Pentagon: Ten civilians, no terrorists killed by US drone strike in Kabul
Way to go Biden.
You get Americans killed and then kill INNOCENT people.
How many Americans did you leave behind Joe? How many allies were left behind Joe?
How many Afghans that helped us in Afghanistan and are being hunted and killed did you leave behind Joe?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON - Ten civilians, including up to seven children, and no terrorists were killed in Kabul by a drone strike that the Pentagon had hailed initially as "righteous," the Pentagon announced Friday.
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"Our investigation now concludes the strike was a tragic mistake," Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, chief of U.S. Central Command, said Friday.
The strike occurred on Aug. 29 near the airport during the final, chaotic days of the U.S. evacuation of civilians and military retreat from Afghanistan. The military claimed at the time that the strike prevented "multiple suicide bombers" from attacking Hamid Karzai International Airport. The statement from U.S. Central Command said the attack had targeted "an imminent ISIS-K threat" and that explosives were being loaded into the vehicle when the Hellfire missile struck it.
© Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi, AP Afghans inspect damage after a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021 in the final days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Pentagon had said the drone strike hit an Islamic State target. But this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged on Capitol Hill he did not know if the man targeted in the strike was an IS operative or an aid worker and said the matter was under review.
Soon after reports surfaced that several members of a family had been killed in the attack. The Pentagon, too, acknowledged the possibility of civilian casualties.
However, Army Gen. Mark Milley told reporters Sept. 1 that intelligence showed ISIS-K was preparing a vehicle for a suicide attack, criteria for launching an attack were met and that an explosion after the attack had led to the "reasonable conclusion" that explosives were in the vehicle.
Milley stated "that at least one of those people that were killed was an ISIS facilitator." Initial indications showed the proper procedures were followed, he said, and it was a "righteous strike."
The New York Times and other news media have posted stories that called into question the Pentagon's account, finding that the driver of the vehicle may have been an aid worker. The Associated Press identified the man as Zemerai Ahmadi, who was killed along with seven children and two adults after the Hellfire missile incinerated his care.
At the time, the Pentagon was on high alert, fearing a repeat of the horrific attack by an ISIS-K suicide bomber that killed dozens of people, including 13 U.S. service members, at the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport on Aug. 26. Terrorists from ISIS-K, the brutal offshoot of the Islamic State, that operates in Afghanistan had been targeted just days before in a separate drone strike.
Killing civilians by drone underlines one of the key limitations of the strategy advocated by the Biden administration after its withdrawal from Afghanistan. White House and Pentagon officials have touted "over-the-horizon" counter-terrorism options for attacking targets in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Drones, flown from bases in the Middle East, are one such capability. However, without U.S. troops and intelligence operatives on the ground to identify terrorists, the military has to rely more on intercepted communications and video feeds that can lead to mistaken identity.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pentagon: Ten civilians, no terrorists killed by US drone strike in Kabul
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Biden lies and people die.
There is no other way to describe it except Biden has BLOOD on HIS HANDS.
Like Trump,Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter Ford, Nixon et.al.?
Unlike those people,.BIDEN and his people intentionally targeted these people. Of course with no intelligence apparatus on the ground, what can one expect? do they now target anything that moves?
Hey wait..........they had the Taliban.
My bad. Those "professional and businesslike" people. How could I forget?
That’s Tollybonn, to you.
Hyper partisan BS [Deleted]
I thought all drone strikes were intentional and Trump Obama and Bush didn't care how many civilians they killed
with their toys?
Welcome to reality.
Welcome to Whataboutsville.
”Yeah butt, butt, lies, damned lies and statistics, lol.“
lol
[Deleted]
Oh Jesus...how could I have forgotten that.....Tollybonn.!
It was all done in haste to make it look like they hit isis-k members in retaliation for our 13 service members who never made it home alive.
Where are those who told us to wait until the facts came in?
The facts are in and now we hear everybody fucked up.
Where did they get the info? Was it from their new "patners" - the Taliban?
AHHHHH! You nailed it!
A, I am surprised at your response, doesn't every Admin have some military horror debacle? It just should not be a political football whether it's 13 of ours this year ( all recovered) or ten more innocent civilians anywhere in the ME.
B, never respond to a comment you flagged, it's just bad form.
Agreed.
The Pentagon had maintained that at least one ISIS-K facilitator and three civilians were killed in what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley had previously called a "righteous strike" on the compound on August 29. The investigation released Friday found that all of those killed in the residential compound were civilians
Did Generals Shelton, Myers or Pace resign in disgrace?
Were they subject to court martial because of their drone strikes?
Call it whataboutism
or call it partisan BS.
It doesn't matter to the dead...just old men on the internet.
As with all withdrawals, something was bound to happen.
Truthfully, there are more training accidents every year that claim more lives.
When 8 Marines and a USN Corpsman drowned off San Diego last year were you here
stating that the POTUS had blood on his hands?
Off course not, because you know better.
Fuck off, sport
“Fuck off, sport”
How the hell is that not a coc violation?
"F*ck y**" directed to a member is a CoC violation, "f*ck off" is not. Don't ask me why. If I were to guess, I'd say it's because F/O is telling you in strong terms to go away whereas F/Y is really a personal insult.
