Do you believe US military reports of the number of civilians killed in US military raids?

No. I do not believe those numbers for a minute. Please do not think that I am passing any judgment on our soldiers with this statement. My nephew leaves for Iraq in November. I believe the orders from the top down are to kill as many people as possible and view the deaths of civilians as unfortunate collateral damage. As the tide of US opinion turns more and more in favor of ending the war, the spin grows more and more important and we will continue to be told that the vast majority of deaths are among insurgents. The Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires are tough enough to stomach without hearing that we are killing innocent people. Bush has shown again and again that he will say what needs to be said to advance his agenda yellow cake uranium anybody and this is just one more case.

mouse, you couldn’t be more wrong. Commanders absolutely do not want as many people as possible killed, and killing noncombatants is BAD juju. Our rules of engagement are lenient enough to reasonably protect ourselves, but sometimes barely so. Accountability is at an all time high, sworn statements must be made for almost every bullet fired, and UAVs are flying everywhere. Plus, hajji has video cameras. Insurgents purposefully exaggerate the number of people killed in any incident, then claim they were all
Civilians, because they have learned how to play us. I only ever asked two things of my men: keep us alive, and keep us off CNN. I also made it standing policy that if you feel you have to ask if it’s ok to shoot someone, then it probably isn’t.