Drones Hardly Ever Kill Bad Guys: 50 civilians are killed for every dead "militant"

[Karmadillo]

This info comes from couterinsurgency adviser, David Kilcullen. He notes the data may not be 100% accurate, but he seems persuaded it's in the ballpark. His arguments against drones are pretty convincing (to me, anyway).

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/05/11/drones-hardly-ever-kill-bad-guys/

Drones Hardly Ever Kill Bad Guys

By Greg Grant Monday, May 11th, 2009 10:52 am
Posted in Air, International, Policy

The foreign policy community’s favorite counterinsurgency adviser, or at least their favorite Australian one, David Kilcullen, told lawmakers last week that the drone strikes targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Pakistan are creating enemies at a far faster rate than its killing them. According to statistics he provided, the success rate of the drone bombing campaign is extremely low: just 2 percent of bombs dropped have hit targeted militants. The other 98 percent? Those killed noncombatant Pakistani civilians, he said.

Since the drone strikes began in earnest in 2006, the U.S. has killed 14 mid-level Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. In the same time frame, the strikes have killed 700 Pakistani civilians, Kilcullen said May 7, speaking before the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism and Unconventional Threats. The strikes themselves are not particularly unpopular in the tribal areas, the FATA, that border Afghanistan, as many of the people there are weary of the militants operating in their midst. Where the strikes are extremely unpopular, he said, is in the more populated areas of Punjab and Sind, areas where there has been a big jump in militancy since the bombing campaign began.

“Right now our biggest problem is not the networks in the FATA, but the fact that Pakistan may collapse if this political instability continues.” The U.S. should stop the bombing campaign against the Pakistani Taliban and instead return to a narrower target set aimed only at Al Qaeda operatives, Kilcullen said, as the bombing campaign has simply become too counterproductive. The Taliban run a very effective “information operations” that broadcasts the death toll from U.S. strikes to feed a rising tide of popular anger against the U.S. and western involvement in Pakistan, he said.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17exum.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=opinion

<edit>

But on balance, the costs outweigh these benefits for three reasons.

First, the drone war has created a siege mentality among Pakistani civilians. This is similar to what happened in Somalia in 2005 and 2006, when similar strikes were employed against the forces of the Union of Islamic Courts. While the strikes did kill individual militants who were the targets, public anger over the American show of force solidified the power of extremists. The Islamists’ popularity rose and the group became more extreme, leading eventually to a messy Ethiopian military intervention, the rise of a new regional insurgency and an increase in offshore piracy.

While violent extremists may be unpopular, for a frightened population they seem less ominous than a faceless enemy that wages war from afar and often kills more civilians than militants.

Press reports suggest that over the last three years drone strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent — hardly “precision.” American officials vehemently dispute these figures, and it is likely that more militants and fewer civilians have been killed than is reported by the press in Pakistan. Nevertheless, every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.

more...

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Well, at least someone's getting killed.

That's what counts.


>>>>While violent extremists may be unpopular, for a frightened population they seem less ominous than a faceless enemy that wages war from afar and often kills more civilians than militants.>>>>>

It's like Viet Nam never happened.

We learn *nothing*.

[Kurska]

2. I fail to see how drones are any worse then other forms of aerial attacks.

Why is there such a focus on them?

[Submariner]

4. The Bushco regime touted them as surgical strike weapon platformss

that would minimize collateral damage, and now it seems the opposite is true.

[Kurska]

5. I'd like to see the data compared to air strikes personally.

"Surgical" or not, you're still just talking about a weapon system that hurls explosions in metal tubes at people. You can be more sparing with them or lower the actual damage inflicted by the bombs, but if the end result is a explosion I fail to see how a drone is any worse or for that fact better then say a conventional jet bomber (atleast on the collateral damage front).

[tekisui]

6. For one, they are being used in a country that we are not at 'war'

with. In Afghanistan, we use jets and bombers. In Pakistan the CIA uses drones. They are all equally bad for the people killed on the ground.

[Kurska]

8. And I don't see how a drone is any diffrent then a jet.

The end result is people getting blown up, why does it matter if the thing blowing you up is manned or not?

