Honestly a lot of asymmetric war sounds like the trolley problem. You hear rumors of an attack and soon after there it is killing many. You start hearing more rumors and you look for data. There must be a lot of scenarios where you can't be sure of things on the ground, it developing fast and chaotic. Obama has spoken on how most of the decisions you make as president are just weighing probabilities, i.e., there's a 70% chance we stop an attack likely killing hundreds, and 30% chance we just killed a handful of innocents. I don't think we or the NYT knows enough of all the details involved in this incident, but I think this nuance is lost on many.