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Collateral damage

Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 16 years ago, in 2008, on the World Wide Web.

Here’s two passages from two different articles that I read today. See if you can fill in the blanks to identify the spokesman, the military force in question, and the enemy force being condemned.

  1. . . ., rejecting criticism of attacks by . . . that have killed thousands, maintained that it does not kill innocent people. … If there is any innocent who was killed in the . . .’s [bombings], then it was either an unintentional error or out of necessity, . . . said. He went on to accuse . . .’s opponents of being the ones who kill innocent people. He also charged that the enemy intentionally takes up positions in the midst of . . . for them to be human shields for him.

  2. Anecdotally, . . . also add some caveats to recent civilian casualty headlines. They acknowledge that mistaken intelligence has led to some truly accidental deaths, including the deaths of children. But in other cases, they say, . . . appear to be delivering inflated reports of civilian deaths. . . . also fights among civilians, dramatically increasing the likelihood of civilian deaths …. (. . . say that during a recent firefight, innocent civilians were forced into a trench alongside . . . so that any [bombings] would result in the significant loss of civilian lives).

See the answer to number 1 here. And the answer to number 2 here.

2 replies to Collateral damage Use a feed to Follow replies to this article · TrackBack URI

  1. Anon72

    Strangely enough I got them both right. I guess the Associated Press has its tendrils everywhere these days…

  2. Anon72

    I’d be interested to hear your opinion on this news report Radgeek: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080408/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestsadrcity_080408165832

    It seems to confirm my belief that humans are innately not predisposed to violence. If humans were, then the people in that article wouldn’t be complaining about how the city isn’t safe or not, they’d join either al-Sadr or the US forces.

    To me it seems to not bode well for market defense; the kinds reactions these Iraqis are having seems to indicate that defense will probably always be a natural monopoly. Do you disagree?

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