Civilian Consequences of Suicide vs. 'Precision' Bombings in Afghanistan
"And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand" -- George Bernard Shaw, Ceasar and Cleopatra
by Marc W. Herold
Departments of Economics and Women's Studies
Whittemore School of Business & Economics
University of New Hampshire
POSTED SEPTEMBER 16, 2006 --
Abstract: While the U.S. military and the mainstream corporate media ceaselessly extol the surgical precision of new bomb technology, they equally condemn the random death and violence resulting from suicide car bombs. I analyze these claims on hand of data from the Afghan war theater and demonstrate that under plausible assumptions exactly the reverse is true: a U.S. precision bomb is far more deadly to Afghan civilians than a Taliban's suicide car bomb when adjustment is made for the differing delivery cost of the two bombs. After all, one of the major justifications for precision weaponry is that the increased costs to develop and produce such weapons is worthwhile as they allegedly save lives of innocents in proximity to the strike target -- greater precision is allegedly being purchased. Such large development and delivery expenses are simply out-of-reach of most. Mike Davis has argued that the car bomb is the poor man's air force.1
This essay forms part of the literature which stresses that the consequences of a technology cannot be divorced from the socio-cultural-economic contexts in which it gets used. No one denies that the technology of precision bombing weaponry is far more precise than the earlier dumb bombs (used for example in the Indochinese wars). The decision by U.S/NATO (and recently Israeli) war planners to bomb (or strafe) in civilian-rich areas renders such precision weapons highly imprecise and moreover contravenes established international codes governing war.
Various mainstream media accounts pegged to the fifth anniversary of the of the 9/11 attacks, have attempted to present summary data on "major" suicide attacks carried out in Afghanistan.2 These compilations are sorely inadequate. A more academic study has been carried out by Hekmat Karzai and Seth Jones (2006) under the auspices of the Rand Corporation and includes a "terrorist incident database."3 The authors document the spiraling number of attempted suicide attacks in Afghanistan:
| 2002 | 1 (attempt failed) |
| 2003 | 2 |
| 2004 | 6 |
| 2005 | 21 |
| (January 1- August 28, 2006) | (43)* |
*derived from a comparison of Karzai & Jones with Reuters (2006)
Of the total 40 suicide (2002-5) attacks 15 occurred in Kandahar, 12 in Kabul, three in Khost, two each in Helmand and Nangarhar, and five in other provinces.4
During the first six months of 2006, the number was 38. A Reuters (2006) compilation for the period January 2005 -- August 28, 2006, reported 64 suicide bombing attacks which killed 181 persons (excluding suicide bombers) and injured 273 persons.5 Every indication is that this number will continue to rise. As I argue in a forthcoming book, suicide bombing and improvised explosive devices represent a very effective least-cost tactic employed by the Taliban and associates.6
Robert Pape (2003) has convincingly documented that "suicide terrorism" has been rising across the world and that it follows a strategic logic. It has risen simply because "it pays."7 The increase in suicide attacks in Afghanistan has been well analyzed by Karzai and Jones (2006).8 These authors mention: Afghan resistance fighters have successfully tapped into existing knowledge developed elsewhere (especially in Iraq); Al Qaeda and the Taliban have concluded that suicide bombing is more effective than other tactics in killing Afghan and foreign occupation forces -- for example, the authors mention data that when resistance fighters attack U.S and other foreign forces directly in Afghanistan, there is only a five percent probability of inflicting casualties (my data indicates an 17 percent chance using suicide bombers); Al Qaeda and the Taliban believe that suicide bombing by increasing the general level of insecurity hampers reconstruction; and lastly, suicide bombing attacks provide high visibility for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which was not the case during the guerilla war combat of 2002-5.
In the following Table 1 I present a disaggregated summary of suicide bombing attacks actually carried out in Afghanistan between the first aborted attempt (on July 19, 2002) and the very large explosion in Kabul on September 8, 2006.
