Opinion

Dirty secrets ON ALLEGED MASSACRE IN AFGHANISTAN

The Bush administration did not seem to want to know what happened to thousands of Taliban prisoners who surrendered to the forces of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord, after the U.S.-led invasion of 2001.

For years, reports of the massacre of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of prisoners under Dostum's custody were not pursued. Survivors and witnesses have described prisoners suffocating and being shot to death while stuffed in metal shipping containers without food or water.

Those alleged atrocities are an American concern. Dostum was on the payroll of the CIA, his militia worked closely with U.S. Special Forces in 2001 - and he recently was reinstated as military chief of staff to President Hamid Karzai.

Finally, over the weekend, President Obama told CNN that he directed his national security team to look into the deaths of those prisoners. The president did not rule out the possibility of an investigation into whether war crimes were committed.

If these allegations are true, then Dostum should be brought to justice, not returned to a position of power in Kabul.