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U.S. Air Strike Kills 80+ Civilian Relatives of IS Fighters in Eastern Syria; Confirms Mosul Civlian Deaths; Iraqi Unit Tortured, Murdered Civilians

3K views 49 replies 28 participants last post by  The Dazzler 
#1 ·
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/s...least-35-civilians-near-deir-ezzor-1992747693

US air strike kills at least 80 civilians in Syria, as UN condemns rising death toll
#SyriaWar

US-led coalition air strike on eastern Syrian town killed at least 80 relatives of IS fighters, including 33 children

A US-led coalition air strike on the eastern Syrian town of Mayadeen early on Friday killed at least 80 relatives of Islamic State group fighters, including 33 children, a monitoring group told AFP.

"The toll includes 33 children. They were families seeking refuge in the town's municipal building," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Earlier on Friday, the UN human rights chief called on all air forces operating in Syria to take greater care to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilians in their escalating air strikes.

A separate air strike late on Thursday evening killed at least 35 civilians.

"The rising toll of civilian deaths and injuries already caused by air strikes in Deir Ezzor and Al-Raqqa suggests that insufficient precautions may have been taken in the attacks,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said in a statement, stressing that extra caution should be taken in the campaign in the northeast against the Islamic State group.

His spokesman Rupert Colville told a Geneva briefing: "There are multiple air forces operating in this part of Syria including the (US-led) coalition, mainly the coalition. We also understand that there are Iraqi airplanes as well."

"I can't begin to identify who is responsible," he added.

Air strikes in mid-May killed nearly two dozen farmworkers, most of them women, in a village in eastern Raqqa and at least 59 civilians in residential areas of Deir Ezzor, Zeid said.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State told Reuters that its forces had conducted strikes near Mayadeen on 25 and 26 May and were assessing the results.


The Thursday evening air strike in Mayadeen killed at least 35 civilians, including family members of Islamic State fighters, said the Observatory.

Most air raids against IS strongholds along the Euphrates basin in Syria have been conducted by a US-led coalition and by Syrian and Russian jets.
In two days, scores dead

Iraqi warplanes have also carried out at least one air raid in east Syria.

The deaths bring the total number of people killed in two days of aerial bombardment in Mayadeen to 115 said the monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,

Residents saw reconnaissance aircraft and warplanes circling the city at 7.25pm local time before they fired missiles which struck two buildings, one of which was a four-storey block housing Syrian and Moroccan families of Islamic State fighters.

Islamic State is losing ground in both Syria and Iraq under assault from an array of sometimes rival forces in both countries.

Many of its fighters who have retreated from other fronts are amassing in Syria's Euphrates basin area.

Between 23 April and 23 May the Observatory reported that at least 225 civilians had been killed in strikes by the US-led coalition and 146 had been killed by Syrian government aircraft.

The US-led coalition says it is careful to avoid civilian casualties in air strikes and investigates any that are reported to have taken place. Russia and Syria's government both deny targeting civilians.

On Thursday, the US confirmed that one of its air strikes against IS in Mosul in March killed at least 105 civilians.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40051640

US air strike on IS killed 105 civilians in Iraq's Mosul

26 May 2017
From the section Middle East

The United States has admitted that at least 105 Iraqi civilians were killed in an air strike it carried out in Mosul in March.

US Central Command (CentCom) said it had targeted two snipers from so-called Islamic State (IS) with what it called a "precision-guided munition".

However, the strike detonated explosives that militants had placed in the building, CentCom said.

Civilians sheltering in the lower floors were killed when it collapsed.

In another incident, 35 civilians were killed on Thursday in US-led coalition air strikes in an eastern Syrian town, monitors said.

The strikes targeted the IS-held town of Mayadeen in the province of Deir Ezzor, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Families of IS fighters, including children, were among those killed, it added.

CentCom said the death toll in the March attack in Iraq included four civilians in another nearby structure.

Eyewitnesses claimed another 36 non-combatants were also in the building, but US authorities said it had "insufficient evidence to determine their status".

CentCom previously said the planes had acted at the request of Iraqi security forces, as coalition forces attempted to wrest control of the city from IS.

The civilians had gathered in the lower floors of the building after being expelled from their homes by IS fighters, a declassified summary of the report said.

Those organising the strike "could not have predicted the presence of civilians in the structure prior to the engagement," it added.