Table 1. Persons Killed in Suicide Car Bomb Attacks carried out in Afghanistan, 2003 -- September 8, 2006
| Date | Location | U.S. military or security personnel | NATO military | NGO staff | Afghan army, police, high gov't official | Afghan civilians | Total number |
| June 7, 2003 | Kabul |
|
4 |
|
|
1 | 5 |
| Dec.29,2003 | Kabul |
|
|
|
5 |
|
5 |
| Jan. 27,2004 | Kabul |
|
1 |
|
|
1 | 2 |
| Jan. 30,2004 | Kabul |
|
2 |
|
|
|
2 |
| August 2004 | Kabul | 10 (DynCorps) |
|
|
|
|
10 |
| Oct. 25,2004 | Kabul |
|
|
|
|
1 | 1 |
| May 7,2005 | Kabul |
|
|
1 |
|
1 | 2 |
| June 1, 2005 | Kandahar |
|
|
|
1 | 18 | 19 |
| June 13,2005 | Kandahar | (4 injured) |
|
|
|
|
(4) |
| Sept. 28,2005 | Kabul |
|
|
|
8 | 1 | 9 |
| Oct. 5, 2005 | Kandahar |
|
|
|
|
1 | 1 |
| Oct. 10,2005 | Kandahar |
|
|
|
1 | 2 | 3 |
| Nov.14,2005 | Kabul |
|
1 |
|
|
|
2 |
| Jan.5,2006 | Uruzgan |
|
|
|
|
10 | 10 |
| Jan.15,2006 | Kandahar |
|
2 |
|
|
|
2 |
| Jan.16,2006 | Kandahar |
|
|
|
4 | 1 | 5 |
| Jan.16,2006 | Spin Boldak |
|
|
|
|
20 | 20 |
| Feb.1,2006 | Khost |
|
|
|
3 |
|
3 |
| Feb.7,2006 | Kandahar |
|
|
|
7 | 6 | 13 |
| March 12,2006 | Kabul |
|
|
|
|
2 | 2 |
| April 7,2006 | Lashkar Gah | (3 DynCorps injured) |
|
|
|
|
(3) |
| April 8,2006 | Herat |
|
|
|
|
3 | 3 |
| April 9,2006 | Barmal |
|
|
|
1 |
|
1 |
| April 14,2006 | Lashkar Gah |
|
(2 injured) |
|
|
(1) | (3 injured) |
| May 2,2006 | No. of Kabul |
|
|
|
|
1 | 1 |
| May 5,2006 | Kabul-Jalalabad |
|
|
|
1 | 2 | 3 |
| May 13,2006 | Herat | 1 (DEA agent) |
|
|
|
|
1 |
| July 17,2006 | Lashkar Gah |
|
|
|
1 | 2 | 3 |
| July 22,2006 | Kandahar |
|
2 |
|
|
|
2 |
| July 22,2006 | Kandahar |
|
|
|
|
5 | 5 |
| Aug.3, 2006 | Panjwayi |
|
|
|
|
21 | 21 |
| Aug.11,2006 | Spin Boldak |
|
1 |
|
|
|
1 |
| Aug.18,2006 | Spin Boldak |
|
1 |
|
|
|
1 |
| Aug.22,2006 | Kandahar |
|
1 |
|
|
1 | 2 |
| Aug.28, 2006 | Lashkar Gah |
|
|
|
1 | 16 | 17 |
| Aug.29,2006 | Kandahar |
|
|
|
|
1 | 1 |
| Sept.4,2006 | Kabul |
|
1 |
|
|
4 | 5 |
| Sept.6,2006 |
Yaqoobi, Khost |
|
|
|
|
2 | 2 |
| Sept.8, 2006 | Kabul | 2 + 5 = 7 |
|
|
|
9 | 16 |
| Sept.10,2006 | Gardez |
|
|
|
2 | 1 | 3 |
| Sept.11,2006 | Tani,Khost |
|
|
|
(5) | (1) | (6)* |
| Sub-totals | - | 18 | 16 | 1 | 35 | 133 | 203 |
* Suicide attack at governor's funeral, but Taliban disavow and condemn attack saying it was against their policy "to bomb public and especially religious gatherings."
