Recall that early on in the war in Iraq when the Air Force was "bombing wedding parties" because of the "threat" from celebratory gunfire? The theme kind of wore itself out after it was used a few times and the search was on for another victim strategy to incite the fidels. You can see a similar enemy victim strategy at work in Afghanistan whenever we bomb a large concentration of enemy forces. What we are seeing is not in reality collateral damage so much as the enemy's deceptive use of a victim strategy in order to get us to stop destroying their concentration of forces when they mass for attacks or celebrations of lynchings of "spies." You saw similar tactics by Hezballah in their war with Israel.

I think the collateral damage in these situations is distorted to the point that we should not credit it with belief without discussing the enemy's use of human shields and very young boys as fighters. don't forget the Taliban propaganda video of the young boy cutting off the head of a "spy." Remember that when they show young boys injured in an attack and claim they were civilians. The claims by medical personnel that the injured are civilians are also suspect since those people have no way knowing whether they are Taliban or not since they wear no identifying uniform or dog tags. As an Afghan officer said recently, "When they have the rifle to their shoulder they are fighters, but when they put it on the ground after the fight they are civilians?"