Obama apologizes to head of Doctors Without Borders for strike on hospital

Doctors Without Borders Executive President Jason Cone called on President Obama to support a fact-finding mission through the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission after the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
President Obama apologized to Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday for an airstrike that killed 12 aid workers and 10 patients in Afghanistan, even as the White House withheld U.S. support for an international inquiry the relief group says is needed to investigate an attack that may qualify as a war crime.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that Obama had spoken by telephone with Joanne Liu, international president of the group also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF, and expressed his condolences for Saturday’s strike in northern Afghanistan.
“When we make a mistake, we are honest, own up to it and apologize,” Earnest told reporters at the White House. “The Department of Defense goes to great lengths to prevent civilian casualties, but in this case, there was a mistake, and it’s one that the United States owns up to.”
At least 22 people, including three children and 12 Doctors Without Borders staff, were killed overnight on Saturday when an American AC-130 gunship launched repeated attacks on the civilian medical facility in the city of Kunduz, where Afghan forces are battling Taliban fighters who overran the city a week ago.
Earnest said that Obama promised Liu a thorough investigation “and if necessary will implement changes to make sure tragedies like this one are less likely in the future.”
The White House says President Obama telephoned the head of Doctors Without Borders and apologized for a deadly airstrike on the aid group's hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
He declined to say whether the White House would support Liu’s demand for an independent investigation of the incident, but suggested the United States would back only a Pentagon probe now underway, along with separate NATO and Afghan inquiries.
MSF, which operates health facilities under difficult conditions across the globe, has insisted the U.S. military cannot conduct a reliable investigation of its own forces’ actions.
Liu, speaking earlier in the day at a news briefing in Geneva, said that an independent examination should be conducted by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, a body that was set up in the 1990s under the Geneva Conventions.
“The facts and circumstances of this attack must be investigated independently and impartially, particularly given the inconsistencies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened over recent days,” Liu said.
Liu said the proposed commission would gather evidence from the United States, NATO and Afghanistan. After that, the charity would decide whether to seek criminal charges for loss of life and damage. The group has said the attack might be deemed a war crime.
“If we let this go, we are basically giving a blank check to any countries at war,” she said.
Army General John Campbell clarified that the decision to provide air support to Afghan forces in Kunduz, which hit a hospital, was a U.S. decision. "We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility," Gen. Campbell said while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 6.
Liu, who spoke prior to the call with Obama, noted there had been no commitments yet on official cooperation with an independent investigation.
But U.S. officials said that the United States would be unlikely to take part in an inquiry by the commission. The United States is not a party to the body.
“We do participate in some international tribunals and are party to numerous treaties, but when it comes to investigations of our military activities, we do those ourselves,” said John Bellinger III, who was the State Department’s top lawyer from 2005 to 2009.
Bellinger said the commission, which has never been activated, may not have the ability to quickly conduct an investigation of this type. “Because accidents or incidents . . . do happen not infrequently, the U.S. government knows how to conduct an investigation” such as the one now taking place.
In a statement issued later in the day, Liu acknowledged the call with Obama and reiterated her call for an independent probe to determine “what happened in Kunduz, how it happened, and why it happened.”
Obama also spoke on Wednesday with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to express condolences for the Afghans killed on Saturday.
The president’s personal outreach is one sign of the administration’s concern about what is one of the worst instances of U.S. air power gone astray in Afghanistan in years.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter promised to hold those responsible accountable, if necessary. The U.S. military rarely, if ever, disciplines individual service members for “collateral damage” or other actions that occur as part of combat.
Officials are now scrambling to assemble an accurate account of what happened in Kunduz after their narrative shifted in the initial days following the attack.
While military officials initially said the airstrike took place to defend U.S. forces on the ground in Kunduz, the Pentagon later revised its account. They now say the strike came in response to a request from Afghan forces, not U.S. forces, under fire from the Taliban.
There are now about 9,800 U.S. troops on the ground as the Obama administration seeks to wind down the long war there. Most are tasked with supporting Afghan forces, who lack key capabilities in intelligence and air power, while a smaller number is dedicated to tracking down militants who threaten the United States.
For the most part, U.S. forces are not supposed to be taking part in combat operations against the Taliban, as they did in the years that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. White House officials are considering additional revisions to President Obama’s plan to bring the U.S. military footprint to 1,000 or less by the end of next year.
Gen. John F. Campbell, the head of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, has ordered that all forces under his command are trained again in rules of engagement that govern operations in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon has not yet said whether Saturday’s strikes violated those rules, which permit the United States to use air power in three situations: for counterterrorism operations, in self-defense or to protect Afghan forces “in extremis.”
Ryan reported from Washington and Deane from London. Tim Craig and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and David Nakamura and Thomas Gibbons-Neff in Washington contributed to this report.
Read more:
The bloody history of Kunduz, from Afghanistan’s ‘Convoy of Death’ to now
In Kunduz, echoes of a 1988 guerrilla assault after the Soviets withdrew
Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world


Find information about troops who have been accused of war crimes during their service in Afghanistan.

Australian forces are accused of war crimes while on duty in Afghanistan. Some other countries are also investigating what their troops may have done while serving there. There have also been American contractors accused and convicted of war crimes while fighting the War on Terror. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been investigating these accusations for years, but the US government has not always been cooperative. Relevant documents include events related to bombings.

Research global war crime investigations related to this question.

U.S. military struggles to explain how it wound up bombing Doctors Without Borders hospital

