HERE’S MORE ON CIVILIAN CASUALTIES from the L.A. Times. Basically, the Taliban deliberately inflated casualty claims in order to win Western sympathy, helped along by supporters and useful idiots like Marc Herold:

On Oct. 31 in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, Taliban officials escorted selected journalists to what they said was a clinic destroyed by an American airstrike. The journalists reported that 10 to 15 civilians had died. The story received widespread circulation in the Arab world via the Afghan Islamic Press, a pro-Taliban agency.

The site actually was an Al Qaeda military post and a small clinic for Taliban wounded located next to a private home, according to an Afghan security guard who said he witnessed the bombing. Interviewed at the site, guard Abdul Salam said several Al Qaeda fighters and two or three civilians from the private home were among those killed.

Khalid Pushtoon, an official with the new Kandahar government, said when asked about the incident: “A clinic? That was no clinic. That place was full of Arabs,” a reference to foreign Al Qaeda fighters.

Why is it that people who are convinced that the Pentagon lies about everything find it so hard to believe that America’s enemies lie about anything?