Word: cols
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...When I see dying women and children," says Col. A. "I feel pain. I think about my own children. But I also feel pain when I see that people are being killed by rockets in Haifa - and I know that they died because of Hizballah...
...officer tapped into intelligence data and in radio contact with ground troops. Still, the decision to fire ultimately rests with the fighter pilot. "We've had many cases of canceling missions, returning with our bombs, because at the last minute the pilot saw people who weren't Hizballah," says Col. A, who points out that in the dozens of daily sorties made by his pilots, they nearly always hit their targets without killing innocent Lebanese civilians...
...Col. A spent a year training with U.S. airmen in Alabama, and all shared their experiences - and frustrations - over 21st-century warfare in which air power is no longer facing conventional, easily identifiable armies but stealthy terrorists who use civilian populations as both shields and targets. He says, "We're fighting the same battle as the U.S. is with al-Qaeda." Hizballah, he says, are hard to spot among Lebanese civilians because they don't wear uniforms and they ride around on motorcycles and in pick-up trucks. Hizballah also hides its rocket launchers in houses, garages and in teeming...
...20th day of the air campaign, the Israeli air force had finished the relatively easy part of the job, blasting away most of Hizballah's larger long-range missiles. Many of them, Col. A. says, were kept in Hizballah arsenals in Beirut. "We have fewer big targets left," he says, adding that Israeli warplanes were able to take out a long-range missile launcher just three minutes after one of its rockets hit south of the Haifa seaport...
...Col. A claims that the Israelis are probably the most cautious airpower in history. But he knows that there is no latitude for error. "In the morning I look in the mirror and I ask myself: "Am I happy with what I'm doing? There's no absolute truth, no absolute morality. I'll do everything I can to prevent killing innocent people. But if I see that Hizballah is firing rockets from Lebanese houses, and it's going to put my soldiers, my civilians in Haifa or wherever, in danger, then I'll put my own people first...