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When You See the Film of These Brave Veterans in Therapy, It Will Change How You Think About PTSD

by Nilda0140pi Posted on May 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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As millions of Americans around the country fire up the grills on Memorial Day and welcome the arrival of summer, it might be easy to forget what the holiday is supposed to commemorate. That’s why on Monday, the POV (Point of View) series on PBS will air Of Men and War, a documentary years in the making that chronicles the stories of American combat veterans as they undergo therapy to cope with their traumatic memories of war.

French filmmaker and producer Laurent Bécue-Renard spent 10 years working on the project, conceptualizing it, scouting locations, finding veterans who would be willing to participate, and then filming their therapy sessions. He focused much of the film on the Pathway Home, a therapy and service center for veterans in Northern California that offers an immersive residential treatment setting for veterans. Bécue-Renard and his cinematographer spent 14 months filming therapy sessions and then checked in on the veterans over the course of four years, filming their family lives after treatment.

“Rage and anger carried me through everything,” one veteran says as the cameras roll. Another describes killing somebody. “I leveled my weapon, led my target, and I pulled the trigger,” he says, adding that while subsequently moving the body, “a big chunk of his brain fell on my foot.” As he starts to tear up, he describes the blank stare on the corpse’s face. “He just kept looking at me.”

The film originally debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014 and went on to win the award for best feature-length documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam later that year. Monday’s airing is the US television debut. Bécue-Renard’s first war documentary, War Wearied, was released in 2003 and chronicled the lives of three war widows in Bosnia. Of Men and War is the second film in this trilogy; the third will focus on the children of veterans and how their parents’ military service shapes their lives.

Bécue-Renard spoke with Mother Jones about the process of making the film, how it affected him, and what he thinks people should take away from it.

Mother Jones: This film deals with some pretty heavy stuff. How did the material affect you?

Laurent Bécue-Renard: I had a specific quest while doing this project. Both my grandfathers fought in World War I, but they never spoke about it to their wives, nor to their kids, or to their grandkids. So I always felt that there was something that wasn’t being told in the family and that I definitely wanted to access. I also have my own experience of war as a civilian, since I spent the last year of the war in Bosnia as the editor of an online magazine. That experience determined my career as a filmmaker, and I first made a film called War Wearied, where the question of being a war widow was addressed. After that film, I really felt the need to have access to what it is to be a young man sent to war, survive it, come back home, and start a family, or live with a family, and raise kids.

I was ready to hear what I was going to hear while I would be shooting. Besides that, for three years before starting to shoot, I did extended scouting, mostly in California, with combat veterans and their families and therapists. All that I heard, including what I heard afterward while shooting, sounded very familiar. It’s not only about death, it’s about surviving. The film itself is a journey toward life, which makes it a rather positive outcome. Although it’s tough. There are a lot of difficulties for each of these young men to survive. On the daily basis when you’re sitting in the therapy room, it’s mostly about death.

So I won’t be hiding that. At times it was tough to hear, because when you’re in the editing room for four years, you keep hearing it, day after day after day after day, and we had so much material, 500 hours to edit, so it takes a toll on you, of course. But again, I had a quest, and also, as the therapist is doing in the therapy room, I was seeking to show their quest to regain life. And that also helped not only me, but also my editors and my cinematographer.

MJ: Less than 10 percent of the US population has served in the military. What do you want Americans to take away from this film?

LBR: There’s a huge amount of young men and women deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan that are paying a high price, and this is the real cost of the war. It can’t be only when we talk “this war” or “that war,” or “going to war there or there,” and we are in favor or we are against. It can’t be only a discussion over the idea or the concept or the politics of the war. It has always to bear in mind the high price that will be paid by these young men and women and their families. That’s one thing.

The second thing is, you’re right, people have no idea, consciously they have no idea. But all our families in the Western world have gone through two world wars in the course of the 20th century and subsequent wars in the post-colonial world. You’re talking about the US—all families were touched one way or another by World War II. So what these guys are saying, and what I was saying earlier about my grandfathers, it’s something that did touch their family at one stage or another, and it did shape the psyche of the family in one way or another.

I’m always amazed in America, when I write the subject and say it’s not really about now—of course it’s about now because I shot now—but it’s also about your father or your grandfather or your great grandfather. And you know, they would have said most probably the same thing as these men in the therapy room had they been in a position to talk about their experience, to talk about what they felt and how war affected them.

