A Triumph of Imprecision?

Donald Rumsfeld says the American attack on Baghdad is “as targeted an air campaign as has ever existed” but he should not try telling that to five-year-old Doha Suheil. She looked at me yesterday morning, drip feed attached to her nose, a deep frown over her small face as she tried vainly to move the left side of her body. The cruise missile that exploded close to her home in the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad blasted shrapnel into her tiny legs � they were bound up with gauze � and, far more seriously, into her spine. Now she has lost all movement in her left leg.

“I’ve just returned from the scene of today’s bombing by American warplanes. They dropped two large bombs on a residential area of Baghdad, at the northern edge of the city, and inflicted utter devastation. At least 14 people have been killed and dozens have been injured in this otherwise unremarkable suburb of Baghdad. The planes came and dropped their bombs at about 11.30 in the morning in the Shaab area, crowded with shoppers and motorists … There is a great deal of shock that this could happen, that America’s precision bombing and technology could fail so utterly. And, also, there is beginning to be a degree of rage.”

“Coalition forces did not target a marketplace nor were any bombs or missiles dropped or fired” in that district, Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director for operations for the Joint Staff, told a Pentagon briefing.

The Pentagon acknowledged striking targets in a residential Baghdad neighborhood that may have caused civilian damage or deaths Wednesday and blamed Iraqi forces for placing military equipment there.