Washington Post: Examining a 'righteous' strike

[former9thward]

Expert analysis of deadly U.S. drone strike’s aftermath in
Kabul suggest no evidence of explosives in targeted vehicle

When a Hellfire missile was launched on Aug. 29 at a target in a Kabul neighborhood — a parked car suspected of containing explosives for use in a suicide attack — U.S. military officials said they were confident the driver and another man at the location had suspected militant ties and were the only people nearby.

The missile took about half a minute to reach the white sedan. In that time, three children approached the car just before it was destroyed, according to a senior U.S. military official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing military investigation. The children were killed, the official said, and families of the victims said another seven people also died in the strike, including the driver and the second man. U.S. Central Command’s initial description of the drone strike in a statement said that the operation targeted a vehicle linked to the Islamic State-Khorasan and produced “significant secondary explosions” from the vehicle, indicating a “substantial amount of explosive material.”

The Washington Post provided imagery of the damage caused by the strike and U.S. military assessments of the operation to experts, including a physicist and former bomb technicians, and spoke to the nonprofit that employed the driver targeted in the operation. Taken together, their assessments suggest there is no evidence the car contained explosives; two experts said evidence pointed to an ignition of fuel tank vapors as the potential cause of the second blast.

The driver’s employer, a California-based group, said his movements around the city were part of his duties for the nonprofit and said the military may have misinterpreted what he was doing as he moved from place to place and loaded packages into the vehicle.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/kabul-drone-strike-questions/?

So much for that drone attack. Drone attacks were not effective in past adminstrations and they are not effective now.