MJ: You point out the generational aspect of this, and it’s certainly apparent in the film. Why are generations so important in this story of war?

LBR: In the film you see a few kids who are growing up next to their father, who has been traumatized by the experience of war. And these kids that we see on screen, to some extent it is us, or it is our parents, who grew up next to a father or a grandfather that was strongly affected by the experience of war.

So it’s not that far away. You just need to think a little bit. If we, the democracies, go to war, of course it’s always a failure because we didn’t manage to solve our problem through diplomacy or politics or economics or culture or whatever. But there’s a high price that will be paid by a few young men and women, and we should always have that in mind.

It is already in our family. We might not know it consciously, but it’s there. It’s been experienced in the past and it has shaped our families.

I’m deeply convinced that most modern neuroses find their roots in the experience of war in the previous generation in the 20th century, and sometimes we don’t know why we have that kind of neurosis in our behavior, and in one way or another there’s a link to some extent with the experience of the war.

MJ: There has been a lot of PTSD coverage in the US in various mediums. What makes this film different?

LBR: The camera is, from scratch, embedded in the therapy process. And it’s part of the therapy process. Meaning that you, the viewer, you’re part of it. And you’re in this room from the very beginning of this journey that each of these guys is going through in therapy, and they want you to be there; otherwise they would not accept the camera. It is, for them, very important to be acknowledged, and that their trauma and their experience be validated by not only the community they belong to, but the community of mankind that they feel separated from because of their experience with war. I know a lot of programs have addressed the question of…what is PTSD, what are the consequences of PTSD? But here you’re part of the process.

MJ: It seems as if the role of narrative in all this is really important.

LBR: Part of the trauma and part of the consequences of the trauma is that they feel so lonely. Not only within the family, but within the community. The premise of the film is also that this story they’re working on and their work as a patient in therapy is something that is going to be shared. The process itself, not only the story, but the process of how difficult it is to find a way to tell a meaningful story about what happened to you in the context of the war. That’s what you’re witnessing on screen.

It’s not a depressing process. This is the difference between just interviewing people with trauma. Here they are in a survival process. They want to survive, they want to live. So what you’re witnessing is their fight for survival, even though it’s tough, and things you’re going to be hearing are tough things. Even though these guys went through very, very difficult things, they’re fighting to survive psychologically. And that’s what you’re witnessing, and you’re part of their survival journey.

MJ: What do you think about the Memorial Day timing of your film’s first screening in the United States?

LBR: I’m very happy and honored that POV and PBS chose Memorial Day to broadcast the film. It’s not only about the Afghanistan or the Iraq war. It’s about all the men and women who went to war and experienced it and were traumatized by it and survived it and lived with the experience of the war. I think if people can bear that in mind, always, it will help them, even in their daily life. That’s where we come from. At one stage or another we have to face it, and it’s better than avoiding it.

I’m also very happy for the characters in the film, because for them it was not only a courageous journey to go through therapy. Very few men and women go to such a residential therapy program during which, for three to four months on average, you go to sessions and you’re really working hard on your psychological wounds. It’s a very courageous journey—but it’s all the more courageous to do it and publicly accept the camera in the room and to stick to it. They never asked us to leave the room or stop filming. They really wanted it and they did it very courageously.

And when they eventually saw the finished film, they realized and they told us how important it was for them. They realized that the film was giving a voice not only for them, but for all the guys and women who would never go to therapy or would never be heard by not only their families, but the community. So I’m so proud that it’s broadcast on Memorial Day.

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When You See the Film of These Brave Veterans in Therapy, It Will Change How You Think About PTSD

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Pentagon Won’t Prosecute Troops Involved in Deadly Strike on Afghan Doctors Without Borders Hospital

by GeraldineLandor Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Pentagon does not plan to prosecute any of the military personnel involved in a deadly airstrike on a hospital in Afghanistan last fall.

The announcement came as the Pentagon released its investigation, which provided new details about the circumstances that led to the attack.

The incident, in which a US aircraft bombed a Doctors Without Borders medical facility continuously for at least 30 minutes, left 42 civilians dead—including medical staff and patients. The attack destroyed the main building, including the emergency room and intensive care unit. Some patients were burned alive in their hospital beds.

After a six-month investigation, the Pentagon concluded 16 service members, including one general officer, “failed to comply with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement.”

