Wednesday, June 06, 2007

"Liberation" from the air: "Four years into the war that opened with "shock and awe," U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago. The airpower escalation parallels a nearly four-month-old security crackdown that is bringing 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Baghdad and its surroundings - an urban campaign aimed at restoring order to an area riven with sectarian violence. It also reflects increased availability of planes from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. And it appears to be accompanied by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties. In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to U.S. Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press....The rate of such reported civilian deaths appeared to climb steadily through 2006, the group reports, averaging just a few a month in early 2006, hitting some 40 a month by year's end, and averaging more than 50 a month so far this year. Those are maximum tolls based on news reports, and they count those killed by Army helicopter fire as well as by warplanes, Iraq Body Count's John Sloboda said. The count is regarded as conservative, since it doesn't include deaths missed by the international media. The U.S. military itself says it doesn't track civilian casualties. "The reality of civilian deaths is a year-on-year increase," said Sloboda, a psychology professor at Britain's Keele University. "This particular part of it - airstrikes - have rocketed up more than any other.""