The Mistakes of War
I caught part of a story on NPR on the way home last night with a Captain Tucker of the national guard. He blogged while in Afghanistan and recently published a book from that material. During his interview he related a story in which his unit had received intelligence about some Taliban supposedly hiding out in a particular mountain area. He called in an airstrike but 10 minutes before the strike a government official (member of parliament) arrived to inform him that they were not Taliban but, in fact, the people he had received his information from were. He went on to express how he would have felt had that official arrived after the strike and not before, how he would have killed innocent civilians.
My open question for Captain Tucker is this: How many air strikes did you call in and did not find out later "officially" that many innocent civilians were killed? Do you honestly think this was the only mistake like this?