Those individuals got administrative sanctions but will not face criminal charges, announced General Joseph Votel, commander of the US Central Command.

Some were members of the air crew that carried out the strike and others were members of the Army Special Forces unit that called in air support. Five of the service members were ordered out of Afghanistan and the general officer was removed from command. Others were sent to counseling, ordered to take retraining courses, and issued letters of reprimand—which can prevent future promotions.

A Doctors Without Borders (also known as Médecins Sans Frontières) official said the organization hasn’t had time to review the full investigation but the sanctions that have been announced so far are insufficient.

“The administrative punishments announced by the US today are out of proportion to the destruction of a protected medical facility, the deaths of 42 people, the wounding of dozens of others, and the total loss of vital medical services to hundreds of thousands of people,” Doctors Without Borders press officer Tim Shenk said in a statement.

“The lack of meaningful accountability sends a worrying signal to warring parties, and is unlikely to act as a deterrent against future violations of the rules of war,” he said.

The organization also renewed its call for an independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission into whether the incident constitutes a war crime. General Votel emphasized that the investigation concluded that no war crime had taken place because the targeting of the hospital had been unintentional. The report calls the bombing a “tragic incident” caused by “a combination of human errors, compounded by process and equipment failures.”

The investigation also revealed new details about the bombing:

The aircrew was supposed to be targeting a nearby building, which had been overrun by Taliban fighters.
When the crew was en route to its target in Kunduz, the aircraft flew off course.
Due to technological and communication failures, the air and ground crew mistakenly identified the hospital as the intended target.
Even though the hospital was on the military’s no-strike list, the aircrew didn’t have access to that list during their flight.

The US government also announced that it has offered condolence payments to more than 170 individuals and families affected by the strike, and the Department of Defense has committed to spend $5.7 million to help rebuild the hospital.

You can read the Pentagon’s summary of its findings here.

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Pentagon Won’t Prosecute Troops Involved in Deadly Strike on Afghan Doctors Without Borders Hospital

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A "Staggering Number" of Vets End Up Homeless After Experiencing Sexual Violence in the Military

by VictorinaGifford Posted on April 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Researchers have identified a new risk factor for homelessness among veterans: military sexual trauma. Nearly 1 in 10 veterans who experienced sexual assault or harassment in the military became homeless within five years—a “staggering number,” noted an editorial in JAMA Psychiatry, which published the study Wednesday.

The research, funded by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, drew on a national sample of 601,892 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who were discharged between 2001 and 2011. Those who reported experiencing sexual assault or harassment while they were in the military were twice as likely to become homeless within five years as those who did not, and the results held true even after controlling for PTSD, alcohol and drug addiction, and serious mental illnesses.

The trauma of violence during a military deployment can make returning to civilian life more difficult, the study’s authors point out, with homelessness exemplifying “an extreme case of poor reintegration.” Military sexual trauma, or MST, includes forcible and coerced sexual assault, as well as harassment (uninvited or unwanted sexual attention, including cornering, touching, pressure for sexual favors, or verbal remarks). According to the VA, around 22 percent of women and 1 percent of men in the military have experienced some form of MST.

Interestingly, the researchers found a slightly higher rate of homelessness among male veterans who experienced sexual violence as compared to women. “Men with a positive MST screen are a particularly vulnerable group,” the authors wrote. “In addition to the burden of issues regarding masculinity, sexuality, and self-concept among males who have experienced sexual trauma,” they also may be less likely to seek mental-health treatment than women—potentially leading to worsening psychiatric symptoms and homelessness.

The link between homelessness and the experience of different kinds of traumatic events—childhood abuse, domestic violence, even homelessness itself—is well documented. The study also adds homelessness to an already long list of MST’s public health consequences. Past research has found that experiencing MST increased a person’s odds of mental illness by two to three times—most notably post-traumatic stress disorder, but also alcohol and drug addiction, anxiety disorders, depression, dissociative disorders. That’s not to mention the links between MST and certain medical conditions: liver disease, chronic pulmonary disease, obesity, hypothyroidism, and HIV/AIDS.

According to researcher Adi Gundlapalli, an associate professor at the University of Utah medical school, potential consequences of military sexual violence include low social support, poor interpersonal relationships, and revictimization. “These types of problems may compromise employment and put one at risk for financial instability,” Gundlapalli says. “Ultimately, this may lead to homelessness.”

