Baquba bomb hits wrong house, wounding 11

[maddezmom]

Source: CNN

BAGHDAD (CNN) -- A U.S. airstrike, intended to blow up a house where insurgents had placed a bomb, instead accidentally hit another building and wounded 11 Iraqi civilians in Baquba Wednesday afternoon, according to a U.S. military statement.

Soldiers from the U.S. Army's 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division discovered a "house-borne IED, likely emplaced by al Qaeda," the military said. A bomb that the soldiers requested be air-dropped onto the booby-trapped house "missed its intended target and struck another structure, away from the targeted house. the military said.

After emergency medical services were given to the civilians wounded by the errant bomb, a Hellfire missile was successfully launched into the targeted house "producing a large secondary explosion confirming the house as containing a large amount of explosives," the military said.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/06/21/thursday/index.html

[sanskritwarrior]

1. Those house borne IED's are huge

something like 1000 pounds of explosives. I saw one go off back in 2005 outside Kirkuk, it was 20 155MM Artillery shells with 500 pounds of some kind of explosive, had we not gotten a tip from local Kurds we all would have gone up with the house.......

[ShortnFiery]

2. IMO, Airstrikes, in general, are the epitome of State Sponsored Terrorism.

It's a damn shame that our illustrious "precision guided" bombs touted to minimize civilian casualties ("collateral damage" sounds so f'ing insensitive), are FAR TOO OFTEN ORDERED by, and OPERATED by, well ... blood thirsty, war-mongering PSYCHOPATHS! :grr:




Every innocent civilian we kill can BE DEPENDED on having at least 5-10 relatives who will swear to oust the evil American invaders. We must extract our troops out of the entire Middle East Arena because we have shamefully LOST their "hearts and minds." It will take, at a minimum, a full generation of thoughtful diplomacy to GET BACK TO where we were before DimSon took office. :thumbsdown:



Same Shit, different war. :cry: WAR, by it's very nature, is *terrorism.*

[Rose Siding]

3. This is what I envisisioned when Alter made his suggestion about a new dem "bumper sticker"

snip>
Now, Democrats should embrace what I like to call "pull and strike"—pull forces from the streets of Baghdad, but strike hard at Qaeda positions in the Sunni areas and in Afghanistan, mostly from air bases outside Iraq. In other words, saying no to the folly of intervening in a civil war between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites isn't enough. Critics must also say yes—loudly—to calling in airstrikes on foreign fighters, who are increasingly being identified by friendly local sheiks determined to chase them out of their country.

The idea behind pull and strike isn't new, but its predecessor catchphrase—"strategic redeployment"—lacked a certain muscular quality and never caught on. Whatever it's called, the logic is clear. Pinpointing the whereabouts of Qaeda strongholds requires beefed-up intelligence, which has little to do with the large-scale presence of American ground forces. In fact, when we leave, and remove a major source of irritation, intelligence on the true terrorists will likely get better.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19263101/site/newsweek/

Strikes called in from the distance of "phased" or "strategic redeployment" would have the added disadvantage of more distant intel, as well. Those misses would be like this one, and with a potential for greater frequency. What a mess.