Pakistan officials green-lit deadly NATO strike: WSJ

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Pakistani officials gave the green light for the NATO strikes that killed 24 of their troops last month, unaware that the forces were in the area, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The Journal cited US officials briefed on the preliminary investigation into the incident — the worst exchange of friendly fire between the two reluctant allies in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.
The officials told the Journal that an Afghan-led force including US commandos was pursuing Taliban fighters near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border when they came under fire from what they thought was a militant encampment.
When they called in air strikes on the camp, team members contacted a joint command-and-control center manned by US, Afghan and Pakistani troops, and Pakistani representatives said there were no friendly forces in the area, clearing the way for the air assault, the officials told the Journal.
The officials nevertheless acknowledged errors on both sides.
“There were lots of mistakes made,” it quoted an official as saying. “There was not good situational awareness to who was where and who was doing what.”
They also cautioned that the latest account is based on initial interviews with the commandos involved and could change as more details come to light.
The Pentagon has insisted there was no deliberate attack on Pakistani forces, but US officials have stopped short of apologizing over the incident.
Pakistan has said the air assault on its soldiers was unprovoked and spread over a period of two hours, despite Pakistani protests to the Americans.
The friendly fire incident over the weekend set off the worst crisis in relations between the two countries since US commandos swooped in to kill Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town in May.

7 COMMENTS

  1. i am sure they said ok kill them we have plenty more… so how about a doctored communication audio? Or does it take too long to retrieve from archives?

  2. Well if Pakistani officials have given the green lit then those should be punished. To prove these accusation US/NATO should provide the communication records for that time…

  3. The WSJ is just muddying the waters with a half baked theory that somehow their saintly troops just couldn’t have made a mistake. “Golly jee wizz. It was all the fault of the Pakistanis.”
    The WSJ should understand that this will not wash with the Pakistani people. If (and it is a very big IF) our side screwed up it would not have made such a fuss about it. It would have blamed the Taliban and sang the praises of the fallen.
    Uncle Sam better start talking straight or end up choking on his own words

  4. does any one know why the pakistan military was operating in the independent tribal area? were they spying for the americans? t

  5. They are liars as they entered Iraq to find the weapons of mass destruction which was actually a war of mass destruction and testing of their own weapons of mass destruction.

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