In my diary yesterday, I made note of the fact that the Air Force has discovered a new native weapon in Iraq, the "house-borne" improvised explosive device. However, although targeting these with five hundred pound bombs dropped from aloft seems to be the preferred response, I wondered how people on the ground would be able to assess the difference between the damage caused by the "house-borne" IED and the GBU-38. That question still lingers, even as the house-borne devices have now made the front page of the Boston Globe. Here, too, the story is short on evidence and, predictably, fails to make the point that if the American troops weren't behaving like the British before the American Revolution and, instead, respected the sanctity of Iraqi homes, they wouldn't be setting off booby traps.
I say this omission is predictable, since the coverage of roadside IEDs never made the point either that they would not be set off if the troops and their vehicles weren't going into places where they are not welcome by the locals.
It's perhaps telling that about the time the increasing sophistication of these IEDs hits the front page, Salon runs a lenghthy story about the place where the Air Force tracks who and what is to be dispatched.
Killing "Bubba" from the skies
Inside a secret high-tech control center the U.S. Air Force targets enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But can they bomb them legally, and without killing innocents? A Salon exclusive.
By Mark Benjamin
Feb. 15, 2008 | UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, THE MIDDLE EAST -- The cavernous control room used by the U.S. Air Force to manage the air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan looks exactly how you'd expect it to look in a Hollywood movie. The lights are low. Around 50 camouflage-clad men and women lean forward in their chairs, staring intently at rows of computer screens glowing with multicolored graphs and fluctuating displays. They sometimes glance up from the banks of computer monitors to gaze at a sweeping panel of large television screens mounted on the front wall. Two massive, side-by-side screens in the center display digital maps of Iraq and Afghanistan. Swarms of U.S. aircraft above the war zones are represented by green labels that move about each map, gravitating toward wherever U.S. troops are fighting on the ground, in case they need backup.
Since this report is actually almost a repeat of one Charles J. Hanley wrote almost a year ago for the Associated Press, which, also predictably, sank like a stone in the whirlpool of more important information, I am going to assume that the reason reporters keep being invited into the inner sanctum of electronically delivered murder is because somebody is seriously concerned about the moral implications of their craft.
Targeters here show me recent footage of two men on the ground in Iraq. The two men, far below the Predator drone's gaze, appear to be setting up a mortar on a city street. They are in the shadow of a building just feet away. Suddenly, the two men explode. Everything around the men, including the buildings, looks unharmed. But when the dust clears, the two men are wiped away. A small bomb, tailor-made for hunting single individuals, has done the job.
An Air Force colonel describes these operations to me as "getting Bubba." This has become a key component of the air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the Air Force has developed it into a science. Air Force officials say the operations are highly effective in targeting enemies of the United States, while minimizing civilian casualties in the war zones. But some experts on international law note that the U.S. has flown into legally murky territory, akin to the Israelis' controversial practice of "targeted killings" in battling Islamic militants.
It strikes me that it takes a considerable suspension of reality to convince oneself that in a foreign country, under military occupation, there is a way to actually distinguish between a civilian and an enemy of the United States. So, perhaps the point of these revelations is to gain reassurance that they are, in fact, doing right.
From this dusty air base in the Persian Gulf region, rarely visited by nonmilitary personnel, the Air Force quietly manages nearly 2,000 sorties a day above perhaps the most complicated battle spaces in the history of warfare. The logistics alone are dizzying: The Air Force hauls 3.7 million pounds of fuel above Iraq and Afghanistan daily to refuel aircraft in flight.
When it comes to dropping bombs, most of the airstrikes carried out by the Air Force are executed to support troops on the ground pinned down in a firefight, called "troops in contact." Other branches of the U.S. military regularly conduct airstrikes; the Army and Marines have hundreds of attack helicopters working in the war zones, supporting U.S. ground troops much more often than does the Air Force. But the Air Force has also enthusiastically embraced what is called the Intelligence Surveillance, Reconnaissance part of its mission. In Iraq and Afghanistan, this means using advanced technology to locate individual people, and then tracking them using the cameras on the Predator drones and other aircraft. These operations can go on for long periods of time. The Air Force recently watched one man in Iraq for more than five weeks, carefully recording his habits -- where he lives, works and worships, and whom he meets.
