U.S. Investigates Civilian Toll in Airstrike, but Holds Insurgents Responsible

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: New York Times

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — The American military said on Friday that it was vigorously investigating a Thursday evening airstrike on a stronghold of insurgent leaders northwest of Baghdad that also killed nine children and six women. The civilian toll is one of the highest to result from a single American military action since the beginning of the Iraq war.

Rear Adm. Greg Smith, an American military spokesman here, said the killings were “absolutely regrettable,” but blamed the enemy fighters for engaging American forces while using civilians as a shield.

“We do not target civilians,” the admiral said in an interview on Friday. “But when our forces are fired upon, as they are routinely, then they have no option but to return fire.”

The airstrike, near Tharthar Lake, a Sunni Arab region about 75 miles northwest of Baghdad, killed 19 senior-level insurgents with ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia after insurgents first fired on a unit of American soldiers approaching a residential structure, the United States military said. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence says is foreign led.

“A ground element came under fire from that building that we had to neutralize,” Admiral Smith said. It was not clear on Friday whether American commanders knew that so many civilians were in or near the structure when they authorized the airstrike....

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html

[tom_paine]

1. Nazis and Bushies ALWAYS blame their victims.

Always.

[babylonsister]

2. That's their tried and true back-up excuse, isn't it? Blame it on

amyone but themselves.

[Zornhau]

3. Of course it's their fault

We can do now wrong, don't cha know? We're the USA... :eyes:

[SpikeTss]

4. "Yes, we dropped our bombs on these children, but we didn't kill them"

When I hear excuses like this, the only valid
comparison for me are the excuses of the Nazis during
their wars of aggression.

[wtmusic]

5. What sorrowful wimps our military forces have become

when we find it appropriate to "neutralize" the source of ground fire, on a ground element, with an indiscrimnate airstrike.

It would take some courage to send in troops on the ground, and apparently we don't have it.

[ixion]

6. This is precisely the same logic that serial killers use

joy.

[Strelnikov_]

7. But I thought Anbar/Salahandin was a land 'O Milk and Honey'

following our great surge victory.

Call me crazy, but staging air strikes in a 'pacified' region doesn't seem, well, very pacified.