Word: pentagons
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...Sniper, the pod sends long-range, high-resolution video--it can tell whether an Afghan on the ground is armed--right into the cockpit. Such weapons systems allow the U.S. military to rain steel on the Taliban from on high, even when troops aren't in the area. The Pentagon doesn't release statistics of the insurgents killed, but the military regards air strikes as the smart strategy in Afghanistan...
...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...
...western Afghan village of Azizabad. What is not in dispute is that U.S. special forces on the ground ordered an AC-130 gunship to attack at least two houses after they and their Afghan allies came under fire. The result of the attack, however, is far from certain. The Pentagon concluded that up to 35 insurgents and as many as seven civilians were killed. But the Afghan government, backed by a United Nations inquiry, puts the toll at 76 to 90 civilians, including 60 children. That would make it the deadliest strike since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan...
...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 is to put more Americans on the ground--to use more snipers instead...
Exemption from prosecution for U.S. soldiers abroad has a long precedent in American policy and politics, as Rice noted. For decades the Pentagon has insisted that the military's own internal judicial system is the only place U.S. troops should be tried for alleged crimes while serving overseas. While that is a politically popular stance in the U.S., it been the source of tensions at times with allies such as Japan, Italy and South Korea that host large numbers of U.S. troops. In each of those countries U.S. troops over the years have been implicated in alleged crimes ranging from...