Has this been in the US news?

[Capt.Hunter]

Yesterday US forces in Afghanistan ordered an airstrike, one bomb from which hit an Afghan wedding party with over 250 guests. Preliminary reports indicate that ground troops mistook the celebratory gunfire that forms a big part of Afghan weddings for an attack. US officials are referring to it as a "stray bomb".

I was just wondering how much coverage this is getting in the States. Given the seeming brush-off over the Canadian friendly fire incident that upset quite a few people on these boards, I hope Bush publicly apologizes to the people of Afghanistan for this - he can't hope to rebuild the nation in the way he would like if he pisses these people off...

Sadly, even the UK news put this item second to the "rising house prices" issue. For nations which "unlike the terrorists" claim to care greatly about innocent lives, we sure don't pay much attention if they're not the lives of OUR citizens...

[Dan Gurden]

Although, in this case... It should be noted that firing weapons into the air... Even in celebration, while armed warplanes patrol the skies, could be easily misunderstood.

Sad but true.


Thing is, all the news reports on this, when talking about the aircraft showed a B52 at altitude. Now if the locals are claiming that the weapons fire was a wedding party, middle east tradition usually uses small arms, not usually effective at hitting planes at altitude. Therefore either the pictures on the news were wrong (smaller plane, lower altitude), or it was anti-aircraft fire, or a spotter made a monumental mistake when calling for an airstrike...

One of those three. Just which one.

[spyone]

This was the headline on most of the papers we sell where I work.
Well, the ones that come in before 6 am anyway.

Also, the computer monitor that alternates advertisements and news brief carried it.

According to the Virginian Pilot (our local paper), the official line is that the plane in question was dropping a lot of bombs, and one of them apparently malfunctioned and strayed from the target area. It was a B-52, and these were comparatively "dumb" bombs.

As for the Canadian thing, the first I heard of it was when that same computer monitor carried this news bulletin: "US (the exact wording escapes me. Takes responsability? Admits responsability? Both are close, both are wrong.) for friendly-fire incident that killed (4?) Canadians in Afganistan. Pilots face charges."

[Dan Gurden]

Originally posted by spyone
According to the Virginian Pilot (our local paper), the official line is that the plane in question was dropping a lot of bombs, and one of them apparently malfunctioned and strayed from the target area. It was a B-52, and these were comparatively "dumb" bombs.

Just compare that to the US General interviewed by the Euro-press on TV this morning saying that the laser guided bomb was targetted due to Anti-Aircraft fire. That was 8am, my time, so 4 1/2 hours ago.

It appears that both stories are official at the moment, from the bombs going astray to the recon plane coming under AA fire;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/wor...00/2081242.stm

[SIR SIG]

Heard it on the news out here in Aussieland. Mate said he watched it.

Still would and armed force of 250+ soldiers all be grouped in a confined area and shoot guns in the air while enemy warplanes are patroling?

I think perhaps the Bomb Targeters could've gathered a little more intelligence on this one.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by Dan Gurden
It appears that both stories are official at the moment, from the bombs going astray to the recon plane coming under AA fire;

CNN has changed their coverage of the incident from a few hours ago (including quotes from some officials claiming the plane reacted to AA fire and concentrating on this aspect) and now only has the "stray bomb" story:

from CNN.com
U.S. officials have said that military planes were on missions in the area at the time and their forces returned fire after coming under attack from the ground. They have ruled out that wedding guests firing weapons into the air in celebration provoked the attack.
(...snip...)
An Air Force B-52 dropped seven 2,000-pound bombs on known Taliban and al Qaeda cave complexes, but one of those bombs malfunctioned, a Pentagon official said Monday.

Another Pentagon official described it as an "errant bomb."

The type of bombs used were GBU-31 precision-guided munitions.

[calguard66]

Saw a press conference. An aircraft came under AAA fire, we counterattacked, and a bomb strayed off course.

