"Carpet bombing kills 150 civilians' in frontline town"

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NNN0LHI (600 posts) Nov-18-01, 10:11 PM (ET) "Carpet bombing kills 150 civilians' in frontline town" http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=105629 <<A catastrophic error by carpet-bombing US Air Force warplanes was blamed yesterday for the deaths of about 150 unarmed Afghan civilians in a densely populated frontline town caught up in the battle for the Taliban redoubt of Kunduz.>> <snip>   Alert Edit | Reply | Top

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Subject     Author     Message Date     ID    God damn it WilliamPitt Nov-18-01 1  I said this in an earlier post, but its worth repeating DCofVA Nov-18-01 2  I am speechless... coralsea Nov-18-01 3  And I have this sinking feeling soleft Nov-18-01 4  Son of a Bitch!!! w4rma Nov-19-01 5    And our civillians will pay the price for these screw ups in spades NNN0LHI 11/19/2001 6    Gimme a break Imajika 11/19/2001 9        dead civilians: part of the price EdGy 11/19/2001 10  This makes me sick!!! Tigerlily Nov-19-01 7    Tigerlily, NYC 11/19/2001 8        Shit happens especially in wartime settings. opihimoimoi 11/19/2001 11

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WilliamPitt (3886 posts) Nov-18-01, 10:23 PM (ET) 1. "God damn it" "In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects." - J. William Fulbright READ THIS: http://www.usccr.gov/vote2000/stdraft1/main.htm   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

DCofVA (121 posts) Nov-18-01, 10:25 PM (ET) 2. "I said this in an earlier post, but its worth repeating" Just about all of us witnessed the bombing of the WTC. We were utterly appalled at the deaths of so many innocent people, and loud was the condemnation of the cold blooded bastards, that could do such a thing. Bush has said, and I quote, “What separates us from the terrorist, is that we respect the lives of innocent people”, and yet the innocent continue to die in our relentless bombing raids over Afghanistan. Well, if this is what you call respect, Mr. Bush, please don’t respect me, I want to live.   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

coralsea (1701 posts) Nov-18-01, 10:25 PM (ET) 3. "I am speechless..." how utterly fucking deplorable! My heart feels very heavy this night... Massacering civilians & abject refusal to acknowledge the forty-odd deaths of our own military forces.. This is a goddamn evil, heartless administration.. ---------------------------------------- Today's GOP: Busy building that Bridge to the 16th Century. "Liberals are fearless, confident of humanity, outgoing and optimistic, because they believe most people are pretty much like themselves. Conservatives are fearful, mistrusting, angry, bitter and afraid because they, too, believe most people are pretty much like themselves."   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

soleft (195 posts) Nov-18-01, 10:42 PM (ET) 4. "And I have this sinking feeling" That the only part of this story that would ever reach mainstream US press is this. "This is the work of the Taliban," said Zumeray, insisting that he was not angry with the Americans. "The Taliban were so cruel, and God brought the Americans to help us."   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

w4rma (1353 posts) Nov-19-01, 00:33 AM (ET) 5. "Son of a Bitch!!!" LAST EDITED ON Nov-19-01 AT 00:36 AM (ET) If Al Gore were President this would not have happened. He and the folks he work with care about innocent human lives no matter which country they live in. These 150 people would still be alive. Their families and friends would not be greving. It is obvious that that SOB, Shrub, doesn't give a rat's butt how many innocent foreigner's die. He and and the rest of his administration likely see the whole lot of them in the same light that Falwell, Roberson and Coutler see them. -Rick http://www.rickswarehouse.com/   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

NNN0LHI (600 posts) Nov-19-01, 00:38 AM (ET) 6. "And our civillians will pay the price for these screw ups in spades" Don   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

