Post by nana on Jan 31, 2005 3:14:25 GMT -5
Brian Cloughley: 'Smart bombs, wrong house: Iraq's civilian dead'
Posted on Sunday, January 30 @ 10:10:56 EST By Brian Cloughley, CounterPunch
The bomb was delivered by a USAF F-16. (Don't you warm to that word, 'delivered' - it's so wonderfully innocuous: "I delivered some flowers"; "You delivered a baby"; "They delivered a 500 pound GBU-30 bomb that obliterated a house and blew its occupants to bits".) It was guided to its target by a precision system that depends on amazingly sophisticated devices. It can't miss. And on January 8 it didn't miss. It smashed into the house it was programmed to destroy.
But it was the wrong house.
In all the reports of attacks on US forces and general mayhem in Iraq in early January there was one news item that verged on the banal. It was certainly treated by US mainstream media as if it were completely unimportant, and in the eyes of the US military it was a mere blip, a trivial incident in their records of explosions and deaths, with an average of 75 attacks taking place day in, day out (very few of which we hear anything about). It was about the wrongly-directed precision-guided US bomb that killed Iraqi civilians - only a dozen or so - in the town of Aitha.
The bomb itself was not to blame for being misdirected. It could hardly be at fault because it performed the manifest duty for which it was constructed at a handsome profit for McDonnell Douglas. (It's nice to know that some people are doing so well out of this war.) It zoomed down as intended and exploded with devastating force. It was a good and obedient bomb that did what it was told to do. And it killed an Iraqi family in the course of "a cordon and search operation to capture an anti-Iraqi force cell leader", according to a US military statement. So let's examine this official pronouncement.
We'll leave the "anti-Iraqi" reference for the moment, because this is crude propaganda aimed at influencing an audience that doesn't exist beyond the revolving-eyeball supporters of the Bush war on Iraq. But if we consider the tactical and reporting aspects, the part concerned with professional military application, it tells us a great deal about how the US Command in Iraq is performing its duties.
If a military operation is intended to capture someone it is obvious that soldiers have been ordered to take him alive. A cordon and search operation is an effective method of doing this, although it is professionally demanding. What usually happens (or should happen) is that in dead of night a unit of troops (their number dependant on the size of the area to be cordoned) silently surrounds the village or urban locality to be searched. The operation has to be rehearsed beforehand, and every single soldier must know exactly where to go, which is basic routine for a well-trained army. Given good troops, clear orders, and, especially, capable junior leaders (corporals to lieutenants), the area can be sealed off effectively. Once that is done, the sub-units tasked to capture the designated person move into their sectors through the cordon, before dawn. Their intelligence about the location of the wanted person is precise (it must be, otherwise there would be no point in the operation), so they are able to grab him quickly. If the target and his supporters fire on those who wish to take him, then the most effective means of dealing with such a hardly unexpected situation is to fight through in classic infantry style. If it is necessary in that process to kill the people who opened fire on the searchers, then so be it.
This particular operation was obviously a botched job and was no more a professional cordon and search than it was a moon-shot (like the Tora Bora operation in Afghanistan, when bin Laden escaped). Part of the shambles was misdirection of an F-16 pilot.
Pilots of F-16s don't capture suspects. Pilots - who are people, too : it's not "an F-16" that kills, as if it were some sort of out-of-earth robot, beyond human control - use precision-guided bombs to destroy buildings. And in this so-called cordon and search operation a pilot was ordered to send a 500 pound bomb thundering explosively into the wrong building. The person whom it was intended to capture was not there. If he had been there, he would have been blown to bits, not captured. But other people were blown to bits. Just an Iraqi family, of course. Who cares?
The military can keep the public confused almost indefinitely concerning the effects of their weapons. Depleted uranium? Nah - fuggedahboudid ; no problems : we absolutely deny there are residual radiation effects lasting for generations ; trust us. And cluster bombs that scatter bomblets looking like soft drink cans that kill kids over decades? - 'We don't use them except in carefully-controlled circumstances'; trust us. And so on.
500 pounds doesn't sound an enormous weight, and not many of us understand what a GBU-30 bomb can do. Generally speaking the only layfolk who know this sort of thing are seriously disturbed war-geeks who get a panting thrill from watching videos of death and destruction. The propagandists are happy to keep it that way, with most people imagining that a 500 pound bomb is just a dinky itsy-bitsy little popping thing that won't hurt anyone except the bad folks. But think back to the bombings on the island of Bali, Indonesia, in 2002. The most devastating was a car bomb at the Sari night club. The Australian Federal Police estimated that the explosive weighed at most 350 pounds. And that bomb killed 202 people.
And we are expected to believe that a 500 pound bomb thundering down from an F-16 can destroy a single house, precisely ('surgically' used to be the OK word, but it fell out of favor), and not affect any other houses around it. You can imagine it : "Excuse me?" "Yes." "Is this number 22?" "Yes." - Kabooom. And the houses and people on either side of number 22, and those opposite and behind number 22 are miraculously spared devastation. I believe in the Tooth Fairy, too.
In this case the US military admitted that the house flattened to rubble on January 8 by a 500 pound bomb in the town of Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul, "was not the intended target for the airstrike. The intended target was another location nearby".