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A "Staggering Number" of Vets End Up Homeless After Experiencing Sexual Violence in the Military

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Way more Americans are worried about climate change

by JanetteMacintyr Posted on March 17, 2016

Way more Americans are worried about climate change

By on 17 Mar 2016commentsShare

There’s good news and there’s bad news: More Americans are concerned about climate change now than at any time in the past eight years. But that’s because the consequences are getting harder to ignore.

According to a Gallup poll conducted in early March, 64 percent of Americans are worried about climate change a “great deal” or a “fair amount.” This is quite a jump over last year’s 55 percent.

However, as you can see from the graph above, the percentage of concerned citizens varies widely from year to year, and it actually peaked in the year 2000. What was going on in 2000? Well, the dot-com bubble burst, the Yankees won the World Series, yours truly finally cut off her ill-advised white-person dreadlocks, and — perhaps most notably — climate hawk Al Gore was running for president. So, big year. What followed was the Bush presidency, 9/11, the American invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and steep declines in concern about climate change. Concern hit a low point in 2004, before rebounding for the next four years, starting right around the time Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth came out, and “Drop It Like It’s Hot” hit the airwaves.

Again, concern rose for the next four years, before dropping steeply and staying low until this year. What gives? Gallup has a theory:

A confluence of factors — the economic downturn, the Climategate controversy and some well-publicized pushback against global warming science — may have dampened public concern about global warming from about 2009 to 2015. However, Americans are now expressing record- or near-record-high belief that global warming is happening, as well as concern about the issue. Several years of unseasonably warm weather — including the 2011-2012, 2012-2013 and 2015-2016 winters — has potentially contributed to this shift in attitudes. If that’s true, continuation of such weather patterns would likely do more than anything politicians and even climate-change scientists can to further raise public concern.

In short, more people care about climate change now than they have in a long time. This probably has something to do with the fact that the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly apparent. From record-breaking wildfire seasons to the warmest year on record to the California drought to epic flooding in the South, it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that climate change isn’t already affecting us. The majority of us are paying attention.

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Obama Kept His Immigration Reform Promise to Latinos in the Only Way That Actually Matters in Politics

by ColleenGooch Posted on February 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Dara Lind reports that young Latinos are torn between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. But not because of anything either candidate has said:

Instead, the president on their mind is Obama. They’re still wrestling with his failure to keep his campaign promise to pass immigration reform, and the record deportations of his first term.

….”My biggest fear,” says Jocelyn Sida of the civic engagement group Mi Familia Vota, “is that the mentality of Latinos is going to be all about broken promises, don’t trust any candidate or campaign.”…Sida’s reference to “broken promises” is right on. For many — especially for young Latinos, many of whom came of political age during the Obama administration — the outgoing president is associated with the promise he made, then broke, on immigration reform, as well as the deportations that took place in its stead.

There are lots of obvious things to say before I comment about this. I’m not young. I’m not Latino. I’m not idealistic. And I’m a pretty big fan of Obama. So I have my own biases.

And yet…there’s still something dispiriting about this. Did Obama break his promise to introduce comprehensive immigration reform in his first year? Yes indeed. He says it was because the economy had collapsed and he had to spend all his time dealing with that. But no one really buys that. The stimulus bill passed pretty quickly, and during the rest of his first year Obama found time to deal with health care, Afghanistan, General Motors, climate change, touring the Middle East, and plenty of other things. Was he really so busy that he couldn’t spend some time on immigration reform?

The answer is that Obama is skirting the truth here—but, oddly for a politician, not in a way designed to make him look better. The real truth is that during an epic unemployment crisis he had no chance of getting the votes to pass immigration reform. So like any president, he triaged. He spent his time on other things in hopes that he could make a successful run at immigration reform a little later. Was this the right call? We’ll never know, but it sure strikes me as correct.

In the end, of course, disaster struck: Democrats lost their House majority in 2010, and even with a strong enforcement record (all those deportations) and Republican support, immigration reform could no longer pass. But this is hardly the end of the story. Obama signed the mini-DREAM executive order in 2012. He worked hard to pass comprehensive reform in 2013. He signed another historic executive order in 2014 aimed at immigrant adults. And although this is seldom given much attention, the biggest beneficiaries of Obamacare have been Hispanics.

