Aerial bombardments in cities violate human rights.

This is from Juan Cole's blog. No one can touch the US for violating international law having to do with obligations of occupiers. The UN may bleat and Maliki may bleat but that is about all. The US does not recognise the international court of justice in fact it "bribes" countries not to sign on so the US troops will not be subject to it.
A similar policy is followed in Afghanistan by bomber Mcneill. The policy not only saves US soldiers lives but it also teaches civilians that they should not harbor or support insurgents.

Obviously, for an Occupation military to bomb a densely-populated city that it already largely controls is a violation of human rights law. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq has just condemned the US for using this tactic, which inevitably kills children, women and other non-combatants. You can't drop a bomb on an urban apartment building without killing lots of people, not only inside the building but also all around it. The bomb turns bits of the building into deadly projectiles. I am told that the US Air Force takes no responsibility for these aerial strikes when they are called in by army troops on the ground, and makes no assessment as to whether proportional force was deployed or excessive civilian casualties were incurred. So you have a convoy of soldiers in humvees driving through deeply hostile Sadr City, and someone starts sniping at them from a building. Obviously, running into the building is dangerous; it could be booby-trapped, or snipers could have set up there. I wouldn't want to do it. So the tendency would obviously be to take out the snipers by taking out the building they are using. That makes military sense. It doesn't make sense in the international law of occupations.

The US military spokesmen are always going on about precision strikes and reducing civilian casualties. I know they are sincere in thinking they can do that, but they just aren't dealing with a simple reality. They are bombing apartment buildings in densely populated cities!

The US military, then, may be artificially keeping US military deaths down this fall by resorting to many more aerial bombings. These bombings have repeatedly drawn forth powerful condemnations from the elected Iraqi political authorities and are unlikely to be viable much longer.