I don't know whether to believe this story. But then, I don't know whether to believe the official U.S. version, either. We've seen so many fabricated stories come out of our Mideast excursions (Jessica Lynch, anyone?), that I simply don't know.
March 23, 2012

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I don't know whether to believe this story. But then, I don't know whether to believe the official U.S. version, either. We've seen so many fabricated stories come out of our Mideast excursions (Jessica Lynch, anyone?), that I simply don't know. But I do think it's important that we at least mention the continuing insistence both by villagers and the Afghan parliament's investigation team that there were more than a dozen troops involved in the Kandahar massacre.

The incongruous stories surrounding the March 11 massacre on Afghan civilians in two villages took another turn today, with reports from witnesses in Mokhoyan, one of the two villages targeted, that they were threatened by U.S. troops just days before the massacre.The witnesses say that troops rounded up all the men from the villages after a roadside bombing, lined them up against a wall, and told them they would “pay a price” for the attack.The witnesses put the date of the bombing at either March 7 or 8.

Previous stories had massacre suspect Robert Bales supposedly “upset” about a bombing in which one of his friends lost a leg.The military would neither confirm nor deny any bombings in the area, only insisting that they would investigate anything that might be related to the shootings. They likewise gave no comments about the threats in Mokhoyan.

If confirmed, the threats would also appear to support the Afghan probe’s version of the massacre, which had an organized group of over a dozen U.S. troops carrying out the massacre, as opposed to a lone man, as the U.S. maintains.

It might be a lot easier to believe the U.S. version if I didn't keep reading stories like this.

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