U.S. pays Afghans $50K per shooting death
A man sits in the back of a truck with the bodies of several men and a child allegedly killed by a U.S. service member in Panjwai, Kandahar province south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, March 11, 2012. / AP Photo/Allauddin Khan
(AP) KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The United States has paid $50,000 in compensation for each Afghan killed in the shooting spree attributed to a U.S. soldier in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan official and a community elder said Sunday.
The families of the dead received the money Saturday at the governor's office, said Kandahar provincial council member Agha Lalai.
Each wounded person received $11,000, Lalai said. Community elder Jan Agha confirmed the same figures.
They were told that the money came from U.S. President Barack Obama, Lalai said.
A U.S. official confirmed that compensation had been paid but declined to discuss exact amounts, saying only that it reflected the devastating nature of the incident. The official spoke anonymously because of the sensitive nature of the subject.
A spokesman for NATO and U.S. forces declined to confirm or deny the payments, saying that while coalition members often make compensation payments, they are usually kept private.
"As the settlement of claims is in most cases a sensitive topic for those who have suffered loss, it is usually a matter of agreement that the terms of the settlement remain confidential," Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings said.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of sneaking out of his base before dawn on March 11 then creeping into houses in two nearby villages and opening fire on sleeping families within.
U.S.: Bales went on 2 shooting sprees
Afghan massacre toll raised to 17 amid tensions
Afghan villagers say massacre was retaliation
It was not immediately clear how much money had been paid out in all. Afghan officials and villagers have counted 16 dead — 12 in the village of Balandi and four in neighboring Alkozai — and six wounded. The U.S. military has charged Bales with 17 murders without explaining the discrepancy.
The 38-year-old soldier is accused of using his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher, to kill four men, four women, two boys and seven girls, then burning some of the bodies. The ages of the children were not disclosed in the charge sheet.
The families had previously received smaller compensation payments from Afghan officials — $2,000 for each death and $1,000 for each person wounded.
Families of the dead declined to comment on any payments by U.S. officials on Sunday, but some of them said the previous day that they were less concerned with monetary payments than with seeing the perpetrator punished.
U.S. soldier charged in Afghan shooting massacreArmy: Many treated for PTSD, returned to war
Lawyer: Bales broke down discussing rampage
On Saturday, a bomb exploded in the south of the country as a foot patrol of Afghan and NATO forces was passing by the previous day, killing nine Afghans and one international service member, officials said.
The group was patrolling through Arghandab district in Kandahar province late Saturday when it was caught in the blast, said Shah Mohammad, the district administrator. Arghandab is a farming region just outside Kandahar city that has long been a bed-down area for Taliban insurgents. It was one of a number of communities around Kandahar city that were targeted in a 2010 sweep to oust the insurgency from the area.
The Afghan dead included one soldier, three police officers, four members of the Afghan "local police" — a government-sponsored militia force — and one translator, Mohammad said.
NATO reported earlier Sunday that one of its service members was killed in a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan on Saturday but did not provide additional details. It was not clear if this referred to the same incident, as NATO usually waits for individual coalition nations to confirm the details of deaths of their troops.
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I wonder how they came up with that number?
The pay scales for the Afghan Army top out at around 200.00 US dollars per month. I believe the average is around 150.00 per month.
So the average Afghanistan Army guy makes around 2,000 US dollars per year. At that rate, it would take them 25 years to earn 50k.
The average base salary of an E3 is around 20k (2007). Or the equivalent of paying their family 500k if they were to receive compensation based on the 25 to 1 ratio.
(Note that US base pay doesn't include many other add on's). According to the US Army's website, salary is only part of the benefits. If added up, it could be from 60 to 100k per year, total.
Using that, it would be the equivalent of paying a US soldier's family as much as 2.5 million dollars for their loss.
Where is the proof that Muslims carried out the events of September 11? There is none whatsoever! The New World Order claims it and their quslings and the gullible drones repeat it, but it has never been proved! Pushed to it, they will say that a grainy film of four men in disguises, photographed from about forty feet away, and the fact that the wallet of Mohammed Atta was found intact, without any cburning or impact damage, sitting on top of a mound of rubble at the World Trade Center site proves they must have been piloting the planes! Carefully ignoring such details as that Mohammed Atta was actually seen alive in France after September 11! Ignoring that no real even scale model test of a structure like the World Trade Center losing support in one area was performed to show that it would cause a symmetrical total collapse without pancaking. Or that, in fact, the temperature of the fires were so low they caused black smoke, which is not characteristic of highh temperature fires, and that temperatures like that don't cause iron to soften, or else frying pans would melt every time they were used! Or that a ragtag coalition of disidents would never engage in something as massive and gauranteed to call out wholesale retaliation as the World Trade Center attacks. No one ever tried anything like that before, and it is arguable that certain individuals felt just as much resentment against others. Or else, explain what the U.S. did so inhumanly monstrous that it would cause such supposed overriding hatred! But, then, the supposed resentment against the U.S. by Muslims existed before September 11, yet there were no major, high profile attacks before that date! After September 11, however, there was the "shoe bomber", the "underwear bomber", the anthrax mailings, the "Times Square bomber", the attacks on the London Underground, Rafik Hariri, Benazir Bhutto, the Ft. Hood incident, the Sears Tower plot, the Ft. Dix plot, the Mumbai attack, the attempt to send explosives in printer cartidges from Iraq to synagogues in New York. A century's worth of events in a decade! And a non-credible tendency of even simple plots in the U.S. to fail.
September 11 was committed by the Facist corporatisty New World Order to establish the premise for the eternal war upon which they planned to create their police state and universal enslavement of humanity. But they dared not permit another, since that would call the effectiveness and even the ethical legitimacy their principle of "security through brutality" into question.
Because it is a criminal operation, the New World Order cannot rely on the truth of its macahinations. Any retorts its shills and quislings provide cannot address the facts, therefore. It's not unlikely that NWO quislings will try to retort to my statements, but they will use typical New World Order machinations, appealing only to the gullible, non validated dismissal, arrogance, contempt, viciousness, mockery, vulgarity.