The MSM has proven it can't be trusted on any story; there is no reason to believe them here.
"US, Afghanistan investigate role of NATO air strike in deaths; Slayings strain relations with Karzai" by Deb Riechmann, Associated Press | November 8, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - US and Afghan authorities yesterday investigated whether a botched NATO air strike was to blame for the death of Afghan soldiers and police during a search for two American paratroopers missing in a Taliban-infested area of the country’s west.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Afghan Manhunt
They didn't get swept away in a river, readers.
They have either been CAPTURED or KILLED by the Taliban!
The investigation into a possible friendly fire incident further aggravates strained relations between President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and the international community, which holds his enfeebled government partly responsible for the rising instability. After enduring a drumbeat of criticism from world leaders in recent days, the Afghan government struck back yesterday, saying it viewed a UN official’s prescription for ridding the country of corruption and warlords as an infringement on its national sovereignty.
The air strike occurred Friday during heavy fighting in Badghis Province, a remote area that borders Turkmenistan. Two days earlier, two American paratroopers disappeared there while trying to recover airdropped supplies that had fallen into a river. Fighting broke out between members of a search team and Taliban insurgents, the US military said....
Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said the deaths and injuries probably happened “during an air attack by NATO forces’’ on a joint US-Afghan base. US officials would not confirm the account, but said in a statement that a joint investigation was underway to determine whether any of the casualties were caused by NATO “close air support.’’
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Commanders are free to call in airpower to defend themselves against Taliban attack. Although the UN says most civilian casualties have been at the hands of militants, deaths of men, women, and children in NATO air strikes have raised tensions between Karzai’s government and the US-led coalition - already running high because of widespread corruption and drug trafficking that have proliferated in the last four years.
Since a presidential election marred by fraud returned Karzai to power, a host of international figures, including President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, have called on the Afghan leader to take concrete steps to clean up his government.
Related: Gordon Brown's Bluster on Afghanistan
I'll take Obama just as seriously.
On Friday, Kai Eide, head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, lectured the Karzai government, saying “we can’t afford any longer a situation where warlords and power brokers play their own games.’’
What, after you guys validated his election?
Of course, disregard all those warlords and power brokers the West does deal with and installs.
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