“The United States has paid $50,000 in compensation for each Afghan killed in the shooting spree attributed to [Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, above] in southern Afghanistan.” According to the AP, “The families of the dead received the money Saturday at the governor’s office, said Kandahar provincial council member Agha Lalai. Each wounded person received $11,000 Lalai said. Community elder Jan Agha confirmed the same figures. They were told that the money came from U.S. President Barack Obama, Lalai said.” With 16 dead and six wounded, the bill comes to $800k for the families of the murder victims and $66k for the wounded. And at least twice that much to bribe the officials and tribal leaders who doled out the blood money. Just sayin’ . . .
How much money did the families of the Fort Hood shooter victims get?
SGLI is $400k
Yall need to also keep in mind that some of the soldiers split the money between family members, so not all of them got $400,000. For example, my husband split his almost in half and gave his parents part, and me/kids the other part. Why he did this, idk. He even told me a couple weeks before the shooting I was getting it all. So after buying a house that had enough room for our 3 kids, there wasn’t any money left. We aren’t living in the lap of luxury, we struggle to pay bills. I am a full time student, it’s hard.
Years ago Obama won a senate race in Illinois.I thought to myself “how bad can it get?”.
He then won the White House. All is not lost, I believed. He cannot do worse than he has in IL.
Our national debt has grown exponentially since then. But he can do no worse than that I thought, until he threatened to shut down the government and military pay for political points.
That was bad, but , really, how much more damage can he do? Then I read headlines like this and now I wonder how much worse B. Hussein O. can do.
The Fort Hood victims lawsuit is still in litigation, but they want $750 million. The 9/11 victims families received on average around $1 million each in order to prevent further litigation with the Airlines. Is their a proper dollar figure for a life? Should the government tell these Afghan families to screw off? Have we been paying off Afghan locals since the war started? Nothing new here, just another angle on an event that ruined a lot of progress from over a decade of war.
What progress?
Right, the troops did nothing over there.
the number of claimants has significantly increased and after attorney fees, they will not be getting anywhere near the $750
“Blood money” payments for accidental or unlawful deaths are very common in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The faux upset expressed here – is it more yokel parochialism, or simple political grandstanding? We report, you decide.
Actually, paying restitution for murder started among Scandanavian and Teutonic peoples and it’s practiced everywhere, including the United States.
Idiot
As a Teutonic person I even know what we called it–Wergild.
Anyone else vote to have Getalife bannedforlife?
Started with the scandanavian and teutonic people. Ya did u read that on twitter cause you are an idiot. Let me guess you happened to recall from your doctorate thesis on victim compensation to the teutonic peoples. What a blowhard moron you are. Try and sound smart for your high school classmates. Ugh. There are some real idiots in America.
Started with the scandanavian and teutonic people. Ya did u read that on twitter cause you are an idiot. Let me guess you happened to recall from your doctorate thesis on victim compensation to the teutonic peoples. What a blowhard moron you are. Try and sound smart for your high school classmates at school on issues like snack bar prices not on grown up things. Ugh. There are some real idiots in America.
In Iraq we paid the families directly the sum of $2000.00 if I recall correctly. I don’t understand why we allow the governmnet of Afghanistan to push us around. They are the ones we went to punish. Iraq we invaded to liberate, but they get the harsher treatment.
this isn’t something new, the military/government has been paying afghan families of wrongful death victims for like a decade.
Well, over a decade now…
If it prevents reprisals, calms down the inflamed feelings in the area, then it’s cheap in my opinion. It’s tragic what the soldier did, but it’s done and can’t be undone. Paying off people may not be pretty, but it is the custom in that neck of the woods.
“Wah wah wah. War is expensive. When US personnel go on a shooting rampage, why don’t we get a quantity discount?”
Robert, wake up. Welcome to the adult world.
We have spent over $3 trillion (conservatively) on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you want to complain or post about something, maybe you should post about what we could have done with those funds.
And to give you a sense of what 3 trillion dollars is compared to what you are complaining about, let’s round up the total costs of your figures (about $1 million).
You could write one blog post about the costs of a $1 million payout
one a minute,
12 hours a day,
for an entire year.
And that’s not $3 trillion.
You would have to spend about eleven years blogging at that rate to get to $3 trillion.
That’s a full time job, $1 million each minute, for eleven years.
That’s the real tragedy – the money is gone.
$1 million paid? That’s cheap. In the US, in civil court, awards for wrongful death would be exponentially higher – over a million per person (rightly so, I say).
As with your previous posts, I am ashamed to call myself part of the gun community which you are a part of.
“They were told that the money came from U.S. President Barack Obama” Lalai said.
So am I to understand this money is from Obama’s personal bank account and was not taken from taxpayers.
lol
1.5 Trillion kill off the whole country. Worth it? Actually there would be nobody left to pay so… 😉
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