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U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

eminetra.co.uk

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Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#181

Post by rscoots »

sp332 wrote: post #144
dmos62 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Ben Anderson's 2 part ~30 minute report from Afghanistan for Vice from around 10 years ago [0][1]. He was embedded with British troops and ANA during a patrol with a lot of gun fights. The British strafed an empty field, almost bombed themselves twice and once an Apache launched a Hellfire missile into a compound with British and ANA troops in it and hit a building where a family with small children were hid…

But in this case it is malice. The Taliban destroyed cell phone towers so walkie-talkies were extremely common. Then the US declared every man with a walkie-talkie was a legitimate target.

>Then the US declared every man with a walkie-talkie was a legitimate target.

Anywhere I can find info on this?

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#182

Post by dayofthedaleks »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #75

You know the worst thing about this, and everything else that's happened in Afghanistan in the past 20 years? The Taliban unconditionally surrendered in 2001: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/08/18/taliban-surren... Talk about a waste: of lives, of money, of time, of effort that could have gone to far more productive purposes.

According to today's NYTimes, the proffered surrender wasnt quite unconditional - the Taliban requested amnesty in exchange for disarming.

Rumsfeld turned them down on the pretense of demanding unconditional surrender. My suspicion is America's persisting collective rage and the firehose of defense spending were beyond anyone's control at that point.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#183

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

dTal wrote: post #166
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never malice. Nobody goes, "hey, this compound is 100% only women and children, let's bomb it." Reality: "A patrol nearby said they took fire from the compound at such and such grid coordinates" It gets bombed. Turns out the unit on the ground was mistaken. War is hell. War criminals should be punished. But it's not a war crime to make a mistake. I love seeing these posts because it's clear that almost nobody he…

Nestled in between "malice" and "honest mistake" is "criminal negligence". When you put yourself in that position - when you invade a country - every resulting civilian casualty is on you. You do not have the moral standing to decide what is and is not acceptable "collateral damage". War is hell, but you chose to make war there. The civilians didn't. >the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian ca…

> to phrase it another way, allied forces killed a third as many civilians as the actual Taliban

> According to the United Nations, the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.

Interesting. How do you get one third out of those numbers?

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#184

Post by sp332 »

rscoots wrote: post #181
sp332 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in this case it is malice. The Taliban destroyed cell phone towers so walkie-talkies were extremely common. Then the US declared every man with a walkie-talkie was a legitimate target.

>Then the US declared every man with a walkie-talkie was a legitimate target. Anywhere I can find info on this?

https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/inside-america-fa...

This link was posted in another thread and seems to be the source that broke the news today.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#185

Post by drewcoo »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #137
dmos62 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Ben Anderson's 2 part ~30 minute report from Afghanistan for Vice from around 10 years ago [0][1]. He was embedded with British troops and ANA during a patrol with a lot of gun fights. The British strafed an empty field, almost bombed themselves twice and once an Apache launched a Hellfire missile into a compound with British and ANA troops in it and hit a building where a family with small children were hid…

It's never malice. Nobody goes, "hey, this compound is 100% only women and children, let's bomb it." Reality: "A patrol nearby said they took fire from the compound at such and such grid coordinates" It gets bombed. Turns out the unit on the ground was mistaken. War is hell. War criminals should be punished. But it's not a war crime to make a mistake. I love seeing these posts because it's clear that almost nobody he…

We're talking about drone attacks, not invitations to our lemonade social. It is always malice.

This might help clear it up: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malice

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#186

Post by neom »

adjkant wrote: post #59
perihelions wrote: post #45

This reads like an AI-generated translation. It looks like the source that they're plagiarizing is this Daily Mail article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9924567/US-drone-pi... The points of difference have a strong smell of machine translation. E.g. "Killing for the sake of killing" turns into "I’ll kill you for the killing"; "Connecting Vets" becomes "Veterinary connection". @dang This article should pro…

From another comment chain (credit to @belter), this seems like the original source: https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/inside-america-fa... Comment chain (along with archive link for EU access): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28299929

Given the video in the link that you sent - I wouldn't say that it's "accidental" - they said they killed anyone who met the "criteria" and the "criteria" was anyone who touched a walki talki because the Talian has taken the phones offline and they suspected ISIS was communicating via walki talki. This was described as basically killing for the sake of killing (agree) - but accidental makes it sound a lot less sinister.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#187

Post by gus_massa »

coding123 wrote: post #162
enriquto wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's not a war crime to make a mistake. I suppose that you are from the USA and your family is living there. Imagine that some afghan-controlled drone intended to kill some U.S. soldiers (a legitimate target because they are enemy combatants). But instead they kill your family. If it was a mistake, by the own account of the drone operator, would you still maintain that the killing of your whole family was not a…

I'm going to be a little dismissive of the question, but that's how the laws work in the united states. If someone was drunk that's a little different, but from the perspective of someone making a mistake on the road, and a family ends up dead - the person that made the mistake (assuming they prove that in court) does not end up with a murder charge. It may still end up being manslaughter and jail time. Now to more s…

> But our country tries to prevent that at ALL COSTS.

I agree. Allcaps included.

> We do so by making sure other countries are stable.

Ehh... that part is more dubious. For example see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central_Intelligence_...

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#188

Post by juanani »

gccs wrote: post #167
marcus_holmes wrote: post #148

A Hellfire missile apparently costs $150K [0]. Given that it's apparently OK to launch one of these at a single suspected enemy informant, couldn't we have saved a lot of time, money and lives by just bribing the entire population of Afghanistan to not do things that the West doesn't like? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire

No. The purpose of the war is to fund defense contractors and create jobs back at home. Giving the money directly to afganis would not do that.

I like how we call them by their Manufactured name. 'Defense'. Not really picking on you or this comment, I just read way too many Defense Contractors in this thread. Hope we start calling them War Contractors, closer to reality.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#189

Post by rscoots »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #148

A Hellfire missile apparently costs $150K [0]. Given that it's apparently OK to launch one of these at a single suspected enemy informant, couldn't we have saved a lot of time, money and lives by just bribing the entire population of Afghanistan to not do things that the West doesn't like? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire

>just bribing the entire population of Afghanistan to not do things that the West doesn't like?

Lol we also did that.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#190

Post by moksly »

ricardobeat wrote: post #71

Having watched a few documentaries on the war, from multiple periods, my first thought was “who did they target with these drone strikes?” seeing as they usually had no idea who or where the enemy was. The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.

America’s drones have made children afraid of blue skies in more than 7 countries over the course of the past two decades.

I’m not sure anyone really knows why or what has been achieved by it.

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