The admittedly incomplete data set indicates that Afghan civilian casualties account for some 65 percent of suicide car bomb attack victims (contrary to numbers - 84 percent - bandied-about by the occupation forces9). U.S/NATO military personnel accounted for about 17 percent of the car bomb deaths. The relative accuracy of the car bomb is further enhanced insofar as many of the reported car bomb attacks succeeded in injuring members of the U.S./NATO forces. Sometimes, the target of the suicide attackers is a high-profile Afghan foe as in the March 12, 2006, suicide attack in Kabul which killed two civilians but succeeded in wounding the target, former Afghan president Sibghatullah Mujaddedi.
Suicide car bomb attacks are typically carried out in civilian-rich areas (as the Table 1 above indicates) and, as such inflict death and injury upon innocent bystanders. In order to make a comparison with civilian casualties caused by U.S. so-called "precision bombing," one must choose U.S./NATO bombing attacks carried out in a comparable universe, namely civilian-rich areas.
Civilian Consequences of Suicide and 'Precision' Bombing:
Top photo: Suicide bombing in Lashkar Gah's market area on August 28, 2006, kills 15 civilians as well as the target, a former provincial police chief (owner of the market) and his son. The former police chief had served under the pro-communist regime in the 1980s.
Lower photo: 'Precision' bombing of the village of Damadola on the night(s) of January 12/13, 2006, kills 18 civilians and no Al Qaeda operatives, alleged targets of the aerial attack.
I have chosen the relatively cheap GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided 500-pound bomb as the comparator with a car bomb. The GBU-12 is delivered by a variety of aircraft, including the F-16 fighter-bomber which has seen extensive duty in Afghanistan.10 The bomb has a reported lethal radius of some 750 feet which in civilian-rich areas is very large. The laser-guided bomb costs $19,000 (1995) to make.11 The per-hour cost of flying for an F-16 is estimated at $5,000.12 Assuming a bombing mission takes three hours, the delivery cost is $15,000. The total cost of delivering a GBU-12 bomb is hence $34,000. A used 1992 Toyota Corolla van in Kabul -- the Toyota Corolla is the suicide car bomber's favored vehicle - with 100,000 miles on it, sells for about $3,000 on the market.13 Assuming a suicide bomber purchases a vehicle for $1,500, and that his expenses amount to $150 (the explosives are deemed free as they come from Russian or other munitions in ample supply strewn across Afghanistan). Hence, the delivery cost of the suicide bomb is conservatively estimated to be $1,650, a figure which would be considerably lower if adjusted for purchasing power parity.
The stated rationale for "precision weapons" is to spend money on their development and production to reduce "collateral damage." To deliver a GBU-12 laser-guided bomb carried by an F-16 "costs" some $34,000, as compared to the suicide bomb's $1,650. In other words, alleged greater accuracy is purchased by greater expenditures. How much greater accuracy?
A plausible assumption would be to assume a positive linear relationship between bomb accuracy and cost. Since the GBU-12 bomb costs 21 times more to deliver than the suicide bomb, we expect it to be 21 times more accurate.
Table 1 above indicates that 65 percent of suicide bomb victims are Afghan civilians, that is, to kill 10 U.S./NATO occupation troops, 18.6 Afghan civilians will perish. If the precision bomb is 21 times more accurate, then to kill 10 Taliban would result in less than one civilian death (more precisely .89 = 18.6/21).
The following Table 2 examines the number of expected civilian deaths caused by the dropping of different kinds of American-made "precision" bombs and with two different estimates of civilians killed in car suicide bombings (e.g., 50 percent, 65 percent and 84 percent). The two bombs are the GBU-12 (see above) and the larger GBU-10 and GBU-16 laser-guided bombs which both cost $25,000 (1995) to produce. I employ both my estimate (derived from Table 1) of the percent of civilians killed in a suicide car bomb attacks (65 percent) and that postulated (with no evidence presented by the U.S. military) namely 84 percent. Again, I assume a linear relationship between bomb cost and bomb precision, e.g., a GBU-10/GBU-16 bomb costs $25,000 whereas a Taliban suicide attack with a Toyota Corolla costs $1,650, hence the expected precision of the GBU-10 should be 24 times greater than that of the car suicide bomb.
