Since Newsweek and Afghanistan are in the news a lot lately, I got to thinking: Has anyone bothered to follow-up on what happened at Dasht-e Leili back in 2001? The last news I've seen on this dates back to 2002.
Newsweek, for one, ran an investigative piece in August 2002. It didn't find any evidence of American complicity in the massacre, but then again the newsmagazine didn't press the Pentagon too hard on details. Refresh your memory here.
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."