{"id":48626,"date":"2015-10-10T05:36:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T12:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=48626"},"modified":"2015-10-10T05:37:53","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T12:37:53","slug":"a-short-history-of-u-s-bombing-of-civilian-facilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/10\/10\/a-short-history-of-u-s-bombing-of-civilian-facilities\/","title":{"rendered":"A Short History of U.S. Bombing of Civilian Facilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jon Schwarz \u00a0Courtesy\u00a0Information Clearing House<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/b><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

October 08, 2015 ”<\/p>\n

Information Clearing House<\/a>” – “The Intercept<\/span><\/a>” –\u00a0\u00a0 On October 3, a U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a hospital run by M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res in Kunduz, Afghanistan, partially destroying it. Twelve staff members and 10\u00a0patients, including three children, were killed, and 37 people were injured. According to MSF, the U.S. had previously been informed of the hospital\u2019s precise location, and the attack continued for 30\u00a0minutes after staff members desperately called the U.S. military.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. first claimed<\/a> the hospital had been collateral damage\u201d in an airstrike aimed at individuals\u201d elsewhere who were threatening the force.\u201d Since then, various vague and contradictory explanations have been offered by the U.S. and Afghan governments, both of which promise to investigate the bombing. MSF has called the attack a war crime and demanded an independent investigation by a commission set up under the Geneva Conventions.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the international outcry has been significant, history suggests this is less because of what happened and more because of whom it happened to. The U.S. has repeatedly attacked civilian facilities in the past but the targets have generally not been affiliated with a European, Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian organization such as MSF.<\/span><\/p>\n

Below is a sampling of such incidents since the 1991 Gulf War. If you believe some significant examples are missing, please send them our way<\/a>. To be clear, we\u2019re looking for U.S. attacks on specifically civilian facilities, such as hospitals or schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Matt_Bors-1\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Illustration: Matt Bors<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Infant Formula Production Plant, Abu Ghraib, Iraq (January 21, 1991)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

On the seventh day of Operation Desert Storm, aimed at evicting Iraq military forces from Kuwait, the U.S.-led coalition bombed the Infant Formula Production Plant in the Abu Ghraib suburb of Baghdad. Iraq declared that the factory was exactly what its name said, but the administration of President George H.W. Bush claimed<\/a> it was a production facility for biological weapons.\u201d\u00a0Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chimed in<\/a> to say, It is not an infant formula factory. It was a biological weapons facility \u2014 of that we are sure.\u201d The U.S. media chortled about Iraq\u2019s clumsy, transparent propaganda, and CNN\u2019s\u00a0Peter Arnett was attacked by U.S. politicians for touring the damaged factory and reporting that whatever else it did, it did produce infant formula.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Iraq was telling the truth. When Saddam Hussein\u2019s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected to Jordan in 1995, he had every incentive to undermine Saddam, since he hoped the U.S. would help install him as his father-in-law\u2019s successor \u2014 but he told CNN there is nothing military about that place. \u2026 It only produced baby milk.\u201d The CIA\u2019s own investigation later concluded<\/a> the site had been bombed in the mistaken belief that it was a key BW [Biological Weapon] facility.\u201d The original U.S. claims\u00a0have nevertheless proven impossible to stamp out. The George W. Bush administration, making the case for invading Iraq in 2003, portrayed the factory as a symbol of Iraqi deceit. When the Newseum opened in 2008, it included Arnett\u2019s 1991 reporting in a section devoted to \u2014 in the New York Times<\/i>\u2019 description<\/a> \u2014 examples of distortions that mar the profession.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Air Raid Shelter, Amiriyah, Iraq (February 13, 1991)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. purposefully targeted an air raid shelter near the Baghdad airport with two 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs, which punched through 10\u00a0feet of concrete and killed at least 408 Iraqi civilians. A BBC journalist reported<\/a> that we saw the charred and mutilated remains. \u2026 They were piled onto the back of a truck; many were barely recognizable as human.\u201d Meanwhile, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said: We are chagrined if [civilian] people were hurt, but the only information we have about people being hurt is coming out of the controlled press in Baghdad.\u201d Another U.S. general claimed<\/a> the shelter was an active command-and-control structure,\u201d while anonymous officials said military trucks and limousines for Iraq\u2019s senior leadership had been seen at the building.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his 1995 CNN interview, Hussein Kamel said, There was no leadership there. There was a transmission apparatus for the Iraqi intelligence, but the allies had the ability to monitor that apparatus and knew that it was not important.\u201d The Iraqi blogger Riverbend later wrote<\/a> that several years after the attack, she went to\u00a0the shelter and met a small, slight woman\u201d who now lived in\u00a0the shelter and gave visitors unofficial tours. Eight of her nine children had been killed in the bombing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory, Khartoum, Sudan (August 20, 1998)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

After al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the Clinton administration targeted the Al Shifa factory with 13 cruise missiles, killing one person and wounding 11. According to President Bill Clinton<\/a>, the plant was associated with the bin Laden network\u201d and was involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Clinton administration never produced<\/a> any convincing evidence that this was true. By 2005, the best the U.S. could do was say, as the New York Times<\/em> characterized it<\/a>, that it had not ruled out the possibility\u201d that the original claims were right. The long-term damage to Sudan was enormous. Jonathan Belke of the Near East Foundation pointed out<\/a> a year after the bombing that the plant had produced 90 percent of Sudan\u2019s major pharmaceutical products\u201d and contended that due to its destruction tens of thousands of people \u2014 many of them children \u2014 have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases.\u201d Sudan has repeatedly requested a U.N. investigation of the bombing, with no success.<\/span><\/p>\n

Train bombing, Grdelica, Serbia (April 12, 1999)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