US officials said the type of bomb was chosen "to minimise collateral damage," but the explosives hidden by IS were at least four times more powerful than the weapon itself.

"Our condolences go out to all those that were affected," Major General Joe Martin said in a statement.

"The coalition takes every feasible measure to protect civilians from harm."

Initial media reports had placed the casualty estimates as high as 200.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the northern Iraqi city as the operation to reclaim it has continued.

Thousands of Iraqi security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Sunni Arab tribesmen and Shia militiamen, assisted by US-led coalition warplanes and military advisers, are involved in the offensive, which was launched in October 2016.

The government announced the full "liberation" of eastern Mosul in January 2017. But the west of the city has presented a more difficult challenge, with its narrow, winding streets.

Iraq has also opened an inquiry into claims that its forces abused and killed civilians in the battle for the city.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/deepdive/brian-ross-investigates-the-torture-tapes-47429895

Iraqi troops torture and execute civilians in secret videos

Elite unit was once praised by U.S. military officials

By BRIAN ROSS, RHONDA SCHWARTZ, JAMES GORDON MEEK and RANDY KREIDER

Officers of an elite Iraqi special forces unit, praised by U.S. military commanders earlier this year for its role in fighting ISIS, directed the torture and execution of civilians in Mosul in at least six distinct incidents caught on tape.

“That's a murder,” retired Green Beret Lt. Col. Scott Mann told ABC News after reviewing the graphic footage. “There should be punishment for anyone doing it. It's reprehensible and it shouldn't be allowed on any modern battlefield."

The alarming footage was smuggled out of Iraq by a prize-winning Iraqi photojournalist, Ali Arkady, who spent months embedded in combat with the elite Iraqi troops leading the fight against ISIS late last year. Since turning over his cache of photos and videos to ABC News, he says he has received death threats from the soldiers he once considered friends and has now fled Iraq to seek asylum in Europe.

"This is happening all the time," Arkady said of the war crimes he documented, which he recounted in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Brian Ross broadcast Thursday on ABC's World News Tonight with David Muir and Nightline.

Iraqi officials are now launching an investigation into Arkady's allegations.

Arkady originally planned to produce a “positive story” about the Emergency Response Division (E.R.D.) of Iraq’s Ministry of Interior, documenting how soldiers from both the Shi'a and Sunni sects of Islam could work together in the fight against ISIS. But he says, as the soldiers began to trust him, they allowed him to record scenes in which they tortured their captives and later even sent him a video showing the shooting of a handcuffed prisoner.

In a remarkable phone interview last week, E.R.D. Capt. Omar Nazar did not dispute the authenticity of the footage Arkady documented but said the brutal tactics were justified because the men tortured and killed were linked to ISIS.

“We do not want war prisoners in our fight against ISIS,” said Capt. Nazar. “We don’t take prisoners.”

The incidents of torture captured by Arkady's lens appeared to have no military objective, showing the E.R.D. officers rarely collected actionable intelligence on ISIS fighters, leadership or operations. Instead, Arkady says, the unit often tortured civilians to provoke false confessions as justification for raids, arrests and what they called "field executions."

While no U.S. soldiers appear in any of Arkady’s footage, a man who claimed to be a contractor and interpreter for the U.S. military is shown conducting the brutal torture of two men Arkady identified as half-brothers.

"Frankly, there is not even a pretext here of torture in the name of obtaining intelligence,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, told ABC News after reviewing several of what she characterized as "sadistic" videos. “This is just torture for fun.”

Arkady, 34, is an Iraqi Kurd and Sunni Muslim working with VII, a news agency that specializes in coverage of conflict. Based in Iraq, his work has focused on war orphans and Iraqi soldiers disabled by the ongoing violence that has engulfed his home country since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Last year, he followed Iraqi soldiers as they swept through Fallujah, liberating the city from ISIS control. The E.R.D. special forces unit impressed him, he said, not only because they were “strong” but also because its leaders -- Capt. Omar Nazar, a Sunni, and Cpl. Haider Ali, a Shi'a -- worked together despite the religious divide that had torn Iraq apart.

From these first embeds with Nazar and Ali’s detachment, Arkady produced a different type of story, one he later described as a mix between journalism and art, as an attempt to show a softer side of a place he felt was too often defined by more than a decade of grim headlines. “Happy Baghdad” would garner nearly 100,000 views on Facebook, and it featured Nazar and Ali drawing clear distinctions between themselves and the ISIS enemy.

