Keeping Count (When Ours Goes Down, Theirs Goes Up) by Dave Lindorff

[leftchick]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/15694

<snip>

But left unsaid is that the lower US casualty figures in Iraq are coming at the expense of much higher civilian casualties. This is even more true in Afghanistan, where the war is heating up.

The reason for this ugly calculus is that in order to keep politically damaging US casualties as low as possible, the US military and the Bush/Cheney administration that gives the generals their marching orders, are resorting increasingly to the use of air power--bombs and rockets and remote controlled, missile-equipped Predator drone aircraft--to attack suspected militant targets.

Case in point--the 22 people the BBC reports were killed in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province yesterday in a US missile strike on what turns out to have been a wedding procession. According to reports from local Afghan police and other officials quoted in the BBC story, 19 of the victims of this horrific attack were women and children.

This slaughter--which US military authorities, following their standard MO, are denying, claiming that those killed were "militants"-- follows an earlier one Friday in Afghanistan, in which a missile fired from a US helicopter killed 15 people, all civilians.

It has reached a point that in Afghanistan, the US and its NATO allies (thought primarily the US, since most NATO forces are not in front-line combat roles, and are not conducting most of the air strikes) are killing far more Afghan civilians than are the Taliban and their allies in the country.





Afghan women collect bloodstained clothes of injured persons at a hospital in Jalalabad city, Afghanistan, Sunday, July 6, 2008 after they allegedly got injured by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Deh Bala district of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul. Chief government official Haji Amishah Gul in the Deh Bala district says villagers have reported between 30 and 35 people walking in a group toward a wedding have been killed in a coalition bombing. Up to 10 people were wounded.
(AP Photo/Nesar Ahmad)

[midnight]

1. I'm so sad that normal daily life is lost to this fighting. Let's

end this killing, and bring them home.

[stillcool]

2. ever notice how those..

bombs don't seem to kill anyone? Sure the suicide bombers kill hordes of people, but the air-strikes hardly kill anyone. Weird.

US Doubles Air Attacks in Iraq
By Charles J. Hanley
Associated Press
June 5, 2007
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/occupation/2007/0605bombardment.htm
Four years into the war that opened with "shock and awe," U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago. The airpower escalation parallels a nearly four-month-old security crackdown that is bringing 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Baghdad and its surroundings - an urban campaign aimed at restoring order to an area riven with sectarian violence. It also reflects increased availability of planes from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. And it appears to be accompanied by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.
In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of
ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to U.S. Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press.
"Air operations over Iraq have ratcheted up significantly, in the number of sorties, the number of
hours (in the air)," said Col. Joe Guastella, Air Force operations chief for the region. "It has a lot to do with increased pressure on the enemy by MNC-I" - the Multinational Corps-Iraq - "combined with more carriers."
--------------------------------
Examples of attacks, as reported in the Air Force's daily summary:
-Last Friday, an Air Force F-16 fighter dropped a guided 500-pound bomb near the northern city of Tal Afar that destroyed a vehicle laden with explosives to be used as a bomb.
-The day before, an F-16 dropped a similar bomb on "an inaccessible building being used by insurgents" near Samarra, north of Baghdad, with "good effects."
-Last Wednesday, another F-16 dropped bombs on "an illegal bridge and an insurgent vehicle in Baghdad."

.... a year after the 'surge'...and check out the writing..a 'mighty barrage'..

Massive U.S. air strikes pound insurgent havens south of Baghdad
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20080110-1257-iraq.html
By Hamza Hendawi, The Associated Press
12:57 p.m. January 10, 2008
ZAMBARANIYAH, Iraq - U.S. warplanes unleashed one of the most intense air strikes of the Iraq war Thursday, dropping more than 18,000 kilograms of explosives in a thunderous 10-minute onslaught on suspected "al-Qaida in Iraq" safe havens in Sunni farmlands south of Baghdad.

The mighty barrage, recalling the Pentagon's "shock and awe" raids during the 2003 invasion, appeared to mark a significant escalation in a countrywide offensive launched this week to try to cripple remaining insurgent strongholds.

U.S. warplanes pound southern Baghdad outskirts
Thu Jan 10, 2008

By Peter Graff

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes launched their biggest air strike in Iraq since at least 2006 on Thursday, bombarding date palm groves? on Baghdad's southern outskirts with more than 40,000 pounds of bombs in a matter of minutes.
---------------------
"Thirty-eight bombs were dropped within the first 10 minutes, with a total tonnage of 40,000 pounds," the military said in a statement. "Each bomber passed over twice and the F-16s followed to complete the set."

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1069138220080110?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

[leftchick]

4. yes I noticed

:cry:

[seasat]

3. That is horrifying

Since we had children, three years ago, I've become even more sensitive to the stories about civilian casualties. I would lose my mind if something happened to one my sons (twins). I can't imagine what those people are going through. Yeah, right, the surge is working. I wish there was a honest person in the corporate media that would report on a story like this.