“We tried to take a look into one of the burning buildings. I cannot

describe what was inside. There are no words for how terrible it was.

In the Intensive Care Unit six patients were burning in their beds.”

So said Lajos

Zoltan Jecs, a nurse at the hospital the U.S. bombed in Kunduz, Afghanistan,

killing 22 people: doctors, staff, patients (including three children).

This image is now spiraling through the Internet and across the global

consciousness.

The hospital was not “collateral damage”; it was deliberately targeted,

deliberately destroyed, in multiple bombing runs that lasted at least

half an hour. MÃ©decins Sans FrontiÃ¨res (Doctors Without Borders), which

operated the hospital, contacted

its sources in the U.S. government immediately, pleading for the attack

to stop — to no avail. The bombing continued until the hospital, with

more than 180 occupants, was destroyed.

And we’re left with the aftermath of a mass murderer spree, except the

killer isn’t dead or hogtied and shoved into a police wagon. The killer

gives a press conference.

Oh same old, same old!

The killer offers condolences, promises to investigate itself. “If errors

were committed, we will acknowledge them,” said Gen. John Campbell, commander

of American forces in Afghanistan. The killer, as usual, flees from any

real responsibility.

But this time, maybe . . . maybe . . . something is different. The organization

that ran the demolished hospital, as Glenn

Greenwald has pointed out, is a Western-based international humanitarian

association with media credibility and powerful support outside the Third

World. It’s not like we’ve simply bombed another wedding party or killed

a few more women and children in an outlying village. On this occasion,

those who have suffered also have a global voice.