“We are liberators not destroyers,” Capt. Omar Nazar said. “All of ISIS are criminals and psychopaths. Don’t expect us to be cruel to you. We are one of you and more merciful than those strangers and intruders.”

“We came to free you and to save you from ISIS,” Cpl. Haider Ali added. “Be happy. Have fun. Go out. Study. Love. Get married. We are here for you.”

For Nazar and Ali, the film gave them folk hero status in Iraq, and for Arkady, it opened the door to more combat embeds with the E.R.D. men as they joined the fight last fall to liberate Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul. They hoped, Arkady said, that he would make another film, like “Happy Baghdad,” which would show them in a new light.

Arkady’s effort to film an upbeat documentary about the two soldiers putting aside sectarian differences to defeat ISIS together took a dark detour last fall when the soldiers conducted a night raid on Nov. 22, pulling a man out of the bed where he slept with his family in the village of Qabr Al-Abed.

"You're scaring the children," his wife says, as the soldiers barge into their bedroom and drag the man outside.

With the man pressed up against a wall, Capt. Nazar punched the man in the head 15 times and told him to recite the pledge of fealty, or baya'a, to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Nazar forced the man to repeat the pledge after him piece by piece, and Arkady says Nazar later asked him to edit the video so that it would appear the man could recite the pledge unprompted.

"Say the pledge, say the pledge,” Capt. Nazar demanded as he grabbed the man by his shirt. “I will hit you in the nuts.”

Watching his video of the man being punched in the face with ABC's Brian Ross two months later, Arkady shook his head.

"He knows he is innocent,” Arkady said. “He's not working with ISIS.”

The man finally recited the ISIS pledge in full, Arkady says. Working with Human Rights Watch, ABC News has been unable to confirm the fate of the man and has withheld his name as well as those of other victims whose whereabouts could not be independently confirmed.

"This is a powder keg for strategic failure,” said the retired Special Forces officer Scott Mann, who has advised senior U.S. special operations leaders on counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This is the narrative fuel that groups like ISIS look for.”

According to Mann, author of Game Changers: Going Local to Defeat Violent Extremists, operations like these are "totally counterproductive." Years of abuses of Sunni Muslims in Iraq by the Shi'a Muslim-dominated Iraqi Army and Shi'a militias ultimately helped the Sunni terrorist group ISIS easily seize large portions of territory, including Mosul, in 2014.

"Isn't that exactly how ISIS came into Iraq in the first place, the way the Sunnis were treated?" Mann said.

The footage shot by Arkady and licensed to ABC News raises questions about what the U.S. military knew and whether American commanders overseeing the campaign to liberate Mosul from ISIS have done enough to curtail Iraqi military abuses.

Iraqi special forces from the E.R.D. and the Golden Division were the subject of a 2015 ABC News investigation called Dirty Brigades: No Clean Hands in Iraq’s ISIS Fight, highlighting human rights abuses Iraqi troops posted on social media. In a briefing for Pentagon reporters in January, however, when a senior American commander in Iraq praised the Iraqi unit, any concerns about their tactics appeared to be in the past.

U.S. Army Col. Brett Sylvia, commander of Task Force Strike in Baghdad, told reporters that American officers had recently advised the E.R.D. and called them "a very effective fighting force."

"This is the first time that we have advised them,” Sylvia said. “And it has been really a fruitful partnership in all regards."

The U.S. embassy and military command in Baghdad told ABC News that they were unaware of the incidents documented by Arkady, and they declined repeated requests to appear on camera for this story but issued a statement in which they appeared to distance themselves from the Iraqi unit.

"The U.S. has not provided military aid, arms or assistance to the Emergency Response Division," Kim Dubois, a U.S. embassy spokesperson in Baghdad, said in statement to ABC News.

U.S. military officials told ABC News the E.R.D. has been blacklisted from receiving U.S. military aid and arms under a federal law known as the Leahy Act, which requires the U.S. to deny military aid if vetting of a foreign military unit finds "credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights."

"U.S. government support to the counter-ISIS campaign is conducted by, with, and through the central government of Iraq. Department of Defense policies on the provision of military assistance to foreign military forces require that Iraqi Security Forces that receive assistance are strictly vetted in accordance with the Leahy Act as well as for associations with terrorist organizations and/or the Government of Iran,” said U.S. Army Col. Joe Scrocca, a spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve's top commander in a statement send to ABC News in late April. “The results of that vetting are reported to Congress on a quarterly basis consistent with the law. The U.S. does not currently train or equip the Iraqi Emergency Response Division.”

