US Consciously Kills Civilians In Afghanistan

Alternet.org

Posted by Scarecrow at 6:15 AM on October 29, 2007.

Scarecrow: There's a "macabre kind of calculus" about whether the "target" was "worth" the likely number of civilian deaths.

Karzai has "plead" with Bush to end airstrikes

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This post, written by Scarecrow, originally appeared on FireDogLake

CBS 60 Minutes revealed last night that the US military in Afghanistan uses air strikes in situations it knows will kill innocent civilians, if the commanders also believe enough Taliban might be killed. The result has been a doubling of civilian casualties, such that we now kill as many civilians as the Taliban and al Qaeda.

And all Aghfan President Karzai can do is plead with George Bush, so far unsuccessfully, that the US stop using air strikes against civilian targets.

In one of many such incidents this year, US forces announced they had carried out an air strike and had killed several suspected militants. However, the military declined to provide further information on who might have been killed, and when reports leaked out that most of the victims had been women and children -- innocent civilians -- 60 Minutes sent a team to find out what happened.

In interviews with 60 Minutes, US military acknowledged that field commanders had clearance to call in air strikes on civilian targets, knowing that innocent deaths would likely occur, provided they made what one official described as a "macabre kind of calculus" about whether the "target" was "worth" the likely number of civilian deaths.

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