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A comment on /story/45447699. Parent comment

Re: by belorn on Friday October 03, 2025 @05:22AM (#45460840)
The US military math for calculating combatant:civilian casualty ratios was, to quote:

every boy 15 and over killed in drone strikes now is automatically listed as an enemy combatant

This math is why the civilian casualty numbers from US military shows almost zero deaths for drone strikes.

The New York Times reported in the 29 May 2012 article Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will:

    Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.*
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Re: by jjk166 on Friday October 03, 2025 @05:50PM (#45468213)
By the Obama administration's counting, they killed 64 to 117 civillians in airstrikes. Independent estimates, which do not use the "any military age male" definition, put the number at 380 to 801. These higher, independent estimates still put the fraction of civillian or unknown casualties at around 15%. That is what a military that wants to avoid civilian casualties but sometimes makes mistakes looks like.

For comparison, the Israeli government claims that a mere 53% of fatalities are civilians, substantially below independent estimates.

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