Scrocca said the E.R.D. was banned from receiving military aid under the Leahy Act on Mar. 14, 2015 -- the day after the original "Dirty Brigades" investigation aired on ABC's World News Tonight With David Muir. U.S. military officials requested that ABC News provide a list of the alleged war crimes witnessed or documented by Arkady, subsequently stating that after reviewing the information "these allegations were not previously documented" by Operation Inherent Resolve but by policy would be investigated by the coalition and shared with Iraqi officials.

The Leahy Act ban may only be window dressing for a unit deemed necessary in the fight against ISIS, however, as videos shot by Arkady and the unit itself show E.R.D. soldiers in possession of U.S.-donated weapons, such as Humvee trucks and “Carl Gustav” anti-tank launchers. U.S. officials declined to comment on that issue.

For Arkady, the abuses he witnessed became grislier the day after he witnessed that first forced confession.

On Nov. 23, another man and his two sons were accused by E.R.D. of making improvised-explosive devices for ISIS in the same village outside Mosul. After his arrest by the E.R.D., the father was not immediately questioned.

Instead, he was hanged from the ceiling of a darkened room by a rope extending from a hook to his bound wrists, dislocating his shoulders, at the direction of two E.R.D. commanders: Capt. Saif al-Kinany and Capt. Tamer al-Duri. It was a torture technique from the Spanish Inquisition known as strappado and used in places such as North Vietnam's infamous "Hanoi Hilton," where American POWs called it "The Ropes."

He was hanged in strappado for an hour. Soldiers placed a case of bottled water between the small man's shoulders to inflict even more pain. He was kicked and punched before being cut down and finally questioned.

Capt. al-Duri demanded that the father admit he made improvised-explosive devices for ISIS and that he also convince his sons to turn themselves in to Federal Police or he would personally kill them.

"We are special forces,” al-Duri warned him. “We conduct field executions. That is what I am telling you for your own sake.”

The man denied helping ISIS make bombs and al-Duri later released him, suggesting evidence of his guilt was thin. One son later turned himself in to al-Duri and his soldiers as Arkady's camera rolled and the 16-year-old was subjected to a dozen blows to the head by the E.R.D. officer, who threatened to kill him if he ever helped ISIS again. It isn't known what happened to his other son.

"This is actually happening under command authority," said Whitson of Human Rights Watch. "This is someone with some level of authority who has the jurisdiction to tell soldiers what to do, telling his soldiers how to torture this detainee."

"It's no different than what ISIS does,” added Scott Mann. “It's on the same moral equivalency of what they do.”

Arkady struggled to reconcile his own sympathies for the E.R.D. men and their cause with their brutal and illegal tactics. To his shame, he admits that on two occasions he obeyed commands by E.R.D. leaders to strike detainees because he felt he had no choice.

On Nov. 21, Cpl. Haider Ali pointed to a detainee sitting on the floor of a room in the intelligence office and said, “Ali, you're the only one in the room not hitting him." So he slapped the man’s face, Arkady said, which satisfied the soldiers, who laughed after he did it.

The second occasion was two days later when Capt. al-Kinany told Arkady to strike the father who had been hung in strappado.

"He said, 'You can hit him, he's ISIS.' I said, 'I'm a journalist, my work is photographing'," Arkady said. There was a long pause as the E.R.D. soldiers stared at him, in which he realized his own life was hanging by the thread of his hesitation. "My heart was beating, boom boom. ‘What [are] they thinking about?’ Because I photographed everything."

So he slapped the father, who had fallen asleep on the floor from exhaustion, once on the back of his neck.

"It's really bad, it's not good,” Arkady said. “I do that to survive, for my life. I'm not that man."

As shocking as the torture of apparently innocent civilians was, Arkady stayed with the unit and continued shooting for three more weeks. In another operation, E.R.D. troops demonstrated to Arkady that al-Duri's ominous remark about "field executions" wasn't just idle words intended to intimidate but an actual practice of killing detainees.

What he witnessed led Arkady to flee his homeland -- possibly forever – and risk his own life to blow the whistle.

In one of the most brutal scenes captured by Arkrady, two half-brothers, one a used car salesman, the other a falafel stand operator, in the town of Bazwaia were subjected to a seven-hour torture session. As with their previous victim, Arkrady says, E.R.D. officers did not offer any proof that the brothers had any affiliation with the group.