[tekisui]

10. You must not have read my post. We can't take a jet into

Pakistan airspace. But, we can take a drone. It also further separates a person from the act of bombing. In the end result, the dead bodies are no different.

It's the policy of bombing in PAKISTAN that causes drones to be a focus, and the fact that they are carried out by the CIA.

[bonzotex]

21. Technically not true

We are supposed to have diplomatic clearance to fly any aircraft, bomber, transport, cruise missile, drone - anything that flies, through a friendly country's airspace. It's just easier to ignore that rule when you don't have a pilot aboard that might end up on the ground in the said country.

If there is some super-secret agreement between Pakistan and the US about allowing unrestricted drone flights over their territory, I would frankly be surprised.

Giving the CIA control of a weapons system like the Predator drones was and is a very controversial move. Not all the drone flights are CIA, however, far from it.

[bonzotex]

19. there is an odd difference

As former USAF bomber pilot and Forward Air Controller I have some inside knowledge here. The drones really psychologically distance the trigger puller form his/her actions. The drones are operated form incredible distance from the target. Operators working out of trailers in Nevada are flying mission in Afghanistan. The "pilot" is watched and supervised by any number of military and or political observers who make the actual decision to attack. Believe it or not, an actual pilot flying an attack aircraft the plane has better situational awareness and much more latitude it how and when they release weapons.

It may seem like a distinction without a difference, but it makes the decision to kill much more sanitary, thus easier. The drones can stay in a target area for hours, almost impossible to detect by human senses. To the targets, people, this is psychologically terrifying, more so than a manned aircraft that has limited loiter time over a target area. Even if they can shoot down a drone, the defenders don't even get the psychological satisfaction of having killed an enemy. They just get treated to another drone coming to find the guys that shot down the first one.

To the military, these characteristics are features, not bugs. If I were a combatant on the ground, with relatively unsophisticated air defenses, I would much rather face manned aircraft than the drones. Although I question some of the statistics in the article linked in the OP, they way these drones are employed guarantees there will be collateral casualties.

The USAF in particular actually considers drone attacks to be part of a strategy to reduce civilian casualties. In one sense that is true. The weapons carried are precision and with relatively smaller explosive yields than a manned fighter or bomber would carry and use. The type of target they go after, however; individuals and small groups of humans living in the general population, pretty much ensures they are going to kill the "wrong" people over and over and over.

[JackRiddler]

20. Because it eliminates any sense of risk to the killers.

Bombing from the air is already bad enough in terms of entailing little risk, but the killer still must be a trained pilot inside the delivery craft. For some reason we know John McCain's name as someone who paid a price - relatively small and deserved as it was, compared to the price paid by tens of thousands of human beings incinerated by him and his cohorts. (Some of whose compatriots still saw fit, as human beings, to pull the downed killer from the pond he'd landed in with broken arms, instead of letting him drown. So that, 40 years later, he could present himself as their victim and run on a platform of bombing more brown people.)

Drone strikes carry the relative risks of a video game. Much of the killing isn't even done by military, but by civilian CIA techs and wonks.

The process may be gradually automated, so that the machine does some of the killing itself, while the operators just watch. Who's the killer then? The programmers? The incinerated are just as dead.

At which point it has the risk of watching TV. You might fall asleep in front of it and read an estimated tally of the dead after you wake up.

---

Then there is the matter of the big lie told about drones, which in the past was also told about other machines of arbitrary mass killing: that they are precise and kill only "the bad guys." Hell, why not? You'd have drone-bombed Hitler, right?

[bonzotex]

22. you have a valid point, but....

You could have made that point without belittling the pain and suffering of McCain by the hands and minds on his captors. I don't much like McCain but it was wrong of the Vietnamese to torture him just as it is for us to torture prisoners we take.

[JackRiddler]

23. Yes, it was wrong of them to torture him.

Assuming they did, of course. Do you believe his hung on a cross story?

Was it right of the villagers who knew he'd just bombed some of their people to rescue him from the pond?

One point about drones is, no one operating them has to worry about what they do. Just actuate an electronic control in Nevada somewhere, and voila.

