Documents obtained through a lawsuit have revealed how erroneous assumptions and biases by US military personnel led to the August 2021 Kabul drone attack killing of Afghan civilians, and that US military officials purposefully misled the public to conceal the assessments of civilian casualties.
On Aug. 29, 2021, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone shot a Hellfire missile at a white Toyota Corolla in a neighborhood near the Kabul airport.
An internal military investigation into the attack reportedly found that erroneous assumptions and biases by US analysts during the Pentagon’s chaotic August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan led to the Kabul drone attack that killed 12 civilians, including seven children.
Three days earlier to the deadly Kabul drone attack, a bomber had killed more than a dozen US soldiers and scores of Afghan civilians at a main gate of the Kabul airport. Then, officials had intelligence that there would be another attack there and that it would involve a white Corolla. Then, US military analysts observed a white Toyota Corolla park at what they believed was a Daesh compound. US officials hastily authorized a drone strike on the Toyota Corolla to thwart a suspected bombing attack. Hours later, US officials announced they had successfully thwarted the attack. As reports of civilian deaths started to emerge, the US military issued statements saying they had “no indications” but would assess the claims and were investigating whether a secondary explosion may have killed civilians.
A US Central Command investigation into the drone attack, which was partially obtained by The New York Times (NYT), showed that military analysts reported within minutes of the drone strike that civilians may have been killed, and within three hours, it had assessed that at least three children were killed in the attack.
US military officials, however, continued to conceal what they knew about the strike. Three days later, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said the attack was “righteous” and that it had killed a Daesh facilitator and unknown “others.”
The documents obtained by NYT also provide detailed examples of how assumptions and biases led to the deadly blunder that US military officials had wanted to cover up......More Below
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2023/01/07/695907/US-Pentagon-Misled-Kabul-Drone-Attack
