Afghan officials: US Airstrikes kill 76 civilians.

This is from antiwar.com.
The official U.S. story is almost always that it was only Taliban militants who were killed although after investigation this is often changed. In any event it should be no surprise that in a tribal society where revenge is demanded when relatives are killed that there are no shortages of recruits for the Taliban. Karzai has consistently decried the bombing policy. Notice that there has been no attempt to resurrect the Afghan air force. All of this activity seems to devolve upon the U.S. as far as I can see. The U.S. wants to stay in charge of air space both in Afghanistan and in Iraq.


Interior Ministry: US Airstrikes Kill 76 Afghan Civilians
Written on August 22, 2008
Just one day after US airstrikes in Laghman province were reported to have killed at least 20 civilians, a much larger incident has occurred on the opposite side of the country in Herat Province.
As with yesterday’s story, the initial US report claimed that 30 militants were killed, including an al-Qaeda commander. Though the Afghan Defense Ministry reported several homes were destroyed and that civilians were among the dead, US officials denied that there were any civilians killed.
Shortly later, Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry released a statement regarding the incident. In it they announced that 76 people, all civilians, had actually been killed in the strike. Among those killed were seven men, 19 women, and 50 children under the age of 15. The Ministry expressed “profound regret” for the killings, which they described as accidental, and promised to dispatch a delegation to conduct a full investigation.
In May of last year, US airstrikes in the same region killed over 50 civilians. After the incident, NATO promised to review its military tactics to ensure that similar incidents didn’t happen in the future. An American commander said he was “ashamed” of the incident, and announced that compensation of approximately $2,000 would be paid to each victim’s family.