Aug. 31, 2008
Bombing Afghanistan
Afghan President Tells 60 Minutes That Too Many Civilians Are Being Killed
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Play CBS Video Video Bombing Afghanistan The president of Afghanistan demands that the U.S. military curtail its use of air strikes against insurgents in his country because they are killing too many civilians. Scott Pelley reports.
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Mujib, age 7, survived an air strike because he was staying at his uncle's home. (CBS)
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai. (CBS)
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Fast Facts Afghanistan Learn about the people, economy and history.
Air Force Col. Gary Crowder is deputy director of the Combined Air Operations Center, which runs the air war over both Afghanistan and Iraq.
"You know, I'm curious. How often is an air strike prepared that's called off at the last minute?" Pelley asks.
"Thousands and thousands of times a month,” says Crowder. “We look very, very often, we tracked some of the insurgent leaders we will track for days and days on end. And we are prepared to strike them at any moment. But we can never get all of the criteria necessary to meet our rules of engagement.”
We learned there are two kinds of targets: deliberate targets, which are analyzed for days and watched for patterns of civilians coming and going, and immediate targets, such as when troops are in combat and need air support. In both cases, civilian casualties are estimated in advance and it's up to the commander on the ground to decide whether the strike is worth the cost.
"We rely on those commanders to make the assessment at the time of what the requirement is. He assesses proportionality. He assesses the validity of the military target," Crowder explains.
Asked what he means by " proportionality," Crowder tells Pelley, "If we know that there is a sniper on a roof and the roof is in the middle of a mosque which is a protected site or in the middle of a very populated area, then dropping a 2,000 pound weapon on that would not be proportional to going after the sniper."
"Two men with AK-47s run into a house. Do you bomb the house?" Pelley asks.
"In some circumstances, we will bomb the house,” says Crowder. “It is entirely dependent upon the circumstances on the ground, and the ground commander's assessment of that particular situation.”
"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," says Marc Garlasco, who knows the calculus of civilian casualties as well as anyone.
At the Pentagon, Garlasco was chief of high value targeting at the start of the Iraq war. He told 60 Minutes how many civilians he was allowed to kill around each high-value target -- targets like Saddam Hussein 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 explains. "But once you hit that number 30, we actually had to go to either President Bush, or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld."
Garlasco says, before the invasion of Iraq, he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets -- Iraqi officials.
But he says none of the targets on the list were actually killed. Instead, he says, "a couple of hundred civilians at least" were killed.
"The bombs that are dropped are really only as accurate as the intelligence behind them?" Pelley asks Crowder.
"That's true. But we have come a very long way in getting that intelligence to be more accurate," Crowder says. "We will collect human intelligence, signals intelligence, overhead full-motion video, all of that tied together, very often in real time. That gives us a better understanding and a significantly higher confidence that the targets we're engaging are in fact valid military targets."
Of course the Taliban are killing civilians too, targeting them deliberately. By contrast, 60 Minutes watched American airmen calculate how to minimize civilian casualties with the choice of timing, weapon, and direction of attack.
"I don't think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they're not killing civilians," Garlasco points out.
"If so much care is being taken why are so many civilians getting killed?" Pelley asks.
"Because the Taliban are violating international law,” says Garlasco, “and because the U.S. just doesn't have enough troops on the ground. You have the Taliban shielding in people's homes. And you have this small number of troops on the ground. And sometimes the only thing they can do is drop bombs.”
Produced By Solly Granatstein
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See all 415 CommentsHe obviously knows nothing about combat, he now nothing about how the military works, he only knows how to impose his own bias onto every story he reports, or better into every story he acts as he is not reporter.
Scott.. a rocket is fired at an american base, it does not matter if it does not hit the base, you don''t wait for them to get better at aiming their rocket you take them out. You see two men with AK-47''s leaving a building you take them out.
The military is not their on a humanitarian mission they are there to find and kill the enemy.
As I stated in my previous post. I am sure that the Military would allow Mr. Pelley to personally go over and knock on the door of each buliding from which fire is received to see if it was an accident.
I would love to see that happen. He wouldn''t make it past the first door he knocked upon.
Do it right the first time and save some money for home.
be off the air soon.
Why not ask Karzide to send his own military to get the bad guys, then no air power is needed. After all the money, time and blood we have spent, your people should be able to handle things so our soldiers can come home.
If you asked this question, you couldnt paint the military as killers, which is your agenda.
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