Justice denied for the victims of Afghanistan's Mai Lai massacre

"Surprise: Top US soldier clears US soldiers of murder" That should have been the headline attached to any story written about the "findings" of a recent "probe" into the massacre of an Afghan family, including seven children, obliterated by a US "Hellfire" missile in late August. Of course, not one editor – as far as I can gather – opted to tell that simple, blunt truth. Instead, most trotted out the usual pallet of euphemisms in effect to absolve US soldiers of the murders of an Afghan humanitarian worker, Zemari Ahmadi, three of his children, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 13, as well as his cousin, Ahmad, 30, and three of Ahmadi's nephews, Arwin, seven, Benyamin, six, and Hayat, two and two three-year-old girls, Malika and Somaya. So, editors wrote lots of headlines like this one to summarise the predictable "conclusions" of a report authored by US Air Force Lieutenant General Sami Said: "Watchdog Finds No Misconduct in Mistaken Afghan Airstrike." The Pentagon could not have penned a more agreeable precis of Lieutenant General Said's "investigation" into the summary execution of Ahmadi and his family.