The U.S. targeted innocents

I’m flabbergasted that such stupidity is ever said, let alone how often I’ve heard it repeated. I’m flabbergasted that such stupidity is ever said, no country in the history of the world (and wars) has ever spent as much time, effort, money, to avoid collateral damage and harming innocents as the United States. I think less of any troll that says it, because they're ignoring facts in front of their face. ℹ️ Info           ~ Aristotle Sabouni Created: 2005-08-04

Even the ex-CNN director Eason Jordon made some moronic allegations. But he was debunked and had to retract later. CNN = front page clickbait, back page retraction.

War is business and economics; so here’s some. A normal bomb costs a few thousand dollars each for 2,000 pounders, and not much more for larger ones. Our smart bombs cost twenty or fifty times that, and are often smaller; 500 pounders. Why do that?

Economics of Warfare

We could drop 10 conventional bombs on a target, miss with 8 of them, and come out ahead both financially and in kill rates. We could just drop larger conventional bombs for cheaper with the same effect. We could carpet bomb with B52’s from bases that are closer, instead of sending B2’s (Steal Bombers) all the way from the U.S., but we did the latter because they had smarter and more accurate weapons. We do all this because we don’t want to hurt innocents and to minimize collateral damage.

When we sent troops in, they did heroic gestures and risked their own lives, and tried to be sensitive to the needs of the people, and avoided shooting when they probably should have; just to avoid collateral damage. When they spied something suspicious, they risked their own lives going in personally, instead of just blowing buildings up, because they wanted to make sure they didn’t accidentally kill civilians. Our troops risked and lost their own lives giving treatment to wounded civilians and even the enemy in hot zones, because they value human life.

The entire cost of the war could have been avoided, hundreds of billions of dollars. We could put one ICBM or a few cruise missiles with nuclear warheads on Baghdad for a few million dollars in hardware, and guaranteed regime change -- without ever have to leave an air-conditioned control center. But we chose to avoid doing that be- cause of the massive amounts of collateral damage.

We even avoided going into Mosque’s and places of historical significance out of respect, even when people were shooting at us from inside, because we had more re- spect for the property of the Iraqi’s than some of the Iraqi military and all of the in- surgents. This risked and cost American lives, but we paid the price out of respect of the Iraqi people, their traditions and nation, and because we wanted to avoid collateral damage.

Then some idiots say that we were intentionally targeting innocents, civilians or reporters on purpose? Anyone doing so would have been put up on war-crimes and court-martialed or tried for murder if it was intentional. All the orders were obviously the opposite; procedures to risk American lives in order to save innocents. So the message was clear and unambiguous. There was not intentional targeting, and it is out of character of the most professional fighting force in the world to do so.

Incompetence is not intent

Of course:

• we missed with a missile or bomb or two.
• there were the usual mis-targeted bombs (or bad calls on whether to go/no-go)
• occasionally accidents, friendly fire incidents or trigger happy soldiers.
• There may have even been a few soldiers that lost it or made bad calls; many of which would be removed for such a serious mistake.

But heck, it is war, stuff happens.

The sane only need to compare what we did to what every other army has done in history, in order to see that it is not even close.

Saddam and his troops were intentionally trying to get more civilians killed and assaulting the public. They blew a few bombs in populated areas just to try to make it look like we did it, and the Europeans and Al Jezeera reported it; but the crater signatures were all wrong for our weapons (and they chose not to air that). They put weapons systems in public places, and set off IED’s (improvised explosive devices) that took out 20 civilians just to get to one of our soldiers. We risked lives trying to stop it. And some people have the gall to accuse the U.S. of targeting civilians intentionally? They can claim that, but only at the cost of their own credibility.

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👁️ See also

• Iraq War - Disagree with American policy or bumbling implementations of that policy. Be anti-war. Just be honest and consistent
• Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 - The war on Islamic terror didn't start on 9/11 and wasn't about Osama Bin Laden, they were symptoms of something bigger.
• Preemptive War - Iraq was the first preemptive war except for all the others.
• Legality of Iraq war - No war is legal or illegal, there's only moral or immoral -- and all wars are immoral (some just more than others).
• Give it more time... - Some have said we should have waited for France or the U.N. to change their minds, or for sanctions to work...
• Violence never solved anything - Some say war/violence is wrong or that it never solves anything. It ended many wars and most mass murderers just fine.
• Bush lied - Bush didn't lie: the world's intelligence disagreed on specifics, but all agreed that Saddam was trying to get WMD's.
• Valerie Plame - Ex-CIA agent lies that she was outted by Bush Admin. Media perpetuates the lies for years.
• Quotes/Iraq War - Leftists want to pretend they had nothing to do with the Iraq War. History (and these quotes) begs to differ.
• Muslims can't do democracy - Muslims aren't capable of a successful democracy".
• Iraq/Set a date for withdrawal - Some claimed we should set a hard date and pull out of Iraq. That's stupid. Never telegraph your moves to the opposition.
• America made Saddam - During the mid 2000's it was popular among the dim of wit, and big of mouth, to claim that Saddam was created by America.
• Iraq is because of Israel-Palestine - Israel/Palestine is a convenient scapegoat for all problems in the middle east. But only rubes buy it as the root problem.
• Iraq is because of oil - All the time I hear people say that the U.S. invaded Iraq because of oil, money, or some other dumber reason. Oil is not a dumb reason.
• The U.S. targeted innocents - I’m flabbergasted that such stupidity is ever said, let alone how often I’ve heard it repeated.
• Iraq War Costs - Everything comes with costs, action or inaction. The price of war, the price of peace.
• Patriot Act - The 2002 version doens't bug me, what it might devolve into does. (Is it a slippery slope).
• Halliburton - NYT invented “evil conspiracy” to pay off a company for cheating us. The rubes believed it.
• Guantanamo - The left made a big deal about Guantanamo, where we had the right to treat people far worse than we did.
• Abu Ghraib - Abu Ghraib was one small group of U.S. Soldiers that something bad things, were caught and punished quickly.
• Security in Iraq - Militarily Iraq was one of the greatest successes in the history of mankind. Sociologically? We'll see.
• Americans are imperialists - People that say Americans are imperialists don’t understand America (or what imperialism means).
• Iraq's impact on Terrorism - Poverty doesn't cause terrorism; totalitarianism and a lack of control does.
• We should have done nothing - Of course we can’t know if doing nothing is ever the better choice or not. But we can look at some facts.

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Iraq Republic of Iraq, in Western Asia, borders Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Syria.

War War, what is it good for? Democrats seem to like is as a tool for dividing us. (Imagined Imperialism).

Falsehoods Iraq War Falsehoods (things that just aren't true).

Tags: Iraq  War  Iraq War/Falsehoods