Evidence of Taliban casualty scam grows

Washington Times:

A top aide defended Gen. David McKiernan after his dismissal as Afghanistan theater commander Monday, saying many of the civilians who died in U.S. air strikes last week had been forced into target buildings by the Taliban and required to shoot at government forces.

The Afghan government says nearly 150 people died in the strikes in the western province of Farah, angering the administration of President Hamid Karzai, who raised the issue with President Obama in Washington last week.

There had also been unhappiness within the Pentagon about the handling of civilian casualties by Gen. McKiernan, who will be replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command who is currently director of the Joint Staff.

Lt. Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for Gen. McKiernan, told The Washington Times that an investigation of last week's incident showed the Taliban was principally to blame for the civilian deaths.

"This was a deliberate plan by the Taliban to create a civilian casualty crisis," Col. Julian said. "These were not human shields; these were human sacrifices. We have intelligence that points to this. Patient after patient just kept telling the doctors their story and how they were forced by the Taliban to stay in these locations."

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Asked about the problem of civilian casualties, Col. Julian said he is "constantly battling allegations of civilian casualties, and it is true that sometimes civilians are accidentally caught in the crossfire."

"It is a fact that the insurgents create deliberate situations to cause civilian casualties that can be blamed on our forces, they exaggerate, they lie, and they deliberately target Afghan civilians," he stated in an e-mail.

In one recent incident, a bus carrying Afghan civilians was blown up by an insurgent improvised explosive device and "we later discovered that it was command detonated."

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The way you defeat these kind of propaganda information ops is by making people aware of the enemy strategy and tactics up front so that you can do an "I told you so." response after teh fact. If the tactics starts to backfire on the Taliban with the Afghans they will have to quit using it. As long as we act like the Taliban information op has credibility they will keep doing it. This is one of the things wrong with Karzai's response to these events. He needs to be told to knock it off.