Kill the Women and Children in Afghanistan?!?!

Buried in a story from Saturday’s Ithaca Journal comes this revelation from Matt Guckenheimer, an infantryman who recounted his recent stint in Afghanistan:

"We were told there were no friendly forces," said Guckenheimer, an assistant gunner with the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. "If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them."

Amazingly, this statement passes without comment in the article.

Further down, there also is this gem:

When he returned to the United States after spending a month either on missions or at the Bagram military base, Guckenheimer said, he remembered how alienated Americans are from each other. After living in a Third World country, where people he didn't know would smile or say hello to him on the streets, it was jarring to return home, where contact among strangers is mostly shunned.

"These people who lived through life, they seemed to be more grounded," he said. Coming home was like walking back into a "clueless" society where over-consumption is commonly regarded as the route to happiness, he said.

Interesting stuff. Not sure how credible Guckenheimer is, or if he has some kind of axe to grind, but if the revelations about being told to kill anyone, “specifically…women and children,” are accurate, then we may have ourselves some war crimes…