Table 2. Expected Civilian Deaths per 10 Taliban Killed by 'Precision" Bombs Dropped by an F-16
| Bomb type = | GBU-16 (cost of $19,000) | GBU-10 or GBU-16 (cost of $25,000) |
| Assuming 50% civilian deaths in suicide attack | .48 | .42 |
| Assuming 65% civilian deaths in suicide attack | .89 | .78 |
| Assuming 84% civilian deaths in suicide attack | 2.50 | 2.18 |
The cost per flying hour of the F-16 is $5,000 while that of the land-based F-15C/D is estimated at $6,000, which would make the numbers above even smaller.14 Were the GPS-guided bombs chosen instead of the laser-guided bombs, the bomb delivery cost would be only slightly less. e.g., a JDAM kit to convert a free-fall "dumb" bomb costs some $18-20,000.15
In other words, the expected innocent civilian death varies from less than a single civilian to two-and-a-half. Empirical evidence from the ground in Afghanistan reveals that many more civilians die than Taliban when a "precision" bomb is dropped in a civilian-rich area.
Ample evidence exists – see my various data bases on U.S/NATO bombing attacks16 - which indicates that when high-explosive "precision" bombs are dropped in civilian-rich areas, many civilians are killed or injured. In the recent NATO assault upon the Panjwayi district southwest of Kandahar, locals reported that for every Taliban killed, three Afghan civilians perished.17 On Sunday, September 3, 2006, a jet fighter bombed three compounds in Ghaljain, a tiny cluster of mud-walled compounds near the village of Zangabad, killing 7 Taliban fighters but also killing en elderly man plus 13 women and children.18 Similar reports abound describing bombing in Helmand during the past months which killed relatively few Taliban but plenty of civilians. An attack in July 2006 upon a string of villages north of Tarin Kot in Uruzgan reportedly killed at least 10 civilians but only 4-5 Taliban. The following two cases illustrate the frequent effects of ‘precision' bombing.
Case 1. F-16's dropping GBU-12 ‘precision' bombs19
In the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, February 11, 2003 a U.S. Special Forces convoy making its way up an isolated valley near the village of Baghran was hit with machine-gun and rifle fire from five persons located on two ridges above the valley.20 U.S. Colonel King said close air support was called-in and Dutch and Norwegian F-16s dropped five GBU-12 500-pound laser-guided bombs [made by Lockheed Martin] and more than 100 rounds of 20mm ammunition was fired upon 'targets.'21
On Tuesday, 25 fighters armed with RPG-7s and AK-47s were spotted by U.S. forces. As is customary, the Special Forces called-in air support and four days of intermittent U.S., Danish and Norwegian bombing followed, as well as searches of small villages. On Tuesday, B-1s and B-52s dropped nearly 20 2,000 pound bombs and Danish F-16s dropped 500 pound GBU-12 bombs on the area around Baghran village. Planes bombed on Tuesday for eight hours.22 Less than 48 hours after the initial skirmish, two reporters who have excelled in independent reporting from Afghanistan - Carlotta Gall of the New York Times and Rory McCarthy of The Guardian - filed stories citing Afghan officials in the Baghran area who said at least 17 civilians had been killed in the U.S., Danish and Norwegian onslaught.23
An aide to the governor of Helmand province said villagers had come to the provincial authorities to complain about the civilian deaths which included women and children. Reuters quoted a local witness as saying that he had seen women and children killed by the bombing lying in a riverbed.24 A report on the 13th said that as many as 30 Afghan villagers may have been killed and scores injured in the intense U.S. and allied bombing.25 A BBC correspondent in Kandahar spoke to eyewitnesses who said 13 people had been killed after U.S. bombing targeted a civilian area, not caves, in the Baghran valley.26
On Wednesday, a B-52 dropped another 2,000 pound JDAM bomb and an AC-130 gunship fired 10 105mm cannon rounds into the ridges and caves allegedly.27 A villager from Shina Keli said that he had seen bodies of eight people, all members of one family, who he said had died in Wednesday's air attack carried out by a B-52 bomber and an AC-130 gunship.28 Village elders reported that three villages had been - Lejay, Robatak and Shina Keli.