"They were not ISIS," Arkady said.

American special operations forces have advised and coordinated military operations in eastern Mosul, but no Americans appear in the hours of videos shot by Arkady. In this case, however, the particularly sadistic torturer was a man they knew as "Ali Mushtarakah," who E.R.D. officers identified to ABC News as their liaison with Coalition Forces.

He shocked the brothers with live wires, ripped out the beard of one prisoner, and placed a knife behind the ear of the other, pressing it into his flesh while demanding he recite the ISIS pledge.

Mushtarakah, who claimed to have worked as a contractor and interpreter for the American military in Iraq for a decade, boasted to Arkady he had been taught such interrogation methods by American forces.

"Say the pledge of allegiance [to ISIS] or I will make you unable to talk anymore," Mushtarakah shouts at one brother, as he presses the prisoner's face into the floor with his knee.

"I swear, I don't know it,” the prisoner pleads, wincing in pain with each twist of Mushtarakah’s blade. “I swear I don't know it.”

But Mushtarakah persisted.

"Say the pledge of allegiance or I'll turn you mute," he said.

In the footage, Mushtarakah appears to speak English with an American accent, claimed to have a U.S. passport and showed Arkady a copy of his Iraqi identity card, revealing what Arkady believed to be his true identity, Ali Abdul Hussein Abd. He did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

After providing copies of Abd's Iraqi identity card and photos to U.S. officials who said they would ascertain his citizenship, the Baghdad embassy spokesperson Kim Dubois told ABC News she would not disclose whether Abd is a U.S. citizen.

The U.S. military also declined to address Abd’s claims of working for the American military in Iraq.

"In regard to allegations that one of the alleged perpetrators may have once been employed as a contractor for the Department of Defense in Iraq, we have not been able to confirm or deny that information,” U.S. military spokesperson Col. Joe Scrocca said in a statement to ABC News. “We also have no reason to believe any of those alleged to have committed improper acts directly worked with U.S. forces in Iraq.”

Arkady left the house while the brothers were still being tortured by Abd, aka “Mushtarakah,” and the E.R.D men.

As the sun rose on Dec. 17, Arkrady says, one of the soldiers sent him a video showing what appears to be the brothers lying dead on the same tiled floor of the room where they had been tortured the night before. He boasted that their executions were retribution for the wounding of Shebl al-Zaydi, a senior Shi'a militia leader in a well-publicized attack last December in Iraq.

"We took revenge," said the E.R.D. soldier, Ahmad Abu al-Fathil, poking at the two corpses with a wooden stick. "Thank God, they have been 100% terminated in revenge for al-Zaydi, Haji Shebl al-Zaydi, and every Iraqi mother."

Arkady acknowledged that his affection for Capt. Omar Nazar and Cpl. Haider Ali and his sympathy for their cause may have initially blinded him to the horrors he was witnessing, but something changed after seeing the video of the brothers' bodies. He showed Andy Patrick, his editor at VII, some of what he had documented.

“Sitting in my office in California, I was like, 'Oh my god,'” Patrick said. “It was a different lens in which I viewed it all. And I said, 'You need to get out of there immediately.’”

Patrick was worried that the tranche of evidence Arkady had amassed during his E.R.D. embeds could put his life in danger should the soldiers grow suspicious of their photojournalist friend. Together they agreed that Arkady needed to smuggle the imagery out of Baghdad and that he and his immediate family should quietly leave Iraq for Europe and safety.

Far from trying to hide their human rights violations, the E.R.D. troops continued to boast of their exploits to Arkady. In late December, before realizing Arkady and his family had fled to Europe, Cpl. Ali sent Arkady a final 14-second cell phone video.

It showed two E.R.D. men appearing to execute a handcuffed prisoner. Arkady says Cpl. Ali identified himself and Capt. Nazar as the shooters.

"No! Please!" shouts the prisoner, staggering away with his hands bound behind his back and his pants dropping from his waist. The E.R.D. soldiers raise their pistols and shoot him in the back nine times.

The E.R.D. first claimed in an official statement that Arkady’s evidence was “fabricated footage” made by ISIS to “tarnish and damage us.” But, joining Capt. Nazar in a subsequent call to ABC News last week, an E.R.D. spokesman reversed course as Nazar admitted all of the video – including the execution -- depicted true events. If those are considered human rights violations, Nazar boasted, “I'm proud of those mistakes.”

