A NATO air strike killed 10 Afghan civilians, five of them children, in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, and wounded five other innocents, according to Afghan officials.
“Foreign forces carried out the attack by themselves without informing us,” Kunar Governor Fazlullah Wahidi told Reuters.
Four Taliban fighters were also allegedly killed in the strike or associated strikes in the area, in the Shigal district of Kunar province.
According to a recent United Nations report, US attacks and airstrikes have killed hundreds of children in recent years, “due notably to reported lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force.”
In describing the UN report, the American Civil Liberties Union reported, “hundreds of children have been killed in attacks and air strikes by US military forces, and those responsible for the killings have not been held to account even as the number of children killed doubled from 2010 to 2011.”
Some US military officials are unhappy about the criticism they receive when Afghan children are killed or injured because of US operations, claiming that insurgents recruit children to plant bombs, so killing children is actually fair game.
“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion Carrington. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”
In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, President Obama announced further troop withdrawals of up to 34,000 soldiers by the end of this year, adding that America’s military presence in Afghanistan will continue on beyond 2014.
NATO at its best!
And NATO at its worst! Ron Paul is my President.
So much for precision strikes! The poor U.S. military officials have their feelings hurt when they are criticised for incompetence. They now make themselves feel better by declaring children legitimate targets. Army Lt. Col. Marion Carrington needs to be locked up in an asylum!
When you don't care who gets wasted, "precise" is a relative term, eh?
And who the hell uses the term "aperture" instead of eyes? Seriously? Must have been the "word of the day" for Lt. Col. Carrington…
He doesn't mean eyes, he thinks he means that the range of targets is wider, using the analogy of a camera lens.
Unfortunately for the victims, the wider the aperture the less depth of field, meaning that further objects are less clearly defined, which apparently conforms to new policy anyway.
now that makes more sense…
now that makes more sense…
So much for precision strikes! The poor U.S. military officials have their feelings hurt when they are criticised for incompetence. They now make themselves feel better by declaring children legitimate targets. Army Lt. Col. Marion Carrington needs to be locked up in an asylum!
"looking for children with potential hostile intent”
Historians need look no further for a quote summarizing our era.
Hmm. More civilians killed. What is John Brennan going to say in Executive Session?
a) They weren't civilians (they weren't even children), because we never kill civilians
b) They were in the target zone so under our pre-matrix protocols we had to conclude they were enemy combatants
c) Their mother and father were terrorists- they should have had more responsible parents
d) I have always opposed putting the CIA in control of this program, so please don't blame me.
e) The program is best administered by the Pentagon, in fact our Pentagon advisors told me we
should do it.
f) I didn't do it, I told NATO to do it.
g) All of the above.
Any one with the right answer may at the discretion of the Senate Intelligence Committee be automatically entered into a sweepstakes to win a toy reaper fully equipped with a pair of toy hellfire missiles from their cereal company of choice, together with a pair of GI Joes, a pair of GI Joe nike boots, and a 2nd Amendment protected bazooka.