‘Imprecise Targeting’

Civilian casualties from U.S. air-strikes are not rare occurrences

Reporters at The New York Times have made public hundreds of confidential reports by the Pentagon on civilian casualties from U.S. air-strikes in Iraq and Syria, covering September 2014 through January 2018. The journalists describe the air-strikes as “marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, many of them children.” The records were “obtained through Freedom of Information requests beginning in March 2017 and subsequent lawsuits.”

A link to an archived file is below. The list is long and damning, and it has the “benefit” of spanning two presidential administrations (Obama’s and Trump’s), lest one suspect that partisanship plays an outsized role here. We can assume that similar air-strikes have continued beyond January 2018. A well-reported mishap — an extended family assassinated by drone — occurred as U.S. forces were leaving Afghanistan. One can only guess that several years of FOIA requests and lawsuits must precede the list for 2018 through 2021.

The link: https://archive.vn/zZwql

Read it and weep.

 

Barbara E. Rose is Web Editor of the NOR.

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