Nazar denied he is one of the officers in the video execution but defended the killing of the handcuffed prisoner because he “is not human, he is a monster.”

“So what do you suggest I do with him then? Put him in a vase for public display?” Nazar asked. “And spend money on keeping him alive? After he has killed and raped hundreds?”

For Arkady, the consequences of blowing the whistle could not be more extreme. The E.R.D. men, Arkady says, have told his friends and family that they intend to kill him. Capt. Nazar even told Arkady’s father via Facebook that he and his men planned to pay him an “official visit” and hold him accountable for what his son would reveal.

"Sir, we have a matter that concerns us and I want to solve it with you quietly," Nazar told Arkady's father in one text obtained by ABC News. "Tribal law holds you responsible as his father."

Arkady is unsure if he will ever feel safe enough to return home.

"I don't know,” Arkady said. “Really, I don't know. I'd like, because I love Baghdad and Iraq.”

The soldiers apparently thought their secret was safe with Arkady. Now they know they were wrong.

ADDITIONAL CREDITS

EDITOR: PETE MADDEN
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: ALEX HOSENBALL
RESEARCH: HAIDER NEWMANI
VIDEO EDITOR: JONATHAN MARX
PRODUCTION ASSOCIATES: LENA MASRI, FAISAL ALKADIRI
VIDEOGRAPHERS: NICKY DeBLOIS, ANDY LAURENCE
ART DIRECTOR: ANDREW VANWICKLER
SENIOR ANIMATOR: LISA FISHER
GRAPHIC DESIGNER: ELIZABETH MORINGELLO
 
#4 · (Edited)
^ So in other words...Business as usual.

Like there weren't any civilian deaths under Obama's watch , right? Give me a fucking break.

Acting like Trump said "Go and murder those children". Stop blaming Trump for everything. Past presidents have called for airstrikes that had the same unintended consequences(Collateral damage....see below).

Collateral damage is unavoidable whenever airstrikes occur, unfortunately. It's not like the U.S. is purposely aiming for innocent civilians when they drop their payloads. It fucking sucks that children died(always does) but that's the way it is and has been in these scenarios. :(
 
#7 · (Edited)
^ So in other words...Business as usual.

Like there weren't any civilian deaths under Obama's watch , right? Give me a fucking break.

Acting like Trump said "Go and murder those children". Stop blaming Trump for everything. Past presidents have called for airstrikes that had the same unintended consequences(Collateral damage....see below).

Collateral damage is unavoidable whenever airstrikes occur, unfortunately. It's not like the U.S. is purposely aiming for innocent civilians when they drop their payloads. It fucking sucks that children died(always does) but that's the way it is and has been in these scenarios. :(
Trump did say that he said you have to kill the families of terrorists

He told you he was going to do this, why is anyone surprised?
 
#18 ·
We only know Trump's views on it because he's idiotic enough to say them...you know like the dufus he is. Most politicians are smart enough to do that without announcing their intentions. If you bomb someone and you KNOW there will be collateral damage killing innocent people then you're just as bad as dumbass Trump is. You don't get to excuse one and then trash the other. Trash them all because every one of these war mongers are just as bad as the other.
 
#20 ·
This is my point exactly.

No difference if my goal is to kill someone if my intent is spoken or not. As we seen with warmongering American Politicians they don't care about civilians or collateral damage and nothing Obama and Hillary has shown me that they'd be above targeting these people. Trump just simply said that's what he was going to do. If all the actions end up with the same results surely one can see a clear pattern regardless of words.
 
#26 · (Edited)
Part of me likes this because Trump's way of dealing with things is different than most other western countries. He will fight evil with evil. Like when I played Mass Effect game as a Renegade. :mark :mark :mark

The other part doesnt like that innocent families were killed, obviously. But can you REALLY blame Trump? Has any other methods worked to halt terrorism?

When I play video games with moral options/endings,
I always choose the Evil one for shits and giggles. That's why Im marking out hard at this.

WHO WOULDVE THOUGHT TRUMP WAS A BAD ASS RENEGADE!? GOAT HEEL VS HEEL FEUD
:clap :clap :clap
 
#27 ·
Part of me likes this because Trump's way of dealing with things is different than most other western countries. He will fight evil with evil. Like when I played Mass Effect game as a Renegade. :mark :mark :mark

The other part doesnt like that innocent families were killed, obviously. But can you REALLY blame Trump? Has any other methods worked to halt terrorism?

