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Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

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Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#51

Post by packetized »

bpodgursky wrote: post #39
packetized wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'current', for small values of current.

I can only think of one contrary example within the last decade -- Libya, where Gaddafi was still in power when we started bombing. It was complicated, and I think in the end it was a poor decision, but I don't think it's fair to consider it wrong or evil. Looking farther back you find Iraq and Afghanistan on the list with similar disclaimers. In any case, neither was a "lob a few missiles from the stratosphere and p…

Philippines, possibly - depending on who you talk to.

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/deadly-drone-strike-on-mu...

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#52

Post by lend000 »

kurttheviking wrote: post #44
lend000 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they throw the issue a bone every once in a while, but was it even within an order of magnitude as the amount of airtime given when Bush was doing the bombing? (you can even look at the amount of stories coming out now, in the two weeks that Trump has been doing what Obama did non-stop for nearly a decade.) It's a little disingenuous to link to five stories from five different sources over a five year period an…

> It's a little disingenuous to link to five stories from five different sources over a five year period and claim that the magnitude of the ongoing stories has been fairly captured over the last eight years. I tried to explain that was a quick Google of resources that most people consider to be "the media". The OP had suggested not "a single member" to which the counter point is, fairly I believe, minimal evidence t…

> To make a claim about relative magnitude would require us to establish "how much is enough" and I do not believe that was the point in question -- as I am unsure how we could ever make such a determination.

Fair, but when I compare the left echo chamber over the last two weeks when Trump launched attacks in Yemen to the left chamber a couple months ago while Obama was bombing Yemen and US armed groups were fighting each other in Northern Syria, there was a significant perceived difference in the amount of coverage and tone. It's not really quantifiable, as you said, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#53

Post by kurttheviking »

ronnier wrote: post #45
kurttheviking wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i'm disappointed that i haven't seen a single member of the media or Democratic party establishments talk about Obama's expansion of the drone program. I have been hearing and reading about the expansion of Obama's drone program for years in "the media". Some quick Googling shows several examples. - http://www.npr.org/2013/04/28/179597464/leading-senate-democ... - http://www.npr.org/2012/06/20/155389081/are-drones-…

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Drone%20str... Interesting how that became so popular lately.

Sure, but as a counter point, simply look at drone strikes overall:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Drone%20str...

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#54

Post by jessriedel »

strainer wrote: post #25
jessriedel wrote: post #7

This is a definitional thing, right? Laymen think of "airstrike" in terms of anything coming from the air, but the military use of the term has always reflected the very different nature of long-range bombing mission and (say) helicopter support of infantry units. > "Apaches for example, conduct close combat attacks as a maneuver element supporting a ground force in contact with the enemy. I would not consider this i…

>unless the Army was also failing to include it in something like "groundstrikes". The article includes multiple statements from army sources which indicate no such figures are published. If someone could turn them up, that would be something.

The point is that if there was also a category released to the general public called "groundstrikes" (or better yet "everything but airstrikes") and the Army was not including attack helicopter mission in that either, then there would be a clear intent to decieve. Likewise if these missions were not contributing to public tallies like "total casualties". But so long as it's public knowledge that the Army has large categories of missions that are not included in these public reports, this is plausibly just a definitional confusion, and so it's not very damning.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#55

Post by megous »

ronnier wrote: post #45
kurttheviking wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i'm disappointed that i haven't seen a single member of the media or Democratic party establishments talk about Obama's expansion of the drone program. I have been hearing and reading about the expansion of Obama's drone program for years in "the media". Some quick Googling shows several examples. - http://www.npr.org/2013/04/28/179597464/leading-senate-democ... - http://www.npr.org/2012/06/20/155389081/are-drones-…

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Drone%20str... Interesting how that became so popular lately.

There's a new documentary coming this year. It was mentioned in one of the lectures on 33C3. What it is about may be a part of it.

https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2016/Fahrplan/events...

