Monday, March 27, 2017

Campaign promise or strategy from Russia? Who is running the US military and from what knowledge base?

It is inhumane to simply kill to kill. This is an elderly man not capable of conducting himself as a warrior to battle. He is VULNERABLE to dangers of warfare and should be protected. He is not only vulnerable to warfare, but, the people dead are no doubt part of his household. How is he to feed himself in such conditions? The idea that humanitarian aid can get through to save lives of survivors is not realistic. 

We also know where humanitarian aid is delivered, they can become targets to the battle.

Strikes against ISIS in such urban settings has to be precise. Human shields can be a casualty to battle when there is no other choice, but, neighborhoods of people are not enemies. These are not human shields. Especially Iraq, the USA knows this country inside and out; there is no reason for killing civilians.

Campaign hubris is not applicable to real life. There needs to be a clear understanding such applications of political hubris is a high crime and not simply a misdemeanor.

March 27, 2017
By Tim Arango

A man stood near several bodies recovered from a house that was destroyed in the Mosul Jidideh neighborhood. Scores of residents are believed to have been killed in American-led airstrikes that hit the neighborhood this month.

Mosul, Iraq — Dozens of Iraqi civilians, (click here) some of them still alive and calling out for help, were buried for days under the rubble of their homes in west Mosul after American-led airstrikes flattened almost an entire city block.

At the site on Sunday, more than a week after the bombing runs, reporters for The New York Times saw weary survivors trying to find bodies in the wreckage. Iraqi officials said the final death toll could reach 200 killed, or even more. That would make it one of the worst instances of civilian casualties from an attack by the United States-led forces during the long military involvement with Iraq, starting in 1990.

The pace of fighting against the Islamic State here has grown more urgent, with Iraqi officers saying the American-led coalition has been quicker to strike urban targets from the air with less time to weigh the risks for civilians. They say the change is a reflection of a renewed push by the American military under the Trump administration to speed up the battle for Mosul.

That push is coming at the moment that the battle for Mosul is nearing its most dangerous phase for civilians, with the fight reaching into the twisting alleys and densely populated areas of the old city. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are pinned down here in tight quarters with Islamic State fighters who do not care if they live or die....

...One of the survivors, Omar Adnan, stood near his destroyed home on Sunday and held up a white sheet of paper with 27 names of his extended family members, either dead or missing, written in blue ink....

Indiscriminate bombing violates the Geneva Conventions. According to the graph in the New York Times, the strategy in Iraq has changed a great deal. On January 17, 2017 an increase in unconfirmed deaths and confirmed deaths increased by three times the average. The civilian deaths have continued to increase and sustain. That is an undeniable change in tactics. The fact there are far higher numbers of unconfirmed deaths does not surprise me. They are behind enemy lines and there are no soldiers confirming the civilian strikes.

1. Affirms resolution XXVIII (click here) of the XXth International Conference of the Red Cross held at Vienna in 1965, which laid down, inter alia, the following principles for observance by all governmental and other authorities responsible for action in armed conflicts:

(a) That the right of the parties to a conflict to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited;

(b) That it is prohibited to launch attacks against the civilian populations as such;

(c) That distinction must be made at all times between persons taking part in the hostilities and members of the civilian population to the effect that the latter be spared as much as possible;

I don't think Kushner can act as Commander and Chief.

Published on Nov 16, 2016
President-elect Trump had plenty to say about the war on ISIS during the campaign, suggesting "bombing the hell out of" the terror group. But as Holly Williams reports, conditions on the ground in Iraq and Syria complicate the decisions he will have to make.