by Stephen Lendman

US warplanes began bombing Iraqi targets in June 2014. Last September, US Syrian airstrikes followed. Washington falsely claims it’s waging war on the Islamic State (IS) - with pinpoint accuracy against positions and fighters targeted. Just the opposite.

Bombing aims to destabilize Iraq and Syria more than already. Infrastructure sites are struck - not IS fighters as claimed. America is its de facto air force.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) in charge of the air campaign falsely claims few civilian deaths at most - saying pinpoint targeting avoids them, one of the many Big Lies proliferated in all US wars.

Civilians are considered legitimate US targets. Hundreds of thousands were willfully slaughtered since Operation Desert Storm aggression against Saddam Hussein in January 1991 alone.

In his book titled “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present,” Ward Churchill explained:

After four centuries of systematic slaughter from 1492 - 1892, "the US Census Bureau concluded that there were fewer than a quarter-million indigenous people surviving," in America, reduced to at most 3% of their original numbers.

Millions were "hacked apart with axes and swords, burned alive and trampled under horses, hunted as game and fed to dogs, shot, beaten, stabbed, scalped for bounty, hanged on meathooks and thrown over the sides of ships at sea, worked to death as slave laborers, intentionally starved and frozen to death during a multitude of forced marches and internments, and, in an unknown number of instances, deliberately infected with epidemic diseases,” Churchill explained.

Shockingly, "every one of these practices (continues in new forms). The American holocaust was and remains unparalleled, in terms of its scope, ferocity and continuance over time," - systematically erased from the historical record, suppressed by denial or silence.

Chris Woods is an investigative journalist specializing in conflicts and national security issues. He heads the “Airwars project - aimed…at tracking and archiving the (US-led) air war (falsely claimed) against (the) Islamic State, in both Iraq and Syria.”

His data “draw heavily from US and allied militaries” - as well as reporting on “credible allegations of civilian casualties” from eyewitness and other sources.

Take all Pentagon and allied military reports with a grain of salt. They have no credibility whatever. This article focuses solely on Airwars.org reported civilian deaths.

It tracks CENTCOM-led Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) in Iraq since 2006 - estimating up to 1,250 civilians killed, likely many more not included in its count.

After less than one year of largely US airstrikes in Syria, it estimates over 400 civilians killed - citing 57 incidents with documented evidence of noncombatant casualties, suggesting many more unknown ones.

It lists 5,866 airstrikes to date - 3,591 against Iraq, another 2,275 targeting Syria. It neglects to explain premeditated aggression in both cases - despite the US-controlled Iraqi regime allegedly approving the campaign. It continues without Syrian authorization.

Given this number of airstrikes if accurately counted, far greater numbers of civilians were likely killed plus many more wounded.

At the same time, the report states “(d)espite claims by the US-led coalition that its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria are ‘the most precise and disciplined in the history of aerial warfare,’ there are clear indications from the field that many hundreds of non-combatants have been killed.”

Given longstanding US practice of considering civilians legitimate targets in all its wars, the report likely way undercounts noncombatant casualties in Syria and Iraq.

Likely many thousands were killed or wounded - numbers increasing daily. The Air Wars report cites one strike in December 2014 killing 58 noncombatants in Al Bab, Syria.

Another in February 2015 killed farmer Ibrahim al-Mussul and his two daughters near Shadadi, Syria. An eyewitness said “(t)heir bodies were shredded. We found Ibrahim’s hand next to the house, and we were still collecting bits of flesh and body parts into the early hours of the following morning.”

Air Wars Syria researcher Kinda Haddad said “(c)ivilians are dying in unacceptable numbers as a result of military action by so many different actors in both Syria and Iraq.”

Washington bears full responsibility for waging multiple regional wars of aggression - ongoing for the past generation with no letup.

Millions died from war related casualties, post-combat violence, illegal Iraqi sanctions, starvation, untreated wounds and diseases, exposure to the elements and overall deprivation.

In total, among history’s greatest crimes - genocide against multiple populations to further America’s hegemonic madness, criminality on an unprecedented global scale, continuing with no letup with perhaps the worst to come if Washington dares confront Russia and/or China militarily.

Previous articles discussed lunatics running the Washington asylum. They may destroy planet earth in their maniacal crusade to own it.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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