Sam, did you find Al Zawahiri?

Let us Pray they GOT Zawahiri!

Not because he is so important, but may this reduce killing innocents for no reason. After all, he is nothing more than a numbers in a series of terrorist unit.

While all the headlines concentrate on the Zawahiri and his expected death, all the news media ignore the fact that the air strike in the remote Pakistani tribal area killed at least 18 innocent people (including 14 members of a family). Among which are 6 kids below 10 years old, mothers and elderly men. No one cares for these; after all they are Pakistanis, villagers, poor, Muslims!!! Why should anyone care?

The American regime could start a war if the same number of American was killed, and no one would blame them. In fact I would support that too. But, because they are not citizens of the Rich North, who cares?

No One!

Uncover the wreckage, dig and dig... hey Sam, can you see our fellow, Zawahiri, anywhere?

Sam: No Mike. He is not here.

Mike: Ok Sam, let's leave before these villagers comes and eat us. I heard they eat human flesh.
...
Apaches pilot: I think I hit the wrong button, over.

Base: Never mind, the 'Rumsfeld' can coverup and say that you might have killed Zawahiri. Come back to base, over.

And the game goes on.

Official announcement: This is a war. We are in a war against terrorism. Civilian causalities are expected. We are sorry that this might happen, but this is the war.

Talking of civilians, remember last year study, published in The Lancet, the highly respected British medical journal by a group of Johns Hopkins University researchers who reported that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the Iraq war during its first 14 months, with about 60,000 of the deaths directly attributable to military violence by the US and its allies.

Did anyone care? No one! Why? The same reason, civilians, poor, Arab, Muslims, etc...

Here is the Times account of what happened on last January 3rd in the small town of Baiji, 240 kilometers north of Baghdad, based on interviews with various unidentified "American officials":

A pilotless reconnaissance aircraft detected three men planting a roadside bomb about 9pm. The men "dug a hole following the common pattern of roadside bomb emplacement", the military said in a statement. "The individuals were assessed as posing a threat to Iraqi civilians and coalition forces, and the location of the three men was relayed to close air support pilots. The men were tracked from the road site to a building nearby, which was then bombed with 'precision guided munitions'," the military said. The statement did not say whether a roadside bomb was later found at the site. An additional military statement said navy F-14s had "strafed the target with 100 cannon rounds" and dropped one bomb.

Crucial to this report is the phrase "precision guided munitions", an affirmation that US forces used technology less likely than older munitions to accidentally hit the wrong target. It is this precision that allows us to glimpse the callous brutality of US military strategy in Iraq and elsewhere.

The target was a "building nearby", identified by a drone aircraft as an enemy hiding place. According to witness reports given to the Washington Post, the attack in effect demolished the building, and damaged six surrounding buildings. While in a perfect world, the surrounding buildings would have been undamaged, the reported human casualties in them (two people injured) suggests that, in this case at least, the claims of "precision" were at least fairly accurate.

The problem arises with what happened inside the targeted building, a house inhabited by a large Iraqi family. Piecing together the testimony of local residents, the Times reporter concluded that 14 members of the family were in the house at the time of the attack and nine were killed. The Washington Post, which reported 12 killed, offered a chilling description of the scene:

The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping. A Washington Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three women and three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 were removed Tuesday from the house.

Because in this case - unlike in so many others in which US air power uses "precisely guided munitions" - there was on-the-spot reporting for a US newspaper, the military command was required to explain these casualties. Without conceding that the deaths actually occurred, Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, director of the Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad, commented, "We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves."

Notice that Johnson (while not admitting that civilians had actually died) did assert US policy: if suspected guerrillas use any building as a refuge, a full-scale attack on that structure is justified, even if the insurgents attempt to use civilians to "shield themselves". These are, in other words, essential US rules of engagement. The attack should be "precise" only in the sense that planes and/or helicopter gunships should seek as best they can to avoid demolishing surrounding structures. Put another way, it is more important to stop the insurgents than protect the innocent.

And notice that the military, single-mindedly determined to kill or capture the insurgents, cannot stop to allow for the evacuation of civilians either. Any delay might let the insurgents escape, either disguised as civilians or through windows, back doors, cellars or any of the other obvious escape routes urban guerrillas might take. Any attack must be quickly organized and - if possible - unexpected.

We can gain some perspective on this military strategy by imagining similar rules of engagement for a police force in some large US city. Imagine, for example, a team of criminals in that city fleeing into a nearby apartment building after gunning down a police officer. It would be unthinkable for the police simply to call in airships to demolish the structure, killing any people - helpless hostages, neighbors or even friends of the perpetrators - who were with or near them.

In fact, the rules of engagement for the police, even in such a situation of extreme provocation, call for them to "hold their fire" - if necessary allowing the perpetrators to escape - if there is a risk of injuring civilians. And this is a reasonable rule ... because we value the lives of innocent US citizens over our determination to capture a criminal, even a cop-killer.

But in Iraqi cities or elsewhere, US values and priorities are quite differently arranged. The contrast derives from three important principles under which these wars are being fought: that the war should be conducted to absolutely minimize the risk to US troops; that guerrilla fighters should not be allowed to escape if there is any way to capture or kill them; and that civilians should not be allowed to harbor or encourage the resistance fighters.

As one American officer explained to New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, the willingness to sacrifice local civilians is part of a larger strategy in which US military power is used to "punish not only the guerrillas, but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating". A marine calling in to a radio talk show recently stated the argument more precisely: "You know why those people get killed? It's because they're letting insurgents hide in their house."

This is, by the way, the textbook definition of terrorism - attacking a civilian population to get it to withdraw support from the enemy. What this strategic orientation, applied wherever US troops fight the Iraqi resistance, represents is an embrace of terrorism as a principle tactic for subduing Iraq's insurgency.

This is the US strategy, billed as a way to de-escalate the war, which actually is a formula for the slaughter of civilians. [source]