Left I on the News

The usual two-sided story in Afghanistan:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned an air strike by Nato-led forces which he said killed 10 election campaign workers, although US officials maintained it was aimed at an Islamist leader.

Nato said its airstrike on a car in northern Takhar province's normally quiet Rustaq district killed or wounded as many as 12 insurgents on Thursday, including a Taliban commander and a local head of an allied insurgent group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, responsible for attacks in Kabul and elsewhere.

However Karzai said the airstrike had killed 10 campaigners working for a candidate in Afghanistan's September 18 parliamentary elections.

"I am able to confirm that a very senior official of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was the target and was killed," Gates said.

I obviously have no independent information (other than years of observation about the "truthfulness" of the American military), but one thing is absolutely certain - I know who the Afghan people are going to believe, whatever their opinion of Karzai. I also know this - when and if the U.S. "ends" this war, whoever is the President of the United States won't be acknowledging any responsibility for the deaths of these people and tens of thousands of others like them, whether they turn about to be "real" "insurgents", or a carload full of women and young children (or anything in between).