US military says an operation kills 49 militants with no civilian casualties.
Iraqi sources say the operation resulted in 15 dead, all civilians, including three children (plus over 50 civilians wounded).
How to reconcile the two? There's no way to, really, except to look at the circumstances of the raid. The New York Times article says Iraqis claimed that fire came from a helicopter (or helicopters), which seems like a detail that wouldn't likely be invented out of thin air. Assuming that a helicopter was involved -- there's no indication one way or the other from the military in the story -- it's absolutely impossible for me to believe that no civilians were hit. Airpower is an extremely blunt weapon -- even the most precise bombs create a big explosion (duh), and gunfire is far more indiscriminate. Also, it's been widely reported that many Iraqis sleep on the roofs of buildings to get relief from the heat (and lack of electricity), so I have no problem believing that (again, Iraqi-reported) account.
So you have a helicopter spraying fire into a crowded slum, from the air, at dawn, when people are sleeping on the roof. And we're supposed to believe there were no civilian casualties? Seriously?
Now it may be fair to say that the US position ("The U.S. military said it was not aware of any civilian casualties") is not technically inaccurate -- it's not like our forces go door to door after every engagement to figure out who died. Maybe -- and I'm skeptical, but bear with me -- not a single US soldier saw any civilian get hit. But even if that's the case, that we can't tell who got hit and who didn't . . . how the hell do we come up with an "estimate" of 49 dead "militants"?
Airpower as a counterinsurgency tactic is horrendous. Misleading the public about operations is horrendous. Body counts are horrendous. And the fundamental breach of trust between citizenry and government, created and perpetuated by this administration, will have profound effects for years to come.