[bonzotex]

25. They did

The torture of McCain and the other prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton is not conjecture or gross exaggeration. McCain has changed and elaborated his story in various ways over the years, but that doesn't change the fact that he and others were systematically degraded and tortured for years. This is really well documented.

As far as the villagers that "rescued" him, they were doing what was standard policy on the Hanoi govt. They wanted American fliers captured alive if at all possible and rewarded those that brought them in. It's also possible they were actually acting in an altruistic concern for a human life. People do counterintuitive things, even in war.

We need to be careful to keep our criticisms factual and substantive. It's OK to not like McCain and point out his inconsistencies and bad policy beliefs, but we can do it without calling him a villager killer and liar. Otherwise we start to sound like Freepers. No offense.

[JackRiddler]

26. Well, he may not be a liar...

but how exactly is he not a villager killer? Because that would only be the case if his bombs happened to miss. Otherwise, he was part of an outfit that existed to do exactly that: kill villagers (and other people, mostly civilians).

[bonzotex]

28. don't confuse the War with the warriors

There's plenty to hate about War and the Vietnam War in particular, but service members involved didn't start it or prolong it deliberately. In McCain's case it's possible he didn't kill anybody. He had a pretty spotty record as a pilot. He might have missed every target he was assigned. On the other hand he may have slaughtered lots of civilians with his ordinance. You can hate it, but it is sort of a moot point.

He was following legal orders just like Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. This is why we can't put morons in charge of making life and death go-to-war decisions. Turn the military loose to "solve" problems and you are going to end up with lots of dead people regardless of what else you might achieve. You can hate him for his participation in that war, but essentially you are hating everyone in uniform regardless of their job or motivation. If the trigger puller on the ground air or sea is guilty then so is every support person at every level that made that attack possible. If you think there should be no military at all, cool, but I'd have to point out you aren't likely to see that in a few lifetimes if ever.

If you don't like the "outfit" he was part of, you have to change the system that created it and the situation the "outfit" was used for.

I for one am just glad McCain didn't get the keys to the National car. You can kill a lot more people from the oval office than you can from the ejection seat of an A-4.

[JackRiddler]

29. The Vietnam war in particular was one with a lot of mutiny among the troops...

and the ones who did mutiny show that the warriors had a choice too. They weren't the architects or primary criminals, but the ones who, for example, participated in the covert and illegal Phoenix death-squad operations don't have a "just following orders" excuse.

[bonzotex]

30. so what?

Hundreds of thousands at any given time did follow orders, even if they weren't sure it was the right thing to do, just as they do now. Actual mutineer's were tiny fractional minority just as were the special ops people who actually knew they were carrying out illegal or at least questionable orders.

A Navy carrier pilot, McCain or anyone else is not typically put in a situation where there is bright distinctive line over whether they are participating in an "illegal" operation or not. Generally they are not. If they are told bad guys are at "x" coordinates, go bomb them, they will and that's not an illegal operation or order, at least from the pilot's perspective. Believe it or not, the American military is made up of people, not robots. They aren't all little fascists, helpless downtrodden minorities or blood thirsty killers. They are a just a cross-section of the population that has been trained a certain way that includes killing people and breaking things at the behest of their government. Officers really try to assess situations and make good decisions to minimize non-combatant casualties. Enlisted men and women try to carry the orders as best they can under bizarre circumstances and at great personal risk.

In the United States, the ones with "choices" that matter are the civilian leaders that send troops into battle and the civilians that elect those leaders. You should focus your attention there and not second-guess one individual or broad brush literally millions of Americans as being complicit war criminals because you think you would have made a better, more ethical decision 40+ years ago.

The logical conclusion of your line of argument is that there should be no military at all or perhaps only one where a highly educated and ethical group of citizen warriors is given near perfect information and gets to vote on every action. That sounds swell, if you live in fantasy land.

[JackRiddler]

31. The logical conclusion...

"The logical conclusion of your line of argument is that there should be no military at all"

Yes. Not for the purpose of waging wars in other countries.

"That sounds swell, if you live in fantasy land."

Actually, you live in fantasy land if you think war can go on forever without destroying civilization, or the human race.

