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Report: Covert US army unit tasked with fighting IS repeatedly killed civilians
[IsraelTimes] Current and former American military and intelligence officials tell The New York Times

... which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
 that a covert US army cell operating repeatedly killed civilians as collateral damage in its operations against the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 terror group in Syria.
Given how excited the New York Times clearly is, we have to wonder how far from the truth their journalism might be.
The unit called Talon Anvil was active between 2014 and 2019 striking convoys, boom-mobiles, command centers and squads of enemy fighters, NYT says.

But NYT sources says the cell "circumvented rules imposed to protect noncombatants," sometimes killing farmers in the middle of their harvest, children on the street, fleeing families, and villagers sheltering in buildings.
We also must wonder how many of the killed suddenly became civilians when they dropped the weapons in their hands.
"They were ruthlessly efficient and good at their jobs," says one former Air Force intelligence officer who was with the unit from 2016 to 2018. "But they also made a lot of bad strikes."
Update from the Daily Mail with lots of incidents at 9:15 a.m. ET, courtesy of Skidmark. Their bullet points:
  • A small American strike cell alarmed CIA and Airforce officials by killing countless civilians as they launches airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria

  • Between 2014 and 2017, operation Talon Anvil routinely flouted safeguard procedures, sources told the New York Times, to function at the 'speed of war'

  • In the process, they obscured the number of civilians they killed in their operations, and averted drone cameras at the moment that missiles would hit

  • The cell played an 'outsize' role in the 112,000 bombs and missiles aimed at the Islamic State while the so-called caliphate was in operation

  • Former Department of Defense and Pentagon adviser Larry Lewis said that casualties were ten times higher in Syria than in similar missions in Afghanistan

  • 'It was higher than I would have expected from a U.S. unit,' he said. 'The fact that it increased dramatically and steadily over a period of years shocked me'

  • Overseeing strike after strike, one source said, seemed to 'erode operators' perspective and fray their humanity'
The NYT is also concerned that the operators wore civvies and beards instead appearing neat and trim in their uniforms.

Posted by: trailing wife 2021-12-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=619842