Six servicemen, 5 US troops, and 12 Afghan civilians killed, 45 civilians wounded by suicide bomber
The loss of 5 US trooops and a NATO soldier is horrific, particularly when one thinks about why we are there and just what we hope to accomplish. What struck me about this article, however, was the number of civilians killed and wounded and the graphic description of the civilian casualties.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
It is unfortunate the Taliban weaponry does not have the capability of distinguishing between military and civilian personnel. US predator drone attacks, for example, and almost without exception, are reported in this same newspaper as killing only insurgents and terrorists. Our attacks apparently do not scatter "body parts for 200 feet as the wounded, many of them women and children, some without limbs, lay in the road moaning for help." Nor would a predator drone attack leave a woman "dead in her seat, cut in half, with her baby still squirming in her arms."
This bombing was horrific and the casualties, all of them, incredibly sad. Our continued presence in Afghanistan does nothing to alleviate this type of killing, it exacerbates it. And it is beyond distrurbing to have a major US daily report on civilian casualties in all the unavoidably gory detail while accepting without question from US intelligence sources the "fact" that predator drones only kill insurgents.