Bergen and Tiedemann should be very careful penning essays such as this one, as it jeapordizes any chance they may have of cashing in on the Message Force Multiplier media slush funds.

Are we to be suprised by this??? Gee golly, you mean our government would actually lie to us about the numbers of civilian casualties? It would be interesting to know which lyin' piece of shit "anonymous source" in the government provided Shane with these blatantly fictional figures.

Just one more example of the kind of "change" this posturing fraud Obama is delivering to the people. But hey, what should we expect? If they are willing to sideline, erroneously discredit, and ignore the Goldstone Report, why should we expect them to be honest about our own role in slaughtering innocents?

Just wait until someday in the distant future, when the TRUTH is known about the effects of DU on the environment and innocent civilian's health and genetic well being. Theres more than one way to kill Muslims. Already, in Iraq, pockets of high rates of birth abnormalities are showing up. But fear not, the same bastards that denied the effects of Agent Orange deny the effects of DU. I'm sure we can take their assurances to the bank, eh? After all, the DOD would never lie to us, would they??? Maybe we should ask the Tillman and Lynch families.

20 dead civilians in Pakistan so far. Right.

They must think we're effin' idiots. And apparently, judging by the way we've bent over these last nine years, we are.

While government estimates are likely to be very inaccurate, media estimates are likely to be no better, only in a different direction. Averaging inaccurate media accounts doesn't make them any more accurate. It's not like polls.

All meaning from those numbers have been massaged out of
existence. If the war is really in Pakistan, how come so many are
dying in Afghanistan. Isn't this called AfPak?
...
Despite the increased caution, 1,013 Afghan civilians were killed in
the first half of 2009, according to the UN, up from 818 for the
same period of the previous year. Almost half died in American air
strikes.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.1/rosen.php

"People in the West are dreaming. If you ask anyone in Afghanistan
what the US can do for the country, they will start laughing at you."

~ Helmandwal, an elder in SE Afghanistan who buried four relatives
last month he believes were killed by NATO bombardment.
[Financial Times, 12/3/09, pg. 2.]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/douglas/douglas29.1.html

The question of civilian fatalities does resurrect the conscience/morality of the international community-perhaps being a silent spectator-has no answer to the problem that the hapless Afghan and Pakistani community has been facing since the war trumpeted in the region eight years ago.

Of course, this whole issue would be moot if Pakistan moved more forcefully and effectively against the militants.

over at pat langs website there is this...

"The neoconservative goal is to exploit the traditional language
of COIN to justify deploying as many US soldiers as possible to
Muslim land. Moreover, neoconservatives believe that it is
extremely important that the Muslim world view neo-COIN as an
occupation, much in the same vein as the IDF. Western
occupation of Muslim land writ large.

As Bibi said after 9-11, “We are all Israelis now”. That is the
neoconservative goal. It is stated, admitted, and on the record.
Once Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against Iran (with or
without the USM, doesn't matter), then those US soldiers
deployed in Muslim lands will act as a buffer to Israel actions, as
Iran will strike out against the USM in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
elsewhere. Then the USG will carry out the goal of Likud
Zionism, which is the inverse of the title of Gant’s article. The
goal of Likud Zionism is to destroy one tribe at a time, under a
Jacobin approach. How can such analysis be wrong?

Yet, no one at the Pentagon will say one word and, God forbid,
certainly not under their own name. Why not? Why is the
Pentagon standing up for Fred and Kim and not Gant? Yeah, we
know the answer.

It just whispers in the mind. Hate to say it, but the same
whispers occurred in the early 1970’s, among the Scot Irish,
African Americans and others. I saw it firsthand, at least in the
South. And I am not talking about the Jane Fonda crowd,
because they hated her too.

Petraeus and the other generals do not understand. They are too
isolated from the real world, just like Jeffery Goldberg, James
Woolsey, and others. I think the brainier neoconservative
Jacobins do understand, and they will successfully exploit to
their advantage the rising anger of Americans that will occur in
the chaos after an attack on Iran."

