Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes | New York Times Azmat Khan

Intro: This is the first part of a series.

Summary using excerpts: "These cases are drawn from a hidden Pentagon archive of the American air war in the Middle East since 2014.

The trove of documents — the military’s own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, obtained by The New York Times — lays bare how the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs. . .what the hidden documents show is that civilians have become the regular collateral casualties of a way of war gone badly wrong.

To understand how this happened, The Times did what military officials admit they have not done: analyzed the casualty assessments in aggregate to discern patterns of failed intelligence, decision-making and execution.

It also visited more than 100 casualty sites and interviewed scores of surviving residents and current and former American officials. In the coming days, the second part of this series will trace those journeys through the war zones of Iraq and Syria.

Taken together, the reporting offers the most sweeping, and also the most granular, portrait of how the air war was prosecuted and investigated — and of its civilian toll.

Part 2 will examine the air war’s human toll. 

 

HIDDEN PENTAGON RECORDS REVEAL PATTERNS OF FAILURE IN DEADLY AIRSTRIKES

The promise was a war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs. Documents show flawed intelligence, faulty targeting, years of civilian deaths — and scant accountability.

The New York Times

 

Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html