The Innocent Dead in a Coward's War

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit


The Guardian - Dec 20, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk


The Innocent Dead in a Coward's War

Estimates Suggest US Bombs Have Killed at Least 3,767 Civilians
    
by Seumas Milne
        
The price in blood that has already been paid for America's war
against terror is only now starting to become clear. Not by Britain
or the US, nor even so far by the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders held
responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

It has instead been paid by ordinary Afghans, who had nothing
whatever to do with the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban
theocrats who ruled over them and had no say in the decision to give
house room to Bin Laden and his friends. The Pentagon has been
characteristically coy about how many people it believes have died
under the missiles it has showered on Afghanistan.  Acutely sensitive
to the impact on international support for the war, spokespeople have
usually batted away reports of civilian casualties with a casual
"these cannot be independently confirmed", or sometimes simply denied
the deaths occurred at all. The US media have been particularly
helpful.  Seven weeks into the bombing campaign, the Los Angeles
Times only felt able to hazard the guess that "at least dozens of
civilians" had been killed.

 
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