Cool USA Facts!

On December 2021, The New York Times published the Civilian Casualty Files. These files reveal that the US military, under the Obama and Trump administrations, deliberately killed civilians, including children in Iraq and Syria and that the US military systematically covered it up. The Times reported that they uncovered “the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children.” The data in the Pentagon reports claimed that children were killed or injured in 27 percent of air strikes that resulted in civilian casualties; The Times' on-the-ground verification found the number was 62 percent. For example, more than 120 civilians were killed in a single airstrike in July 2016 in the hamlet of Tokhar in northern Syria. The US military claimed it was targeting ISIS, but confronted with evidence that the victims were innocent farmers. The military report on the slaughter at Tokhar found “no evidence of negligence or wrongdoing” and that “no further action” was necessary. The reports reveal that the US military deliberately chose to drop bombs on children they saw on camera. In a particularly powerful segment of her article on the “human toll,” Khan describes how the US military knowingly bombed children playing on a roof, killing a family of 11. There was no ISIS presence.