FEOS wrote:
AussieReaper wrote:
Macbeth wrote:
Anyway it Pakistan went to the U.N. and asked for international troops to come into Pakistan and help fight the militants would you support sending your countries troops over there?
What about just sending U.S. troops?
Um, hello? It's the US causing most of the problems there to begin with. They are doing nothing but shifting the terrorists further East from Afghanistan and into Pakistan.
Airstrikes on the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan by the US has been going on for months, often causing civilian casualties on Pakistan villages so the Pakistan are wary of any more "help" from the US to begin with.
Really? Lots of civilian casualties? You don't say?
Got much data to support that assertion?
Because I've got
data that says different.
There are gobs of airstrikes going on in both AFG and PAK with little to no civilian casualties and high numbers of Taliban/AQ casualties. You just don't hear news reports about them...for exactly that reason.
Fine, we'll use your source shall we?
Naturally, it is difficult to determine the exact number of civilians killed in Predator strikes for many reasons - including intentional exaggeration by Taliban spokesmen, and vague accounts by Pakistani media sources which frequently report that a certain number of "people" were killed in a strike, but rarely offer a follow-up report identifying which victims were civilians and which were militants. However, it is possible to get a rough estimate of civilian casualties by adding up the number of civilians reported killed from the media accounts of each attack. According to this method, a total of 94 civilians were reported killed as a result of all strikes between 2006 and September 29, 2009.
Well done, your chart only includes "predator strikes" and claims Pakistan media sources are "vague". I'm sure they are less vague to the families of civilians who have been killed. And that the Pakistani's trust their own sources.
Considering that drone strikes have resulted in 979 total casualties during that same time period, our numbers show that only 9.6% of the casualties reported have been identified as civilians. While our number is undoubtedly a low estimate, this extremely small percentage suggests that the accuracy and precision of these strikes have improved along with the increased pace of these strikes over the past few years.
10% civilian casualties. Wow, that is low... wait, that's only the confirmed casualties. And wait, they even say it is an "undoubtedly a low estimate".
Yeah. I'd say that when at least 10% of those killed are civilians, from "Predator strikes" (so called precision strikes) is high enough to call them often.
