THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

So the Pentagon, in its brass plated wisdom, will punish 16 people for the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Shitholeistan. According to the Pentagon they will all get an administrative "whack on the pee-pee" for it.

Mistakes by the crew flying an AC-130 gunship, compounded by equipment and procedural failures, led to the devastating attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in northern Afghanistan last year, and 16 American military personnel, including a general officer, have been punished for their roles in the strike, the Defense Department announced on Friday.

The punishments for the attack on Oct. 3 in Kunduz, which killed 42 people, will be “administrative actions” only, and were not more severe because the attack was determined to be unintentional. The punishments include suspension and removal from command as well as letters of reprimand, which can seriously damage a career. But none of the service members being disciplined will face criminal charges.

The new top officer of the military’s Central Command, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, made the announcement during a Pentagon news conference. He said the military had conducted “a thorough investigation” that was “painstaking” in seeking an “accurate account” of what occurred.

Its conclusion was that the crew members of the gunship who fired on the hospital “did not know they were striking a medical facility” and that the attack on the hospital was the result of human errors compounded by “process and equipment failures.”

The AC-130, whose assignment was to support an American Special Forces team that was working with Afghan forces, came under fire from a surface-to-air missile, General Votel said, and received incorrect coordinates for the source of the attack. Its crew, communicating with ground forces, came to believe that the hospital basically matched the description of a Taliban-controlled building about a quarter of a mile away, and fired at the hospital.

The crew of the gunship did not get all the information it should have received about “no strike areas” that included the hospital, which was categorized as a protected facility.

The punishment to be meted out is more likely a response to the embarrassment of missing the real target by such a wide margin than it is for hitting a hospital. The MSF people should know better than to work anywhere near US Forces.