The Pentagon has a practice called “condolence payments.” This is when U.S. commanders pay surviving family members thousands of dollars for every civilian they’ve killed. After a night operation in 2009 killed 15 civilians, U.S. commanders visited the village and handed out $40,000 in cash – $2,500 for each death, $500 for two wounded men and $1,500 for village repairs.
In this cynical policy, the Pentagon has doled out $688,000 in condolence and $6.8 million in battle repair funds in Afghanistan in the first half of fiscal 2011. Millions of dollars in these payments have been made since 2005, in a sign of the high rate of civilian casualties U.S. forces produce and of the sick nature of a nation paying reparations for its bloodshed which is deliberately continued.