There are just two little problems.
1) They were the ones who bragged about this drone strike, and they did so in a desperate effort to spin political attention away from their failures in Afghanistan. If they hadn’t made such a big deal of the strike, they wouldn’t be getting so much criticism now.
2) Mistakes happen, but it’s hard to imagine any other group of Americans who could make so many huge mistakes and keep their jobs. Austin, Milley and McKenzie must go.
Training accidents aren't done on purpose based on intelligence they refuse to divulge the source of.
This was done on purpose with forethought and malice.
Haven't heard any general ever brag about a training accident. According to Milley this was a "Righteous strike".
Just Bush? Why don't you do Obama? Obama made Bush look like a piker when it came to drone strikes and collateral deaths. Of course Obama changed the way the casualties were counted to make himself look better.
A more in depth look- and one that doesn't use Obama's skewed numbers.
But Obama did kill four US citizens in drone strikes. That is something Bush Jr never managed to do.
Yet not a peep out of the left from those that bashed Bush Jr for the same damn thing.
Tell us all Split, do you really think that people are calling for their resignation over a drone strike that killed the wrong target? Or is it over the entire botched withdrawal and evacuation? Is it because US civilians were abandoned in Afghanistan due to their vast stupidity? Is this "mistake" just the latest piece of stupid incompetence in a long line of them?
All of this deflection and BS aside. Where did the Biden Administration get this wonderful intelligence used for the drone strike? We don't have assets in the area any longer. If it came from Biden's newest bestest buddies the Taliban would that make a difference?
Hmm, i’m with ya, Buzz. Seems like a violation to me too. Oh well, might come in handy a time or two.
Don’t ya just love how callous some totally partisan pieces of shit are when it’s their side getting criticized? “Well, they should just get a higher paying job.” “They can build rail cars instead of a pipeline.” “Something was bound to happen.” Etc. and then they call others out for being partisan, lol. They can fuck off.
Bush denied it. Obama owned it quite publicly for 8 years. Trump ended the reporting but kept on droning.
According to the Politifact article you posted
Is that all it takes? Don't acknowledge it, pretend Bush didn't have it happen on his watch?
None of us here or there at the time are responsible for you lapse in memory.
I on the other hand remember it quite well.
It was ugly on both sides, no one wanted to support Obama and no one felt sorry for Al-Alwlaki.
Just purists outraged that "an American" had been killed.
We don't know what we don't know. It was a bad call. Period.
I believe in the near future, maybe three election cycles,
the Dunkirk like evacuation will be lauded for how much material
and people were moved in 2 months with no loss of aircraft.
Like Reagan's and Clinton's SNAFUs the current Biden poutrage will fade away too,
Who was fired when your hero Reagan fucked up in Beirut and later Libya?
He owned it? That's a unique way of looking at it I guess.
2012?
The first link provided by Ronin...from 2017
He must have evolved, even admitted targeting Al Awlaki etc.
Trump went back to allowing the CIA to drone in secret
Apparently Biden went back to transparency and it bit him in the arse.
Yes, if you couldn't tell that was in response to you saying that he owned it for 8 years. Evolved?
[deleted]
I sit corrected....
That is if Joe doesn't kill them first it seems.
So does Biden still intend to make ISIS-K pay? Or is he going to call it good after killing an aid worker; and doing the Taliban's job for them?
That’s the beauty of it. If you just explode them, they aren’t really left behind.
Imagine the impeachment calls if Trump was still in charge. Hell the Democrats would have already impeached him for the withdrawal; they would follow it up by impeaching him again for this blunder.
The Trump administration would never have admitted to it and would have continued to claim all who were killed were terrorists. Do you really believe no Afghan civilians were killed from 2016 to 2020?
" The United States military in 2017 relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan, which resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties. From the last year of the Obama administration to the last full year of recorded data during the Trump administration, the number of civilians killed by U.S.-led airstrikes in Afghanistan increased by 330 percent ."
You mean like the Biden administration lied about this drone strike? It wasn't until the US media called them out on it that they changed their tune. No call out and this would have never been brought to light by this administration.
Don't act like the media wouldn't be all over Trump; especially after a blunder of the proportions of the Afghan withdrawal and evacuation. Hell, it would be just Fox news harping on Afghanistan. Every last network would have a "America held hostage clock"; and have up to the second reports of how many people the Taliban were killing- complete with graphic video if it was available. There would be calls for every last member of the Trump Administration to resign. Oh, and the Democrats would have impeached Trump twice more already. Don't even pretend they wouldn't.
Oh you know it. Lighting one’s self on fire would be a more restrained reaction than what we would see if Trump were president.
Even though I am glad the DoD finally took responsibility, the whole situation is still suspect. When was the last time it took us three weeks to verify the dead in a drone strike?
Unbelievable!
Ya suppose anyone will care? News media? Congress? I won’t hold my breath.
The Biden Administration?
Has anyone watched the movie "Casualties of War", which is about a TRUE STORY? When a nation wants to be the Policeman of the World, shit is going to happen.
And then there are all the kids dying at the border...thanks to Biden