U.S. drone strike kills five in Pakistan: officials

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

U.S. drone strike kills five in Pakistan: officials
Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:12pm EDT

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. pilotless
drone fired two missiles at a house in northwest
Pakistan killing five people, Pakistani intelligence
agency officials said Wednesday.

Frustrated by an intensifying Taliban insurgency in
Afghanistan, U.S. forces have in the past month
carried out seven missile strikes by pilotless drones
and a commando raid on the Pakistani side of the
border.

In the latest attack, a drone fired two missiles at
a house near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan,
at about midnight Tuesday (1800 GMT), two
intelligence agency officials said.

-snip-

"We have reports of five dead including foreign
militants," said one of the officers, who declined
to be identified as he is not authorized to speak
to the media.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE48T81520080930

[happyslug]

1. Reports of Five dead? Who did the reporting, the officer who controlled the Drone?

When I was in the Field Artillery as part of our training for firing our artillery pieces we would engage in the type of language we suspect we will hear on combat. Such as up 50 left 40 (To signal where they wanted the next round to go, we would then use our "computers" to figure out where that was and how to get the shell to that location, set the firing order to the gun, fire a round and wait for the forward observer to report back. Sooner or later he would call for a full battery attack which we would provide, he would then report "ten killed" or something similar. No one was actually killed, this was training, but the forward observer would have to say something and he just made it up.

The same thing I suspect is occurring here. Two missiles were launched and the officer controlling the drone reported what he think he killed. About as accurate as the Forward Observers reports back to us (And the Forward Observer's report may be more accurate, at least he is close enough to see what happened).

During WWII, US and Japanese Navy pilots kept coming back with reports of sinking the other sides ships, between them the US and Japanese sunk each other ships about Five or Six times. Accurate reports are hard to come by when the other side control the area where the ship (or in this case the Taliban) hold. Most commanders kept these reports confidential till they had some other way to determine the ship was sunk (i.e. they went to the location after the other side had left to see if the ship was at the bottom). Sometime we will hear the other side report the lose (Another way to confirm such a loss, but we had to be careful people do lie, especially in war).

My point is we do NOT have anyone on the Ground to confirm how many people were killed, all we know is we have pictures of the missiles hitting a building and pictures of the people going into that building. Did the building have another exit? Did the building have secondary protection? i.e. inner walls to protect an entrance to a cave? We do not know. Remember when we capture Saddam in his Rat Hole, they is strong evidence the US went in to kill him, and was shocked when he was found alive (He was hiding in a hole for protection from the ground fire, fired into the house he was in.

Were people killed? I do not know, but I suspect pictures exist of people going into that building. I suspect pictures of the missile hitting that building and exploding. Given those two facts we can fairly assume people were killed, the problem is we do NOT know who, how many or their ages. They may have been Taliban, they may have been a local goat herder, I do not know and probably the Officer who fired the missiles does not know.

My point is the report is typical of a report people in the Military always give when an attack occurs, even in training where such an attack is in an uninhabited impact area. Confirmation on the Ground would be helpful, but that means sending in troops and we do not dare do that.

[ManiacJoe]

2. Sounds like they might have gotten the right target...

... this time.

"We have reports of five dead including foreign militants,"

[Nihil]

4. You hope.

Notwithstanding the above comment about "who's doing the counting",
the rule for years has been "dead civilian" = "terrorist" = "militant".

I must be getting old: "militants" are looking really young these days ...

[AndyTiedye]

6. That's What they Always Say

Anyone our forces kill is a "militant" in the "news" reports.

[ManiacJoe]

7. Define "they".

I would tend to agree if the source was a US agency or US military. Since it is the Pakistanis who are claiming the dead were not innocent civilians, it does lend a bit of credibility.

[junior college]

3. I suspect we will see more military action like this in coming weeks.

The neocons are trying to provoke militants into attacking American interests in an effort to stir up some fear of terra before the election.

[Supersedeas]

5. "collateral damage" is just an abstraction meant to divert attention and marginalize human life

[Winterblues]

8. I expect McCain to be railing against this any moment now...

I am still waiting..... I wonder if I hold my breath....Anybody hear him railing??