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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Latest Garlasco update

I'm trying to find time to post on other topics, but this one keeps getting more interesting...

Daled Amos uncovers some stuff that Garlasco has said in the past that seems somewhat, um, inconsistent with his attitude towards Israel:
"I don't think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they're not killing civilians," Garlasco points out.

"If so much care is being taken why are so many civilians getting killed?" Pelley asks.

"Because the Taliban are violating international law,” says Garlasco, “and because the U.S. just doesn't have enough troops on the ground. You have the Taliban shielding in people's homes. And you have this small number of troops on the ground. And sometimes the only thing they can do is drop bombs.”
Daled Amos finds another quote from Garlasco in that same interview concerning his previous life working with the US military:
Garlasco says, before the invasion of Iraq, he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets -- Iraqi officials.

But he says none of the targets on the list were actually killed. Instead, he says, "a couple of hundred civilians at least" were killed.
Let see, that's a ratio of, very roughly, zero percent of the dead that were the intended targets. The worst you can say about the IDF in Gaza is about 45% with equally tough circumstances. (Is this sorry record what makes him a military expert?)

Perhaps we should ask HRW to investigate whether Garlasco should be charged with war crimes.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, The Guardian has picked up on the story, even mentioning little ol' me:
Several of the websites that have been running with the Garlasco story, Human Rights Watch says, are the same websites that have been attacking its reporting of the Gaza war. They include Elder of Ziyon, NGO Monitor and Mere Rhetoric.
Sounds vaguely conspiratorial, no?