Vox Sentences: the Army admits it screwed up when it bombed an Afghan hospital

An unsatisfying investigation into the US bombing of an Afghan hospital; peaceful protests against Chicago police; and the terrible turkey pardon.

TOP NEWS

The Army's Kunduz report doesn't answer many questions

(AFP/Wakil Kohsar via Getty)

• The Army is disciplining an unknown number of soldiers after finishing its investigation of the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz earlier this year.

  [AP / Robert Burns, Lynne O'Donnell and Ken Dilanian]

• The investigation blamed the bombing on "human error." It claimed the gunship that bombed the hospital thought it was bombing a different building instead.

  [Reuters / Phil Stewart and Yeganeh Torbati]

• In other words, it concluded, the airstrike never should have happened.

  [New York Times / Rob Nordland]

• MSF is not at all satisfied with this investigation or with the disciplinary measures. In a statement, it said it was left with "more questions than answers."

  [Medecins Sans Frontieres]

• One of those questions: If the bombing of the hospital was a mistake, why did the US keep firing after MSF contacted the Army and told it the hospital was under fire?

  [Spencer Ackerman via Twitter]

Police behave themselves at protest

(Getty/Scott Olson)

• Despite the concerns of Chicago officials, residents held large but peaceful protests last night after the city finally released the video of the killing of Laquan McDonald.

  [Chicago Tribune / Dawn Rhodes, Tony Briscoe and Peter Nickeas]

• One protest leader, Malcolm London, was arrested for allegedly punching a police officer — an allegation fellow protesters claimed was totally false.

  [Chicago Tribune / Dawn Rhodes, Tony Briscoe and Peter Nickeas]

• Felony charges against London were dropped today.

  [DNAinfo Chicago / Joe Ward, Lizzie Schiffman Tufano and Erica Demarest ]

• The irony of last night's protests, of course — and of every protest against police misconduct — is that how well they went depended heavily on the behavior of the very people being protested: the police department itself.

  [The Atlantic / David A. Graham]

• Chicago's police department is deeply implicated in the McDonald case. The officer who killed him had a history of misconduct.

  [Washington Post / Sarah Kaplan]

• And the gap between McDonald's killing and the criminal charges against the officer point to a possible cover-up on the part of the department.

  [Chicago Reporter / Curtis Black]

America's worst political tradition

AFP / Nicholas Kamm via Getty

• Today marks the presidential turkey pardon, which is arguably America's worst political tradition.

  [TIME]

• It is a total charade. The turkeys' names aren't even real: This year's turkeys were supposedly named "Honest" and "Abe," but their real names are Tom 1 and Tom 2.

  [NPR / Domenico Montanaro]

• President Obama hates hit. (His daughters hate it even more.)

  [Huffington Post / Jeffrey Young and Audrey Horwitz]

• Turkeys are useless birds who don't even enjoy living in the wild anymore anyway.

  [The Atlantic / Yoni Applebaum]

• It's become politicized because America can't have nice things: A substantial portion of Republican voters oppose the pardoning of the turkey.

  [Frank Luntz via Twitter]

• And it makes a mockery of the presidential pardon power, which President Obama — despite repeated promises — has used very sparingly on actual humans over the course of his presidency.

  [Huffington Post / Eric E. Sterling]

• The inevitable conclusion is this: Keep the pardon, but pardon people instead.

MISCELLANEOUS

In defense of making TV shows that are episodic, not novelistic. [HitFix / Alan Sepinwall]

• The bear density of Finland, illustrated in bears.

  [GRRR / Annukka Makijarvi]

• A missive from Jerusalem: "There is no mainstream here."

  [The White Review / Francesca Wade]

• One man's four-year quest to unmask his troll.

  [The Verge / Russell Brandom]

• An ornithologist fact-checks Angry Birds.

  [Atlas Obscura / Jess Zimmeman]

VERBATIM

"He realized that Indiana Jones, his four-year-old orange tabby cat, was gaining weight when he heard chairs crashing in the middle of the night because the feline was toppling them over when he jumped on them." [Wall Street Journal / Laura Meckler and Stephanie Armour]

• "I’ve received calls that bluntly want to interview me regarding 'technology used by terrorists, such as yours.'"

  [Nadim Kobeissi]

• "On our screen, it was called the 'Muslim Poll.' At first, I thought it looked interesting. After about 20 minutes, I began to feel strange about it."

  [Vice ]

• "If all else failed and Obnoxious couldn’t get a hold of a woman, he would start threatening to dispatch a SWAT team to her house, or her parents’ house, or her college — a kind of intrusion that couldn’t be ignored."

  [NYT / Jason Fagone]

• "Being afraid of the sight of a dead body is quite different from being afraid of dying, which is the province of the confessional, the therapy suite, or the insomniac bedroom."

  [New Yorker / Rebecca Mead]

WATCH THIS

Turkeys have gotten ridiculously large since the 1940s [YouTube / Vox]

(Vox/Liz Scheltens)