Colonel King, on the other hand, affirmed that the U.S. bombing had not killed noncombatants.29 The Karzai puppet regime was informed on Tuesday by the Helmand authorities of the bombing. Its response was that it preferred if no bombing took place during the three-day Islamic holiday which began on Tuesday.30
Case 2. Targeting senior Al Qaeda leaders in the Bajaur Agency, Pakistan
In Memory of Hussain Nawaz, boy, 5; Nadia (Mehda) Bibi, girl, 9; Sadiqa Bibi, girl, 10; Tayyeb, boy, 9; Zahid Ullah, 7; Amer Muhammad, 20; Nazir Muhammad, 25; Noor Pari, 50;Shahi Baden Bibi, 40; Tahira Bibi, 30; Qari Saeed Ullah, 30; Bakhtpoor Khan, father and family elder; Mohammad Noor's two sons; four other un-named civilians.
Killed at ~ 3 AM, January 12/13, 2006 in the ethnic Pashtun hamlet of Damadola Burkanday inhabited by the Mamond tribe, in the Bajaur Agency of Pakistan's Federally Administered Territories. Bajaur has a history of strong jihadi sentiments. U.S. aircraft (possibly Predator drones which carry four Hellfire AGM-114 missiles made by Boeing) flew in from Kunar Province and fired at least four missiles at homes in the hillside hamlet located ~7 kms inside Pakistan.
The U.S. "precision" onslaught killed 13-20 civilians, injured another five-six, destroyed the homes of Bacha (Badshah) Khan, Bakhtpoor Khan, and Mohammad Sadiq (who survived the assault and is the younger brother of Bakhtpoor Khan), all jewelers with shops in the nearby town of Inayat Qala, and killed some two dozen cattle. Thirteen members of one family that of Bakhtpoor Khan, a laborer, were killed. Bacha Khan, a flour mill worker whose home was destroyed, said: "we don't have anything to do with al-Qaeda and it was a cruel act of the Americans to attack my house without reason."
The known dead include four women, eight children and six men, all victims of another night-time "precision" air strike. Information provided by the independent journalists Behroz Khan (The News) and Anwarullah Khan (Dawn). A resident, Waheed Gul, said the three destroyed homes were owned by a jeweler Abdul Ghafoor, whose nephew's children and female relatives were killed. Another survivor, Shah Zaman, a jeweler, lost two sons and a daughter in the U.S. attack. He escaped death by running towards a nearby mountain with his wife. Sami Ullah, 17, a student lost his parents (including his father, Bakhtpoor), four brothers, three sisters-in-law, three sisters, and five nephews. Mohammad Noor lost two sons.
Characteristically, the United States corporate media led by CNN blathered on about this alleged CIA-strike being aimed at Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri said to be an Eid "dinner guest" in one of the destroyed homes. In typical fashion, no sources are named for such (dis)information. The dinner event seems to be a story made up after the deadly opportunistic U.S. attack.
Would Mr. Zawahiri really risk going to attend such a festivity in a region heavily patrolled by U.S. aerial craft? U.S intelligence must think that both Bin Laden and Zawahiri have nothing better to do than "attend dinner parties". For days no mention was made in the U.S. corporate press about innocent villagers being killed. The photo (by Mohammad Zubair, AP) shows a Pakistani doctor fixing a tube of Shabana Gul, five, injured in Damadola, at a local hospital in Khar, Bajaur Agency.
Shabana is just another faceless and nameless victim of the U.S. "precision" air war, an unworthy person in the mainstream U.S. media, the C.I.A.'s Global Response Center on the sixth floor of C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and for the U.S. military's targeting personnel at CENTCOM in Tampa, Florida. The U.S. corporate press continues to proclaim that three-four "top Al Qaeda leaders" were killed in the deadly attack. No evidence whatsoever is presented and vague references abound to "un-named sources." The corporate press triumphantly proclaimed that nonetheless a major Al-Qaeda figure in Pakistan, Abu Marwan al-Suri, wanted by the U.S., had been killed in the Damadola strike. Three months later, on April 20, 2006, the mainstream press reports that the same Abu Marwan al-Suri is killed (again) in the Bajaur region.
