Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
ABC
May 1, 2008 World News With Charles Gibson (ABC), 6:30 PM
CHARLES GIBSON: Many of those Iraqi casualties has come as a result of the recent fighting in the enormous Baghdad slum of Sadr City. Five years after mission accomplished, the U.S. is engaged there in intense fighting in dense urban areas to clear out insurgents, but it’s fighting that inevitably puts civilians at high risk. Here’s ABC’s Ryan Owens.
RYAN OWENS: From the air, the U.S. military is targeting insurgents in Sadr City. On the ground it doesn’t always look that way. “They are attacking innocent people,” this man says. “Two rockets fired, four families killed.”
In one attack the U.S. gunships hit their target. This truck, the military says, was carrying an insurgent leader. The shrapnel also hit this child who cried out, “I hope I will not die.”
The U.S. military says it does everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, but in a cramped urban environment like this, that’s not easy. Even the most precise weapons often hit more than their intended target.
This helicopter video illustrates the dilemma. The military says it shows two men loading weapons into a car parked next to a house. The pilot waits until it pulls into the middle of the street before firing.
The battle for Sadr City is being waged largely from the air to avoid a ground offensive into the sprawling slum. It’s full of snipers and booby-traps that have killed and maimed American troops. U.S. commanders thought the airstrikes would stop insurgents from firing rockets and give soldiers a chance to provide aid to civilians, but all of that air power may have backfired.
PROF. THOMAS KEANEY [Military Analyst, Johns Hopkins University]: Air power, particularly when used against insurgents who have no air force, creates an automatic PR concern. It is creating terror in the middle of the night that they can’t strike back at.
OWENS: So a month after the battle began, the rockets are still flying out of Sadr City and more American missiles are flying in. Ryan Owens, ABC News, Baghdad.
May 1, 2008 World News With Charles Gibson (ABC), 6:30 PM
CHARLES GIBSON: Many of those Iraqi casualties has come as a result of the recent fighting in the enormous Baghdad slum of Sadr City. Five years after mission accomplished, the U.S. is engaged there in intense fighting in dense urban areas to clear out insurgents, but it’s fighting that inevitably puts civilians at high risk. Here’s ABC’s Ryan Owens.
RYAN OWENS: From the air, the U.S. military is targeting insurgents in Sadr City. On the ground it doesn’t always look that way. “They are attacking innocent people,” this man says. “Two rockets fired, four families killed.”
In one attack the U.S. gunships hit their target. This truck, the military says, was carrying an insurgent leader. The shrapnel also hit this child who cried out, “I hope I will not die.”
The U.S. military says it does everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, but in a cramped urban environment like this, that’s not easy. Even the most precise weapons often hit more than their intended target.
This helicopter video illustrates the dilemma. The military says it shows two men loading weapons into a car parked next to a house. The pilot waits until it pulls into the middle of the street before firing.
The battle for Sadr City is being waged largely from the air to avoid a ground offensive into the sprawling slum. It’s full of snipers and booby-traps that have killed and maimed American troops. U.S. commanders thought the airstrikes would stop insurgents from firing rockets and give soldiers a chance to provide aid to civilians, but all of that air power may have backfired.
PROF. THOMAS KEANEY [Military Analyst, Johns Hopkins University]: Air power, particularly when used against insurgents who have no air force, creates an automatic PR concern. It is creating terror in the middle of the night that they can’t strike back at.
OWENS: So a month after the battle began, the rockets are still flying out of Sadr City and more American missiles are flying in. Ryan Owens, ABC News, Baghdad.