Washington, Pentagon. The United States hit a new low point in it’s history, as a leading figure in its military leadership has openly admitted the US knows there will be civilian casualties and its “just a part of life.”
Mattis said that “civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation.”
Civilian casualties are inevitable in the war against the Islamic State group but the United states is doing everything humanly possible to avoid them, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in an interview on American television.
A US-led international coalition has been carrying out air strikes against the IS group in Iraq and Syria since 2014, and nongovernmental organizations say the attacks are claiming ever more civilian lives.
Global NGOs have blamed the rising civilian death toll on a push by President Donald Trump’s administration to accelerate the pace of combat in an effort to “annihilate” the terrorists, with no regard for local populations, the Mattis comments simply bolster the case that America does not care who dies to accomplish its goals globally.
The Pentagon Fuhrer contests both the NGOs’ death counts and the charge that a new sense of urgency under Trump is to blame. “We have not changed the rules of engagement,” Mattis said. “There is no relaxation of our intention to protect the innocent.” But facts don’t lie, Mattis though does.
The coalition has officially acknowledged responsibility for more than 450 civilian deaths since its bombing campaign began in 2014, including 105 in the Iraqi city of Mosul on March 17th alone. All just “a fact of life” according to Mattis own mouth.
Airwars, a London-based collective of journalists and researchers that tracks civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria sees Mattis lies as even bigger than reported here, documenting reports that coalition strikes have killed at least 3,681 people in American led war crimes in Syria, a nation they were not invited into and have no formal declaration of war upon..