In Wake of Deadly U.S. Airstrike, Jeremy Scahill Questions Dems on Obama's Afghanistan Policy

Posted by Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! at 8:00 AM on August 28, 2008.

The mood inside the Pepsi Center on night two of the Democratic National Convention was jubilant. Hillary Clinton brought people to thunderous applause as she called for a unified party to defeat John McCain.

But while the Democrats celebrated, a half a world away grief and sorrow continue to plague a village in western Afghanistan that was victim to a stunningly lethal air strike by U.S. forces last Thursday. This week, a United Nations team released the findings of its on-the-ground investigation. And what they found was horrifying.

Some ninety Afghan civilians were killed. Among the dead, as many as sixty children between the ages of three months and sixteen years. It’s believed to be the single deadliest US strike against Afghan civilians since the US first attacked the country in 2001.

Here in Denver, the horror of this story could not be further from the hallway discussions of those inside the Pepsi Center ... But Afghanistan will play a major role in the general election, where Barack Obama will make his plan to increase the US military deployment in Afghanistan by several thousand troops a centerpiece of his foreign policy vision. The Obama campaign is painting Afghanistan as the good war.

Read the rest of the transcript here.

Tagged as: afghanistan, barack obama, dnc, jeremy scahill, marcy kaptur, david wu

Jeremy Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.