Speaking at the Pentagon, Gen. John Campbell, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said Afghan troops under fire in Kunduz requested air support from U.S. forces. The airstrikes killed 22 in a Doctors Without Borders hospital.
A heavily armed U.S. gunship designed to provide added firepower to Special Operations forces was responsible for shooting and killing 22 people at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, over the weekend, Pentagon officials said Monday.
The attack occurred in the middle of the night Saturday, when Afghan troops and a U.S. Special Forces team training and advising them were on the ground near the hospital in Kunduz, the first major Afghan city to fall to the Taliban since the war began in 2001. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said Monday the airstrike was requested by Afghan troops who had come under fire, contradicting earlier statements from Pentagon officials that the strike was ordered to protect U.S. forces on the ground.
[Afghan response to hospital bombing is muted, even sympathetic]
The new details, and the continuing dispute over what exactly happened, heightened the controversy over the strike. In the two days since the incident, U.S. officials have struggled to explain how a U.S. aircraft wound up attacking a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders. On Monday, the medical humanitarian group said the United States was squarely responsible.
“The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs,” Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement. “With such constant discrepancies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical.”
The weekend’s disastrous airstrike reinforces doubts about how effectively a limited U.S. force in Afghanistan can work with Afghan troops to repel the Taliban, which has been newly emboldened as the United States draws down its presence.
The strike also comes as the Obama administration is weighing whether to keep as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2015, according to senior officials. Obama has not made a final decision on the proposal, but the recent advances by the Taliban have certainly complicated the president’s calculus.
Army Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told reporters Monday at a news conference that Afghan forces “advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S. forces.” Campbell made it clear that this differed from initial reports that said U.S. forces were under attack and called in the airstrikes for their defense.
Campbell’s remarks differed from two previous comments, including one made by Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter on Sunday that said U.S. forces were under attack.
“At some point in the course of the events there [they] did report that they, themselves, were coming under attack. That much I think we can safely say,” Carter told reporters Sunday.
Afghan forces battle the Taliban in an effort to retake the city.
Abdul Qahar Aram, spokesman for the Afghan army’s 209th Corps in northern Afghanistan, said he could not comment on the specifics of Saturday’s hospital bombing. But Aram said there was a “strong possibility” that Afghan forces had requested it.
A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had no immediate comment on Campbell’s statement.
One aspect of the strike that remained unclear Monday was the exact role played by U.S. forces accompanying the Afghans that night.
After Kunduz was overrun with Taliban fighters late last month, American Special Operations forces were ferried in to shore up Afghan forces that were making little headway in the fight to retake the populated city center. Together, the U.S. and Afghan forces have been able to retake nearly all of the city.
These “train, advise and assist” missions are a staple of U.S. Special Forces capabilities and have been conducted extensively in recent years. In combat situations, rather than return fire, U.S. troops on these missions are more likely to help direct communication, casualty evacuation and direct air support from an AC-130, for instance, if it is available.
As a result, there has been little direct contact between U.S. troops and the Taliban since most U.S. forces were relegated to the sidelines when official combat operations ended last year.
[Afghans who once watched war from afar forced to flee as front lines shift]
The aircraft that carried out the weekend attack was an AC-130 gunship, according to Campbell. Unlike jets, the AC-130 is a unique aircraft dedicated almost entirely to supporting Special Operations forces.
In order to make sure targeting and communication from the ground to the aircraft is as seamless as possible, every AC-130 flies with a liaison officer who has spent time as a Special Forces soldier on the ground.
While most jets streak across a target, moving quickly while dropping bombs or firing cannons or machine guns, the AC-130 essentially loiters over a target at around 7,000 feet, flying in a circle and firing from weapons ports mounted on the aircraft’s left side.
Unlike other military fixed-wing aircraft, an AC-130 is requested differently. While a jet requires a map coordinate to engage its target, the AC-130 relies on direction (a compass heading) and a distance to the enemy target from the friendly forces engaged on the ground. In short, it relies on visual targeting.
This difference might explain why the hospital was targeted even though Doctors Without Borders said it had given U.S. and Afghan forces its map coordinates before.
“It’s a visual acuity aircraft,” said a U.S. close-air support pilot who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his active-duty status. “An AC-130 finds the friendly force, then fires over their left or right shoulder.”
The pilot went on to add that an AC-130 does not enter enemy airspace and look for targets. It specifically has to be guided onto the target by a force on the ground and will fire only after identifying friendly and enemy forces, he said.
The aircraft, because of its large profile and the fact that it operates at low altitude, flies close air support missions only at night. Since it only works in the dark, the crew of roughly a dozen uses a number of infrared sensors and night vision devices to see and engage targets on the ground.
According to Navy Cmdr. Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, there have been 12 U.S. airstrikes around the city of Kunduz since Sep. 29. The airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital was the second strike within the city.
It now ranks among one of the most high-profile U.S. strikes to result in civilian casualties in Afghanistan. In July 2002, a U.S. AC-130 fired on a wedding party, killing more than 40 and injuring more than 100 people in northern Helmand province.
Since Saturday’s attack, Doctors Without Borders has left Kunduz.
Tim Craig in Kabul contributed to this report.
Read more:
U.S. troops dispatched to Kunduz to help Afghan forces
Afghan forces undertake bid to regain key city seized by Taliban
The bloody history of Kunduz, from Afghanistan’s ‘Convoy of Death’ to now


Doctors Without Borders says U.S. airstrike hit hospital in Afghanistan; at least 19 dead

Photos from social media show the aftermath of an incident in Kunduz, Afghanistan where U.S. forces may have mistakenly bombed a hospital, killing at least 16 people. Officials warned the death toll could rise as dozens of people remain unaccounted for.
KABUL —
The airstrike occurred before dawn when a Doctors Without Borders trauma center in war-torn Kunduz was struck while doctors were treating dozens of patients. Hospital officials said they were assaulted from the air for 30 to 45 minutes, resulting in a large fire that burned some patients to death in their beds. Among those killed were 12 of the charity group’s staff members, the group said.
“This attack is abhorrent and a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” said Meinie Nicolai, the group’s president.
While the charity’s workers reported waves of bombs hitting their facility, the U.S.-led military coalition in Kabul issued a statement confirming one American airstrike that may have caused “collateral damage” to a “medical facility.” Authorities said it was launched against “insurgents who were directly firing upon U.S. servicemembers” who had traveled to Kunduz to advise Afghan security forces.
The hospital disaster came at the end of a week in which U.S. forces had to step up their involvement in Afghanistan’s chaotic 14-year war, despite President Obama’s pledge to reduce the U.S. role and remove most American troops from the country by the end of 2016.

U.S. fighter jets and Special Operations troops were dispatched to the area after Taliban militants on Monday overran Kunduz, Afghanistan’s sixth-largest city.
It was unclear how close Taliban fighters may have been to the hospital Saturday or whether the U.S. military didn’t realize the building was a hospital. Afghan security officials said Taliban fighters had been pouring into the facility in recent days seeking treatment for gunshot wounds and other injuries.
The charity and other international organizations reacted with outrage, and the hospital’s management said it had repeatedly informed the U.S.-led coalition of the facility’s precise GPS coordinates over the past few months. The location of the hospital was last conveyed to the international coalition three days before the airstrike, officials added.
Independent probe sought
In a statement, the United Nations’ top human rights official called for an independent, public investigation.
“This event is utterly tragic, inexcusable and, possibly, even criminal,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, adding that “if established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime.”
Jason Cone, executive director of Doctors Without Borders in the United States, said hospital officials in Kunduz immediately reached out to U.S. military officials when the airstrike occurred.
An airstrike damaged much of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz. (Msf/AFP/Getty Images)
“The bombing continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed,” the organization said in a statement.
A U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, said the strike appears to have been carried out by an AC-130 gunship, a heavily armed warplane.
Late Saturday, Obama extended his condolences to those killed and injured and said in a statement that “the Department of Defense has launched a full investigation, and we will await the results of that inquiry before making a definitive judgment as to the circumstances of this tragedy.”
‘The only advanced hospital’
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Army Gen. John F. Campbell, commander of the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, called him Saturday to offer condolences. But U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was cautious in a statement issued Saturday, saying that “a full investigation” was underway and that he was extending prayers to those affected. “We are still trying to determine exactly what happened,” his statement said.
In all, at least 12 Doctors Without Borders staff members were killed along with seven patients, three of them children, the group said. At least 37 other people were seriously injured, including 19 staff members. The hospital was “partially destroyed” in the attack, which began shortly after 2 a.m., the group said.
“The bombs hit, and then we heard the plane circle round,” said Heman Nagarathnam, who is the charity’s head of programs in northern Afghanistan. “There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. This happened again and again. When I made it out from the office, the main hospital building was engulfed in flames.”
Those who could, Nagarathnam said, hid in the hospital’s bunker. Medical staff and critically ill patients, however, were left exposed to the ensuing fire.
A nurse working at the hospital, Lajos Zoltan Jecs, said that when she and other staff members emerged from a safe room after the attack, they looked into the intensive care unit, which was on fire.
“Six patients were burning in their beds,” she said in a statement issued by Doctors Without Borders. “There are no words for how terrible it was,” she said.
Mirza Laghmani, a local resident, said Afghan soldiers were battling militants near the hospital when Saturday’s airstrike took place.
“The Taliban are taking and evacuating their wounded fighters to the hospital for treatment,” said Laghmani, who said the militant group still controls most of the city. “It was the only advanced hospital” in the area.
Abdul Qahar Aram, spokesman for the Afghan army’s 209th Corps in northern Afghanistan, on Saturday said Taliban fighters are now hiding in “people’s houses, mosques and hospitals using civilians as human shields.”
Sultan Arab, a local police commander in Kunduz, said the hospital came under an airstrike “because the Taliban had shifted their command center inside the hospital.”
Doctors Without Borders, which operates in 20 countries and was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, prides itself on treating any patient in need of assistance.
Throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has faced criticism over civilian casualties and “friendly fire” incidents. Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai repeatedly accused the U.S. military of being reckless in how it carried out airstrikes. But after Ghani replaced Karzai last year, relations between the Afghan government and coalition officials improved dramatically.
Ghani, who is hoping that Obama rethinks his timetable for removing troops from Afghanistan, did not directly criticize the United States for the tragedy.
The U.S. military official said Special Forces soldiers were on the ground advising Afghan forces when they detected incoming fire from Taliban fighters. They received authorization to return fire at an area that was apparently close to the hospital, the official said.
The AC-130 gunship, commonly known as the Spectre, can stay above a target for long amounts of time and carries a number of weapons, including a 105mm cannon.
On Saturday, as the main hospital building was still smoldering, Doctors Without Borders circulated photographs showing the aftermath of the bombing. In one photo, a health-care worker in blood-stained scrubs huddled in a corner with another man.
Later in the day, hospital officials began evacuating patients to another facility about two hours’ drive away, a risky undertaking because fierce fighting continues across swaths of northeastern Afghanistan.
There are mounting concerns that an already grim humanitarian situation in Kunduz will worsen in the coming days.
“The dead bodies are lying on the streets, both the Taliban and also civilians, and no one is allowed to pick up the bodies,” said Laghmani, the local resident. “There is also an electricity shortage, a water shortage plus a bread shortage.”
There have been several incidents in the past in which U.S. airstrikes inadvertently caused large numbers of civilian casualties.
In 2002, the U.S. military mistakenly bombed a wedding in Afghanistan’s central province of Uruzgan, killing more than 35 people. In 2009, the U.S.-led coalition bombed two tanker trucks in Kunduz, igniting a fireball that killed 74 civilians, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission.
Missy Ryan and Thomas Gibbons-Neff in Washington, and Mohammad Sharif in Kabul contributed to this report.
Read more:
Afghans who once watched war from afar forced to flee as front lines shift
U.S. troops dispatched to Kunduz to help Afghan forces
In Taliban-held Kunduz, echoes of a 1988 guerrilla assault after the Soviets withdrew
Doctors, aid workers fight Ebola in West Africa, then fear of disease in U.S.


