Airstrikes kill scores of Afghan civilians: officials

Airstrikes kill scores of Afghan civilians: officials

www.reuters.com

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO and U.S. airstrikes have killed scores of Afghan civilians this week, residents and officials said on Saturday, deaths likely to deepen discontent with foreign forces and the Western-backed Afghan government.
...
Several residents and the head of a district council in Farah said an air attack in the Bala Boluk area had killed 108 civilians.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
news.bbc.co.uk
rawstory.com
www.postchronicle.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
'Up to 80 civilians dead' after US air strikes in Afghanistan
Afghan President Karzai says too many civilian deaths by multi-national forces
7 Afghan children killed in Air Strike

If this trend continues, I wouldn't
expect NATO commader Dan McNeill
to be in charge much longer.

Senior British soldiers have already
expressed concerns that his massive use
of air power would be counter-productive.

So the question remains,
how many more innocents have to die
before there's a change in strategy?
Obviously, carpet bombing an entire village
creates more people sympathetic to the
insurgents/Taliban.

What do ya'll make of this?





www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I feel it's important to note that
Coalition Forces have killed more
civilians the first half of this year
than the Taliban have.

U.S. and NATO troops killed more Afghan civilians in the first half of the year than Taliban fighters did, The Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

The United Nations and local rights groups tallied 314 civilians killed by U.S. and NATO forces and 279 killed by the Taliban and other militant insurgents by late June, the newspaper said.

Other civilian death tallies are similar, the newspaper said.

source

We are putting too much emphasis on airpower and technology, if we ever wish to win this war it will be via the troops on the ground. Not tanks, airplanes, guided missiles, etc.

Those are great for destroying things but can they occupy an area and constantly patrol the said area for terrorists and develop relationship with the locals? Nope,therefore they are useless in counter guerrilla activities.

I don't know why people insist on calling this a war.

It is an invasion pure and simple and I am very sad for the innocent people over there who are just trying to live their life and to be safe in all the turmoil.

"Airstrikes kill scores of Afghan civilians: officials"


No doubt these are the very same officals that alleged Americans killed something like 50 civilians. Might not be 50 but you get the drift. That was since found out to be a plant by Insurgents via Reuters and the story was retracted or so I heard.

Can you find a link on that?
Thanks.

And how do we tell the difference
between civilian and insurgent?

Fuzzy math?

If they hide amongst civilians,
bombing the entire village is still
a BAD military strategy.

Originally posted by aecreate
Can you find a link on that?
Thanks.

Fake media story from Reuters

Actual Reuters Story

Yup even the AP fell for it

If they hide amongst civilians,
bombing the entire village is still
a BAD military strategy.

Not always at times intel says they are not cifilians, they are insurgents claiming to be civilians.





[edit on 7/7/2007 by shots]

I searched for other media sources to back this thread and all could find pertaining to it is this.

Canadian Source

It appears that routers may not be a reliable source in my books.

[edit on 7/7/07 by Rhain]

Originally posted by shots
Fake media story from Reuters

Actual Reuters Story

Yup even the AP fell for it

Not always at times intel says they are not cifilians, they are insurgents claiming to be civilians.
[edit on 7/7/2007 by shots]

The first link obviously has bias,
and it was all about beheadings in Iraq.
Not that I'm here to defend Reuters,
but they retracted that article..

I don't see how that one false report of beheadings in Iraq
detracts from the fact that these airstrikes in Afghanistan
are counter-productive.

Tribal Chief Says NATO Airstrike Kills 108 Afghan Civilians
100 Militants Killed in Afghanistan
Air and ground strikes kill 33 Taliban in Afghanistan

If anything, I think NATO and US Forces are
trying to hide the numbers of civilian deaths
under the guise of "insurgent" and "militant".

Originally posted by Rhain
I searched for other media sources to back this thread and all could find pertaining to it is this.

Canadian Source

It appears that routers may not be a reliable source in my books.

[edit on 7/7/07 by Rhain]

U.S. and NATO leaders, though, said they had no information to substantiate such claims, and a U.S. military officer said Taliban fighters are ordering villagers to say civilians died in fighting - whether they did or not.

Why would NATO or the US even bother
to substantiate those claims?
"Yup, we confirmed that it was in
fact us, that killed all these civilians"

Originally posted by aecreate

Not that I'm here to defend Reuters,
but they retracted that article..

This is but one example there are several more like Faked Photos by Reuters and others, Amy Goodmans claims we killed hundreds if not thousands of Afgans only to have her own souce shoot down her lies. in that case she alleged we used red trucks which were allegedly full of dead civilians yet they all turned out to be Taliban fighters and not civilians as alleged. You can find the thread on that floarting around here some where I think it was authored by Syrian Sister or solujah but not sure. Her site (democracynow) no longer has it or at least the search there does not pull it up. No doubt she like Reuters pulled it when it was found out her own sources proved it was all lies.


Even the sources you just used clearly stated the leaders were told that civilians had been killed even if they were not DUH.


So if you are not defending Reuters who are you defending?



[edit on 7/7/2007 by shots]

Acreate, this is a forum, not a poetry center.

...Meaning, please, stop pressing enter after every quarter of a sentence.

When you start,
typing things like,
this,
they get very,
hard to,
read.


For the air strikes, I don't know. There are conflicting reports about what civilians were killed. It just shows how brutal this sort of war can be.

Ahh, so one claim of dead civilians in Afghanistan was faked, so they all must be faked. Great logic there

It's amazing, we're so good we can drop 2000lb JDAMS in the middle of a village, and nobody gets hurt except the bad guys

Seriously though, as in Iraq, here we are again doing the militants' recruiting for them.
Freaking brilliant

shots,
I was really unaware of Reuter's lies.
I'll probably avoid using them as a source.

Who am I defending? I guess the regular
schmoes over in Afghanistan. This new
NATO commander, Dan Mcneill seems to
be a big fan of these airstrikes. I'm just
pointing out the absurdity of dropping
bombs on villages.. It almost seems like
higher-ups have no regard for the civilians,
rather just secure the resources.

Originally posted by Johnmike
Acreate, this is a forum, not a poetry center.

...Meaning, please, stop pressing enter after every quarter of a sentence.

When you start,
typing things like,
this,
they get very,
hard to,
read.


For the air strikes, I don't know. There are conflicting reports about what civilians were killed. It just shows how brutal this sort of war can be.

It's spelled, aecreate, Johnmike.
I'm sorry you have an issue with the
way I structure my text. Maybe if you had
U2U'd me, I might have considered changing.

We all know how brutal this war can be.
I'm saying it doesn't have to be that way.

now whos a terorist? If the reason they went there was to stop the killing they sure have a weird way of completing their objective.... I can just see it now...
" Lets just bomb the hell out the place, that'll teach those terrorist scums!!!"
and look what happens.

Originally posted by aecreate
It almost seems like
higher-ups have no regard for the civilians,
rather just secure the resources.

Yeah a lot of peopole assume that . What they do not know is that each and every strirke or attack (I should say most ) have to have JAG approval first before they can shoot/bobmb just to protect civilians. The only ones that do not are where troops come under fire.

Yes I know there have been excpetions but those are few and far between.