Fog of war my ass!
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/r...ian-deaths-from-u-s-led-isis-bombing-campaign
And so we did a systematic sample in three different traditionally ISIS-held areas near Mosul. And we looked at every single airstrike in each of these areas. They were downtown Qaiyara, Shura, and the Aden district of East Mosul.
And what we found or what we were trying to figure out was which number of airstrikes of the total number of airstrikes in those areas had resulted in civilian deaths or casualties, and then from that to determine which one of those were coalition airstrikes, so that we could get a reliable sense of how effectively this campaign was going, because, when you look at the coalition’s own statements about this, they boast that this is the most precise air campaign in the history of warfare.
And I really wanted to know if that was the case.
...
We found that precision might not matter if the intelligence is wrong.
And of the 103 airstrikes we looked at, there were 20 civilian casualty incidents of airstrikes, and in about half of those, there appeared to be no discernible target nearby, no ISIS target, suggesting either poor or faulty intelligence.
So, if you don’t have the right target in mind and you’re conflating civilians with combatants, your precision may not matter, because if you’re hitting a house the way you want in that exact way, it doesn’t matter, if the target itself is an incorrect target.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/r...ian-deaths-from-u-s-led-isis-bombing-campaign
- Azmat Khan:
And so we did a systematic sample in three different traditionally ISIS-held areas near Mosul. And we looked at every single airstrike in each of these areas. They were downtown Qaiyara, Shura, and the Aden district of East Mosul.
And what we found or what we were trying to figure out was which number of airstrikes of the total number of airstrikes in those areas had resulted in civilian deaths or casualties, and then from that to determine which one of those were coalition airstrikes, so that we could get a reliable sense of how effectively this campaign was going, because, when you look at the coalition’s own statements about this, they boast that this is the most precise air campaign in the history of warfare.
And I really wanted to know if that was the case.
...
We found that precision might not matter if the intelligence is wrong.
And of the 103 airstrikes we looked at, there were 20 civilian casualty incidents of airstrikes, and in about half of those, there appeared to be no discernible target nearby, no ISIS target, suggesting either poor or faulty intelligence.
So, if you don’t have the right target in mind and you’re conflating civilians with combatants, your precision may not matter, because if you’re hitting a house the way you want in that exact way, it doesn’t matter, if the target itself is an incorrect target.
- Hari Sreenivasan:
Now, [you] went back to Central Command with your findings, showed them the kind of reporting that you had done, and compared them to, what, their own YouTube videos?
- Azmat Khan:
Yes, their own YouTube videos, their own previous statements, their own public admissions or what they have acknowledged as civilian casualty incidents.
So, I went to the Combined Air Operations Center in Udeid, which is where all of these aircraft, where U.S. Central Command is for the region and where these aircraft take off to bomb in Iraq and Syria.
And, you know, I interviewed many commanders. I interviewed civilian casualty assessment experts. I spoke with legal advisers there. And then, ultimately, we provided them with the coordinates and date ranges of all 103 airstrikes and asked them if these were coalition airstrikes.
Ultimately, they denied several of them as unlikely, for which I was able to find their own videos that they’d uploaded of military Web sites of a coalition airstrike taking place in areas where they said, no, that wasn’t us, the nearest airstrike we carried out was 600 meters away or the like."
Facebook
Twitter