CIA job interview leads to criminal investigation of Green Beret

Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, Jr., right, awards the Silver Star to Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn in January 2011. (The Fayetteville Observer/James Robinson)
A Green Beret officer who was stripped of a prestigious valor award and dropped from the Special Forces fell out of favor with Army officials after the CIA shared information it gathered about him while he was going through screening for a potential job, according to officials familiar with the case.
Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn was investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Command for an undisclosed violation of the U.S. military’s rules of engagement in 2010 that resulted in the death of a known enemy fighter and bombmaker in Helmand province, Afghanistan, according to the officials. The Army closed a lengthy investigation last summer without charging Golsteyn with any crime, but Army Secretary John McHugh revoked a Silver Star that Golsteyn had been awarded for heroism on Feb. 20, 2010, during the iconic Battle of Marja.
The Army also took away Golsteyn’s Special Forces tab, a qualification that goes to any soldier who completes Special Forces training, and reassigned him to the conventional Army as an infantry officer, several officials said. He is in the process of determining his future with the Army, said his lawyer, Phil Stackhouse.
[READ: Army revokes Silver Star for Green Beret officer, citing investigation]
It’s an uncommon fall for a commander who led a 3rd Special Forces Group team in combat. Golsteyn received the Silver Star in 2011 for braving enemy fire numerous times as a captain on a day in which his team came under attack while hunting an enemy sniper team that had opened fire on their patrol base, according to an Army summary of action. Army officials later approved an upgrade to the Distinguished Service Cross — considered one level down from the Medal of Honor in honoring combat heroism — but ultimately decided Golsteyn deserved neither.
Neither the Army nor Stackhouse have been willing to elaborate on the allegations he faced, and Golsteyn declined to be interviewed through his lawyer. But three sources with knowledge of the investigation told The Washington Post that the Army began probing Golsteyn’s actions after he interviewed for a job with the CIA. Todd Ebitz, a spokesman for the agency, declined to comment.
Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn is congratulated by fellow soldiers following the Valor Awards Ceremony for 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg. (The Fayetteville Observer/James Robinson)
Golsteyn’s story received attention after Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R.-Calif.) wrote a piece for the Daily Beast this week that accused Army investigators of threatening the men who served under Golsteyn and offering them immunity in exchange for their testimony. None of his fellow soldiers were willing to speak to investigators, Hunter said. Chris Grey, a spokesman for Army CID, confirmed they investigated Golsteyn, but declined additional comment.
An independent expert on military awards, Doug Sterner, said it is highly uncommon in the military for a prestigious valor award like the Silver Star to be stripped away later. Sterner, An Army veteran who served in Vietnam, questioned whether it was fair to do so.
“His award went through the process,” Sterner said. “It was properly vetted, it was properly processed and it was awarded for a single act at a moment in time.”
A number of influential people have advocated on Golsteyn’s behalf. In addition to Hunter, Medal of Honor recipient William D. Swenson wrote a letter that was circulated on Capitol Hill and said he would “gladly stand with [Golsteyn] on any battlefield against any enemy.” Swenson wrote they went through training together early in their careers, but were brought back together through “unfortunate circumstances” that he does not describe.
“Having now known Golsteyn through the course of his career as an Officer, I can truly say he is the finest Officer I have served with,” said Swenson’s letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Post. “He stands apart. When our nation calls for warriors to defeat our enemies, it calls for Officers like Matt Golsteyn.”
Swenson, who received the nation’s top award for valor in 2013, could not be reached for comment.
A recently retired Marine officer, Col. Randall Newman, who led infantry operations during the Battle of Marja, also has advocated for Golsteyn on several occasions and written letters on his behalf, he told The Post on Friday. Golsteyn led operations in the southern portion of what had been a Taliban stronghold, and had his complete trust, Newman said.
“Matt is a very conscientious guy, and probably one of his greatest attributes is that he is one of the harshest critics of himself,” Newman said. “I can see him being a guy and being involved in an action, and then wondering afterward if he had done the right thing.”
Newman said he was interviewed by Army investigators, but is not clear on all the specifics of the allegations against Golsteyn.
“Until someone produces some viable evidence that he has done something wrong, he should be treated as an innocent man,” Newman said. “Matt has been exposed to what I imagine is the worst punishment possible for a warrior, which is being benched.”