The day is likely to come within the next century when war is consigned to the barbaric past and militaries no longer exist, except for emergency response to natural disasters. Or the logic of war leads to its logical conclusion. One or the other.

[bonzotex]

32. we are still a long way from that day...

Idealism is awesome but pragmatically it's going to take lots of steps to get to that place where the armed forces are needed only for handing out food and water at disaster sites.

In the meantime I'd consider it a big win if we can first stop growing the military, then start cutting it back, rationalizing the force structure and stay out of foreign wars. Barring a miraculous global awakening where every government and person rejects violence as viable public policy, a strong defensive national military is still a pretty good idea.

As far as how long it can go on? Forever or total destruction are both viable options. Human tolerances for pain death and destruction are pretty damn high. To return to the original thread; the more bloodless and painless (on our side) we make the military option by using unmanned drones or missiles for example, the more likely chicken hawk politicians will choose to use it. It's not morally better or really even morally different to kill people with robotic missiles as opposed to bayonets. You can, however; find more people that can and will do it from an air-conditioned trailer as opposed crawling around at night in the mud with a knife.

We are more likely to be able to change our government's composition and ideology enough to make violence less likely than we are to convert every individual on the planet into a pacifist.

[JackRiddler]

33. I agree with some of that, but reject several of your terms.

It's not about converting every individual on the planet into a pacifist. (Nice signature line, by the way.) It's about having them understand, at least as nations, that the true pragmatism lies in abandoning their worst and most destructive collective insanity.

Nationalism and the idea that military means provide self-defense are idealist; a world at peace where war is obsolete and humanity develops in freedom is realist. War is the greatest single cause of our miseries.

On the scale of centuries (which are fleeting, though our lives are even shorter), we the people of the earth are barely removed from a time when the majority thought slavery was a realistic, unavoidable fact of life; but we are also not that far away from a time when we universally understand that war among nations and preparations for it are insane. It won't require a miraculous global awakening, only a widespread acknowledgement of logic that may seem miraculous when the tipping point arrives.

[bonzotex]

34. We probably agree more than disagree

You don't have to clue me in that war is insane. We've made progress but the tipping point you dream of is still a long way off. You can disagree with my terms all you want, but you don't have to convince me. We have to convince people whose world view is entirely different.

"War is the greatest single cause of our miseries" Actually, most Americans are blissfully unaware what misery war causes because they've never seen it, much less experienced it. That may be a historical anomaly due to America's strength and prosperity, but it is true. The way we fight and structure our military ensures that few citizens participate enough to understand it.

Over 58 million American voters thought McCain and Palin would be better in the oval office than a guy who called bullshit on the Iraq war back when it wasn't cool to do it. I guarantee you few if any of those voters were thinking we should use our military less instead of more. Of the 66 million or so that voted Obama/Biden, very few did it because they thought Obama was going to seriously cut the Military. You give that line about Idealist vs Realist to any one of the truck drivers I work with and he's going to look at you like you were from another planet. It doesn't matter if you are right if you can't put it in terms they will accept. Even if it's John-freak'n-McCain, blaming the individual service members for their actions, for being part of the machine, for being complicit in war crimes, doesn't sell well. Veterans can be some of the best progressive allies. I think you need to try and understand their motivations and realities better.

A militarist would argue that military strength is the best method for convincing nations that pragmatically speaking, war would be destructive collective insanity. Indeed our entire military doctrine since WWII was built around the idea of deterrence rather than aggressive action. Yet over and over, Presidents and their handlers have found creative reasons we needed to attack other countries and found millions of enthusiastic supporters all over the country. Other than terrorist attacks, our country and population hasn't been attacked by another Nation nor suffered grave consequences for our actions. (I haven't forgotten 9/11, but the loss of life there, though horrific, was a drop in the blood bucket compared to what other nations have suffered) From that purely selfish perspective our policy "worked". A lot of people are pretty satisfied with that policy even if they choose to ignore the opportunistic use of the military in situations that don't really have anything to do with existential threats to the Nation. Many are and will get rude awakenings when PTSD afflicted soldiers return to the streets, but overall, most Americans are very supportive of the military even if they are skeptical of how the politicians use it.