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#56

Post by linuxkerneldev »

cyberferret wrote: post #43
csallen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you still think of the world as divided into good and evil, then I have to break it to you that you have been played. People don't know the half of it, and in my experience, they don't want to know. It's comforting to feel like the good guys. The media is complicit, in that it intentionally leaves out relevant facts that might make us look bad. For example, take Iran. In 1953, we overthrew their democratically-e…

I was living in South East Asia when the USS Vincennes incident took place, and it was widely reported there. But I do remember when I returned to Australia, hardly anybody knew about what had happened. That was my first introduction to 'curated news' by various countries. Of course, a few years later when the family of the Captain of the Vincennes was targeted in a failed car bomb attack, we heard a bit about this '…

> the USS Vincennes incident took place

Summary for those who like me didn't know about the incident. Our guy shot down a passenger flight, murdering 290 human beings, we gave him a medal but we then paid USD$213,000 in blood money per passenger to Iran without ever admitting fault.

" Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating on this route was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes under the command of William C. Rogers III. The incident took place in Iranian airspace, over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, and on the flight's usual flight path. The aircraft, an Airbus A300 B2-203, was destroyed by SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired from Vincennes. All 290 people on board died

...

As part of the settlement, the United States did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran but agreed to pay on an ex gratia basis US$61.8 million, amounting to $213,103.45 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims.

...

Commander David Carlson, commanding officer of USS Sides, the warship stationed nearest to Vincennes at the time of the incident, is reported to have said that the destruction of the aircraft "marked the horrifying climax to Captain Rogers's aggressiveness, first seen four weeks ago".

...

In 1990, Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989.

"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#57

Post by 2bad4u2b »

megous wrote: post #37
bpodgursky wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The U.S routinely bombs other sovereign countries and this is show cased as a "hero" activity There's a lot of nuance here, because there isn't really a (current) clear-cut case of the US bombing a sovereign nation where the government has not given the US permission. Of the current active campaigns: - Afghanistan - Iraq - Pakistan Each of these countries has a functioning government, even mostly democratically ele…

Syria: Assad complained about that in recent interview with Belgian press. It's also hard to say he's against ISIS. But anyway, he's a dictator and a paranoic who sees terrorists everywhere and can't even fathom that opposition against him may be legitimate, so his permission means nothing really. http://www.globalresearch.ca/president-al-assad-to-belgian-m... [I'm not endorsing this website in any way. It just was t…

Assad is the President , he's extremely popular , he won the internationally observed election , hands down . If you say that Assad isn't the legitimate leader your the one spreading crap . I lived there 19 of the last 32 years .

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#58

Post by kurttheviking »

proee wrote: post #34
kurttheviking wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i'm disappointed that i haven't seen a single member of the media or Democratic party establishments talk about Obama's expansion of the drone program. I have been hearing and reading about the expansion of Obama's drone program for years in "the media". Some quick Googling shows several examples. - http://www.npr.org/2013/04/28/179597464/leading-senate-democ... - http://www.npr.org/2012/06/20/155389081/are-drones-…

Just because you posted a few example articles, does not negate the fact that the media fails to provide front-page coverage of such an important issue.

During the end of Preisdent Obama's first term and into the start of the second term there was a series of uproars about illegal drone strikes in Pakistan[1]. This was covered on the front page of the papers I see (WSJ, NYT) and discussed extensively in podcast-land. See also, related discussions from HN [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=drone%20strike&sort=byPopulari...

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#59

Post by DanBC »

amenghra wrote: post #36
sytelus wrote: post #21

Wow... 1,700 air strikes just last year alone. That's more than 1 air strike every 6 hour for entire year! I'm wondering how much damage is being inflicted on civilians here. Not just people getting killed, but people becoming homeless or their livelihood getting destroyed. If these are not ultra-precise air strikes then we would be giving birth to future heavily disgruntled middle east population.

Some countries use cluster munition for some of their strikes. The usa last did this in 2009. The opposite of precise...

Especially when they used to also drop food aid in packages that were the same colour as the cluster bomblets.

(mostly text, but with graphic image of child with amputated limbs) http://www.rawa.org/cluster2.htm

http://www.landmineclearance.org/page2.html

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#60

Post by DanBC »

megous wrote: post #48
amenghra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries use cluster munition for some of their strikes. The usa last did this in 2009. The opposite of precise...

Cluster munitions are bad, but you have to consider that people often try to hide in houses, in cellars during air raids in the city. Cluster munition will not do much to those people, other than being insanely noisy and terrifying. What will kill those people is a bomb that will drop the house on them. Indiscriminate killing is a function of decision making process, not the munition itself.

> Cluster munition will not do much to those people,

Not all of the bomblets explode, so when those people come out of their houses they've got to not disturb any of the bomblets.

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