Word: astraye
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...Pentagon's most optimistic estimate is that 85% of American bombs and missiles have hit their targets. But that means that 450 or more may have gone astray, regularly nailing civilian structures and residential neighborhoods. The military has struggled to explain some of its mistakes. Rumsfeld flatly denied a Taliban report that a U.S. warhead landed on a hospital in Herat. But the next day he sent his spokeswoman out to concede that "it is possible" a 1,000-lb. bomb from a U.S. F-18 accidentally damaged the hospital. The U.S. has also acknowledged dropping two 500-pounders...
...this week a U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman acknowledged that several bombs had gone astray, hitting an old people?s home and residential areas of Kabul. According to the Taliban, 100 people died in the raids. Still the forces ranged against Osama bin Laden were no nearer to finding the elusive terrorist leader. Britain?s Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted in a newspaper interview, "I have always thought it unlikely that he will turn up in a court one day." U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded that it was proving "very difficult" to find bin Laden and that the Taliban were...
...Rule 2: That House Is Really a Weapons Depot The Pentagon's most optimistic estimate is that 85% of American bombs and missiles have hit their targets. But that means that 450 or more may have gone astray, regularly nailing civilian structures and residential neighborhoods. The military has struggled to explain some of its mistakes. Rumsfeld flatly denied a Taliban report that a U.S. warhead landed on a hospital in Herat. But the next day he sent his spokeswoman out to concede that "it is possible" a 1,000-lb. bomb from a U.S. F-18 accidentally damaged the hospital...
...Princess of Wales Memorial Fund for the U.S. and Britain to stop using cluster bombs in Afghanistan, because of the "serious long-term threat to civilians." The bombs, being used against Taliban defensive lines, scatter 200 smaller "bomblets" designed to maximize their kill-ratio. But the bombs sometimes go astray, and also leave dangerous unexploded bomblets that kill civilians days or years later. Diana spent the last years of her life campaigning to ban land mines for the same reason...
...impossible to wage war from the air without killing civilians. The term "precision-guided" is relative when describing 500lb projectiles dropped from a few thousand feet at small or moving targets. When bombs do go astray, they can just as easily destroy schools and hospitals as tanks and command centers. Pentagon planners have long ago learned to accept this as an unavoidable by-product of any air campaign - hence the military's anesthetic term for it, "collateral damage...