So did Obama break his promise? Yes. Should young Latinos be demanding that the next president make immigration reform a priority? Yes. That’s how you get things done.

But should they feel betrayed by Obama? I don’t think so. The nutshell version is this: Every president has to decide which of his priorities can pass Congress. If Obama had tried to push immigration reform in 2009, it almost certainly wouldn’t have passed, no matter how hard he had pushed. That’s the fault of reality, not presidential willpower. So, as Obama so often does, he waited. He waited for the economy to improve, and in the meantime he tried to set the stage for success with a strong enforcement record—even at the expense of losing political support from an important voting bloc. When the time came, he worked with Republicans and came close to passing something. But the House balked and it failed.

None of this would have changed if Obama had barreled ahead in his first year. He would have lost just as badly, but two other things would also have happened. First, some of his other first-year initiatives would likely have fallen by the wayside. Second, he would have had a big, symbolic losing fight to his name. That would have done him a world of good in the Hispanic community, but he wasn’t willing to go down that cynical path.

I’m not young. I’m not Latino. I’m not idealistic. But I don’t consider it a betrayal to have a president who shows me the respect of foregoing the cheap and cynical political stunt in favor of a longer, tougher, but more realistic chance of getting something actually done.

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Obama Kept His Immigration Reform Promise to Latinos in the Only Way That Actually Matters in Politics

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Robert Gates Not Impressed With Modern Republican Party

by TrevorGottschalk Posted on January 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Former defense secretary Robert Gates has had a few uncomplimentary things to say about Hillary Clinton over the past couple of years, but they’ve mostly been fairly restrained. Not so much for the current crop of Republican presidential candidates:

“The level of dialogue on national security issues would embarrass a middle schooler,” Gates said of the Republican contenders at a Politico Playbook event in Washington on Monday. “People are out there making threats and promises that are totally unrealistic, totally unattainable. Either they really believe what they’re saying or they’re cynical and opportunistic and, in a way, you hope it’s the latter, because God forbid they actually believe some of the things that they’re saying.”

….“In some cases, the things they’re saying they’re going to do are unconstitutional or merely against the law and others are, from a budgetary standpoint, inconceivable, and so it seems to be that the press has not hammered hard enough and been relentless in saying, ‘How the hell are you going to do that?’”

In fairness to the press, the candidates have flatly refused to provide any more detail about how they’d do any of the things they say they’re going to do. And the public doesn’t seem to care. So what are reporters supposed to do? In other remarks, Gates explained why he didn’t want photos of the Bin Laden raid released to the public:

The intelligence veteran of nearly 27 years also spoke about the danger of leaks and recalled the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed terrorist Osama bin Laden. A friend later emailed him a Photoshopped version of the famous picture in the situation room with the occupants wearing superhero costumes: Obama as Superman, Joe Biden as Spider-Man, Clinton as Wonder Woman and Gates himself as the Green Lantern.

“And we all had a good laugh, and then I said, ‘Mr President, this is the reason the photographs of the dead Bin Laden must never be released, because somebody will Photoshop them and it will anger every Muslim in the world, even those that hated Bin Laden, because of being disrespectful of the dead, and it will create greater risk for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and for all Americans, especially in the Middle East.’ And to the best of my knowledge, those photographs are the only things about that raid that have never leaked.”

Fair enough.

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Robert Gates Not Impressed With Modern Republican Party

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How the US Blew Millions of Dollars Airlifting Cashmere Goats to Afghanistan

by SterlingRingros Posted on January 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Pentagon airlifted Italian goats to Afghanistan as part of a failed $6 million project aimed at boosting the country’s cashmere industry.

That’s one of the latest findings from John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, who testified at a Senate hearing yesterday on the Department of Defense’s efforts to boost the Afghan economy at a cost of more than $600 million. SIGAR, Sopko said, “has not been able to find credible evidence showing that TFBSO’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations activities in Afghanistan produced the intended economic growth or stabilization outcomes that justified its creation.”

The Pentagon’s cashmere project entailed importing nine rare, blond male goats from Italy, building a farm, and setting up a laboratory to certify the their wool. It’s possible that the program created as many as 350 jobs. But according to Sopko, the Pentagon failed to track its spending, and the project’s status is unknown. It remains unclear whether or not the goats were eaten.