Army officer convicted in shooting deaths of 2 Afghans

Last summer, days into a new assignment leading a platoon in a volatile patch of southern Afghanistan, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army asked one of his soldiers to open fire on two Afghan men on motorcycles. The fatal shots set in motion an extraordinary criminal investigation that unfolded largely unnoticed until a jury at Fort Bragg, N.C., this week heard dramatically different accounts of the choices that the officer, Clint Lorance, made that day. On Thursday evening, jurors convicted the 28-year-old Lorance of murder, siding with prosecutors who portrayed his order as a reckless contravention of the rules of engagement. Lorance’s supporters say the real crime was the military’s decision to turn a war hero deployed in one of the most dangerous and remote corners of Afghanistan into a defendant. “To put murder charges on him!” Lorance’s mother, Anna Lorance, protested in an interview before the verdict in the court-martial was announced. “In war, people die. When you’re in a heated combat zone, you have seconds to think.” Lorance was sentenced to 20 years in prison, forfeiture of pay and dismissal from the military. In the annals of American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, cases that have landed service members in court on serious charges have typically been preceded by outcries, allegations of egregious conduct and extensive coverage in the news media. The vast majority of defendants have been enlisted troops. “In modern warfare, there is no clearly defined enemy,” argues a statement on the site, which his family is using to raise money for the officer’s legal expenses. “Long gone are the days where American Soldiers could distinguish their enemy by the uniform they wore.” Lorance was born and raised in Hobart, a small town in Oklahoma, the son of a welder and a stay-at-home mom. As a toddler, his mother said, he played with toy guns and firetrucks. “We knew at a young age who he was going to be: someone who would defend and help,” she said. He signed up to become a military police officer on his 18th birthday, when the nation was barely a year into the Afghanistan war and had not yet invaded Iraq. As an enlisted man, Lorance was deployed to South Korea and later Iraq, where he spent 15 months. He loved the rigor and intensity of a military career, Anna Lorance, 54, said. “Every year, his pride just

Last summer, days into a new assignment leading a platoon in a volatile patch of southern Afghanistan, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army asked one of his soldiers to open fire on two Afghan men on motorcycles.
The fatal shots set in motion an extraordinary criminal investigation that unfolded largely unnoticed until a jury at Fort Bragg, N.C., this week heard dramatically different accounts of the choices that the officer, Clint Lorance, made that day.
On Thursday evening, jurors convicted the 28-year-old Lorance of murder, siding with prosecutors who portrayed his order as a reckless contravention of the rules of engagement. Lorance’s supporters say the real crime was the military’s decision to turn a war hero deployed in one of the most dangerous and remote corners of Afghanistan into a defendant.
“To put murder charges on him!” Lorance’s mother, Anna Lorance, protested in an interview before the verdict in the court-martial was announced. “In war, people die. When you’re in a heated combat zone, you have seconds to think.”
Lorance was sentenced to 20 years in prison, forfeiture of pay and dismissal from the military.
In the annals of American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, cases that have landed service members in court on serious charges have typically been preceded by outcries, allegations of egregious conduct and extensive coverage in the news media. The vast majority of defendants have been enlisted troops.
There was the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the 2005 Haditha massacre in Iraq — cases so shocking that they injected an indelible poison into the relationship between Baghdad and Washington. In Afghanistan, a squad of soldiers infamously described itself as a “kill team” for shooting Afghan men for sport in 2010; the group’s ringleader kept body parts as trophies. Just months before Lorance’s fateful patrol, an Army sergeant left his base at night and massacred 17 sleeping Afghans, including several children.
Lorance’s case is remarkable because he is only the second Army officer charged with murder in a battlefield death during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His defense, outlined in a detailed account on a Web site registered to his name, sought to shift the burden, putting U.S. military rules of engagement on trial.
“In modern warfare, there is no clearly defined enemy,” argues a statement on the site, which his family is using to raise money for the officer’s legal expenses. “Long gone are the days where American Soldiers could distinguish their enemy by the uniform they wore.”
Lorance was born and raised in Hobart, a small town in Oklahoma, the son of a welder and a stay-at-home mom. As a toddler, his mother said, he played with toy guns and firetrucks. “We knew at a young age who he was going to be: someone who would defend and help,” she said.
He signed up to become a military police officer on his 18th birthday, when the nation was barely a year into the Afghanistan war and had not yet invaded Iraq. As an enlisted man, Lorance was deployed to South Korea and later Iraq, where he spent 15 months. He loved the rigor and intensity of a military career, Anna Lorance, 54, said.
“Every year, his pride just grew and grew, along with his rank,” his mother said.
After his Iraq deployment, Lorance became the first college graduate in his family and was commissioned as an officer.
He was deployed to southern Afghanistan in March 2012. After a first lieutenant in his unit, the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 8nd Airborne Division, was wounded in a bombing, Lorance unexpectedly became a platoon leader, a job that many infantry officers regard as among the most challenging and rewarding in a military career.
Shortly after he and his men rolled out of their small outpost in Kandahar province early July 2, 2012, Army pilots warned Lorance over the radio about suspected insurgents loitering north, east and west of the platoon, according to the account posted on the Web site. As the troops, most of whom were on foot, approached a village, they spotted the men on motorcycles. Suspecting that they were insurgents, Lorance asked one of his soldiers to shoot them.
“I was given a lawful order,” the shooter, Pvt. David Shilo, testified, according to the Fayetteville Observer. “My life wasn’t threatened at the time.”
Lorance’s site contends that intelligence reports he had reviewed suggested that every man on a motorcycle in that vicinity was presumed to be a member of the Taliban because the insurgent group was in control of the area. The order to fire the two long-range shots was rightful, his account says, “eliminating the threat.”
Prosecutors say Lorance knew that to be false — and they elicited testimony from service members that bolstered their case. U.S. troops in Afghanistan may open fire only if they detect hostile intent or actions in the battlefield.
After some of his men reported the incident up the chain of command, Lorance was reassigned to a desk job and stripped of his weapon as an investigation was launched. In January, a few months after returning home with the rest of the brigade, he was charged with murder, attempted murder and misconduct.
The charging document depicts Lorance as abusive. He warned an Afghan man whose property abutted the outpost that “if there is enemy activity on your land, we will shoot and kill you, your family and your kid,” the document says. It also accuses him of impeding the investigation by asking a soldier to falsely state in the incident report that the platoon could not examine the slain Afghans’ bodies because locals removed them shortly after the shooting.
His parents raised money through the Web site and their neighbors to retain Guy Womack, a Houston lawyer and retired Marine lieutenant colonel who has represented high-profile military defendants.
Womack said in a statement issued late Thursday night that he was “bitterly disappointed” by the verdict. He said his client’s actions were justified in light of the threat level in the area and the information conveyed to him during the patrol, which made Lorance feel the men in motorcycles posed an imminent threat.
“I respect the Member’s decision,” Womack wrote, referring to the jury. “But I fear it bodes ill for other small unit leaders who face similar challenges, daily, in Afghanistan.”
The sentence handed down against Lorance dashes his plans for the future.
“Until this incident, Clint planned on serving his country for 10 more years, retiring from the Army and attending law school,” his Web site says. “Clint’s dream is to work in a district attorney’s office as an associate prosecutor.”


In southern Afghanistan, U.S. airstrikes kill up to 18 members of Afghan forces

KABUL —
U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan killed as many as 18 Afghan police officers late Thursday during heavy ground fighting with Taliban forces near the capital of Helmand province, Afghan officials and provincial leaders said Friday.
U.S. military officials here said the airstrikes, in what they described as a “tragic accident,” killed members of the Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters, but they did not say how many from each side died.
A spokesman for the U.S. military advisory mission here, Lt. Col. Dave Butler, said in a statement that Afghan security officials requested “precision air support” during heavy fighting and that U.S. military personnel had worked with Afghan coordinators. The coordinators “confirmed that the areas were clear of friendly forces,” he said. “Unfortunately, they were not, and a tragic accident resulted.”
U.S. officials are “examining the miscommunication to ensure it is not repeated,” Butler said. “We regret this tragic loss of life of our partners.”
Afghan officials in Kabul and Helmand gave conflicting information on the number of casualties, saying that between eight and 18 Afghan personnel were killed and that 14 others were wounded. They said the incident, which took place during a ground battle on the Kabul-Kandahar highway, was under investigation.
The Taliban said in a statement that U.S. forces were behind the strikes, but the Helmand governor’s office said it was not clear whether Afghan or foreign forces had carried them out.
The incident occurred amid the widespread combat between Taliban fighters and U.S.-backed Afghan forces that has gone on for months and caused heavy casualties among Afghan troops and civilians.
The Taliban launched its annual spring offensive in March and has continued aggressive attacks since last week, the start of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and prayer. The Taliban surge is seen as a means to gain leverage in ongoing peace talks with the United States.
Errant airstrikes such as occurred in Helmand have been relatively rare during the years of conflict here, but Thursday’s incident bore a striking resemblance to a recent occurrence in southern Uruzgan province in March, when at least five Afghan soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in U.S. airstrikes.
In that case, Afghan defense officials said, the soldiers had been patrolling near a checkpoint when they were attacked from the air. “The attack was caused by lack of proper coordination,” a defense official told the Reuters news agency at the time.
In a statement about the March air attack, the U.S. military said its forces had conducted “precision self-defense airstrikes on people firing on Afghan and American forces” who were conducting a ground operation near an Afghan army checkpoint.
Deadlier incidents have occurred. More than 40 civilians were killed in aerial attacks in October 2015 in the northern city of Kunduz while a ferocious battle was underway against Taliban insurgents for control of the area. A U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a hospital run by the charity Doctors Without Borders, killing 42 people, after receiving confused or unclear target information from Afghan ground forces.
The incident provoked an angry outcry from the Afghan public and led to a major investigation by U.S. military officials. Since then, U.S. military commanders have made repeated efforts to improve battlefield and air coordination with their Afghan counterparts.
pamela.constable@washpost.com


