This Aerial Onslaught Is War at Its Most Stupid

by Liberty and Power

Simon Jenkins writes here that the images of U.S."friendly fire" show how good bombers are at hurting, but how bad they are at winning.

For the full story of how two U.S. pilots killed a British soldier, go here, here, and here.

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Andrew D. Todd - 2/7/2007

The Russian ZIL157 is a heavy truck (6 tons, I believe), commonly used as a platform for heavy artillery rockets with a range of about 12,000 yards. A rocket battery could launch essentially all of its rockets in about a minute or so. The transcript indicates that the pilots mistook British armored cars for Iraqi heavy artillery, and they had to make up their minds quickly, and once and for all, because 1) the airplanes were running out of fuel, 2) the vehicles were about to go into a village, and 3) other American aircraft were incoming, and they needed to get out of the way. If the pilots had made the opposite mistake, letting a heavy rocket battery escape, the results would have been equally disastrous. There must have been a dust cloud, raised by the vehicles' wheels. There was no safe choice. That is simply the way war is. It is an exercise in firing at shadows lest the shadows fire back first.