Misinformation About Drone Strikes is Making Me Lose My Mind
I miss having sources I can trust
I’m less-than-jazzed to write about drones. Drone strikes are a topic that makes people retreat to their identity corners; some people feel the need to reflexively denounce American imperialism, others bristle at the thought of some dirty hippie bad-mouthing the US of A. So, I’m going to make a request: If the mere mention of the word “drones” makes your blood boil, and you already know that you won’t “read” this column so much as “scan it to see if my opinion matches yours”, then please sit this one out. Do something else; I highly recommend Only Murders in the Building, and Mike Duncan has a new biography of Lafayette. Or, there’s always cat videos on YouTube; my career goal is to be more entertaining than cat videos on YouTube, and I feel no shame from the fact that I’m currently nowhere close.
After the airport bombing in Kabul that killed 13 US service members and an estimated 170 Afghans, a US drone strike destroyed a car that officials said was carrying explosives for a follow-up attack. Officials say that the strike likely killed the driver — a man named Zemari Ahmadi — another man believed to have “militant ties”, and three civilians. But follow-up reporting from the New York Times and Washington Post found that Ahmadi’s family reported a total of ten dead, including seven children. More reporting from the Times and Post questioned the military’s contention that the explosion may have caused a “secondary” blast, which would indicate the presence of explosives in the car. In fact, the reports raise questions as to whether Ahmadi was involved in terrorist activity in any way whatsoever.
One thing I’ve learned from following this topic over the years is that it’s hard to find sources you can trust. The military and the press often do things that make me think they’re shading the truth. And to be clear: I am not suggesting that the magic ingredient we need to inject is some independent jackass with a Substack (hello!). But, a close reading — or even a not-egregiously-lazy reading — of what the Pentagon, New York Times, and Washington Post are telling us makes it clear that they’re fumbling important facts. Which is a legitimate crisis for a guy like me, who has spent my whole life more-or-less believing what I read in the Times and the Post.
Let’s start with the Pentagon’s account of what happened. Personally, I’m not inclined to take anything the military says at face value, because of, you know…the last hundred years. I don’t think that Pentagon officials are the baby-murdering psychopaths that some people believe them to be, but there’s clearly an institutional bias towards rounding likelihood up to certainty and covering up mistakes. At this point, trusting the military to report accurate information seems a bit like trusting Michael Vick to dog-sit; if they still have your trust, then there’s probably not anything they could do to lose it.
Some of the Pentagon’s characterizations raised my eyebrows. The drone feed reportedly recorded men “gingerly” loading wrapped packages thought to be explosives into the car; I’m skeptical that a drone high above Kabul could differentiate loading something “gingerly” from loading it “artlessly”, “jocularly”, or even “while wearing rollerblades”. Officials repeatedly refer to a “compound”, which is almost certainly the office where Ahmadi worked — they’re calling it a “compound” because “compound” is more menacing than “building”. If you think about it, is there any structure on Earth that could not be described as a “compound”? Splash Mountain, maybe? But…nah, even that’s a compound.
The Pentagon’s level of certainty about a secondary explosion that would indicate the presence of explosives in the car is all over the map. In their initial statement about the strike, they state:
“Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.”
No ambiguity there. But officials later said that a preliminary assessment by bomb experts concluded that it was only “possible to probable” that explosives in the car caused a second blast. And yet, when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley briefed the press on the incident, the ambiguity seems to have seeped back out of his remarks:
“Secondly is we know that there was secondary explosions. Because there was secondary explosions, there's a reasonable conclusion to be made that there was explosives in that vehicle.”
This is a crucial thing to pin down. There seems to be general agreement that there was a second explosion seconds after the initial blast (there’s drone video of the strike). But experts say that could have been caused by vapors from the gas tank. If nothing else, the initial statement overstated the certainty that there were explosives in the car.
Finally, there’s the question of civilian casualties. Again, the Pentagon has been inconsistent. That same initial statement — which packs a remarkable amount of over-certainty into 73 words — reports “no indications” of civilian casualties. Which seems like a slight oversimplification: US officials later said “the drone operator quickly scanned and saw only a single adult male greeting the vehicle.” So, that’s obviously one dead guy in addition to Zemari Ahmadi (though that man is the one with alleged “militant ties”). And now, the military is acknowledging three civilians killed. But interviews with the family by the Washington Post, New York Times, and NBC put the number1 at eight civilians, at least seven of them children (plus Ahmadi and the “alleged militant ties” guy). And the Times reports corroboration of child deaths by an Afghan health official.
