Obama: We Want To Stop Civilian Casualties

After Meetings With Afghan, Pakistani Leaders, President Says U.S. Making "Every Effort" To Keep Innocents From Being Killed

(CBS/ AP)  President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the United States is making "every effort to avoid civilian casualties as we help the Afghan government combat our common enemy."

The United States has come under criticism this week after Afghan officials said dozens of civilians died as a result of an air raid conducted by American forces Monday. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday the Obama administration "deeply, deeply" regrets the loss of innocent life.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, however, said Wednesday that the military has come to "distinctly different conclusions" about how the civilians died, though he declined to offer specifics.

The president's comment came after he hosted what he called an "extraordinarily productive" White House meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, two neighboring nations where crucial U.S. security concerns are at stake.

Mr. Obama and his foreign policy and national security team met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari separately in the Oval Office and then together in the Cabinet Room.

Afterward, Mr. Obama pledged a sustained and lasting commitment to support democratically elected sovereign governments in both countries.

"We meet today as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaida and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future," the president said following the meetings. "And to achieve that goal, we must deny them the space to threaten the Pakistani, Afghan, or American people."

In a notable showing of support for both men, Mr. Obama said Karzai and Zardari both "fully appreciate the seriousness of the threats that we face" from extremists and are committed to confronting it.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, the president's national security adviser, said following the meeting that Mr. Obama told Karzai about the U.S. regrets concerning civilian casualties with "great sympathy." He said Karzai was moved by the statement of condolences.

Jones said the United States will try to determine what happened in Monday's bombing and seek to ensure that it doesn't occur again.

Earlier, Pakistan attacked Taliban militants with helicopter gunships and mortar rounds in a northwestern region as residents hunkered down in their homes ahead of an expected offensive in the extremist stronghold, witnesses and officials said.

The army action in the Swat Valley was expected to please Washington, which has been urging Pakistan to crack down on militants blamed for rising violence at home and in Afghanistan. But it was unclear whether the stretched military planned the kind of sustained operation likely needed to defeat the insurgents.

The president is pressing Zardari to stand up to the threat of a wider war by Taliban and al Qaeda forces inside Pakistan. He's also seeking broader cooperation between Zardari and Karzai, who blames the Taliban's resurgence in his country on its havens across the border.

The U.S. needs Zardari to rein in the militants and guarantee his nation's nuclear weapons are safe from terrorist hands, CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports.

But the U.S. is dealing with a weak president in a country more accustomed to military dictatorships.

"In general, he's not very popular," Fouzia Saeed, a social activist in Pakistan, told Logan.

Since fighting broke out Tuesday in Pakistan, thousands of men, women and children have fled the region's town of Mingora and surrounding districts, fearing an imminent major military operation. The government said it believes refugees could reach 500,000.

"It is an all-out war there. Rockets are landing everywhere," said Laiq Zada, a 33-year old who fled the valley late Tuesday and was now in government run tent camp out of the danger zone. "We have with us the clothes on our bodies and a hope in the house of God. Nothing else."

The clashes followed the collapse of a 3-month-old truce in Swat that was widely criticized in the West as a surrender to the militants, who had fought the army to a standstill in two years of clashes that saw hundreds of civilian casualties.

[ReallyMeanIt]

Didn't barrack and the libs accused our troops of killing civilian when Bush was president?
If they're so despised about it, why countinued what they accused Bush of doing?

[pensacola8-2009]

President Obama is saying the same thing Secretay Clinton is saying about the matter and I feel their policy is effective and congruent with a diplomatic mission and a civil form of wartime conduct.

The end of the war will come when people in the grandstands stop looking for it.

The Pakistani resolve is taking a much more effective form than we have seen in the past.

[guyfrompa45]

endurorob - AHHHH thatk you.. You libs read this?

[endurorob]

You hit ALL the ditto head talking points! LOL I'll bet you can't expand on or explain ONE of them now can you?
Posted by skyk-2009 at 4:43 AM : May 7, 2009

Heres one. A guy that just started working with me moved here from Phoenix because he was layed off. He was a project manager and since there were no projects happening his company layed off all projects managers. He couldn't sell his house that he bought 6 years ago because it lost 40% of it's value.

[endurorob]

Can someone tell me why there aren;t prttests going on outside the White House condeming the war.
Posted by guyfrompa45 at 4:43 AM : May 7, 2009

Because those that did not previously protest the war understand the neccesity of finishing the job whether it was legitimate to begin it or not. Those that previously protested are not willing to do ar say anything negative concerning the guy behind the gate now.

[guyfrompa45]

Can someone tell me why there aren;t prttests going on outside the White House condeming the war.

[skyk-2009]

Who wants to make a bet that Obama leaves Iraq in a Fiasco, has many soliders killed in Afganastan and accomplishes nothing. The economy will be left worst with many companies leaving the US to avoid high taxation. Your home value will drop to the year 1999 value. Anyone I'll bet a months paycheck
Posted by luilun at 12:13 AM : May 7, 2009

You hit ALL the ditto head talking points! LOL I'll bet you can't expand on or explain ONE of them now can you?

[skyk-2009]

You have to give Obama some credit though. He is not the anti-war pacifist weakling some thought he was during the campaign.
Posted by ameroseas at 2:37 AM : May 7, 2009

LOL Makes you wonder about all the other people trashed by the Radical Right during the last 3 decades doesn't it? When you look back to those decades and all the Wedge Issues, the Hate and pure division brought to this nation by those low lifes and for no other reason than power, it makes one cringe.

[specialty8]

stuart,
He didn't ask for a character judgement, he asked if anyone wanted to bet a months pay. How about you?

[tbbaot]

You can't stop civillian casualties when the enemy hides amongst them and uses them as human shields. Their culture does not value women and children or they would not put them at risk