Imajika (235 posts) Nov-19-01, 07:54 AM (ET) 9. "Gimme a break" "If Al Gore were President this would not have happened." What a bunch of crap. If Al Gore were President we would be doing much the same thing as we are doing now...and civilians would be getting killed. Such is the way of war. Remember Kosovo? Clinton was President at the time and during the war many civilians were killed. Infact, in one instance an entire convoy of refugees was annhilated by US bombers. Do you think Clinton didn't care about civilians? I think it is pretty safe to say he did. War is hell. You simply can not fight a war without civilians dying. We are just very lucky we have the kind of high tech weapons nowadays that are much more precise than in years past. Front page of the Washington Post on Sunday. A story appeared and was discussed in depth on Sunday on multiple channels that talked about at least 10 opportunities to hit Taliban and Al- Queda (sp) leadership that were missed because of a slow chain of command and fear about civilian casualties. "These 150 people would still be alive." You have no way of knowing this. Sure maybe these particular civilians may be alive, but under a Gore warplan (which I'd be would be very similar to what Bush is doing) many civilians would have been killed as well. That quite simply, is just what happens in war. And most people wouldn't be whining and pointing fingers at Al Gore, just like most people didn't blame Bill Clinton when large numbers of civilians were killed in Kosovo. The bottom line is, the United States military doesn't INTENTIALLY try to kill civilians and noncombatants. It didn't under Clinton, it wouldn't have under Gore and it isn't under Bush. I'd much rather see Gore in the White House right now, but if he were he WOULD be waging war in Afghanistan right now - and many civilians would have been killed. Imajika   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

EdGy (107 posts) Nov-19-01, 09:51 AM (ET) 10. "dead civilians: part of the price" that war makers factor into into the cost of the war. The military uses something called "proportionality" when thinking about how many civilian casualties are acceptable. The more strategically or militarily important the target, the greater the direct "collateral damage" that is acceptable. So the claim that civilian casualties are unintentional is disingenuous: in this kind of war it is 100% sure that civilians will be killed, even if they are not directly targeted. Those who decide to pursue this kind of war know this for a fact. They decide to go ahead anyway. That is, they decide that a few hundred or thousand dead Afghan civilians is worth it to achieve their war goals (whatever those might be...) And they do not take into account the indirect deaths that result from this kind of action, for example, those who die because power plants or sanitation or water plants are destroyed, leading to disease, refugees who will starve or freeze, etc. Those civilian casualties are not even considered in the proportionality calculation. But they know this is the cost of their war when they make a decision to fight it. This is true of Repubs as well as Dems. Which I think is all the more reason to explore other ways of achieving goals, if civilian lives are really important. If you really value innocent lives and want to spare them, then you'll be much more careful than this bunch has been. If on the other hand you think that US goals are worth whatever price has to be paid, fine, just be honest about it, don't try to have it both ways. Plus, I am not convinced that this bombing is actually about what they claim it is. I think a lot of it has to do with ideological craziness on the part of what Pat Buchanan is calling "the party of war" within the administration. It's also clearly about overcoming the right-wing's loss in the 2000 elections, the unpopularity of the right-wing repuke agenda, and the whittling down of civil liberties at home. The liberation of Afghans from Taliban rule is an unintended consequence (just wait til the Northern Alliance consolidates power...) When you think of it in those terms, it is even more criminal that they are accomplishing those goals by taking the blood of innocents.   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

Tigerlily (1672 posts) Nov-19-01, 06:54 AM (ET) 7. "This makes me sick!!!" I do not know very much about the history of war, but does anyone else get the feeling that this war has killed far more civilians (in proportion to how long it has been going on for) than other wars? I'm just curious because I am so sickened by the reports of "accidentally" hitting Hospitals, the Red Cross, Schools, and Civilians in general. I mean this is really, really disgusting. Has this happened in other wars too? To this degree? (Besides WW2)   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

NYC (1278 posts) Nov-19-01, 07:33 AM (ET) 8. "Tigerlily," Yes. Many civilians die in wars. I think the statistics are (roughly) 40% military casualties and 60% civilian casualties for the overall death rate from wars. I don't think armies are anywhere near as careful about civilians as they profess to be.   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

opihimoimoi (613 posts) Nov-19-01, 10:14 AM (ET) 11. "Shit happens especially in wartime settings." We are Humans, as such, prone to mistakes big and small. As we are wheeled into a hospital surgery room for an operation, large or small, we are asked to sign a release in case anything goes wrong. And we do, as the odds indicate otherwise. Most of the time, it is worth the risk.... to take out thaT SMALL CANCEROUS GROWTH NOW but the hand, the leg, the scars, etc may be part of the price. In war, too many people,innocents/participants, pay the price for peace/domination/aggression efforts and I too, wish we could find ways to diminish the numbers even further than the present low figures. Come, we shop for mangos and lychee   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

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