It was noted that the AAA was set up very close to the celebration, that opponents of the US who set up military weapons systems close to civilian populations are risking the lives of their own people, opponents of the US who actually ATTACK US servicemembers from such positions are endangering the lives of their own people.

The US is not going to allow their enemies to use human shields... and frankly, a wedding celebration would be hard to identify as such with tracers coming at you.

[Eric R.]

Before we get going deeper, the B-52 does has the abilty to drop laser guided bombs now, but there has to be somebody on the ground to direct them with a painter (to use an old Legionier term). The news I watched is that seven bombs were dropped and 1 went astray.

[calguard66]

Doesn't have to be painted from the ground. Other manned aircraft can do it, as can a UAV.

[Silverthorne]

The problem with the statement is that the US is bound by the Genevia(sp?) Convention. We are not allowed to hunt innoscent people to get the bad guys. Abdul can shoot americans all day but as long as he is standing behind a group of innoscents we cannot use leathal force to remove him. The special interest groups in america will scream bloody murder the second a stray shot comes anywhere near the civilians. The is no place in combat for a politician to stand there and tell the soldiers who to shoot at.

< Opinion > If someone fires at me I will fire back. I do not care if they are in a crowd, they have started the fight, and the innoscent people in the way are no longer innoscent if they are blocking me from protecting my country. The bad guys will always win if the soldiers are stopped from using that tactics that will end the problem. The politicians that hamper military efforts are not acting in the best interest of the US. Every Soldier that is injured or killed in on their hand, but as you know politicians have no problem wasting the lives of those under them.

[Sarge]

According to the Laws Of Armed Conflict (which I get briefed on annually), soldiers are not to target civilians. If there is a legitimate military target behind the civilians, it is legal to attack, but we should attempt to minimize civilian casualties during the attack, and the military value of the target must be high enough to justify the loss of civilian life.

Of course, they never tell us just how many lives a target is worth. That kind of decision is made way above my level.

[Kaiddin]

CNN is suggesting that it wasn't a bomb but fire from a Spectre.

[qerlin]

Someone screwed up, yes. But if the Afghanis are firing their rifles into the air, they make that kind of mistake pretty easy. You'd think someone might be smart enough to say, "The yanks are all over the place, and they take people shooting at them kinda bad...they usually shot back...." and maybe put the celebratory fire ont he back=burner for this wedding.

Am I blaming the victims? Yup. Am I blaming the US military? Yup. But I would point out that people under fire tend to, hmmm...get a little freakin' panicked. It's called self-preservation. Armchair quarterbacking from the comfort of our computer desks is a bit easy to do: oh, why couldn't they have figured that out?

The other military guys knw this one: you've been up an ungodly amount of hours, with little sleep in between missions, you're hungry (probably) and thinking about hopefully going someplace with real plumbing -- or at least a door on the stall -- sometime before you die, and suddenly someone yells, "incoming!" What do you do?

As for our media brushing off reports of friendly fire: don't bloody count on it. It the media here can bad-mouth the military, they're all over it. The guys in Malibu and Park Avenue West that run the major outlets absolutely HATE the military...except when movies about them make them money. On 'Middle America' loves the military...

[Perrryyy]

Originally posted by Kaiddin
CNN is suggesting that it wasn't a bomb but fire from a Spectre.

I think I saw this story yesterday (as well as today) on Yahoo. Yahoo suggests it was gunfire, rather than a bomb.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...an_us_military

[Cybrludite]

Hell, even without being IN A BLOODY WARZONE, shooting in the air like that is a really bad idea. Even if you've submited to the will of God as revealed by the Prophet Mohammad, what goes up still comes down. Nearly every other year or so, someone dies down here due to falling bullets at New Years. I have a cousin who is severely retarded because he was hit by a falling bullet as a child. Any $%*&$#!% that shoots up into the air deserves to be castrated with a heavy blunt object.