Increasing use of unmanned drone aircraft by USAF increases civilian casualties

[JohnyCanuck]

Death at a Distance: The U.S. Air War

Conn Hallinan | August 30, 2007

Editor: Miriam Pemberton

According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan's North Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan's Pakitka Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were dead.

The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114 Hellfire missiles they used in the attack were directed from a base deep in the southern Nevada desert.

It was not the first time Predators had struck. The previous year a CIA Predator took a shot at al-Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, but missed. The missile, however, killed 18 people. According to the Asia Times piece, at least one other suspected al-Qaeda member was assassinated by a Predator in Pakistan's northern frontier area, and in 2002 a Predator killed six "suspected al-Qaeda" members in Yemen.

SNIP

The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from air strikes has created a rift between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States.

"A senior British commander," according to the New York Times, has pressed U.S. Special Forces (SF) to leave southern Afghanistan because their use of air power was alienating the local people. SFs work in small teams and are dependent on air power for support.

SFs called in an air strike last November near Kandahar that killed 31 nomads. This past April, a similar air strike in Western Afghanistan killed 57 villagers, half of them women and children. Coalition forces are now killing more Afghan civilians than the Taliban are. The escalating death toll has thrown the government of Hamid Karzai into a crisis and the NATO governments into turmoil. "We need to understand that preventing civilian casualties is crucially important in sustaining the support of the population," British Defense Minister Des Browne told the Financial Times.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4511

[angrycarpenter]

1. when war is fought on computer screens

all people are just blips.

[southerncrone]

2. Yep, that's how to create peace in this world.

Georgieboy doesn't care how many lives are lost, or if they are innocent lives like women & children. He only wants to look macho......"Yeah, were bad." "Don't mess w/Texas", etc. He & his administration are nothing but a bunch of bullies!

The ENTIRE world will hate us b/4 he is removed from office. I would not be at all surprised if nations banded together to attack us after what he has done to our reputation in the world. But that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy of his, now wouldn't it?

[TomInTib]

3. Running these missions out of Nevada...

Using sat images and not spotters on the ground.

Heaven help them poor Heathens.

[OzarkDem]

4. Now even NATO disagrees with the US?

NATO is made up of those countries who have historically been our closest allies. I can't believe we've even pi**ed them off.

Amazing how in such a short period of time one president has done so much to destroy US diplomacy that was nurtured and built over the last 60 years.

And why do our strongest Allies oppose us? Because we're breaking the law, conducting an illegal war in an illegal an unethical manner.

Yet our Dem leaders in Congress don't want to do anything to stop it.