more evidence to come out. Question their integrity if you want to but I hope you have better evidence that they just grabbed random liars to interview than the fact that you don't like what they said. E: I also don't believe that the BBC is alleging anybody committed a war crime. I'm not like a lawyer but civilians getting killed in a crossfire isn't legally speaking a war crime most of the time, although obviously morally it might as well be in a lot of cases. At any rate this certainly isn't any more egregious than poo poo the US has been doing in Afghanistan all along, so I don't get the outrage at the BBC over the BBC reporting that one more such incident may have occurred after two decades of similar incidents, scenes like this aren't exactly novel. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Aug 28, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 17:07
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VitalSigns posted:You're the one making uncorroborated claims about the BBC here. The BBC saying "we have a source that said X" isn't the same as the BBC saying WE HAVE DEFINITELY PROVEN X IS TRUE.
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Aug 28, 2021 17:11
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VitalSigns posted:You're the one making uncorroborated claims about the BBC here. Seph posted:Also, even if the witnesses were being 100% genuine, witness reports of chaotic situations are notoriously unreliable. The second guy is basing his statement purely on conjecture from the fact that a guy he knew had a hole in the back of his head, which could have come from shrapnel or gunfire from anyone else in the crowd.
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Aug 28, 2021 17:12
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