The Pentagon’s story seems to have evolved again. Here’s how events were told to The Washington Post in a story that ran on September 10:
“The missile took about half a minute to reach the white sedan. In that time, three children approached the car just before it was destroyed, according to a senior U.S. military official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing military investigation.”
WHY THE FUCK WAS NONE OF THAT IN THE INITIAL STATEMENTS FROM THE PENTAGON? If the Post, Times, and NBC hadn’t tracked this down, would we have ever learned about it? It’s now pretty clear that at least five people were killed: Ahmadi, the man by the car, and the three children. That’s very different from the story we were initially told.
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UPDATE (09/17/21 @ 9:40 PM): This afternoon, the Pentagon completely reversed themselves, saying that there was “no connection” between Zemari Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorisan. They also said they now believe the strike killed as many as ten people, including up to seven children.
So, things that have changed since the Pentagon’s initial statement: 1) The number of people visible in the drone video; 2) The likelihood of explosives in the car causing the secondary explosion; 3) Probably the timeline in which the car was loaded. The Times reported that the military said they observed the car being loaded some time after the video cut off at 3:38. The military says that the men departed the compound at 3:47. So, unless the men loaded the car in those nine minutes, then the loading the military observed happened while the video was still on. Under the revised timeline, the Times’ “water jug” theory (see below) probably makes sense.
And “evidence” that the Pentagon touted at one point that now seems to be going completely unmentioned includes: 1) The alleged intercepted communications between Ahmadi and ISIS-K; 2) The supposed “militant ties” of the man standing by the car; 3) The characterization of Nutrition & Education International’s office as a “known ISIS compound”; 4) Any talk of “wrapped packages”.
Unbelievable.
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The Pentagon continues to earn every ounce of mistrust I send their way, which is saying something. But at least the media did some legwork — they’re the good guys here, right? Unfortunately, nothing these days is that simple.
The Times investigation pokes holes in parts of the Pentagon’s case against Ahmadi, especially the part about the possible “double explosion” (more on that in a bit). And they do some laudable work; they conduct on-the-ground interviews and research that are beyond the capabilities of some snarky asshat self-platforming his personal grievances (hello!). I do have the eensiest quibble with the Times’ habit of seeming to present Ahmadi’s co-workers’ telling of events as the account of what happened, as opposed to an account of what happened. I slightly question the journalistic value of sentences like this:
“In separate interviews, all three passengers denied loading explosives into the vehicle they were about to commute home in.”
Okay, but if they were ISIS operatives who had loaded explosives into a car to be detonated at the airport, what would you expect them to say? “Yup, ya got me dead to rights. We were loading explosives for a mass murder! I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t ask, but since you did, I’m certainly not going to fib!”
But that’s just a minor quibble. My not-minor quibble with the Times article is that they strongly imply several times that the military mistook Ahmadi and his co-workers loading water jugs into the car for Ahmadi and his co-workers loading explosives into the car. Here’s an unambiguous sentence:
“…an analysis of video feeds showed that what the military may have seen was Mr. Ahmadi and a colleague loading canisters of water into his trunk to bring home to his family.”
But the Times’ own reporting makes it pretty clear that this isn’t what happened. The timeline they provide all but precludes the possibility of a water-for-explosives mix-up:
2:35 PM: Ahmadi pulls into the the driveway of the NGO where he worked. He and a co-worker begin filling empty jugs with water and loading them into his car. This is captured on video.
3:38 PM: Ahmadi’s car is pulled further into the driveway; the gate is closed behind him. Shortly afterwards, the video feed cuts off. It’s at some point after this time that US officials claim to have observed — via drone — four men “gingerly” loading heavy, wrapped packages into Ahmadi’s car. Officials believe those packages may have contained explosives. Ahmadi’s associates say that the only items they brought into the car at that time were their laptops.
So, the water jugs appear to have been loaded between 2:35 and 3:38. US officials say they observed something — described as “wrapped packages” — being loaded some time after 3:38. Whatever the military observed, it doesn’t seem to be those water jugs. And the Times would know that if they had read their own article and were capable of performing basic temporal logic.