As Derrick Z. Jackson comments in the Boston Globe, "...The incident remains bloody proof that we are repeating the Vietnam mistake of destroying villages to save them. If the correct reports hold up, we still killed three times more civilians than terrorists in the attack, a ratio we would not accept from our local police, no matter how desperate we are to curb youth violence or organized crime" (in his "Making Enemies in Pakistan).
The conclusion is obvious: the U.S. cares not for Pashtun lives; they are unworthy bodies (a point elaborated upon in my essay, "What is the Value of a Dead Afghan?"). Such intended U.S. extrajudicial killings are strictly prohibited under international human rights law according to Amnesty International. Anyone accused of an offence, however serious, has the right to be presumed innocent unless proven guilty and to have their guilt or innocence established in a regular court of law in a fair trial. The media and political responses to this barbaric attack are analyzed in Rev. William E. Alberts, "Another Sign of America's Moral Decay. Remembering Damadola," Counterpunch, March 4/5, 2006).
Source: Afghan Victim Memorial Project
As I have documented elsewhere, a rising relative share of precision bombs in total tonnage dropped is correlated with higher rates of civilians killed per ten thousand tons of bombs dropped.31 I do not deny that when U.S/NATO war planes bomb more isolated Taliban or associates' camps, civilian deaths are non-existent, but such a comparison is inappropriate insofar as one must compare similar universes (namely, civilian-rich areas).
The conclusion is inescapable. When using delivery adjusted cost data as a proxy for accuracy, U.S/NATO "precision" bombing slaughters many more innocent Afghan civilians than does a Taliban suicide car bomber.32
My data in the Afghan Victim Memorial Project indicates that to-date during 2006, U.S and NATO attacks killed at least 350 innocent civilians. What NATO's spokesman U.S. Army Major Luke Knittig (commenting on the alleged 173 people killed during 2006 by suicide bombings) told assembled mainstream reporters in Kabul on September 12, 2006, needs to be corrected (from his words in parentheses) to
such blatant disregard for human life and potential undertaken by NATO/U.S (insurgents) who callously ask to be called peacekeepers (mujahedeen) cannot be more clear.33
The "poor man's air force" turns out to be much less deadly to innocents than the rich man's one.
-- 30 --
Footnotes
1. Mike Davis, "The Poor Man’s Air Force: A History of the Car Bomb (Part 1)," TomDispatch.com, April 12, 2006.
2. As by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "Afghanistan: A Chronology of Suicide Attacks Since 2001,", January 17, 2006, and Associated Press, "List of Major Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan," September 8, 2006.
3. Hekmat Karzai and Seth G. Jones, "How to Curb Rising Suicide Terrorism in Afghanistan," Rand.org July 18, 2006.
4. Hekmat Karzai, "Afghanistan and the Logic of Suicide Terrorism," IDSS Commentaries (Singapore) March 27, 2006.
5. "FACTBOX – Key Facts about Suicide Bombings in Afghanistan," Reuters (07:30 GMT, August 29, 2006).
6. In Afghanistan como un Espaco Vacio (Madrid: Ediciones AKAL, forthcoming 2007). See also Scott Baldauf, "Taliban Turn to Suicide Attacks," Christian Science Monitor (February 3, 2006), which also discusses how the Taliban perceive suicide bombing fitting within Islam.
7. Robert A. Pape, "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," American Political Science Review 97 (2003): 343-361. See also Dying to Win, and Carl Robichaud, "The Proliferation of Suicide Bombings," The Century Foundation (June 10, 2005).
8. Karzai and Jones, op. cit.
9. And uncritically parroted in the mainstream press as in "Afghanistan Suicide Bombings Take Mostly Civilian Toll," Lincoln Tribune (September 3, 2006), which cites this. A recent NATO count reports that during 2006, some 173 people died in Afghanistan from suicide bombings (151 of whom were Afghan civilians), though again no disaggregated data is presented (see "NATO: Afghan Suicide Bombings Killed 173," Associated Press (September 12, 2006). My data in Table 1 shows that there were 143 deaths from suicide bombings to-date in 2006 and 36 U.S, NATO and Afghan authority deaths, giving a ratio of 75 percent civilian deaths.
