[Manic Moran]

[Mod]Tenuous thread distraction deleted.[/Mod]

[gizmo555]

Originally Posted by First Aid Ireland

I'm not defending or condoning the loss of innocent life in war, but I'm just wondering how a figure of "between 282 and 535" civilians can be "credibly" reported.

I'm not for one second saying the figures are wrong. But if they were all that credible surely the lower estimate wouldn't be only 50% of the higher estimate.

This piece in today's (29/05/12) New York Times goes a long way towards explaining the disagreement over the numbers of civilians being killed in drone strikes:

. . . Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent . . .

This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.

But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.

“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”

Seems like we're back in the realms of "if he runs, he's VC; if he stands still he's well-disciplined VC."

[tac foley]

That's the problem, being at war with combatants who don't wear uniform.

I speak for real-life experinece.

tac

[gizmo555]

Originally Posted by tac foley

That's the problem, being at war with combatants who don't wear uniform.

I speak for real-life experinece.

tac

One can acknowledge the problem without necessarily concluding that the US's present "kill them all, God will know his own" response, while making a completely implausible pretence that all those killed are actually enemy combatants, is the solution.

As I think someone commented in the NYT article linked to, the policy means that if, for example, a drone strike hits a car killing a family of four, the father and, say, a teenage son are officially designated "militants" on no more evidence than their location, gender and age, while a mother and daughter in the same car are "civilians".

That discussion is probably better suited to the politics forums, but I just wanted to highlight the gross hypocrisy of the US ambassador's hand-wringing about the civilian deaths in this incident, while at the same time the US is pursuing policies and tactics which will inevitably result in widespread civilian deaths.

[christmas2012]

dreadful rip to those who lost their lives