Planned killing of civilians by America

[Rishikesh]

Here is an article about the approach of America in war. All this is stated, so imagine the unstated killings. Last line clearly shows what happens in this so called "War on terror". One can easily imagine who is bigger terrorist, a suicide bomber or planned killer.

Source : Times of India
URL http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/US_justifies_wars_collateral_damage/articleshow/2500668.cms

US justifies war's collateral damage
30 Oct 2007, 0059 hrs IST, PTI

NEW YORK: US commanders prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq make "macabre" calculations as to how many civilian casualties could be justified in taking out an enemy target.

If the number is higher, then they might be required to contact and get approval of the political leadership, CBS TV said in its '60 Minutes' investigative report on Sunday.

The air strikes in both countries are planned in a highly classified facility in a Gulf country which the report did not identify for security reasons. "There's this macabre kind of calculus that the military goes through on every air strike, where they try to figure out how many dead civilians is dead bad guy worth," Marc Garlasco, who knows the calculus of civilian casualties well, told CBS.

At the Pentagon, Garlasco was chief of high value targeting at the start of the Iraq war. He told '60 Minutes' that his team was authorised to kill a set number of civilians around high-value targets - targets like Saddam and his leadership.

"Our number was 30. So, for example, Saddam Hussein. If you're gonna kill up to 29 people in a strike against Saddam Hussein, that's not a problem," Garlasco explained. "But once you hit that number 30, we actually had to go to either president Bush, or secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld."

Before the invasion of Iraq, he said he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets. But none of the targets were killed, instead "a couple of hundred civilians" were killed.