The Pentagon recently updated its rule book on how it chooses ISIS targets. The rule book now allows for more civilian casualties. This comes after the Obama administration’s 2014 admission to having already relaxed standards on avoiding civilian deaths (just how relaxed can you get?). Which doesn’t really matter anyway, because a federal appeals court just rejected a freedom of information lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, one aimed at obtaining documents that would have shed some light on the number of people killed by drone strikes, their intended targets and strike locations.
As the Pentagon is able to continue doing its grim task in secrecy, nobody really knows how many civilians are being killed anyway – not unless you take their official figures at face value, that is. The open season on civilians just means more innocent lives lost that we won’t hear about; if a bomb is dropped on a civilian and it doesn’t get reported on, did he really exist to begin with?
Probably not, going by the “official” Pentagon figures; so far the US Central Command has only admitted to another 20 civilian deaths in “nine separate U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, between Sept. 10, 2015 and Feb. 2, 2016″, bringing the civilian death toll in Syria caused by US activities to just 41. A conservative estimate by Airwars, one of the few groups bothering to count, which FYI is partly funded by the Soros-run Open Society Foundation, puts the estimated death toll at at least 1,000.
Why the 250-fold discrepancy? It might have something to do with the definition of militant being “all military-age males in a strike zone.”The seven months of silence preceding the 20-civilian-death admission was probably necessary to figure out which civilians were old enough to pick up a gun (probably above five years of age).
The relaxation of targeting civilians, the lack of Pentagon transparency, the artificially low civilian death count that probably stems from how militants are defined… it all seems to be providing cover for the increasingly aggressive campaign in Syria. 250 special forces are being sent to Syria according to a recent announcement, ostentatiously against an ISIS so weak that it has turned to selling its own living jihadists’ internal organs for funds (cannibalizing its own idealistic canon fodder).
Definitions are important for military commanders and politicians alike. 250 troops are being deployed in Syria, which increases US troop numbers in Syria by six times (not even counting those in neighboring Iraq), in a case of obvious mission creep. Yet we realize that president Obama has not broken any of his 16 promises that there would be “no boots on the ground” because of how “boots on the ground” is defined by the US government. RT reporter Gayane Chichakyan questioned State Department spokesman John Kirby on the matter:
“Within 24 hours, we have seen two headlines, one of them being, ‘President Obama rules out ground troops to Syria’ and he told the BBC…” she said.“And then, shortly after, ‘President Obama to deploy 250 more special forces troops to Syria.’”
“My question is, what is the difference between the troops that the president ruled out and the troops that he’s going to send to Syria?”
“There is a big difference between saying, ‘no boots on the ground’ ‒ we’ve all recognized since almost the outset that we’ve had US troops in Iraq, which are very much on the ground ‒ and the colloquial meaning of the term, which is what many people when they say ‘no boots on the ground’ are referring to,”Kirby said, “which is large-scale, intentionally combat ground troops engaged in combat operations that they themselves are conducting independently”of the country’s “indigenous forces.”
“That’s not happening, and that’s not gonna happen,” he said.
Of course, he failed to define “large-scale”, “intentionally”, “independently of the country” and “indigenous forces,” which pretty much means “we can do whatever we want because we make the rules, $*&^”.
As 250 pairs of boots that are not boots get deployed on ground that is not ground, it is wise to remember that the special forces are now “relaxed” with regards to their treatment of Syrian civilians; it doesn’t really matter because only militants are killed by US forces, who are only there to kill ISIS before it succeeds in doing so first by cornering the terrorist-organ-black-market.
/endrant
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within are solely the author’s etc, etc, etc, etc.
Sources: Alternet, RT, USA Today, Centcom, Common Dreams, Airwars, Salon, IB Times
This article (US Govt: Only 41 Civilians Killed In Syria. 250 Troops Ain’t Boots On The Ground) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author(CoNN) and AnonHQ.com.
