The Village Where Nothing Happened

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Journalist Richard Lloyd Parry visited the village of Kama Ado, which has ceased to exist after "American B-52s unloaded dozen of bombs that killed 115 men, women and children." According to the US Department of Defense, however, nothing happened there. "A Pentagon spokesman, questioned about reports of civilian casualties in eastern Afghanistan, explained that they were not true, because the US is meticulous in selecting only military targets associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network. Subsequent Pentagon utterances on the subject have wobbled somewhat, but there has been no retraction of that initial decisive statement: 'It just didn't happen.' So God knows what kind of a magic looking-glass I stepped through yesterday, as I travelled out of the city of Jalalabad along the desert road to Kama Ado. From the moment I woke up, I was confronted with the wreckage and innocent victims of high-altitude, hi-tech, thousand-pound nothings."