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.

NOTE: Vox Sentences will be on hiatus for Thanksgiving on Thursday and Friday of this week.
Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

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)

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