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/

The Pakistan military has been trying its level best to make the military offensives against the militants( as has been glaringly evidenced by the ongoing military operation by the Pakistan army against the militants in Waziristan);yet those_ who think that the military action can pave the way for the extermination of terrorism _seem to have been believing in making prints on water(an idealist paradigm), this is a war against an ideology of "ignorance and illiteracy" how may it be possible to fight against an ideology by force can bring the perceived results. Therefore, a multiple strategy of defense, diplomacy and development( the methodology of smart power doctrine) can be the right course to adopt in this direction.

Drone Attacks are the most cowardly method of murder ever conceived.
Fuck obomber and his colonial wars

don't worry your pretty little head too much cwolf, the administration's top war-monger SoS Hillary and her generals have shoved war down the throats of Obama and the American people and our allies. Yipeee....we have a surge of precious lives and needed money being dumped into AfPak. And before you start, the surge in Iraq did not work after the initial bandaid. Not worth the lives and money for that bandaid you say? Perhaps Hillary's constant sabre rattling will save using some of those pesky drones over the next umpteen years. She may even get us into a few more wars...what the heck. An added bonus are the anticipation of a rainbow of pantsuits coming down the pike.

This spin is not surprising since Americans "don't count" the deaths of civilians killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan.

The whole world knows this and have every reason to be pissed off. Most Americans could give a rat's ass about the brutal and unnecessary deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan more than likely Iran due to the neo, theo, oil cons expansionist war games going on.

These warmongers know that most Americans are busy filling their tanks, pressing their pedals to the metals driving to the malls to buy silk and plastic shit from American and multinational corporations produing their shit in China. Come on the American people do have their priorities.

And the deaths of innocent people caused by the U.S. wars of choice is of no concern to most Americans. That is the brutal truth

Kathleen, get off your high horse. YOU don't count the death of civilians unless you can blame them on America, which you do once America is remotely involved no matter who presses the trigger. When the Taliban took Mazar el Sharif, they slaughtered 5000 civilians....to the Taliban the Hezara don't count as Muslims so they deserved to die. Did you count that? Did you even hear of it?

I get so tired of this pretense that the Left cares about civilians. Only if the "right" people kill them do they care, otherwise they could care less, no matter if the death toll enters the millions.

Nadine,

you say that it`s suspicious if a US citizen like Kathleen (I suppose she is an American)
shows some concern regarding the death of civilians that America is directly or
indirectly responsible for?

You accuse the left of bias in this regard. Would you say that you show less bias by only
counting dead civilians that can be blamed on the enemy? Do you somehow imagine that you
have credibility while accusing your opponents of being biased?

Above, you admit that "while government estimates are likely to be very inaccurate, media
estimates are likely to be no better, only in a different direction." Well, that would be
fine if you admitted that the "inaccuracy" also applies to, say, the government of
Israel?

During the last decade of the cold war, I didn`t trust in the accusations of human rights
violations coming from the West or the Communist states. I listened more to independent
organizations like Amnesty International etc, whether the issue was abuses in South
America or Eastern Europe, in USA or in China. And the historical documents later proved
that organizations like Amnesty were much more accurate than the propaganda from both
sides. I recommend this method.

But you would never do that, would you, because you are involved in a propaganda war
where accurate and unbiased information is completely irrelevant?

And you think that if you repeat the accusation that your opponents are biased hundred or
thousand times, we get so sick of hearing it that we start to believe that you are
unbiased?

If you accuse others of being biased, one may think that it would make some sense to make
an effort to appear less biased than your opponents? But you don`t even care to fake
"objectivity". You display your bias more than most of us here - but still, you
constantly accuse others of being biased.

I`ll never understand why you think that this kind of activity makes sense at TWN.

Correction: "Nadine, you display your bias more OPENLY than most of us here - but
still, you constantly accuse others of being biased.

I`ll never understand why you think that this kind of activity makes sense at TWN."