Troop Reduction Spin Distracts From Escalating Bombings of Civilians

Military Confirms Surge in Airstrikes

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 24, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122301473_pf.html

U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have surged this fall, jumping to nearly five times the average monthly rate earlier in the year, according to U.S. military figures.

Until the end of August, U.S. warplanes were conducting about 25 strikes a month. The number rose to 62 in September, then to 122 in October and 120 in November.

Several U.S. officers involved in operations in Iraq attributed much of the increase to a series of ground offensives in western Anbar province. Those offensives, conducted by U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces, were aimed at clearing foreign fighters and other insurgents from the Euphrates River Valley and establishing Iraqi control over the Syrian border area.

With the Pentagon preparing to reduce the level of U.S. ground forces in Iraq next year, some defense experts have speculated that U.S. airpower will be used more intensively to support operations by Iraq's fledgling security forces and protect U.S. advisers embedded with them. Indeed, American commanders have said that U.S. air forces in the region will not be drawn down as quickly as ground forces."


and this,


U.S. Airstrikes Take Toll on Civilians
Eyewitnesses Cite Scores Killed in Marine Offensive in Western Iraq

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 24, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122301471.html

U.S. Marine airstrikes targeting insurgents sheltering in Iraqi residential neighborhoods are killing civilians as well as guerrillas along the Euphrates River in far western Iraq, according to Iraqi townspeople and officials and the U.S. military.

Just how many civilians have been killed is strongly disputed by the Marines, and, some critics say, too little investigated. But townspeople, tribal leaders, medical workers and accounts from witnesses at the sites of clashes, at hospitals and at graveyards indicated that scores of noncombatants were killed last month in fighting, including airstrikes, in the opening stages of a 17-day U.S.-Iraqi offensive in Anbar province.

In a Husaybah school converted to a makeshift hospital, Rawi, four other doctors and a nurse treated wounded Iraqis in the opening days of the offensive, examining bloodied children as anxious fathers soothed them and held them down.

"I dare any organization, committee or the American Army to deny these numbers," Rawi said.

Chart shows the number of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/051220/480/gfx90312201511

<snip>

"That was a good strike, and we got some people who were killing a lot of people," Denning said.

Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the 2nd Marines, said it was not possible that children were killed in that strike unless they were outside the range of the F-15's camera.

Residents, however, said the strike killed civilians as well as insurgents, including 18 children. Afterward, at a traditional communal funeral, black banners bore the names of the dead, and grieving parents gave names, ages and detailed descriptions of the children they said had been killed, witnesses said. The bodies of three children and a woman lay unclaimed outside a hospital after the day's fighting.

:puke:

both involve dropping ordnance. Both are "death from above."

This DOD chart attempts to define close air support in a way that would include logistical and other non-strike missions. This is an attempt to deceive. Close air support missions involve dropping bombs or other ordnance in support of ground missions. People are killed by close air support missions. In fact, close air support missions may kill more people than airstrikes.

Airstrikes are generally aimed at lines of communication and capital targets. Whether people are killed or not is irrelevant for tactical purposes. It is the impact of the destruction of material targets that has military effect which may or may not kill people directly or indirectly. Close air support on the other hand is generally designed to kill personnel on the ground to destroy resistance to ground missions.

but you never hear any proof afterward. What you do hear are the villager accounts which almost always identify innocent civilians, old and young, harassed and killed by our bombs.

Then come the funerals. The unforgettable image of a child to be buried, wrapped in cloth . . .

Associated Press | December 20, 2005
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,83349,00.html

WASHINGTON - The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps have flown thousands of missions in support of U.S. ground troops in Iraq this fall with little attention back home, including attacks by unmanned Predator aircraft armed with Hellfire missiles, military records show.

News reports and the public have focused mainly on ground action by the Army and Marines, but a variety of U.S. aircraft are striking targets in Iraq daily. They include frontline Air Force and Navy fighters as well as Marine Corps attack planes. American and allied refueling, transport and surveillance planes also are flying.

The airstrikes have been largely in areas of western Iraq and other places where the insurgency is strongest, such as Balad, Ramadi and in the vicinity of Baghdad, according to the U.S. military's Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in Iraq. For example, it said that on Iraq's election day, Dec. 15, an Air Force F-16 fighter fired a precision-guided munition at an access road used by insurgents near Baghdad.

The number of U.S. airstrikes increased in the weeks leading up to last Thursday's election, from a monthly average of about 35 last summer to more than 60 in September and 120 or more in October and November. The monthly number of air missions, including refueling and other support flights, grew from 1,111 in September to 1,492 in November, according to figures provided by Central Command Air Force's public affairs office.