Friday, January 06, 2006

Precision strikes

I am referring to the attempt of the US Airforce to get it right. Since the advent of the first live edition of the gulf war, the airforce has been touting their precision bombs. Bombs that can figure out the real ugly ones and spare the good and bad ones. But time and again, they have been forced to correct this, and frequently admit to bombs landing where it should not. Sometimes, in the neighbour's yard, across the street, the next block, ahem.. maybe even the next township.

And then there is the US intelligence, that is supposed to have, as per this report, figured out the three people who set off a roadside bomb, had entered the nearby building. But after knowing all that i know about their capability to gather intelligence, i am prompted to ask the question, when ? Because they have many times bombed neighbourhoods in Baghdad and also caves and villages in Afghanistan, based on intelligence that their suspect is located in the area of bombing, only to find out, that it was eons ago.


An Iraqi man weeps Tuesday next to the bodies of victims of a U.S. airstrike in Baiji, Iraq.

The bombing below was been triggered by insrugents (note the term), and over a 100 civilian lives and few soldiers lost their lives. There were no such bombings before the invasion, was there ? How come, the forces that came into rid the place of terrorists, suddenly attract so many bombings ? These are some of the laws of socio-politics and geo-politics that good friend Bush and his team didnt quite care about, when they went after Saddam. They got him alright. But they could have gotten him long back, if they wanted to, specially those days when they were the ones actively supporting him. It like the joke in the US, during the days of the WMD presentation in the UN, 'we know he has weapons of mass destruction, because we supplied it to him'.
Anyway, my point here is that, to make this stop, the US forces have to withdraw. That is the first step.

Relatives outside a hospital grieve over a victim of a suicide bomb attack in Karbala, Iraq, on Thursday. - AP Photo


U.S. says bomb hit wrong house in Iraq
At least 134 killed in attacks across Iraq

Tags: usa, iraq, wmd, bombing, terrorist

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