4 ms·
The point is that if there was also a category released to the general public called "groundstrikes" (or better yet "everything but airstrikes") and the Army wa
by jessriedel 10y ago
The point is that if there was also a category released to the general public called "groundstrikes" (or better yet "everything but airstrikes") and the Army was not including attack helicopter mission in that either, then there would be a clear intent to decieve. Likewise if these missions were not contributing to public tallies like "total casualties". But so long as it's public knowledge that the Army has large categories of missions that are not included in these public reports, this is plausibly just a definitional confusion, and so it's not very damning.
- strainer 10y agoThey already stated 'unequivocally' there is no intent to deceive --its just a complete accident then that it takes a lone journalists inquiries to clarify that for over a decade the officially quoted figures of military strikes have been misunderstood. Its not really about damning the military, they do what they are ordered to do - its about realistic accounting of what they have been ordered to do. *and of course, not being able to trust what we are told about what they are doing