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How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

nytimes.com

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Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#31

Post by [deleted] »

dragontamer wrote: post #30
hh3k0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) That would _not_ be a good justification to wage a war, but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction – later found to be non-existent. 215 Republicans and 82 Democrats voted for this. They paved the way for a war of aggression… and I seem to remembe…

> but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction Afghanistan War was 2001. Iraq War was 2003. Your history is off by about 1.5 years.

[deleted]

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#32

Post by adolph »

pessimizer wrote: post #13
bayesian_horse wrote: post #2

As horrible as those allegations are, let's appreciate that the U.S. military may be about the only military force that is both capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and investigating them. Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar.

That's not what the article says. The article says that they stymied any internal inquiries, fudged numbers, and lied at every possible opportunity to do so. It's great that the NYT is covering it, because liberals might pay attention, but this looks like another case (like the rocket into the compound of an Afghan family seemingly out of a Hallmark card or a segment of CBS Sunday Morning) where pictures, testimony,…

I wonder what the larger societal context for this airstrike? The context for the "the rocket into the compound of an Afghan family" was a retreat from Afghanistan. Other previous bombings of questionable military value had other contexts.

These justifications for the bombing were disputed by the owners of the plant, the Sudanese government, and other governments. American officials later acknowledged "that the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed. Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980s." The attack took place a week after the Monica Lewinsky scandal and two months after the film Wag the Dog, prompting some commentators to describe the attack as a distraction for the public from the scandal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factor...

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#33

Post by pkphilip »

oh_sigh wrote: post #22
curiousgal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And y'all wonder why Americans are hated. It takes a special amount of delusion to pat yourself on the back, for whatever made-up reason, after having killed innocent people. Imagine saying the same thing about 9/11 and watch your life be torn to pieces.

Americans are hated? I think you hang out in a fairly small social circle if that is the norm. Or are you just one of those self-hating Americans who thinks everyone else is just like you? Guessing that's the case from the use of "y'all"

You should travel more and ask people outside the US what they actually think about US military policy. Note, some people do distinguish between what the US establishment does and what ordinary American civilians do but that is not always the case.

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#34

Post by dragontamer »

adolph wrote: post #24
bayesian_horse wrote: post #2

As horrible as those allegations are, let's appreciate that the U.S. military may be about the only military force that is both capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and investigating them. Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar.

> Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar. There doesn't seem to be English language publication to establish if similar internal criticism occurs in other countries or not. For all we know Daesh PR did a through analysis of burning Jordanian pilots alive in cages [0] and found it unhelpful to their cause. Given that any large enough human org…

> For all we know Daesh PR did a through analysis of burning Jordanian pilots alive in cages [0] and found it unhelpful to their cause.

I mean... ISIS-K / Daesh is still murdering people in Afghanistan, even after we've left.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/world/asia/afghanistan-mo...

Considering that the Daesh / ISIS-K organization is so freakishly violent that they're attacking the _TALIBAN_ for being too moderate, gives you everything you need to know about that group.

For better or worse, ISIS-K is the Taliban's problem for now. But I do worry that the Taliban are going to be toppled by ISIS-K, and once ISIS-K is in power they'll use Afghanistan as a training center to launch international attacks from.

Or Syria, or Iraq. ISIS-K has strength in a fair number of regions. They clearly don't care "which" land they get, they just want some land / safe havens to train up and grow in strength.

------

Brutally killing civilians is their modus operandi. USA hides it when we do it because we're at least embarrassed about it and nominally against that sort of thing..

Unfortunately, we have more important things to worry about and prepare for.

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#36

Post by pan69 »

dragontamer wrote: post #30
hh3k0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) That would _not_ be a good justification to wage a war, but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction – later found to be non-existent. 215 Republicans and 82 Democrats voted for this. They paved the way for a war of aggression… and I seem to remembe…

> but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction Afghanistan War was 2001. Iraq War was 2003. Your history is off by about 1.5 years.

> After 9/11, the Bush administration national security team actively debated an invasion of Iraq. On the day of the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his aides for: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at the same time. Not only Osama bin Laden."[90] President Bush spoke with Rumsfeld on 21 November and instructed him to conduct a confidential review of OPLAN 1003, the war plan for invading Iraq.[91] Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks, the commander of US Central Command, on 27 November to go over the plans. A record of the meeting includes the question "How start?", listing multiple possible justifications for a US–Iraq War.[92][93] The rationale for invading Iraq as a response to 9/11 has been refuted, as there was no cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.[94]

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

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#38

Post by dumdumdumdum »

photochemsyn wrote: post #20

The US record in Afghanistan is arguably even more ridiculous (and psychotic) than in Iraq. We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) - although to be honest, the argument for doing the regime change op in Saudi Arabia was far more robust, as members of the Saudi government aided the hijackers and Saudi Royal family members were a…

> Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism

That's not entirely true. They wanted to negotiate his extradition. As any sovereign nation would.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#39

Post by sollewitt »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #2

As horrible as those allegations are, let's appreciate that the U.S. military may be about the only military force that is both capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and investigating them. Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar.

The story is how

1) there are systems in place to stop this happening.

2) there are system in place to investigate if it happens.

3) the systems in 1) are circumvented

4) the systems in 2) are stymied

This means the systems have been corrupted. It means the US military can claim to care about those things but actually acts entirely contra to those stated principles. This is more cynical than not pretending to care.

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#40

Post by boomboomsubban »

adolph wrote: post #14
csee wrote: post #10

Highlights: - Special task force ordered strike. They didn't have to go through normal checks and balances because they were doing it under emergency provisions apparently due to an emergency request from arab allies on the ground. - They claim they didn't see the civilians because they were relying on SD quality drone feed. - The group is accused of falsifying log records afterwards.

Second paragraph: "Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast." Who is lying about the surveillance quality?

Further in the article

>A 5th Special Forces Group officer in the task force looked at the drone footage and didn’t see any civilians, a task force officer said. But the drone he relied on had only a standard-definition camera. Central Command said there were no high-definition drones in the area that could get a better view of the target...In fact, a high-definition drone was available. The task force did not use it.

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