U.S.-Led Coalition Airstrike Kills 18 Anti-Assad Fighters in Syria: Pentagon

[BeyondGeography]

Source: NBC News

A U.S-led coalition airstrike against ISIS mistakenly killed 18 members of the Syrian Democratic Forces fighting President Bashar Assad, the Pentagon admitted Thursday.

It was not immediately clear if a U.S. plane was involved in the 'friendly fire' strike, which happened south of Tabqah in northern Syria on Tuesday.

"The strike was requested by the partnered forces, who had identified the target location as an ISIS fighting position," the Pentagon said in a statement.

However, "the target location was actually a forward SDF fighting position," it said.

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/u-s-led-coalition-airstrike-killed-18-sdf-fighters-syria-n745986

[Doodley]

1. Mistakes like this should not happen.

[Moostache]

3. What do you expect from a guy who isn't sure we attacked Iraq or Syria? (n/t)

[FBaggins]

4. Mistakes like this will always happen

The "fog of war" is not a weather forecast.

It's one of the reasons for warfare to be a "last resort" option.

[BeyondGeography]

7. +1

And Syria is very foggy.

[Bradical79]

18. Yeah, especially in this case

When you have dozens of factions fighting each other all over the place, there's going to be a lot more moments of confusion.

[hack89]

14. Not the first forward observer to accidentally call in a strike on his location.

humans = errors. It is our nature.

[Botany]

2. "The strike was requested by the partnered forces." aka Russia/Assad

So The US military will now be working for Russia/Assad in Syria?

[hack89]

15. No. It was called in by the Syrian Democratic Forces

looks like they screwed up the coordinates.

[lostnfound]

22. You're an optimist. Nt

[hack89]

24. Mistakes are common in war

especially with inexperienced, poorly trained soldiers. Blue on Blue is not uncommon even with highly trained troops.

[MedusaX]

5. Precision is great....

Provided you have selected the correct target ...

[Achilleaze]

6. It sucks having a 5-time republican draft dodger as commander

what a colossal screw up the republican "leader" is.

And this greedy, irresponsible, casino-bred assclown is who the republicans want to "lead" our military and our country?

deplorable.

[geek tragedy]

8. 'mistakenly'-that's their story, huh? nt

[hack89]

16. I can see it. Inexperienced forward observer under stress

not the first time a FO has accidentally called in a strike on his own position.

[Sunlei]

9. Russia told USA forces to strike and thats NOT A MISTAKE, USA was scammed again by Russia!!

We need to get those anti-Assad fighters out of Syria before Russia/Assad slaughter them all.

Help them & families immigrate to another country. They probably don't want to immigrate to Ame(R)ica.

[Doreen]

10. "Friendly fire" WTF!! I do not care WHO shot who but

calling it "friendly fire" is just stupid. It is kind of like saying "friendly slaughter.". A new explanation needs to be found. How about "mistaken fire" or "fucked up fire" or "they screwed up fire"?

[Cryptoad]

11. The Ole GOP War Cry,,,,,,

"Kill em all, let God sort em out"!

[Kennah]

20. I thought that was a Catholic War Cry (n/t)

[davsand]

12. Starting to wonder if the US has killed more citizens than the dictator.

The number of "accidental" citizen deaths has been high enough that the US may be killing more civilians than Bashar al-Assad.

[EX500rider]

19. You can stop wondering, the answer is no..

On 20 August 2014, a new U.N. study concluded that at least 191,369 people have died in the Syrian conflict.[856] The UN thereafter stopped collecting statistics, but a study by the Syrian Centre for Policy Research released in February 2016 estimated the death toll to be 470,000, with 1.9m wounded (reaching a total of 11.5% of the entire population either wounded or killed)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War#Deaths

[Kennah]

21. Depends if you include civilian deaths in Iraq (n/t)

[Demtexan]

13. With Putin's boy in office we will be part of the Russian military.

We will be doing their dirty work.

[Fast Walker 52]

17. what's worse is there's already so few of the good militants fighting Assad

most are ISIS and al Qaeda affiliated

[lostnfound]

23. The psychological impact to antiAssad forces is perhaps no accident.

"Resistance is futile".