We are structuring our military even more to insulate our citizens from the blood cost of war -- Again the original topic you raised about the difference between using drones vs manned aircraft to kill people. The trend is not toward ways to use force less, but to use force without risk to our people thus making the use easier to stomach. This is a bad trend and does not argue well for the impending abolition of national military violence as a substitute for law enforcement and diplomacy.

It's possible, perhaps even likely that in a century, war between nations on any scale will seem as abhorrent to the majority as slavery is today. Keep in mind that no shit, actual slavery still exists in the world despite that abhorrence. You want to get to that tipping point faster, you need to back off the barely veiled contempt for warriors and keep it directed at the people with actual power who sustain a world where warriors are a necessity. And please don't tell me that if the individuals would just refuse to participate, all war would end. That is just not going to happen. People have to be led to peace just like they are led to war. Unfortunately, our leaders right now default to war and there are too many people who are more than happy to go right along with that. I'm going to stick with the notion that we have to be, grow and elect better leaders rather than wait for the masses to rise up and demand a new, more peaceful world paradigm.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. Let's tie this one off and we can argue some more on some other topic and thread.

[JackRiddler]

35. It will require some of both, no doubt...

"I'm going to stick with the notion that we have to be, grow and elect better leaders rather than wait for the masses to rise up and demand a new, more peaceful world paradigm."

Can't really have one without the other.

Thanks for your thoughtful posts and an interesting exchange, and yeah, see you in other threads!

[Mari333]

3. and we create 100 militants for every civilian we murder

welcome to Vietnam 3!

[Kurska]

7. And the Taliban has worn out its welcome in Pakistan by all accounts.

Pouring acid in the faces of girls who don't dress modestly enough does that to you.

Also lets play stastics, I've seen the number 1 million floated around for how many killed we've killed in Iraq, the entire population of Iraq isn't even 100 million.

[Mari333]

9. 'stastics' aside

not even ONE PERSON should have been murdered by our forces in Iraq. Not one.
not ONE soldier should have died.
not ONE person should be murdered by us in Afghanistan
not ONE soldier should die there.
not for oil, and not for Oil Pipelines.
afghanistan women worse off since Taliban removed from power:
http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/opinion-afghan-women-worse-off-since-taliban-removed-from-power-r-1247077797

oh and its not about saving the people of afghanistan

thats the Bush/Cheney meme
its about money always follow the money

[mike3121]

14. You confuse me 'stastics'aside

RANT ON:

Remember something happened on 9-11, duh! These innocent peace loving Taliban were the ones that harbored and protected the people that killed 3,000 Americans. Now Iraq is a different story but not Afghanistan. Even liberals supported that war. As much as I think Bush was one of the worst US Presidents ever invading Afghanistan was correct. Also, look up the natural resources of Afghanistan - rocks, billions of rocks. You can't just take the liberal Iraq boiler plate and apply it to Afghanistan; blood for oil, world domination, raping the land for Halliburton, etc.

RANT OFF:

[Mari333]

16. show me a verified link that proves the Taliban had something to do with 9/11

and then, explain to me why 15 of the 19 hijackers are from Saudi Arabia and we still give blow jobs to Saudi Arabia.
there isnt even a link that shows for sure Bin Laden had anything to do with anything. and hes probably dead.
we supplied the Taliban with the arms they have now, we GAVE them 40 mil dollars to fight against Russia..we created who they are.
no, this is about an oil pipeline, done believe the Faux news propoganda .

always follow the money:

http://www.alternet.org/world/139983/pipeline-istan:_everything_you_need_to_know_about_oil,_gas,_russia,_china,_iran,_afghanistan_and_obama/

http://members.shaw.ca/trogl/oilwar/

[Forkboy]

18. We wanted a western friendly government well before 9/11.

"The U.S. Government's position is that we support multiple pipelines...
The Unocal pipeline is among those pipelines that would receive our
support under that policy. I would caution that while we do support the
project, the U.S. Government has not at this point recognized any
governing regime of the transit country, one of the transit countries,
Afghanistan, through which that pipeline would be routed. But we do
support the project."
U.S. House of Reps., "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.htm#17

"CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized
Afghanistan Government is in place."
U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.htm#33

3rd November 1998 - attacks stop US oil pipeline:

Up to 80 cruise missiles were fired at Afghanistan and Sudan in August. An American-funded training project in Afghanistan has closed down as a result of the US cruise missile attack on the country in August. The programme was funded by the American oil company, Unocal, which was once hoping to be involved in building a gas pipeline across the country from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
BBC News, "US attack closes US project", 3 November 1998.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/207183.stm

15th March 2001 - allies invade Afghanistan:

India is believed to have joined Russia, the USA and Iran in a concerted front against Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Military sources in Delhi, claim that the opposition Northern Alliance's capture of the strategic town of Bamiyan, was precipitated by the four countries' collaborative effort.
Janes International Security News, "India joins anti-Taliban coalition", 15 March 2001.

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir010315_1_n.shtml

3rd September 2001 - allies deploy huge task-force for “fictional” conflict

The aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious has sailed from Portsmouth to lead the biggest Royal Navy and Royal Marine deployment since the Falklands. HMS Illustrious is the flagship of three groups of warships travelling to the Middle East to take part in exercise "Saif Sareea 2". More than 24 surface ships from Britain, plus two nuclear submarines, will be completing the 13,000 mile round trip. The operation, costing nearly £100m, will end with a major excercise before Christmas that will also involve the Army, Royal Air Force and Armed Forces of Oman. The strike force has been put together to take part in a conflict between the fictional forces of the so-called state of 'Alawham' and those of Oman.
BBC News, Carrier heads for the Middle East, 3 September 2001.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1522987.stm

THE TALIBAN GOES SHOPPING IN AMERICA WITH AMERICAN OIL COMPANY BOSSES!
Did you know that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan were offered more than $100 million a year by the American oil industry to submit to the pipeline project without a fight?

"On at least one occasion, in December 1997, Unocal officials played host to
high-ranking Taliban leaders in Texas. The American oil executives reportedly
wined and dined them and took them on a shopping spree."

Boston Herald, "U.S. ties to Saudi elite may be hurting war on terrorism", 10 December 2001
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/americas_new_war/saud12102001.htm

"In the 1980s, bin Laden left his comfortable Saudi home for Afghanistan to participate
in the Afghan jihad, or holy war, against the invading forces of the Soviet Union - a
cause that, ironically, the United States funded, pouring $3 billion into the Afghan
resistance via the CIA."
BBC News, "Osama Bin Laden: Profile of a Terror Leader", 12 February 2002
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/binladen_profile.html

"...Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. The Afghan jihad was backed with American dollars and had the blessing
of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. He received security training from the
CIA itself."
BBC News, "Who is Osama Bin Laden?", 18 September 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/155236.stm

"... received military and financial assistance from the intelligence
services of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States."
Forbes bsuiness news, "Who Is Osama Bin Laden?", 14 September 2001
http://www.forbes.com/charitable/2001/09/14/0914whoisobl.html

You might want to hold off the "duh" stuff until you've actually gained a clue.

Oh, and welcome to DU.

[tekisui]

11. You statistic is meaningless.

You say that if the population isn't 100 million, a million couldn't be killed?

Are you defending the killing of Iraqi civilian? We had no business dropping one bomb on one person in Iraq.

[madrchsod]

12. we have been at war with iraq since desert storm

one million deaths directly or indirectly is not out of the realm of possibility

[tekisui]

13. I have heard one million died due only to sanctions, as well.

A million dead from war and a million from sanctions are reasonable numbers.

[JackRiddler]

24. In fact, "we" have been at war with Iraq's people since the 1960s...

when Saddam's faction within the Baath Party rose to power with US covert support.

Or since the 1980s, when his regime was armed and aided by the USG.

[Iggo]

36. We got 'em on the run!

The Taliban are in their death throes as we speak1

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. Well, blowing up a lot of civilians worked ever so well in Vietnam and Iraq.

Oh...wait..

[Mari333]

17. k

[rucky]

27. If we just handed over the drone controls to some hardcore PS3 gamers

we wouldn't have these problems