Word: civilianizes
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...future of the civilian Hummer does not look as bright. GM stopped producing the H1 in 2006 and said in June it plans to scale back, sell off or shut down the division. These days, consumers prefer their Jeeps on a diet...
...ground, the picture is much less clear; for all their precision, American bombs sometimes take out the wrong targets. As U.S. air strikes doubled from 2006 to 2007, the number of accidental civilian deaths soared, from 116 to 321, according to Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon targeting chief who tabulates civilian casualties for Human Rights Watch (HRW), an independent research group. By his count, the death toll among civilians so far this year is approaching...
Such attacks yield propaganda gold for the Taliban, which feeds on anti-American rage. "The more people turn against Americans, the more benefits the Taliban get," says Saifuddin Ahmadi, a 52-year-old Kabul cabdriver. In the Afghan capital, anger over civilian casualties is leavened by the knowledge that U.S. and NATO troops may be keeping Afghanistan from plunging into civil war. In the countryside, opinions are stronger. Haji Obaidulla, 65, who lives in Kapisa province, northeast of the capital, says he "would prefer civil war to being killed by American air strikes...
Afghan officials say sporadic civilian deaths are inevitable, but they are troubled by the frequency and persistence of attacks like the one at Azizabad. "You can't have casualties and no end in sight," President Hamid Karzai told TIME recently. Senior U.S. officials agree. When military operations claim civilian lives, "it really does set us back," Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Aug. 28 while discussing the Azizabad operation. "So we work exceptionally hard to make sure that doesn't happen...
...main reason for civilian casualties is that the revolution in precision-guided weapons hasn't been matched by the quality of intelligence needed to drop them in the right place. "Technology has leaped forward, but the ability to know precisely who's at your target hasn't," says HRW's Garlasco, who spent nearly seven years plotting targets for the Pentagon. The military sometimes launches air strikes based on tips from Afghan tribesmen, some of whom are not above using American firepower in their own feuds. For some observers, the surest way to improve the quality of intel...