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Unless correspon- dents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
Britt and Keri Singleton, United States, offer a comment on a gun-camera video from the attack on Afghanistan, Sunday, September 19, 2004
Correcting the facts: AC-130 gunship in Afghanistan
HI, I WAS Googling the gun camera video and saw your site. Your assessment of the AC-130 gun camera is a bit flawed. First of all, I had this exact file sent to me over the internet in early-mid 2002 when I was in the USAF, so for you to say it dates from 2003 is erroneous. Release of the video came at or near the time American forces were in the Tora Bora region.
Please
note one of the crewmen mentions a particular "hotspot"
on this infrared image as being the entrance to a cave,
with which the Tora Bora region is riddled. (Note also
how many men materialized after the cave entrance was
bombed; perhaps 8-10 men appeared seemingly right out of
the ground, because that's where they were hiding.)
Second of all, the mosque that you claim to be destroyed remains undamaged, at least by the crew of this particular AC-130. There were 2 large buildings clearly visible.
The rectangular building was the mosque, and if you go back and view the clip again, you'll see that the only building to receive fire was the larger, square shaped building, not the mosque. Thirdly, as a crewman can be heard saying over the audio, there were numerous secondary explosions caused by the AC-130's cannonfire.
That means there were explosives, or at the very least, large flammable devices of an unknown nature, within this compound that were ignited by the AC-130s artillery rounds. According to the Geneva Convention, this building, the vehicles, and supplies scattered around are all legitimate targets.
Furthermore, when you say the crewmember claims "I saw him die earlier. He was in his forties," I have to laugh.
This crewmember is flying in a closed-in cockpit hundreds of feet above the ground, at a speed of at least 200 miles per hour, wearing night vision goggles. For him to have been able to discern the age of one unfortunate enemy combatant is nothing short of prescient!
What he in fact said, if you will replay the file, is this: "I saw him die earlier. A 40 round."
What the crewmember is referring to is a 40mm round that he saw explode near the target, killing him (40mm rounds cause smaller explosions than 105mm rounds, so he would be able to tell easily which was which). The AC-130 gunship carries a 105mm cannon and two 40mm cannons among its armaments.
And
you thought the Afghan war was over?
Spine-chilling leaked video and sound of Afghan
civilians being killed this year in cold blood by a US
air force gunship
David Irving