10. The F-16 "Fighting Falcon" began flying over Afghanistan from fixed locations (non carrier-based) on October 22, 2001. The four Canadians killed in 2002 outside Kandahar in a friendly-fire incident met their death from a GBU-12 laser-guided bomb dropped by an F-16. The attack in Iraq upon Aub Musab al-Zarqawi was carried out by two F-16’s with two 500-pound, GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. See also here.
11. As compared to $25,000 for the GBU-10 (2,000 lb) and the GBU-16 (1,000 pound) bombs (1995). Cost data from U.S. General Accounting Office, Weapons Acquisition. Precision Guided Munitions in Inventory, Production, and Development (Washington D.C.: U.S. G.A.O. National Security and International Affairs Division, B-260458, June 23, 1995), p. 12, here.
12. Harold Kennedy, "Simulation Reshaping Military Training. Technology Jumping from Teenagers' Computers to Pilots' Cockpits," National Defense Magazine (India) (November 1999).
13. "Kabul Taxi Drivers Favor Used Japanese Cars," Kyodo News (December 4, 2001).
14. Data of the CPFL for the F-15C/D is drawn from Capt. Kevin P. Dawson (USAF) and Capt. Jeremy A. Howe (USAF), "Analyzing Air Force Flying-Hour Costs," Air Force Journal of Logistics 30, 2 (Summer 2006): 22-27
15. "GBU-29/30/31/32 JDAM. Joint Direct Attack Munitions," F-16.net.
16. Here, especially data on individual incidents in the Afghan Victim Memorial Project.
17. See "NATO Says Offensive is Cornering Taliban," Reuters (04.51 AM ET September 5, 2006).
18. Graeme Smith, “Civilian Deaths Reported in Operation Medusa,” Globe & Mail (September 8, 2006)
19. From my essay, "Et Plus Ca Change...Patterns of Death and Deceit in Afghanistan," Cursor.org (March 10, 2003).
20. "Coalition Warplanes Bomb Afghan Caves After Ambush," Sydney Morning Herald [February 12, 2003] citing a report by Agence France-Presse
21. "U.S. Bombers Pound Taliban Targets," Reuters [February 12, 2003 at 4:39 EST]
22. Carlotta Gall, "U.S. Bombs Kill at Least 17 Civilians, Afghans Say," New York Times [February 13, 2003]
23. Gall, op. cit., and Rory McCarthy, "17 Afghan Villagers 'Killed in American Bombing Raids'," The Guardian (February 13, 2003)
24. Gall, op. cit.
25. "Up to 30 Afghans Killed by Allied Bombing," The Guardian (February 12, 2003)
26. "U.S. Denies Afghan Civilian Deaths," BBC News [(February 13, 2003 at 12:55 GMT)
27. "Todd Pitman, "U.S. Forces Bomb Afghan Caves," Associated Press (February 13, 2003 at 3:27 AM PST)
28. Mirwais Afghan, "Afghans Say More Civilians Die in U.S.-led Raids," Reuters (February 13, 2003 at 11:43 AM ET)
29. "L'armee americaine dement toute perte civile en Afghanistan," Agence France-Presse (February 13, 2003 at 11:04)
30. McCarthy, op.cit.
31. As for example in my "Urban Dimensions of the Punishment of Afghanistan by US Bombs," in Stephen Graham (ed), Cities, War, and Terrorism. Towards an Urban Geopolitics (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), Table 17.2 on p. 316.
32. Iraq Body Count reported a similar finding, namely that for the period March 20, 2003 – March 19, 2005, civilians killed per incident by aircraft attacks numbered 13.5 whereas those from suicide vehicle attacks were 10.9 (from A Dossier of Civilian Casualties 2003-2005). The recent Israeli bombing in Lebanon where F-16s dropped "precision" weapons in civilian-rich areas provides yet another example of where the civilian casualties far out-numbered military (Hezbollah) casualties, e.g., the ratio was about 10 to one or two.
33. "NATO: Afghan Suicide Bombings Killed 173," op. cit.
