Top officials at the Pentagon cannot confirm if their haphazard drone strike against an alleged Islamic State member actually killed members of the Islamic State, or if it killed civilians.

Members of the Pentagon have been called out in a lie by the New York Times. After the suicide attack that killed 13 U.S. Service Members at the Hamid Karzai International Airport that was allegedly carried out by the Islamic State of the Khorasan Province, the Pentagon gave clearance for an MQ-9 reaper drone to conduct a kinetic airstrike with a hellfire missile against a white Toyota Corolla inside of Kabul. The problem with this was that they didn't have positive identification of the person in the vehicle because there were no U.S. or U.S. allied boots on the ground to provide them with reliable intelligence on the scenario.

The man killed in the MQ-9 Reaper attack was Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime employee of the California-based aid group Nutrition and Education International. According to other Afghans from his neighborhood, at least seven children were present when the strike occurred, they all died in the same attack. Had there still been actual American, or American allied boots on the deck, this information could have been vetted. Instead, it appears as if the Pentagon was relying on Taliban ground intelligence. That's a sentence no one should ever need to write ever again.

It's interesting to note that following the attacks, the MQ-9 Reaper footage was never released to the public. Every drone strike that occurs is recorded by the drone controller station. High-profile attacks like this are generally unclassified and released to the public directly through the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service within 24 hours of the strike occurring. For example, the Trump administration cleared the GBU-43/B MOAB for use against ISIS-K in April of 2017, killing 93 ISIS-K fighters. The footage was posted almost immediately for public release. The footage from this drone strike, which the Pentagon has clearly stated caused secondary explosions causing collateral damage, has yet to be released.

Is this because no video evidence of secondary explosions exist?

Also, in these attacks, high value targets are generally named. When the strike is conducted and confirmed a success, those names are also released to the public. We have seen this in the past as well.

Now, I'm going to editorialize for a little while.

The debacle in Afghanistan has been a massive blow to not only the Biden Administration, but also for top U.S. Officials in the Pentagon who have their incompetency in full view of the public for the first time since they stepped onto Twitter to start virtue signaling about "White Rage". Everything about this situation screams war-crime, and the fact that none of the footage has been released to the public only makes it more obvious that top U.S. Officials are doing everything in their power to prevent themselves from being held accountable.

According to the Pentagon, this drone strike is still "under investigation". Who is investigating this situation though? Is the Pentagon investigating themselves? To me, that sound incredibly suspicious. This situation needs to be brought before the International Court, and the U.S. Officials who approved this airstrike need to be present and held accountable by the international community, because it's clear now that they can't be trusted to hold themselves accountable for anything.

Point blank, this is what I think happened. The suicide attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport was a huge blow to the morale of Americans everywhere who were already weary from the conflict in Afghanistan. Seeing this huge blow, and realizing that they were quickly losing the support of the American public on a bi-partisan basis, the Pentagon sent an MQ-9 Reaper drone into the air looking for a quick win. Within 8 hours of spotting a white Toyota Corolla, a single Hellfire missile was launched into a compound without proper positive identification of the target. As a result, good men died, and so did a bunch of innocent children, but the Pentagon got to get in front of the press and say they killed the guys who planned the suicide attack at HKIA.

Unfortunately for the Pentagon, it doesn't matter how much virtue signaling they do. They wear a uniform, therefore the press will not carry water for them the way they do their political idols. The New York Times piece above is a shocking throwback to the days of actual investigative journalism, and you know what, when they want to be honest, the NYT can still do it better than just about anyone out there. I know most of you probably disagree with the source's political leanings, but just watch the video. They did good work here.

As Americans, we have to hold our top military commanders accountable for their actions. They should not be politicians, but men and women of strong moral character who do everything in their power to make the right call, regardless of the public's perception of them. Look no further than the actions of former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who disagreed with the Trump administration's plan to negotiate with the Taliban to end the conflict in Afghanistan just before his resignation. That resignation not only showed the the former SecDef was a man of character who would stick to his convictions, but it also showed that he was a proper military leader prepared to make hard decisions even when it did not benefit him.

We do not currently have men of that standard leading our military. Hold them accountable. Every single one of them.