quote:
Originally posted by Silver Cheetah:
Sorry, Afghani civilians are not, and never will be, Osama bin Laden. As for the civilian numbers, there is no guarantee whatsoever they are accurate. After the barefaced lies America told about civilian casualities in the Gulf War, I am afraid I have turned a wee bit cynical.
No the Afghan civilians are not Osama and are not responsible for what he's done, but their government is responsible and harbors this one man to the detriment of their innocent population.
There is no way of knowing if the casualty numbers are correct, but even if you take the Taliban's count, it's still incredibly low for a month of sustained bombing proving civilians are not the targets, and in fact, are being avoided.
In the Gulf War, if the numbers were inaccurate, I don't believe it was only the fault of the US. The US wasn't alone in the Gulf war, and estimates of the dead are just that, estimates, until someone "on the ground" can make a count.
Are you more inclined to believe Sadam or the coalition? Hopefully the coalition. Are you more inclined to believe the coalition or neutral observers after the Gulf War? The observers because they have been there. Coalition forces were never on the ground in Baghdad.
Innocents die in war. Wars shouldn't be started, but when they are started, innocents die, and not all the technology in the world today can change it.
It's kind of like radical cancer treatments, the cancer is targeted, with the knowledge that healthy tissue will be destroyed, in the hope of saving life.
[ 11-04-2001: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]