When I play video games with moral options/endings,
I always choose the Evil one for shits and giggles. That's why Im marking out hard at this.CANT WAIT FOR MASS RFFECT 4 BABY
You're telling me you're marking hard for the fact that innocent civillians died?

And as for whatever Trump is doing, Putin is doing much better.
 
#32 ·
In the wikileaks emails, Hillary Clinton admitted that in all likelihood, at least thousands more civilians would be killed in Syria and yet wanted to continue the war plus put forward a no fly zone. Obama during his tenure, dropped 10 times as many bombs as George W. Bush, who the "anti-war left" which doesn't exist anymore barring a couple of legitimate people such as Tulsi Gabbard, decried as a war criminal.

The point is, it's a time wasting and petty argument to put forward who was the worst. Does it really matter at this point? The story here is that the same old US foreign policy is continuing, indiscriminately bombing the Middle East with not a care in the world who takes the collateral damage, whether on purpose or not.

It is truly horrific and disgusting what has been happening in the past decade.
 
#34 ·
@birthday_massacre

What people are saying is that, yes, Trump, in his typical inept way, actually said he'd target civilians but that Hillary and Obama, very intelligent career politicians, would never be dumb enough to publicly announce civilians are either unimportant or actual targets. That tells me nothing about what was discussed behind closed doors, but the appallingly poor accuracy of drone bombings that continued despite repeated civilian deaths tells me plenty about how important collateral damage is to anyone approving such tactics. Democrats may support more compassionate, less nationalistic policies but they've not been much different from republicans in terms of foreign policy.

US led coalitions do not go overseas to bring peace and stability to nations at war. The majority of the time, they aren't going there to ensure American (or American allies) safety either. Don't be naive.

It's all deceptive and cruel. Incidents such as those being discussed, intentional or otherwise, are why so many parts of the world distrust certain powerful western nations. Our governments act as if these people simply don't matter as individuals and we passively go along with it. When we're provided with clips of food bags being distributed or stats on monetary aid donations we think Oh, look how kind we are as a country! (or We send so much to the rest of the world and look at the thanks we get!) and deliberately forget, or excuse, our role the chaos being spread because it's more comfortable to pretend it's all someone else's fault.
 
#37 · (Edited)
To be fair

When fighting an enemy that does not have established "bases" and is willing to bring their family with them to what is essentially a military camp civilian casualties must be expected for any type of effective combat

Its either fairly blind airstrikes or going in and rooting out the area by hand which has a massive list of dangers

If I was given a piece of paper that said I could "A. bomb an area overrun with combatants as well as anyone who they were stupid enough to go there or B. Raid the area which could get my men killed which may not even be effective as it gives the enemy a chance to flee" I would choose the first one

Civilian deaths are unfortunate but are unavoidable in war and times that by 500 when you are facing a enemy that does wear uniforms

also the third story is kind of BS because the airstrike set off a cache in the basement so can't really blame anyone for that
 
#41 · (Edited)
It's so fucked up man... People are so desensitized from what really matters, from the foundations of society, integrity and life itself, that they end up discussing this stuff like it's a case of any individual person being responsible for it.

Let's forget the presidents, let's forget the countries, let's forget all of that stuff... People are being killed, and loads of innocent ones at that. War isn't something you should try to win, it's something you should try to stop. It's not like there's a magical solution to this and people will suddenly stop having malicious intents, but hate breeds hate and it's a cycle that is very hard to stop, but one can only hope people change their mentality, because it's the only solution to this.

I know it's not a problem exclusive to americans, but some of them talk about certain cultures with so much disdain that it makes me wonder if they think that, given the case that they were instead born in one of those said cultures, their actions would really be any different from the people they criticize. Society plays a key role in who you are, and even more in how you act.
 
#46 ·
fpalm fpalm fpalm



She was stating democrats and Republicans alike both are evil bastards just like anyone else in power. Trumps a cunt hillaries a cunt. Shes a lesser cunt. I don't know why you have to imply that people condone his actions especially when no one likes trump
How is she a lesser cunt?

A cunt is a cunt. There is no lesser or greater. :hmmm
 
#49 ·
^ Then Hilary is not a lesser cunt because you better believe she would be pulling the same shit in Trump's position(the only difference is she wouldn't announce it).
 
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