Three years ago, as the U.S. was bugging out of Afghanistan, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the Kabul airport, killing 13 Americans and at least 170 Afghan civilians.
There were two investigations of the incident. The last one was released on April 15, and both investigations came to the same conclusion: all casualties were caused by the explosion, and whatever gunfire was heard was reported by Marines who were confused by the blast and not thinking clearly.
But a Marine's GoPro camera footage has blown up that narrative and called into question what the Pentagon—and the White House—have been trying to hide for nearly three years.
First, both Pentagon reports said gunfire "was limited to three bursts that were near-simultaneous – one of 25 to 30 warning shots from UK troops, and two bursts of fire from US troops aimed at suspected militants, which did not hit anyone," according to the CNN report on the new evidence. Both reports claimed there were no casualties as a result of the gunfire.
However, audio forensic experts have concluded something far different.
The Marine’s GoPro footage runs nearly continuously for many minutes before and after the blast. It shows 11 episodes of shooting after the explosion, over nearly four minutes. This is significantly more than the three “near simultaneous” bursts of gunfire that the Pentagon investigations have claimed occurred.
An Afghan doctor, Sayeed Ahmadi, director of the Wazir Akhbar Khan Hospital in Kabul, says that at least half the dead Afghan civilians suffered fatal bullet wounds, again contradicting the official Pentagon reports. The doctor reports being threatened on the night of the blast if he continued to differentiate between blast victims and gunshot fatalities.
“He spoke fluently Dari,” he said. “He told me, ‘What are you doing, Doctor? You love your life. You love your family. This is not good when you are collecting that data. It would make a big dangerous situation for you. You should stop that as soon as possible.’”
Ahmadi says he was never approached by American investigators.
“I hope one day they ask me,” he said. “Now I am safe. I feel well… Sometimes just this secret that I have in my mind haunts me.”
Accounts from US servicemen of the aftermath have often been dismissed by officials as the product of blast concussion, or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). As Marine survivors leave active duty and continue to struggle with their trauma and an official narrative that jars with their personal experience, their dissent has grown.
CNN spoke with about ten Marines anonymously, many of whom described hearing gunfire and feeling under attack from it. Some have reported seeing what they thought was a militant gunman. The Pentagon has insisted no other gunmen opened fire in the area at the time of the attack, bar US and UK troops. No American or Afghan witness has specifically stated they directly saw a militant open fire.
One anonymous Marine witness told CNN that the gunfire came from the direction of the Abbey Gate sniper tower manned by Americans. It should be noted that even with the new video, there is no evidence of Americans firing into a crowd of civilians.
Could they have been "warning shots"?
"They would not have fired into the air." Marines had been told not to fire warning shots, the anonymous Marine said, for the same reason you don't fire a gun in the air in a city. The bullet could land on civilians. “It wasn’t a direct order,” he added, "but it was a common understanding: no warning shots.”
“You’ve got to think, these are kids,” he said. “They’re young. And they’ve only been taught what they’ve been taught. Some of these kids had been with the unit for quite literally two, three months prior to deployment. They didn’t have the training to be able to recognize some of the things that, you know, might have occurred – nor could you have the training for what had happened on August 26. Or really what happened in Kabul.”
What about the Pentaghon's dismissal of accounts of gunfire from the Marines due to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)?
“It’s a pathetic excuse. To say that every Marine, every soldier, every Navy corpsman on the deck has a traumatic brain injury and cannot remember gunfire is, is lunacy. It’s outright disrespectful. And especially for it to come from somebody that wasn’t there.”
Knowing the importance of this report, the White House was almost certainly following the progress of the investigators closely. In hindsight, we can see the gaping holes in the investigation as well as what appears to be the deliberate, studied effort to ignore evidence that was contrary to the official narrative. Why didn't someone at the White House ask about interviewing Afghan civilians? Or the Afghan doctor?
The White House was even less eager to get to the truth of what happened. They didn't want the Marines possibly being responsible for the deaths of dozens of Afghan civilians to be the definitive coda to 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
The Republican House has to haul these officers and other witnesses before the Armed Services Committee and try to get to the bottom of what happened. Our honored dead and their still grieving families are owed that much.
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