Via America’s Lawyer: The Pentagon apologizes for its recent drone strike which killed 7 innocent children in Afghanistan. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The Pentagon was forced to admit last week that they completely botched a recent drone strike and ended up killing seven innocent children.
John Kirby: As the secretary says, in the statement, we, we apologize and we will endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake. And to that end, he has directed a thorough review of the investigation just completed by US central command. Uh, and he has asked for this review to consider the degree to which the investigation considered all available context and information, the degree to which accountability measures need to be taken and what level and degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered going forward.
Mike Papantonio: All right. I looked at this story. This is my first reaction. The Biden administration looked like a bunch of morons in the withdrawal. Okay. You had the attack. American soldiers are killed. Hundreds, hundred plus Afghans killed in a bombing at the airport. So Biden has to do something. Generals have to do something. So McKenzie, general McKenzie, comes out and he says, look, I’ve got an idea. We’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do a bow, a drone strike. Tell me the result of the, of the drone strike.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, The result of the drone strike is that they, they killed a family that was literally parking a car. They, they were, you know, I, I guess had, had gotten groceries. They, they were not even close to being terrorists. There’s no real rhyme or reason why this particular vehicle.
Mike Papantonio: They were aid workers, for God sake. They were aid workers.
Farron Cousins: And so then they came out at the time and said, okay, we did our drone strike. We’ve killed people. Everybody should be happy now. And then last week they say, oh, look, we’re really sorry. It actually, you know, was three grownups, seven children and yes, their body parts were flying all through the air.
Mike Papantonio: They were vaporized, for God’s sake.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, I mean, it was.
Mike Papantonio: And this idiot McKenzie comes out and says, oh, I apologize. Oh, well I guess it’s okay now. General, general has apologized to the daddy who lost his entire frigging family to a drone strike, to the daddy who, oh, by the way, was an aid worker. Was simply trying to get water to his family. But this is a guy that, this is very interesting. He worked for the nutrition and education international. That was this guy’s job. He had these children that simply got in the car. Daddy’s home. Daddy’s brought us water now. So all the kids jump in the car, hooray, Daddy’s got water. The entire family’s in the car and they get vaporized by this idiot McKenzie, because he’s feeling pressure from the White House who have looked like total buffoons, you know, Blinken and the rest of them look like total buffoons because of the withdrawal.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So, I mean, you look at this story and you go, my God, how long does this, how long does this go on, man?
Farron Cousins: Well, and part of the problem too, is the fact that these, you know, the drone warfare age that we’re in now, they can just go out there, kill anybody, do anything, you know, send this hellfire missle is what it was called.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And they don’t have to see the results. They don’t have the human being there to see the carnage. So it’s so impersonal. I know that sounds weird, but I’m taken back to a college course. We had to read the Odyssey. And every death in that book is described in detail, every individual, their whole lineage given every time they die. And they did that, so that people understood the cost of war.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: We’ve gotten away from that. And people think it’s just like a video game. I’m killing people from far away. They don’t think the human toll.
Mike Papantonio: Well, we’ve got to do some more on this story. I’m, I just feel so awful for this family. I really do.
