The American military likes to claim that every effort is made to avoid collateral damage, or fatalities of non-combatants. The spokespersons for military leadership like to talk about "smart weapons", laser guided missiles, and other high technology weapons that are claimed to be highly accurate. Of course, these claims were made in the Gulf War and many such claims of accuracy were proven to be utterly false. The American military was perfectly willing to lie, deceive, and distort the truth in the cause of public relations.
That being said, it is undeniably true that many modern weapons are more accurate than those used decades ago. There is little doubt that precision munitions are able to be targeted more accurately than ever before; especially in the case of missiles, laser guided artillery, high-tech bombs and similar devises using high explosives. If for no other reason, the high financial cost of these weapons makes it important to strike military targets with great accuracy and try to avoid wasting munitions on any non-significant target from a military standpoint.
So, the U.S. has a doctrine of avoiding collateral damage when it comes to use of high explosives. But when a U.S. convoy in Humvees or Bradley fighting vehicles comes under fire, all concern over collateral damage goes right out the window! Rifle, machine gun, and cannon fire by U.S. ground troops is carried out with little fire discipline, or concern over killing innocent civilians who might happen to be caught in a cross fire. If an Iraqi civilian happens to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, he/she will be shot, and no questions will be asked afterwards as to whether the kill was necessary.
Every day Iraqi morgues receive tens of corpses of non-combatants. People are shot while shopping, gunned down while in transit, blasted to smithereens while trying to get home.
If American lives were thus lost, it would be an outrage in the American homeland. But Americans do not value non-American lives. If a non-American is killed by accident in Iraq, it is "tough luck". No one hardly even bothers to keep count. American soldiers, frightened and literally scared of death and to death, hear a "bang" or a gunshot and fire their weapons on full automatic until nothing is left alive. Even screaming, innocent Iraqis trying to save themselves by calling for ceasefire get killed.
And the American soldiers cannot understand why Iraqis are not thankful for being "liberated".
