Pentagon Thinks About Burying Afghan Airstrike Report

By Steve Hynd

As a friend noted when she sent this to me, "how stupid do they thing the Afghans are?"

Defense Department officials are debating whether to ignore an earlier promise and squelch the release of an investigation into a U.S. airstrike last month, out of fear that its findings would further enrage the Afghan public, Pentagon officials told McClatchy Monday.

The military promised to release the report shortly after the May 4 air attack, which killed dozens of Afghans, and the Pentagon reiterated that last week. U.S. officials also said they'd release a video that military officials said shows Taliban fighters attacking Afghan and U.S. forces and then running into a building. Shortly afterward, a U.S. aircraft dropped a bomb that destroyed the building.

However, a senior defense official told McClatchy Monday: "The decision (about what to release) is now in limbo."

Pentagon leaders are divided about whether releasing the report would reflect a renewed push for openness and transparency about civilian casualties or whether it would only fan Afghan outrage and become a Taliban recruiting tool just as Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal takes command of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has already deliberately leaked the report's finding that US forces broke their own rules of engagement and that "the civilian death toll would probably have been reduced if" the rules had been followed. Now, McClatchy's Nancy Yousef reports that:

Two U.S. military officials told McClatchy that the video shows that no one checked to see whether any women or children were in the building before it was bombed. The report acknowledges that mistakes were made and that U.S. forces didn't always follow proper procedures, but it does little to reassure Afghans that the U.S. has done enough to avoid repeating those mistakes.

Again, one of those "officially unofficial" leaks.

This information is already 'out there' and it's bad enough to enrage Afghans (and those Westerners who object to their governments indiscriniately bombing civilians). So the question is - could there be something even worse in the report that's so bad it is worth squelching from the Pentagon's point of view or is this just more kneejerk secrecy?