Occasionally, it seems, reality pricks the conscience and it becomes necessary to make a finer distinction and admit that only "innocent civilians" can count on not being killed with the speed of a mouse click.
The technology the Air Force relies on to kill Bubba, but not his neighbors, is mesmerizing. It also makes the process of killing another human being eerily impersonal.
On the floor, once Bubba is up on the screen, targeting officials can quickly call up satellite images of his location. They have at their fingertips high-fidelity images less than 90 days old of nearly every square foot of Iraq and Afghanistan -- a vast amount of data. By overlaying two images of the same location taken from separate angles, and donning a pair of gray 3-D glasses (I wore a pair), a stunning real-life-looking, 3-D image of Bubba's house appears on a computer screen: There is Bubba's yard, the tree in Bubba's yard and so on. Using a mouse to point and click, a computer quickly determines the size, height and precise location of nearby structures.
The Air Force uses the live images from the Predator drones to try to see if any innocent civilians are near a target. The 3-D satellite images are used to help identify and measure the precise distance to other nearby "collateral concerns" -- close-by buildings or any other thing they don't want to damage in an airstrike.
Clearly, the principle that everyone's innocent until proven guilty in a court of law has fallen by the wayside. But, as was the case in the torture issue, everything's backed up by legal memos and the President accepts responsibility.
While the Air Force handles that whole process, Army or Marine commanders on the ground always make the final decision on whether to drop a bomb. But the Air Force knows whom to look for. The Bush administration -- the president himself and the secretary of defense -- have established broad categories of people who can be targeted, according to Air Force officials. Using those parameters, the commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan literally draw up a list of names. Lawyers, like Carranza, and intelligence specialists review the intelligence behind each name on that list.
That review is important under international law. The Law of Armed Conflict, a web of international treaties including the Geneva Conventions, prohibits the intentional killing of civilians unless they are taking a "direct part in hostilities." This gets very complicated when fighting an insurgency.
"A problem is that Bubba is not a member of an army that is a party in a conflict," explains Gary Solis, a former Marine prosecutor at Georgetown University Law School. Solis says there is disagreement among experts about whether, for example, a terrorist is taking a "direct part in hostilities" when he is out walking his dog. "There is definitely an interpretational issue here," Solis says. "We are pressing the envelope in the law of armed conflict when we do this. I think some of the international community would say this is unlawful."
Never mind that there is no "armed conflict"--hasn't been since the Iraqi military was disbanded. That this whole endeavor is grossly immoral seems not to have occurred to anyone--other than the troops who are destroying themselves because they can't stand the guilt.
All of the technological and tactical advances during the Iraq war have meant that commanders have had to make those choices more often. "Prior to this, we never did targeting of individuals," says Crowder. "Full-motion video is in such high demand now," he says. "I can follow a guy back to his house and then take out the entire house of IED makers," he says, referring to insurgents using roadside bombs.
One has to wonder if what we've got here isn't a force looking for a mission. Because there are no aerial competitors to test their mettle, our intrepid airmen are adjusting by contesting with individual people and structures on the ground. Not only is this a poor use of the resources we, the taxpayers provide, but one suspects that, in addition to wearing out the hardware, it's destroying the souls of our troops.
Lt. Col. Bill Pinter, who does strategic planning here, says nobody expects the mission to end anytime soon. "They don't have an Iraqi Air Force," he tells me, referring to the Iraqi government's nascent efforts to establish some sort of air power. "The Air Force will be the last ones to go out the door."
I don't doubt that the Air Force is wishing to be in Iraq a long time. After all, that was the plan when the fourteen long-term bases were originally planned and bases here at home were slated to be closed down (see Luke Airbase in Arizona). And, while I have some sympathy for the fact that the flyboys, lacking someone to contest with up in the stratosphere, are plying their trade closer to the ground, it's my sincere hope that the Air Force will be the first to depart Iraq, not the last.
However they may think of themselves, as supporters of Iraqi freedom or warfighters supreme, the fact is that everyone of the U.S. Air Force bases in Iraq is like that splinter in your thumb that festers with puss until you pull it out.