Pentagon secrecy over the casualties of the civilians.
An American newspaper reviewed more than 1,300 documents from the Pentagon’s secret archives and concluded that US military airstrikes in West Asia were aimed at inaccurate targets and incomplete information, and that the number of civilian casualties was much lower.
The New York Times reports that hundreds of civilians have been killed in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, including children, in US airstrikes aimed at inaccurate targeting and severely incomplete information.
The paper examines 1,311 documents from the Pentagon’s secret archives and concludes that civilian casualties are much higher than the 1,417 civilian casualties reported by the US military in Iraq and Syria and the 188 reported casualties in Afghanistan.
According to Sputnik, the New York Times reported on Saturday that reports of civilian casualties were often ignored, and interviews with survivors of victims and current and former US officials showed that the US military had made little effort to identify patterns of defeat. There was no public assessment to identify violations.
The deaths of civilians were often the result of “affirmative action” by the US military, which mistaken civilians for terrorists or failed to ensure that civilians were not present in the targeted buildings, the paper said.
According to the New York Times, US commitments on transparency and accountability have often not been met, and the Pentagon leadership has not only not conducted a thorough investigation but has not even taken steps to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that a US military secret cell involved in operations against the ISIS terrorist group in Syria had repeatedly killed Syrian civilians.
