Posted on 01/01/2018 11:24:00 AM PST by Ennis85
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave a full-throated defense Friday of U.S. efforts to prevent civilian casualties in the conflict in Yemen, making the case that without American involvement, there would be more.
Mattis, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, said that “it’s a tragedy every time” a civilian dies, but that the United States is held to a high standard when it comes to preventing civilian fatalities.
“We are being held to a standard – ‘we’ being us and anyone associated with us – that has never been achieved before in warfare,” he said.
The comments came after two separate airstrikes on Dec. 26 by a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen killed dozens of people and prompted a rebuke from a top United Nations official in the country. Initial U.N. reports said that at least 54 civilians, including eight children, were killed in a strike on a crowded market, and an additional 14 people from one family were killed in a bombing on a farm.
The United States does not drop bombs as a part of the Saudi-led air war against the Houthis, but provides aerial refueling to Saudi jets, shares intelligence to improve their targeting and attempts to teach Saudi pilots how to be more accurate. Mattis bristled Friday when a reporter suggested that the effort isn’t working, saying “that’s your call.”
Asked whether he was “okay” with the current level of civilian casualties, the defense secretary grew stern.
“I’m never okay with any civilian casualty,” he said. “Don’t screw with me on this.”
The U.S. military’s handling of civilian casualties has remained in question in several war zones in which the U.S. military operates, especially as it touts the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as the most precise in world history.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sounds like the specious “duty to defend” that Obama/Hillary used as an excuse to topple Libya.
LOL. Long overdue. Time to go after the reporters.
Who the Saudis kill is on them.
You know what should be called into question? That American troops are put into environments where civilians and enemies are identical, knowing that if in the split second decision to save their lives, they might rot in jail forever for inadvertently wasting a civilian.
Punk ass “reporters”, I hope he keeps shoving it back down their throats!
This guy is awesome!
No comment, really, I just wanted to read that again.
I love that guy. :-)
The more I experience, watch, read and see from this administration, the more I’m torn between why the Left, MSM, UN, most of the worlds leadership and Democratic politicians hate him so much.
Obviously, one reason is because he won and she didn’t. I think the other being, that he and the people he has working with him, talk straight. They tend no to beat around the bush. They tell it like it is, like he does. They can give straight forward answers and back up what the say.
So, basically, they’re all a YUGE bunch of snowflakes that can’t handle being talked to like adults, instead of the children they prove themselves to be.
Yes it does. Let the Saudis kill as many as they can. It is the only way to beat the goat f*ckers. Worse Mattis a USMC product and knows what was done tp beat Japan into submission.
Not civilians but enemy non combatants. There are no goat fornicator civilians.
There are no civilians or noncombatants in Yemen.
Yemenis that are warm and breathing are either shooting, reloading or carrying ammo and water.
And chewing khat.
bump
“full throated” There’s a gerbalist Linda Lovelace expression I could live without in 2018.
LOL You got that right!
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