by Stephen Lendman

Changing US explanations following the October 3 Kunduz hospital attack were all lies - willful deception, covering up a deliberate attack on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) facility.

Pentagon officials knew it was a hospital, yet attacked it anyway - multiple times for over an hour, killing 24 doctors, other medical staff and patients, injuring 37 others.

Make no mistake! This was a deliberately planned war crime. An AP report said “US analysts knew (the) Afghan site was (a) hospital.” They’d been gathering intelligence on it for days - the strike authorized on the phony pretext of it being used by “a Pakistani operative…coordinat(ing) (with) Taliban activity,” said AP.

MSF stressed doctors, other medical staff and patients alone were in the facility - no Taliban, Taliban supporters, or other US-installed Afghan puppet regime opponents.

According to AP, US “special operations analysts had assembled a dossier that included maps with the hospital circled, along with indications that intelligence agencies were tracking the location of the Pakistani operative and activity reports based on overhead surveillance, according to a former intelligence official who is familiar with some of the documents describing the site.”

Claiming the “intelligence suggested the hospital was being used as a Taliban command and control center and may have housed heavy weapons” was a complete fabrication.

Nothing of the sort was there. It was solely a hospital, providing vital medical services for thousands of Afghan victims of US imperialism, now with nowhere to go because of Washington’s horrific war crime.

US General John Campbell in charge of Afghan operations lied, calling the strike a mistake, changing previous phony explanations, stopping short of saying who authorized it.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook compounded his Big Lie, claiming US forces “would never intentionally target a protected medical facility. We have confidence that the ongoing investigations into this tragic incident will uncover exactly what happened and why this hospital was mistakenly struck.”

Ongoing US, NATO and Afghan investigations will all whitewash Washington’s willful war crime when released - exercises solely in coverup and denial of what’s obvious from what’s already known.

MSF needs approval from US and puppet Afghan authorities to proceed with the independent investigation it demands - unwilling to accept the results of phony ones now being conducted.

On October 15, it launched a petitions drive, urging worldwide support, saying:

MSF “today launched a petition urging citizens to call on President Obama and the United States to consent to an independent investigation into the bombing of MSF’s trauma hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on October 3.”

“MSF called for an independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) into the repeated US airstrikes on the hospital…”

“MSF is calling for the United States and the Obama administration to consent to an investigation into the Kunduz hospital bombing. Consent is required before an impartial truth-seeking investigation can be launched.”

Read the petition. Add your name. Demand US war criminals be held accountable for 14 years of naked aggression against a nation threatening no one - the Kunduz hospital attack the latest example of their contempt for human life and welfare.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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