In some respects Lt. Calley is more forgivable.

The 1000Kg JDAM has a kill radius of some 500+ meters. You probably live in suburbs, but most of the world lives in dense cities, like Baghdad, or New York. Even hitting the correct building with 1000Kg of hi explosives subjects those living in adjacent buildings to the carnage.

In 1940, the Germans carpet bomed London and killed civilians at the rate of 365/day in a campaign of terror — Shock & Awe killed civilians at 385/day with precision munitions.

” there is certainly nothing out there to substantiate your ridiculous claim.” Except the story to which we are commenting.

1/8Kg would be better.

Much more descretion would be best.

imran: We wrecked our own economy just fine without any help from the Pakistanis…

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=21440

I found two sources to some what support the above story. Haven’t heard of “Pakistan Defence” forum before so cant say much about its credibility. But The News is a very prestigious Pakistan based English newspaper, and I cant deny what it reports that easily. Both the above links state that the US Drone accuracy has been less than 6%. Not 2% as stated above, but still, 6% is also very low. Lets assume for argument’s sake that this source is very much biased too, but even if it is, i cant see how the accuracy of Drone attacks can still be more than, say 15% as an estimate. Which again is too low. Its not really working out too well is it?

And about this entire Afghan-America war, lets just look at the history and then look at the odds. Afghanistan was founded in 1747, and we know The East India company backed by the British Empire took over much off the India and neighboring countries. British Empire was the super power of that time, just like America is now. Very strong, and virtually unbeatable. East India company also had state of the art artillery at the time, very much powerful compared to the Afghan artillery. Through out the Company Raj, the British Empire made several attempts to take over Afghanistan. They made continues effort between 18th and 19th century, and failed each time. Finally, the only way they they found to restore peace in the area was to sign a treaty with the Afghans, which they did.
Compare this to the current situation. USA has much better weaponry than the British Empire had at the time, but so does Afghans. USA has been trying to gain complete control of Afghanistan for years now, and its still trying. Afghans are a weird nation. they just don’t stop. They are persistent, i have to give them that. And they are guerrilla fighters, and guerrilla fighters can never be defeated by air strikes. You need to get down in the mountains to take them out, but even Russia couldn’t get out of their complex terrain once it decided to enter it, its a maze of mountain ranges. They know it best, no one else outside does. The only prediction i can personally make about this whole thing is, its going to end just like it ended with the British Empire. We might, hopefully soon, see USA and Talibans sign a treaty of peace and go their own ways, cause no one has ever defeated Afghanis before no matter how strong. America seems no exception by the way things are going.

Learned this the hard way in the counterinsurgency business on two continents.

(1) About 50 years ago the great cartoonist & Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Mauldin(creator of “Willie and Joe” — WWII GI’s)published an editorial cartoon. The cartoon showed a young jet jockey sitting dejectedly beneath his jet aircraft holding a newspaper with a headline reading ” Missles Make Manned Aircraft Obsolete”. Standing next to the pilot was a dog-face GI looking sympathetically at the pilot and sayiny “That’s OK kid, I’ve been obsolete for 40 years now!”

2) The late LCOL John Paul Vann, before he had his troubles, actually gave briefings on a successful strategy in Viet Nam, which was depicted in dramatic fashion in an old TV movie made from Neil Sheehan’s book about Vann — “A Bright, Shining Lie”. In the briefing when Vann would discuss prevailing in counterinsurgency warfare he would say when fighting your enemy use this — and hold up a bayonet — not this — and then show a slide of a flight of B-52’s dropping iron bombs (although, truth be told, the latter were effective against massed formations of NVA infantry).