By Dave Lindorff
London Timesreporter Jerome Starkey has broken two stories of US/NATO atrocities in Afghanistan over the past month or so, the first the execution-style slaying of eight innocent Afghan students and a visiting 12-year-old shepherd boy, and the second the killing of a popular government police commander, a local government prosecutor, two pregnant women and a teenage girl.
The US/NATO response was first to lie about what happened (military spokesmen first claimed that the students had been a bomb squad and that they'd died in a firefight, and they claimed that the pregnant women had been "discovered" bound and gagged). Then, when Starkey interviewed locals and blew the lies apart, the military command under Gen. Stanley McChrystal took a more insidious step, trying to malign Starkey and his reporting.
For an expose of how the American military has been lying about its crimes,check out this video.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area reporter. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