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Posted on Sunday, January 30 @ 10:10:56 EST By Brian Cloughley, CounterPunch
The bomb was delivered by a USAF F-16. (Don't you warm to that word, 'delivered' - it's so wonderfully innocuous: "I delivered some flowers"; "You delivered a baby"; "They delivered a 500 pound GBU-30 bomb that obliterated a house and blew its occupants to bits".) It was guided to its target by a precision system that depends on amazingly sophisticated devices. It can't miss. And on January 8 it didn't miss. It smashed into the house it was programmed to destroy.
But it was the wrong house.
In all the reports of attacks on US forces and general mayhem in Iraq in early January there was one news item that verged on the banal. It was certainly treated by US mainstream media as if it were completely unimportant, and in the eyes of the US military it was a mere blip, a trivial incident in their records of explosions and deaths, with an average of 75 attacks taking place day in, day out (very few of which we hear anything about). It was about the wrongly-directed precision-guided US bomb that killed Iraqi civilians - only a dozen or so - in the town of Aitha.
The bomb itself was not to blame for being misdirected. It could hardly be at fault because it performed the manifest duty for which it was constructed at a handsome profit for McDonnell Douglas. (It's nice to know that some people are doing so well out of this war.) It zoomed down as intended and exploded with devastating force. It was a good and obedient bomb that did what it was told to do. And it killed an Iraqi family in the course of "a cordon and search operation to capture an anti-Iraqi force cell leader", according to a US military statement. So let's examine this official pronouncement.
We'll leave the "anti-Iraqi" reference for the moment, because this is crude propaganda aimed at influencing an audience that doesn't exist beyond the revolving-eyeball supporters of the Bush war on Iraq. But if we consider the tactical and reporting aspects, the part concerned with professional military application, it tells us a great deal about how the US Command in Iraq is performing its duties.
If a military operation is intended to capture someone it is obvious that soldiers have been ordered to take him alive. A cordon and search operation is an effective method of doing this, although it is professionally demanding. What usually happens (or should happen) is that in dead of night a unit of troops (their number dependant on the size of the area to be cordoned) silently surrounds the village or urban locality to be searched. The operation has to be rehearsed beforehand, and every single soldier must know exactly where to go, which is basic routine for a well-trained army. Given good troops, clear orders, and, especially, capable junior leaders (corporals to lieutenants), the area can be sealed off effectively. Once that is done, the sub-units tasked to capture the designated person move into their sectors through the cordon, before dawn. Their intelligence about the location of the wanted person is precise (it must be, otherwise there would be no point in the operation), so they are able to grab him quickly. If the target and his supporters fire on those who wish to take him, then the most effective means of dealing with such a hardly unexpected situation is to fight through in classic infantry style. If it is necessary in that process to kill the people who opened fire on the searchers, then so be it.
This particular operation was obviously a botched job and was no more a professional cordon and search than it was a moon-shot (like the Tora Bora operation in Afghanistan, when bin Laden escaped). Part of the shambles was misdirection of an F-16 pilot.
Pilots of F-16s don't capture suspects. Pilots - who are people, too : it's not "an F-16" that kills, as if it were some sort of out-of-earth robot, beyond human control - use precision-guided bombs to destroy buildings. And in this so-called cordon and search operation a pilot was ordered to send a 500 pound bomb thundering explosively into the wrong building. The person whom it was intended to capture was not there. If he had been there, he would have been blown to bits, not captured. But other people were blown to bits. Just an Iraqi family, of course. Who cares?
The military can keep the public confused almost indefinitely concerning the effects of their weapons. Depleted uranium? Nah - fuggedahboudid ; no problems : we absolutely deny there are residual radiation effects lasting for generations ; trust us. And cluster bombs that scatter bomblets looking like soft drink cans that kill kids over decades? - 'We don't use them except in carefully-controlled circumstances'; trust us. And so on.
500 pounds doesn't sound an enormous weight, and not many of us understand what a GBU-30 bomb can do. Generally speaking the only layfolk who know this sort of thing are seriously disturbed war-geeks who get a panting thrill from watching videos of death and destruction. The propagandists are happy to keep it that way, with most people imagining that a 500 pound bomb is just a dinky itsy-bitsy little popping thing that won't hurt anyone except the bad folks. But think back to the bombings on the island of Bali, Indonesia, in 2002. The most devastating was a car bomb at the Sari night club. The Australian Federal Police estimated that the explosive weighed at most 350 pounds. And that bomb killed 202 people.
And we are expected to believe that a 500 pound bomb thundering down from an F-16 can destroy a single house, precisely ('surgically' used to be the OK word, but it fell out of favor), and not affect any other houses around it. You can imagine it : "Excuse me?" "Yes." "Is this number 22?" "Yes." - Kabooom. And the houses and people on either side of number 22, and those opposite and behind number 22 are miraculously spared devastation. I believe in the Tooth Fairy, too.
In this case the US military admitted that the house flattened to rubble on January 8 by a 500 pound bomb in the town of Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul, "was not the intended target for the airstrike. The intended target was another location nearby".
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