Three killed, including 15-year-old, in Afghan security raid on health clinic

Afghan and U.S. flags fly side by side during a security handover ceremony in Panjshir province in 2011. U.S. officials are looking into allegations that U.S. troops may have been involved in a deadly raid on a clinic in Wardak province Wednesday night.   (Ahmad Masood/Reuters)
KABUL —
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan said in a statement that the Afghan National Army had conducted the raid, calling the attack “a gross violation of humanitarian principles and the Geneva Convention.”
Bjorn Lindh, a spokesman for the group, said Afghan troops arrived near the 10-bed clinic in a helicopter about 11 p.m. Initially, he said, they went to the home of a local ambulance driver and detained him. The ambulance driver then escorted the soldiers to the health clinic.
The troops stormed into the clinic and began arresting and beating staff members, Lindh said, adding that they then “found two patients who were injured in some way.”
“They took these people out of the clinic to a nearby bazaar and killed them,” Lindh said. A 15-year-old boy who had been watching over the two men was also killed, he said.
A spokesman for the Defense Ministry did not return several calls for comment.
Some local officials in Wardak, south of Kabul, alleged that U.S. forces were also involved in the raid, perhaps flying the helicopters that transported Afghan security personnel to the area.
Col. Michael T. Lawhorn, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said officials are investigating those claims.
“We are aware of those reports, and we are looking into them,” Lawhorn said.
Gen. Razeq Safi, commander of an Afghan army brigade for Logar and Wardak provinces, said that four Taliban insurgents were killed and two others wounded during the incident. Another insurgent was also taken in custody, he said.
But Safi denied that the Afghan army had conducted the raid, saying he suspects Afghan police special forces carried it out in cooperation with “foreign troops.”
“Choppers were seen last night,” Safi said. “Airstrikes have also taken place there.”
An official with the Afghan Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said the agency did conduct operations in Wardak on Wednesday night but declined to comment on whether they took place near the health clinic.
The apparent raid comes less than six months after U.S. Special Forces mistakenly strafed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 42 patients, medical staffers and caretakers. President Obama apologized for that airstrike, but Doctors Without Borders is pressing for war crimes charges to be filed.
Gen. John Campbell, the outgoing commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, blamed “human error” for the Kunduz strike. Campbell said U.S. Special Forces who had been operating in that area had not been briefed that the Doctors Without Borders compound was a hospital.
Afghan security forces, however, have been known to routinely enter medical facilities in pursuit of militants, even though hospitals are considered neutral spaces under international law. A few months before the hospital in Kunduz was bombed, Doctors Without Borders complained that Afghan troops had illegally entered the facility.
A report released Sunday by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan noted that coalition and Afghan special forces raided health facilities in Logar and Helmand provinces in December. The report said the search operations “resulted in the arrest of healthcare staff and destruction of clinic equipment — although they did not cause any civilian casualties.”
Jorgen Holmstrom, the country director for the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, said all the patients in the group’s clinics had the right to be protected.
“Medical facilities and medical staff are to provide treatment to anyone in need, and patients are to be granted safety according to humanitarian law,” he said.
Lindh noted that the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan is the only medical provider in Wardak province, where fierce battles between Afghan security forces and Taliban militants are common.
Abdul Wali Noorzai, a spokesman for the provincial police force, said the raid began when Afghan special forces used ropes to descend into the village from a helicopter.
“The operation was conducted at night, and Afghans do not have the technology to do it by air, lowering troops onto the ground,” he said. “I think Americans were present with them.”
U.S. military officials say the Afghan army sometimes uses its own helicopters now to conduct night operations, without the presence of coalition advisers.
Hameeda Akbari, a member of parliament from the area, said the hospital was well-known for treating Taliban militants. She called the raid “justifiable.”
“That hospital treats the opposition,” Akbari said.
But Lindh stressed that the staff at the health clinic “is not part of this conflict.”
“Anyone who comes to our clinics, we don’t ask questions, and they should feel protected,” Lindh said. “But they were taken out, and they were killed.”
Mohammad Sharif in Kabul and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.
Read more:
U.S.-funded Afghan air force is growing. So are civilian casualties it causes.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is leaving, but the troops are staying
U.S. airstrikes in Kunduz destroyed more than a hospital
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world


Army reopens investigation into detainee’s death after Special Force soldier’s Fox News interview

