And we wonder why the Taliban is making a comeback

The New York Times has a report up guaranteed to make it clear why the Taliban is being welcomed back by the Afghan people.  It starts with a flinch-inducing headline -- U.S. Admits Role in Killing Women in Afghanistan -- and goes downhill from there:

After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.

 -- snip --

 NATO military officials had already admitted killing two innocent civilians -- a district prosecutor and a local police chief -- during the raid, on a home near Gardez in southeastern Afghanistan. The two men were shot to death when they came out of their home, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, to investigate.

Three women also died that night at the same home:  One was a pregnant mother of 10 and another was a pregnant mother of six. NATO military officials had suggested that the women were actually stabbed to death -- or had died by some other means -- hours before the raid, an explanation that implied that family members or others at the home might have killed them.

 -- snip --

 And in what could be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also "dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath" and then "washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened."

The article concludes with an interesting contradiction:  first NATO investigators say that they, too, found signs of tampering with evidence at the home, such as bullets dug out of walls, walls being washed, etc., and then they conclude by rejecting "allegations that the killings were covered up." 

The house was apparently full of people because the families had been celebrating the birth of a grandson to the owner of the house.

The article also notes that botched raids by Special Ops forces have been causing numerous headaches for NATO.  So what makes those guys so Special and why are they still allowed to go roaming around at night with guns?  How many times do they have to fuck up before someone figures out the appropriate barracks for most of them is in Leavenworth, Kansas?