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Please see the update above: The Pentagon has revised their version of events, and under the timeline they now provide — in which the loading of the car they observed probably happened while the video was still on — the water jug theory is not ruled out.
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But the “water jug theory” is out there now; a search for “water” and “drone” on Twitter confirms that — yes indeed! — lefty-world now thinks the Pentagon killed Ahmadi because of water jugs. Nice bit of misinformation you spread there, New York Times! I guess in addition to “all the news that’s fit to print”, we also get half-assed theories pushed by reporters who can’t read their own goddamned writing. Quite the value for money!
The Washington Post doesn’t do much better. Like the Times, their article contains a good bit of journalistic value along with a pretty-fucking-obvious dose of bias. The journalistic value comes from reviewing imagery of the explosion’s aftermath with four experts — described as “a physicist and former bomb technicians” — to determine whether there was a secondary explosion that would indicate the presence of explosives in the car. Three experts are pretty clear: No significant secondary explosion seems likely. They cite the lack of damage to the surrounding area, and suggest that vapors from a ruptured gas tank could have caused what might look like a secondary explosion, but that wouldn’t indicate explosives in the car.
These three experts are given 2071 of the articles’ 2188 words. In fact, they are given the first 2071 of the article’s 2188 words, along with fancy-pants “Hey, Pulitzer committee, over here!” graphics. Their testimony also motivates the subheading, which reads:
Seems pretty conclusive. But then, at the very end of the piece — crammed within the article’s last 117 words — we hear from the fourth expert:
Alternatively, some experts told The Post that there could be a smaller amount of explosives that detonated after the Hellfire struck. Air Force veteran Wes Bryant said the images are consistent with the car carrying explosive material.
“Hellfires just do not do this level of damage by themselves to a vehicle,” said Bryant, whose duties included guiding airstrikes from the ground. “That tells me there was some level of high-order explosives.”
WHAT THE FUCK??? HE COMPLETELY CONTRADICTED EVERYTHING YOU SAID SO FAR! So, unless I’m the world’s biggest idiot, what happened here is pretty obvious: The Post spoke to four experts. Three of them said what the Post wanted them to say, so the Post gave those experts 96.8 percent of the article, plus all of the graphics and the subheading. The fourth expert didn’t say what the Post wanted him to say, so they did the journalistic equivalent of smothering his testimony with a pillow, dragging it into the woods, and burying it in a shallow grave.
Let’s look at that subheading again:
And, once more, the quote from the expert interviewed in that very fucking article:
“That tells me there was some level of high-order explosives.”
Well then: THAT WOULD CONSTITUTE SOME EVIDENCE, WOULDN’T IT???
Am I losing my fucking mind here? Am I just nit-picking? These seem like major mistakes. Why can’t the Times and the Post read and understand their own articles? I feel the need to say: I have never been a “fuck the mainstream media!” guy. I’ve subscribed to both publications for 20 years, and I used to write for the fucking Washington Post!!!
But the trend of once-venerable media institutions demonstrating reading comprehension levels that would get you kicked out of Arizona State didn’t end there — The Guardian and NPR jumped in with these wildly-inaccurate headlines:
THAT IS NOT WHAT THE TIMES REPORT SAID!!! YOU HAVE SCRUBBED OUT ALL AMBIGUITY, JUST LIKE THE PENTAGON DID WITH ITS INITIAL ASSESSMENT OF THE SECONDARY BLAST!!! Does anybody read anything anymore? Maybe I’m vastly underestimating the power of TLDR as a force shaping the universe.
I just feel lost. As a high-schooler, I used to drive to the Farm Fresh (that’s a grocery store) in Great Bridge, Virginia and buy the one copy of the New York Times that my town received every day. In college, I’d sit in the quad and read it, and yes: I was an ass about it. A complete “Whoopdee-doo, look at me, I’m reading the New York Flippin’ Times!” ostentatious fucking ass. Before long, I added the Washington Post to the mix, pushing my Insufferable Liberal Prick Quotient to near-lethal levels.
I never took what I was reading as gospel. I knew that the writing came from people, and people are biased and make mistakes. But I took it to be about as close to truth as you can get on this planet.
