REACHED FOR COMMENT, CRANKY CLINTON TOLD THESE REPORTERS, "YES, I AM RESPONSIVE TO CONCERNED CITIZENS. ANYONE WHO EXPRESSES THEIR CONCERN IN DOLLARS -- A LOT OF DOLLARS -- WILL GET MY ATTENTION. MONEY MAKES MY WORLD GO ROUND."
On the airstrikes, Greg Jaffe and Loveday Morris (WASHINGTON POST) explain:
The White House is on the verge of releasing a long-delayed accounting of how many militants and civilians it has killed, primarily with drones, in countries where the United States is not at war. The list will include airstrikes in countries such as Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
It will not include deaths in Iraq or Syria. Nor is it likely to mollify critics who say that Obama’s largely defensive, low-American-casualty approach puts too many civilians at risk and too often feeds resentment that benefits U.S. enemies. The report will mean little to Iraqis and Syrians in places such as Mosul, Ramadi and Raqqa, where the tragic consequences of American mistakes are often easily ignored and American precision bombs sometimes do not seem very surgical or precise.
In nearly two years of fighting in Iraq and Syria, U.S. officials say they have killed as many as 20,000 Islamic State fighters and caused only 41 civilian deaths. Military analysts and human rights activists said those figures are absurd. “They don’t pass the straight-face test,” said retired Col. Christopher Kolenda, who led troops in Afghanistan and served as a senior adviser to U.S. commanders there. He recently completed a study on civilian casualties for the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.
AIRWARS counts 8,768 air strikes in Iraq and 4,128 in Syria with a minimum of 1,278 civilians killed. To put just two faces on the many civilians killed in Iraq, last September, RADIO SAWA journalist Zaid Benjamin Tweeted this:
Zaid Benjamin
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"stuck?"