Sopko has detailed other examples of waste and unchecked spending in Afghanistan, including $150 million for private security and rented villas for the Pentagon’s business task force; a $47 million “Silicon Valley-type start-up incubator” that “did nothing,” according to the contractor implementing the project; and a $7.5 million project to increase the sales of hand-knotted Afghan carpets. The Pentagon’s business task force “claims to have created nearly 10,000 carpet weaving jobs through this program,” Sopko’s prepared testimony notes, “however our initial analysis has left us questioning the veracity of this figure.”

Sopko’s reports have been leaving lawmakers dumbfounded. At yesterday’s hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) lambasted a $43 million natural gas station that could have been built for $500,000, calling it “dumb on its face.” She noted that the average Afghan earns less annually than it costs to convert a car to run on natural gas.

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How the US Blew Millions of Dollars Airlifting Cashmere Goats to Afghanistan

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Wherefore Art Thou, Mohammad?

by LakeishLeHunte Posted on December 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Before the New York Times stationed him in Afghanistan, Rod Nordland spent years reporting on the Soviet occupation and its aftermath for Newsweek. But he couldn’t have anticipated the dilemma he would face covering America’s longest war. In 2010, Nordland was poking around for a story about honor killings when he learned of Zakia and Mohammad Ali, a young Afghan couple who had defied their families, cultural conventions, sectarian loyalties, and Islamic law in order to marry. His front-page Times story on Afghanistan’s “Romeo and Juliet” became an international sensation. As everyday Afghans celebrated the daring couple and the authorities threatened Ali with kidnapping charges, Nordland found himself increasingly wrapped up in their fate. His new book, The Lovers, comes out in January.

Mother Jones: How did you come across this story?

Rod Nordland: In a random email in bad English from a women’s affairs ministry official in Bamiyan. I get a lot of crank email, but it pays to read everything.

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Wherefore Art Thou, Mohammad?

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Bowe Bergdahl Ordered to Face Court Martial

by CassieMzgyvibyns Posted on December 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bowe Bergdahl, the Army sergeant whose 2014 release by the Taliban prompted a firestorm of controversy over the nature of his five-year captivity, was ordered by a high-ranking Army commander on Monday to face a court martial on charges of desertion and endangering his fellow soldiers.

If convicted of leaving his post in Afghanistan without permission, the New York Times reports, Bergdahl could face a life sentence. The date of the hearing will be announced at a later time.

An Army lawyer had previously recommended Bergdahl face lesser charges for his alleged offenses. The decision on Monday also comes just days after the popular podcast Serial launched its second season, which will investigate Bergdahl’s divisive story.

In 2014, five Taliban leaders were released in exchange for the Taliban’s release of Bergdahl.

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Bowe Bergdahl Ordered to Face Court Martial

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A Stunning Series of Screw-Ups Led to October’s US Strike on an Afghan Hospital

by EdwardStreet Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Pentagon has completed its investigation of the US attack on a hospital in Afghanistan operated by Doctors Without Borders, and it paints a grim picture. Gen. John Campbell, the top commander in Afghanistan, delivered a summary of the investigation today:

According to the military’s investigation, the special operations gunship had sought to attack a building suspected of being used as a base by Taliban insurgents, but the plane’s onboard targeting system identified the coordinates as an open field. The crew decided to open fire on a nearby large building, not knowing that it was the Doctors Without Borders hospital.

….When the gunship flew closer, its targeting system “correctly aligned” with the intelligence building, not the hospital, but the crew ignored the system, he said. The AC-130 aircraft had launched more than an hour early “without conducting a normal mission brief” or receiving a list of locations that it was barred from attacking, including the hospital, he said.

….A minute before the gunship started firing, the crew transmitted the coordinates of their target to their headquarters at Bagram Airfield, north of Kabul, giving the accurate location of the hospital, Campbell said. The headquarters “did not realize that the grid coordinates for the target matched a location on the no-strike list,” he said.

In summary: the gunship crew left without getting briefed. Their targeting system malfunctioned, so they decided to open fire on the nearest large building instead. When the targeting system later found the right building, the crew ignored it. And when they sent coordinates to headquarters, nobody there matched it up with their no-strike list.

If this is the whole truth, it’s a pretty stunning series of screw-ups. If it’s not the whole truth, then something even worse happened. We may never know which.

Original source – 

A Stunning Series of Screw-Ups Led to October’s US Strike on an Afghan Hospital

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