To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (6582 ) 5/3/1999 9:49:00 PM From: nuke44 Read Replies (3) | Respond to
It's a mistake to refer to these civilian deaths as the result of "accidental attacks". That is misleading. None of the attacks were accidental. That makes it sound as if an F-15 pilot was just flying around, minding his own business and a 2000 lb. AGM-130 launched itself from his wing pylon and took off on it's own. That's obviously not the case. In all cases where civilians have been killed, the attacks were intentional. Twice, munitions have overshot their targets and hit in civilian areas that were adjacent to military targets. Once, if the Serbs are being truthful, and they haven't established any kind of precedent that would suggest that they are being truthful, then a pilot misidentified a civilian convoy as a military one and attacked it. In the cases of civilians crossing bridges, the targets were the bridges, not the civilians. Those munitions had been released by the aircraft up to five minutes prior to striking the bridge and the civilian vehicles had the tragic misfortune of crossing that bridge at the wrong time.