Then-Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn is congratulated by fellow soldiers after receiving the Silver Star for valor during a ceremony in January 2011. (Fayetteville Observer/James Robinson)
The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command has reopened its investigation of an Afghanistan war hero who Army officials said confessed to killing an unarmed Taliban detainee.
The service is again scrutinizing former Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn after he appeared in a Fox News television interview in October and acknowledged that he had killed a Taliban bombmaker who had been held as a detainee during the bloody battle of Marja in February 2010. The bombmaker was not on a list of targets that U.S. forces had been cleared to kill, according to Army documents; Golsteyn said that letting go of the insurgent meant the Taliban member could later target Afghans who are helping U.S. troops.
“You realize quickly that you make things worse,” Golsteyn said in the interview. “It is an inevitable outcome that people who are cooperating with coalition forces, when identified, will suffer some terrible torture or be killed.”
Golsteyn first acknowledged killing the detainee during a polygraph test while he was interviewing for a job with the CIA in 2011. A lengthy military probe followed. Army documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act last year show that the service investigated Golsteyn on charges of murder and conspiracy but closed the case after determining that it did not have any evidence to prosecute. The results of his polygraph would not be admissible in court, defense officials said.
Lt. Col. Jennifer Johnson, an Army spokeswoman, said in a statement that it would be “inappropriate to comment further regarding an ongoing investigation.” A spokesman for Army Criminal Investigation Command, Christopher Grey, declined to comment.
Golsteyn said Thursday in an email to The Washington Post that he was “frustrated, but not terribly surprised” that the Army reopened its investigation into his actions. He declined to discuss what happened the day the bombmaker died, but said the Defense Department and Army has “viciously pursued me without a discernible cause or a stated goal for over five years.”
Golsteyn led a team from 3rd Special Forces Group, of Fort Bragg, N.C., that had a unit of Marines deployed alongside it during the bloody Battle of Marja in February 2010. Two Marines under his command — Sgt. Jeremy R. McQueary, 27, and Lance Cpl. Larry M. Johnson, 19 — were killed and three more were wounded Feb. 18 after a metal sliding door booby-trapped with explosives detonated.
Army Maj. Matthew L. Golsteyn smiles in Afghanistan as a captain in 2010. (Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Duncan D. Hunter)
Two days later, Golsteyn watched a Taliban marksman nearly hit another Marine who was manning a rooftop observation post on their base. He launched an 80-man mission to hunt the shooter down, slogging through a muddy field under fire to help a wounded Afghan soldier, returning fire with an antitank weapon, and coordinating repeated airstrikes by F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets and a Predator drone. He was awarded a Silver Star, the military’s third-highest award for combat valor, and service officials later recommended an upgrade to the more prestigious Distinguished Service Cross.
Army documents show that Golsteyn’s unit launched a search for bombmaking supplies in the area after the deaths of Johnson and McQueary, and detained the man Golsteyn confessed to killing. A tribal leader working with the Americans identified the detainee as a member of the Taliban but worried the detainee knew who had singled him out. The tribal leader’s immediate fear: If Golsteyn’s unit let the detainee go, he would kill him and his family.
Golsteyn told the CIA during his polygraph test that he trusted the tribal leader and “had no qualms” about killing the detainee “because he couldn’t have lived with himself if [the suspected bombmaker] killed another Soldier or Marine,” Army documents said. During Golestyn’s interview with the CIA, according to investigators, he described taking the bombmaker off the base, shooting him and burying his remains in a shallow grave. Golsteyn added that later that night, he and two other soldiers dug up the remains, brought them back to their base and burned them in a pit used to dispose of trash.
Golsteyn and his attorneys have long maintained that the Army’s characterization of events is filled with exaggerations and leaps of logic. No other service members would serve as witnesses against Golsteyn, even when investigators offered immunity from prosecution. Then-Army Secretary John M. McHugh stripped Golsteyn of his valor award in fall 2014, and the Army also revoked his Special Forces tab and reassigned him as a conventional infantry soldier.
Golsteyn said in his email to The Post that his case was reopened despite an Army administrative board determining last year that the murder accusation against him was unfounded. The panel did find that Golsteyn demonstrated conduct unbecoming an officer and recommended a general discharge under honorable conditions, ensuring he could keep health benefits.
Former Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn is shown in Afghanistan in 2010. (Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Duncan D. Hunter)
Senior defense officials, Golsteyn said, continue to talk tough about the fight against the Islamic State group while they “mischaracterize my combat actions as ‘murder.'” He compared his case to that of another officer, former 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 for ordering his soldiers to open fire on village elders in Afghanistan who were approaching his unit while they were on patrol. Several member of Lorance’s platoon testified against him after being offered immunity.
“I am filled with moral disgust that such individuals can continue to wreak such havoc on our warfighters without consequence,” Golsteyn said, adding that he does not regret doing the TV interview because it was important to speak out on how soldiers are restricted in combat.
Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R.-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee who has clashed with the Army repeatedly about Golsteyn’s treatment, said Thursday that he was disgusted with the Army’s decision to reopen the case. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army’s top officer, and Army Secretary Eric Fanning told Hunter that they cannot stop the investigation at this point, Hunter said.
“Matt Golsteyn is an American hero. Matt Golsteyn does for the American people what we ask him to do, and the Army is screwing him again,” Hunter said. “I’m embarrassed for the U.S. Army — and they ought to be embarrassed.”
In a letter sent Wednesday to Milley and Fanning, Hunter wrote that they have “the ability to fix this stupidity.”
A senior Army official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said a complaint on the Army’s handling of the case has been filed with the Defense Department Inspector General. Until that is resolved, the official said, the case is on hold.
Related on Checkpoint:
Army secretary defends stripping Special Forces officer of awards
CIA job interview led to criminal investigation of Green Beret


Army reopens probe into suspected bombmaker’s death after Special Forces soldier’s Fox News interview

Then-Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn is congratulated by fellow soldiers after receiving the Silver Star for valor during a ceremony in January 2011. (Fayetteville Observer/James Robinson)
The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command has reopened its investigation of an Afghanistan war hero who Army officials said confessed to killing an unarmed Taliban detainee.
The service is again scrutinizing former Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn after he appeared in a Fox News television interview in October and acknowledged that he had killed a Taliban bombmaker who had been held as a detainee during the bloody battle of Marja in February 2010. The suspected bombmaker was not on a list of targets that U.S. forces had been cleared to kill, according to Army documents; Golsteyn said that letting go of the insurgent meant the Taliban member could later target Afghans who are helping U.S. troops.
“You realize quickly that you make things worse,” Golsteyn said in the interview. “It is an inevitable outcome that people who are cooperating with coalition forces, when identified, will suffer some terrible torture or be killed.”
Golsteyn first acknowledged killing the man during a polygraph test while he was interviewing for a job with the CIA in 2011. A lengthy military probe followed. Army documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act last year show that the service investigated Golsteyn on charges of murder and conspiracy but closed the case after determining that it did not have any evidence to prosecute. The results of his polygraph would not be admissible in court, defense officials said.
Lt. Col. Jennifer Johnson, an Army spokeswoman, said in a statement that it would be “inappropriate to comment further regarding an ongoing investigation.” A spokesman for Army Criminal Investigation Command, Christopher Grey, declined to comment.
Golsteyn said Thursday in an email to The Washington Post that he was “frustrated, but not terribly surprised” that the Army reopened its investigation into his actions. He declined to discuss what happened the day the suspected bombmaker died, but said the Defense Department and Army has “viciously pursued me without a discernible cause or a stated goal for over five years.”
Golsteyn led a team from 3rd Special Forces Group, of Fort Bragg, N.C., that had a unit of Marines deployed alongside it during the bloody Battle of Marja in February 2010. Two Marines under his command — Sgt. Jeremy R. McQueary, 27, and Lance Cpl. Larry M. Johnson, 19 — were killed and three more were wounded Feb. 18 after a metal sliding door booby-trapped with explosives detonated.
Army Maj. Matthew L. Golsteyn smiles in Afghanistan as a captain in 2010. (Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Duncan D. Hunter)
Two days later, Golsteyn watched a Taliban marksman nearly hit another Marine who was manning a rooftop observation post on their base. He launched an 80-man mission to hunt the shooter down, slogging through a muddy field under fire to help a wounded Afghan soldier, returning fire with an antitank weapon, and coordinating repeated airstrikes by F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets and a Predator drone. He was awarded a Silver Star, the military’s third-highest award for combat valor, and service officials later recommended an upgrade to the more prestigious Distinguished Service Cross.
Army documents show that Golsteyn’s unit launched a search for bombmaking supplies in the area after the deaths of Johnson and McQueary, and detained the man Golsteyn confessed to killing. A tribal leader working with the Americans identified the detainee as a member of the Taliban but worried the detainee knew who had singled him out. The tribal leader’s immediate fear: If Golsteyn’s unit let the detainee go, he would kill him and his family.
Golsteyn told the CIA during his polygraph test that he trusted the tribal leader and “had no qualms” about killing the bombmaker “because he couldn’t have lived with himself if [the suspected bombmaker] killed another Soldier or Marine,” Army documents said. During Golestyn’s interview with the CIA, according to Army investigators, he described taking the bombmaker off the base, shooting him and burying his remains in a shallow grave. Golsteyn added that later that night, he and two other soldiers dug up the remains, brought them back to their base and burned them in a pit used to dispose of trash.
Golsteyn and his attorneys have long maintained that the Army’s characterization of events is filled with exaggerations and leaps of logic. No other service members would serve as witnesses against Golsteyn, even when investigators offered immunity from prosecution. Then-Army Secretary John M. McHugh stripped Golsteyn of his valor award in fall 2014, and the Army also revoked his Special Forces tab and reassigned him as a conventional infantry soldier.
Golsteyn said in his email to The Post that his case was reopened despite an Army administrative board determining last year that the murder accusation against him was unfounded. The panel did find that Golsteyn demonstrated conduct unbecoming an officer and recommended a general discharge under honorable conditions, ensuring he could keep health benefits.
Former Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn is shown in Afghanistan in 2010. (Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Duncan D. Hunter)
Senior defense officials, Golsteyn said, continue to talk tough about the fight against the Islamic State group while they “mischaracterize my combat actions as ‘murder.'” He compared his case to that of another officer, former 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 for ordering his soldiers to open fire on village elders in Afghanistan who were approaching his unit while they were on patrol. Several member of Lorance’s platoon testified against him after being offered immunity.
“I am filled with moral disgust that such individuals can continue to wreak such havoc on our warfighters without consequence,” Golsteyn said, adding that he does not regret doing the TV interview because it was important to speak out on how soldiers are restricted in combat.
Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R.-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee who has clashed with the Army repeatedly about Golsteyn’s treatment, said Thursday that he was disgusted with the Army’s decision to reopen the case. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army’s top officer, and Army Secretary Eric Fanning told Hunter that they cannot stop the investigation at this point, Hunter said.
“Matt Golsteyn is an American hero. Matt Golsteyn does for the American people what we ask him to do, and the Army is screwing him again,” Hunter said. “I’m embarrassed for the U.S. Army — and they ought to be embarrassed.”
In a letter sent Wednesday to Milley and Fanning, Hunter wrote that they have “the ability to fix this stupidity.”
A senior Army official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said a request for information on the Army’s handling of the case has been filed with the Defense Department Inspector General. Until that is resolved, the official said, the case is on hold.
Related on Checkpoint:
Army secretary defends stripping Special Forces officer of awards
CIA job interview led to criminal investigation of Green Beret