During the U.S.-led bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo war, an F-15E fighter jet fired two remotely-guided missiles that hit a train crossing a bridge near Grdelica, killing at least 14 civilians. Gen. Wesley Clark, then Supreme Allied Commander Europe,called it<\/a> an unfortunate incident we all regret.\u201d While the F-15 crew was able to control the missiles after they were launched, NATO released footage taken from the plane to demonstrate how quickly the train was moving and how little time the jet\u2019s crew had to react. The German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau<\/i> later reported that the video had been sped up three times. The paper quoted a U.S. Air Force spokesperson who said this was accidental, and they had not noticed this until months later \u2014 by which point we did not deem it useful to go public with this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Radio Television Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia (April 23, 1999)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Sixteen employees of Serbia\u2019s state broadcasting system were killed during the Kosovo War when NATO intentionally targeted its headquarters in Belgrade. President Clinton gave an underwhelming defense<\/a> of the bombing: Our military leaders at NATO believe \u2026 that the Serb television is an essential instrument of Mr. Milosevic\u2019s command and control. \u2026 It is not, in a conventional sense, therefore, a media outlet. That was a decision they made, and I did not reverse it.\u201d U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke told the Overseas Press Club<\/a> immediately after the attack that it was an enormously important and, I think, positive development.\u201d Amnesty International later stated<\/a> it was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Chinese Embassy, Belgrade, Serbia (May 7, 1999)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Also during the Kosovo war, the U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy in Serbia\u2019s capital, killing three staff and wounding more than 20. The defense secretary at the time, William Cohen, said<\/a> it was a terrible mistake: One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map.\u201d The Observer<\/i> newspaper in the U.K. later reported<\/a> the U.S. had in fact deliberately targeted the embassy after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.\u201d TheObserver <\/i>quoted a source in the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency\u201d calling Cohen\u2019s version of events a damned lie.\u201dProdded<\/a> by the media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the New York Times<\/i> produced its own investigation<\/a> finding no evidence that the bombing of the embassy had been a deliberate act,\u201d but rather that it had been caused by a bizarre chain of missteps.\u201d The article concluded by quoting Porter Goss, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as saying he believed the bombing was not deliberate \u2013 unless some people are lying to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Red Cross complex, Kabul, Afghanistan (October 16 and October 26, 2001)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

At the beginning of the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. attacked the complex housing the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul. In an attempt to prevent such incidents in the future, the U.S. conducted detailed discussions with the Red Cross about the location of all of its installations in the country. Then the U.S. bombed the same complex again<\/a>. The second attack destroyed warehouses containing tons of food and supplies for refugees. Whoever is responsible will have to come to Geneva for a formal explanation,\u201d said a Red Cross spokesperson. Firing, shooting, bombing, a warehouse clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem is a very serious incident. \u2026 Now we\u2019ve got 55,000 people without that food or blankets, with nothing at all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Al Jazeera office, Kabul, Afghanistan (November 13, 2001)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Several weeks after the Red Cross attacks, the U.S. bombed the Kabul bureau of Al Jazeera, destroying it and damaging the nearby office of the BBC. Al Jazeera\u2019s managing director said the channel had repeatedly informed the U.S. military of its office\u2019s location.<\/span><\/p>\n

Al Jazeera office, Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the U.S. bombed the Baghdad office of Al Jazeera, killing reporter Tarek Ayoub and injuring another journalist. David Blunkett, the British home secretary at the time, subsequently revealed<\/a> that a few weeks before the attack he had urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to bomb Al Jazeera\u2019s transmitter in Baghdad. Blunkett argued, I don\u2019t think that there are targets in a war that you can rule out because you don\u2019t actually have military personnel inside them if they are attempting to win a propaganda battle on behalf of your enemy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2005, the British newspaper The Mirror <\/i>reported on a British government memorandum recording an April 16, 2004, conversation between Blair and President Bush at the height of the U.S. assault on Fallujah in Iraq. The Bush administration was infuriated<\/a> by Al Jazeera\u2019s coverage of Fallujah, and according to The Mirror<\/i>, Bush had wanted to bomb the channel at its Qatar headquarters and elsewhere. However, the article says, Blair argued him out of it. Blair subsequently called<\/a> The Mirror<\/i>\u2019s claims a conspiracy theory.\u201d Meanwhile, his attorney general threatened to use the Official Secrets Act to prosecute any news outlet that published further information about the memo, and, in a secret trial, did in fact prosecute and send to jail<\/a> a civil servant for leaking it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Palestine Hotel, Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The same day as the 2003 bombing of the Al Jazeera office in Baghdad, a U.S. tank fired a shell at the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, where most foreign journalists were then staying. Two reporters were killed: Taras Protsyuk, a cameraman for Reuters, and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish network Telecinco. An investigation<\/a> by the Committee to Protect Journalists concluded that the attack, while not deliberate, was avoidable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This story has been updated to include the April 8, 2003, attack on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Jon Schwarz – Before joining First Look, Jon Schwarz worked for Michael Moore\u2019s Dog Eat Dog Films and was Research Producer for Moore\u2019s Capitalism: A Love Story.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s contributed to many publications, including <\/i>The<\/em>\u00a0New Yorker, <\/i>The<\/em>\u00a0New York Times, <\/i>The<\/em>\u00a0Atlantic, <\/i>The<\/em>\u00a0Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones and Slate, as well as NPR and Saturday Night Live.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jon Schwarz \u00a0Courtesy\u00a0Information Clearing House October 08, 2015 ” Information Clearing House” – “The Intercept” –\u00a0\u00a0 On October 3, a U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a hospital run by M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res in Kunduz, Afghanistan, partially destroying it. Twelve staff members and 10\u00a0patients, including three children, were killed, and 37 people were injured. According to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}