Now…I can’t believe that anymore. They’ve run too many articles that are clearly biased or blatantly untrue. They’ve lost me due to — among many other offenses — the lab leak debacle, their rush to judgement about the Atlanta shooter’s motives, and their embarrassing articles last summer that breathlessly explained that the spike in murders had to be due to Covid and could not be caused by any other factor!!! The Guardian is now getting pantsed by Andy fucking Ngo, which is like losing an MMA fight to the Snuggle Bear.
We’re in a crisis of institutional credibility. On the right side of the aisle, there’s a political movement — which has captured one of our two parties — that rejects all expertise. They dismiss what the media tells them about the election, what the scientific community tells them about climate change, and what the FDA tells them about vaccines. On the left, we have institutions like the Times and the Post that increasingly demonstrate ideological blindness and seem to be on a mission to piss away their credibility. It is so fucking awkward to try to rebut Trump-y idiots by saying “look at these Covid numbers, and…okay, yes, they’re in the New York Times, which has a Covid obsession and has been in max-freak-out mode for a year and half, but they come from the CDC, which, yes, has made some missteps, but…maybe please trust them anyway?”
That’s too much nuance even for me. We need credible institutions, but credibility can’t be bestowed; it has to be earned. Drone strikes are an issue where there doesn’t appear to be any credible source of information; we’re drifting in an endless sea of “maybe”. I can’t help but feel unmoored; institutions that used to make truth their brand now seem to mostly employ simple-minded hacks who view all things through the distorting prism of ideology. And I increasingly feel like I don’t know anything anymore.
***Poll***
I know what I’m writing for Friday, so let’s do this instead:
If Jeff were to sometimes do a "digest"-type thing, where he highlights music, comedy, and other writing that he enjoys, my response would be...
1. I could not possibly care less about what he thinks about these things. If I want to experience a 41 year-old white guy's taste in music, I'll just watch "Clueless" again. [VOTE FOR THIS]
2. I'd like that, if only to make fun of the garbage he enjoys. [VOTE FOR THIS]
I think this is worth mentioning: Some of the reports based on interviews with Ahmadi’s family about who died contain minor inconsistencies. This report says eight children 18 and under and two adults died; this report says it was seven and three. This report says Zemari Ahmadi was 38, gives the age of a toddler Malika as two, and a boy Farzad as 13; this report gives their ages as 43, three, and ten, respectively. This report gives Zemari Ahmadi’s age as 45, not 38 or 43. Make of that what you will; the Times, Post, and NBC are speaking to various family members, and if an uncle thinks his niece was three but another uncle reports her age as two, I personally don’t think that discredits their testimony. But I also think it would be naïve to take their accounts as gospel.
"Which is a legitimate crisis for a guy like me, who has spent my whole life more-or-less believing what I read in the Times and the Post."
I went through that crisis about 1.5 years ago, and ever since then have felt very foolish for not having gone through it more like 20 years ago. After many painful months, I think I've finally made it to step 7 of the grieving process: Acceptance. The Times and the Post are simply not to be believed. I've accepted it. It sounds to me like you're still back on step 5: Anger. Best of luck with your journey. It's an uncertain and disconcerting world on the other side, but at least it's real.
I’ve been in the room while higher ranking dudes were debating about blowing up people they couldn’t see very well- it was a PGM from an Apache team and not a drone, but the process of wrestling with lack of info and trying to interpret what little you have is similar.
The only two things I am sure of are-
That the primary victim was innocent, because if he’d had so much as a cousin in law who did business with a baddie the DoD would have screamed it from the rooftops to prove he was ISIS. The fact that they aren’t claiming vindication means that he wasn’t plotting a bomb attack.
And two-
They had some piece of data indicating that this guy in particular was plotting the second bomb attack. Some informant somewhere gave that address, they caught some radio traffic matching his vehicle, they scanned the city for anybody loading suspicious stuff, who knows. But they didn’t just throw a dart at the map of Kabul and sent a Hellfire wherever it landed, there was SOMETHING. That piece of data was wrong (as per above), but it was present.
So what we’re looking at is a decision made with limited intelligence (obvious army joke is obvious) and high stakes. There were still thousands of would-be refugees camped out by the airport, possibly the juiciest target ever in the history of the country. Our armed forces were still horribly exposed, entirely dependent on the good faith of the Taliban just to stay alive, let alone operate the air lifts. And if you have evidence that this guy over here is loading up a VBIED, exactly where do you draw the line between “the evidence is good enough to waste him” and “the evidence is too weak to waste him over”?