From ‘collateral damage’ to ‘deeply regrets’: How the Pentagon has shifted on the Afghan hospital attack

The burned Doctors Without Borders hospital is seen after the complex in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz was bombed on Oct. 3. (Médecins Sans Frontières via AP)
In the days since a U.S. gunship opened fire on a Doctor Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the Pentagon has struggled to explain how 22 people, including patients, staff and three children, wound up killed in the airstrike.
Officials have offered murky and contradictory statements on the incident, which Doctors Without Borders has called a war crime. Meanwhile, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Army Gen. John Campbell has pledged a full investigation into the attack, and the White House has expressed its condolences.
Below, a timeline of the Defense Department’s evolving account of what happened.
Saturday, Oct. 3:
U.S. forces conducted an airstrike in Kunduz city at 2:15am (local), Oct. 3, against individuals threatening the force.  The strike may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.  This incident is under investigation.
—U.S. Army Col. Brian Tribus, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan
Initial reports were extremely murky, with the Pentagon still not sure if it could confirm that a U.S. airstrike in fact had hit the hospital. The use of the military term “collateral damage” immediately inflamed the situation as Doctors Without Borders saw the classification of the strike as a dismissal of the incident. Under the Law of Armed Conflict, collateral damage is legal as long “as it is not excessive in light of the overall military advantage anticipated from the attack.”
Sunday, Oct. 4:
I think our current understanding, again, understanding that an investigation is going on and early facts can be misleading, is that yes, there was American air action in that area, and that American forces there were engaged in the general vicinity.
And at some point in the course of the events there did report that they, themselves, were coming under attack.  That much I think we can safely say.
—Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter to reporters while enroute to Spain
The day after the attack, with criticism mounting, Carter insisted that U.S. forces were essentially acting in self-defense. The Pentagon would only say that the attack was conducted “in the vicinity” of a Doctors Without Borders medical facility.
Monday, Oct. 5:
We have now learned that on October, 3rd, Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S. Forces. An air strike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat and several civilians were accidentally struck.
—Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Army Gen. John Campbell to reporters
Campbell appeared to be pointing the finger at Afghan forces for requesting the airstrike, and he said specifically that he was correcting earlier reports that indicated U.S. forces were directly engaged with the enemy when they called in the airstrike. Doctors Without Borders immediately responded to Campbell’s comment. “The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs,” Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement. “With such constant discrepancies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical.”
Tuesday, Oct. 6:
Army General John Campbell clarified that the decision to provide air support to Afghan forces in Kunduz, which hit a hospital, was a U.S. decision. "We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility," Gen. Campbell said while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 6.
A hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility.
—Gen. Campbell in testimony to Senate Armed Service Committee
…the Department of Defense deeply regrets the loss of innocent lives that resulted from this tragic event. The investigation into how this could have happened is continuing, and we are fully supporting NATO and Afghanistan’s concurrent investigations. We will complete our investigation as soon as possible and provide the facts as they become available.  The U.S. military takes the greatest care in our operations to prevent the loss of innocent life, and when we make mistakes, we own up to them.
—Defense Secretary Ash Carter in a statement
Four days after the attack, Carter and Campbell shifted their tone, saying the U.S. military was squarely responsible for the attack and those that needed to be held responsible would be.
Read more:
Afghan response to hospital bombing is muted, even sympathetic
The bloody history of Kunduz, from Afghanistan’s ‘Convoy of Death’ to now
In Kunduz, echoes of a 1988 guerrilla assault after the Soviets withdrew


Army revokes Silver Star award for Green Beret officer, citing investigation

Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn is congratulated by fellow soldiers after an awards ceremony for the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2011. (Photo by The Fayetteville Observer/James Robinson)
Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn was leading a Special Forces team in Afghanistan in 2010 when an 80-man mission he assembled to hunt insurgent snipers went awry. One of the unit’s five vehicles sank in mud, a gunshot incapacitated an Afghan soldier fighting alongside the Americans, and insurgents maneuvered on them to rake the soggy fields with machine-gun fire.
Golsteyn, already a decorated Green Beret officer, responded with calm resolve and braved enemy fire repeatedly that day, according to an Army summary of his actions. He received the Silver Star for valor for his actions during a 2011 ceremony at Fort Bragg, N.C. Top Army officials later approved him for an upgrade to the prestigious Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor in recognizing combat heroism by U.S. soldiers.
In a rare reversal, however, Golsteyn, now a major, no longer has either award. The officer, a former member of the 3rd Special Forces Group and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., was later investigated for an undisclosed violation of the military’s rules of engagement in combat for killing a known enemy fighter and bomb maker, according to officials familiar with the case. The investigation closed last year without Golsteyn’s being charged with a crime, but Army Secretary John M. McHugh decided not only to deny Golsteyn the Distinguished Service Cross, but also to revoke his Silver Star.
McHugh cited a provision in Army regulations that if facts become known that would have prevented the awarding of a medal, the award can be revoked. The Silver Star was approved by a top commander in Afghanistan — Army Gen. David M. Rodriguez, then the three-star deputy commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan — according to Golsteyn’s lawyer, Phil Stackhouse.
“I firmly believe that had he known about the derogatory information that was [found] by the aforementioned investigation, he would have never awarded Major Golsteyn the Silver Star,” McHugh said in a Nov. 17 letter to Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R.-Calif.), who has advocated on Golsteyn’s behalf. “Accordingly, I have decided to revoke the interim Silver Star that Major Golsteyn received for this action.”
The decision is still shrouded in mystery because of the secretive nature of the Army’s investigation into Golsteyn, who did extensive work with U.S. Marines in and around Marja in Helmand province. An online Defense Department database of top valor awards still included Golsteyn’s Silver Star as of Wednesday afternoon and said the information was current as of Jan. 30.
A spokesman for McHugh’s office, Lt. Col. Chris Kasker, declined to comment Wednesday, citing the administrative nature of the decision. But he released details of Golsteyn’s service record that show he no longer has a Silver Star and is is not in Special Forces anymore. The major earned a Bronze Star and Army Commendation medal with “V” devices for heroism in earlier actions, Kasker said. Golsteyn joined the Army in 2002.
Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland Jr., right, awards the Silver Star to then-Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn during a ceremony at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2011. The Fayetteville Observer/James Robinson
Hunter, a former Marine officer and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, alleged in the Daily Beast on Tuesday that the Army “went to extraordinary lengths to investigate Golsteyn,” threatening his fellow soldiers and offering them immunity. In a Dec. 4 letter to Army Human Resources Command, Hunter said the revocation appears to be “retaliatory and vindictive.”
“The Army has been unable to present substantive evidence while an overwhelming number of first-person accounts provided to Army investigators uphold Matt’s record as a top-level operator,” said Hunter’s letter, which the congressman’s office released to The Post.
Golsteyn’s lawyer said the investigation into the Army officer’s actions was launched in 2011, less than a year after he received the Silver Star. He remains assigned to Army Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg and is in the process of determining what to do with his future, Stackhouse said. The lawyer declined to elaborate on what the Army investigated.
“In the summer of 2014, we were certainly under the impression that everything was done and complete,” said Stackhouse. “The revocation of his valor awards came out of left field to us.”
The decision also raises the question of whether the military should strip troops of awards they have earned if they are found to have done something wrong later.
Golsteyn’s Silver Star came for actions on Feb. 20, 2010. He assembled his unit after his base had come under sniper fire from an insurgent wielding a Dragunov rifle, according to an Army narrative of his actions. He directed his troops to launch an assault across 700 meters of open fields, but an armored truck known as a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle sank into mud under gunfire after about 175 meters.
Under heavy machine-gun and sniper fire, Golsteyn ran about 150 meters to the trapped MRAP to retrieve a powerful 84mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, an anti-tank weapon. While moving under gunfire, he coordinated a medical evacuation for the wounded Afghan soldier and then opened fire with the Carl Gustav, said the Army narrative, which was obtained by The Post.
“Captain Golsteyn was alone running in the open through enemy gun fire that had over 80 men pinned down, and from the crow’s nest on top of [Forward Operating Base] McQueary, it looked like Captain Golsteyn was alone fighting 30 enemy fighters out in the poppy fields,” the award narrative said.
Enemy reinforcements continued to arrive on the battlefield, so Golsteyn organized airstrikes by both F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets and a Predator drone. No American or coalition troops were killed in the battle despite a barrage of enemy fire that lasted four hours, the narrative said.
Golsteyn has been critical of the Afghanistan mission in the past. In the 2011 Bing West book “The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy  and the Way Out of Afghanistan,” he is quoted as saying that the Americans were considered insurgents in Afghanistan who were “selling a poor product called the Kabul government.”
West later wrote in a review of a book about another Special Forces soldier, Maj. Jim Gant, that the careers of Gant, Golsteyn and a third Green Beret, Dan McKone, were “terminated,” assessing that the Army failed them. West could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Golsteyn wrote about his assignment in Afghanistan in a June 2014 academic paper for a class at Fayetteville State University that was published online. It covers his 2010 deployment and said that his unit — known as a Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, or A-Team — operated in multiple two- and three-man teams. Over time, local tribesmen grew to trust them, especially after three weeks of fighting, he added.
“We enjoyed repeated interactions with the local populace because we lived with them, fighting for them as well as alongside them,” Golsteyn wrote. “In a 60 day period, our medical clinic run by Green Berets with several Marine medics treated approximately 1,000 local Afghans. We executed multiple helicopter casualty evacuations for civilian victims of [improvised explosive devices] in addition to being the first responders to the scene in nearly every case.”
This story has been updated with new information about Golsteyn’s current status in the Army.


Medical facilities becoming routine casualties in conflict zones

Doctors Without Borders staff are seen after an attack on their trauma center’s compound in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz on Oct. 3. (Médecins Sans Frontières via AP)
Late Monday night, a series of Saudi-led airstrikes leveled a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Saada, Yemen, effectively denying medical access to more than 200,000 people, according to a statement from the group.
Only one staff member was injured, as the hospital’s personnel were evacuated in between further strikes.
“This attack is another illustration of a complete disregard for civilians in Yemen, where bombings have become a daily routine,” said Hassan Boucenine, the relief organization’s head of mission in Yemen, in an online statement.
The charity, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or its French acronym MSF, said the hospital’s coordinates had been “regularly shared” with the coalition before the strikes. On Wednesday, MSF said the coordinates were last shared with coalition forces on Oct. 24, two days before the buildings were hit.
[By evening, a hospital. By morning, a war zone.]
The loss of another hospital to destruction from the air is just one more instance in a disturbing month-long trend that has spanned multiple conflict zones.
Hospitals are protected areas under the International Law of Armed Conflict and are only viable military targets if the hospital is being used for a military objective. Even then, however, the facility must be given ample time to evacuate before it can be legally targeted.
In Syria, four hospitals have been bombed since Russian airstrikes began in the country on Sep. 30, according to international observers and news reports. Physicians for Human Rights, a group that tracks attacks on medical facilities and medical worker deaths in Syria, has recorded 313 attacks against medical facilities since the civil war began. According to the group, 283 of the attacks have been carried out by Syrian government forces.
The strikes hit hospitals in Al-Eis, Sarmin and Latamneh.
On Friday, advocacy group Human Rights Watch released a report stating that two possible Russian airstrikes in northern Homs on Oct. 15 killed 59 civilians, 33 of which were children. Human Rights Watch said the attacks were possibly unlawful and called on Russia to investigate the attacks.
[There are still a lot of questions around the U.S. bombing of the MSF hospital in Kunduz]
While Russian aircraft have been pictured using precision guided munitions, the majority of the airstrikes carried out by Russian aircraft use “dumb” bombs. There have also been reported sittings of Russian cluster munitions. On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Russians’ use of “dumb” bombs for 85 to 90 percent of their strikes in Syria “increases the possibility” of more civilian casualties in the four-year old conflict.
In response to these claims, the Russian Deputy Minister of Defense, Anatoly Antonov, summoned the military attaches from a number of NATO countries to provide proof of their respective countries allegations that Russia is indeed targeting and bombing medical facilities — something if proven constitutes a war crime.
“If there is no evidence or official information refuting, the Russian Ministry of [Defense] would estimate such stovepiping as a part of information warfare against Russia,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a written statement posted online.
While Russia disputes international claims that its forces bombed hospitals, the United States has taken responsibility for bombing a hospital run by MSF in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
Army General John Campbell clarified that the decision to provide air support to Afghan forces in Kunduz, which hit a hospital, was a U.S. decision. "We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility," Gen. Campbell said while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 6.
The Pentagon has apologized and pledged a number of investigations into the Oct. 3 bombing, but it has yet to release any details about the circumstances that resulted in the death of 30 people, including 12 staff members and a number of patients. The attack, carried out for more than an hour by a heavily armed AC-130 gunship, burned out a large portion of the hospital — rendering it inoperable for the near future and causing MSF to evacuate the city altogether.
According to MSF, the hospital was one of the only trauma centers open to the public in northeastern Afghanistan. The group has requested an external investigation, as it believes the U.S. military is incapable of investigating itself, and has also accused the United States of war crimes for intentionally targeting a hospital, something the Pentagon denies.
Read more:
Afghan response to hospital bombing is muted, even sympathetic
Top U.S. general in Afghanistan: Hospital was ‘mistakenly struck’
The Pentagon’s evolving response to the Afghan hospital attack