Talk:2017 Nangarhar airstrike

Pelosi and Schumer
Not at all sure that Pelosi and Schumer supported the bombing, as written in the "United States" section. Removed a source that was in reference to another event. Can someone investigate?


 * I can't find a single source that suggests they supported this particular bombing.
 * https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/trump-syria-congress-reaction-republicans-democrats-236975


 * https://pelosi.house.gov/news/press-releases/pelosi-statement-on-us-airstrikes-in-syria


 * https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schumer-pelosi-among-democrats-to-react-to-syria-strike


 * Every source I've found says that they supported a different airstrike that occurred earlier in the month, so I'm thinking that people are confusing the two.
 * I removed the reference to them both as I can't find any sources that say they supported this specific strike.
 * Smorticus (talk) 00:29, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Was it that tunnel networks paid by the CIA?
Those tunnel networks we're bombing in Afghanistan, we paid for them: "The first time bin Laden had seen the Tora Bora caves, he had been a young mujahedeen fighter and a recent university graduate with a degree in civil engineering. It had been some 20 years before, during Washington's first Afghan war, the decade-long, C.I.A.-financed jihad of the 1980's against the Soviet occupation. Rising to more than 13,000 feet, 35 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Jalalabad, Tora Bora was a fortress of snow-capped peaks, steep valleys and fortified caves. Its miles of tunnels, bunkers and base camps, dug deeply into the steep rock walls, had been part of a C.I.A.-financed complex built for the mujahedeen." --87.156.225.243 (talk) 00:53, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * There's also a lot of irrigation tunnels out there - the ones they call kariz - that can be centuries old. Some them are pre-islamic.  Terry has been known to get into these as well, but unfortuantely so do civilians and the local ordinary decent criminals which makes blowing them up problematic.  That and the whole irrigation thing, which is bad enough as it is out there.  82.1.7.156 (talk) 12:15, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Aircraft
According to MOAB bomb, the weapon is "designed to be delivered by ... primarily the MC-130E Combat Talon I or MC-130H Combat Talon II." If that was the case at Nangarhar, it should be specified. Sca (talk) 15:03, 14 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The aircraft that was used to drop this particular bomb was a MC-130J Commando II. 35.129.56.28 (talk) 16:09, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the use of “allegedly” alongside referenced casualty figures
I don’t have a firm enough grasp of Wikipedia policy to answer this question; I ask it in good faith because I truly do not know the answer.

In the infobox, the reported number of civilian casualties — but seemingly not the reported number of combatant casualties — is followed by the word “allegedly” in parentheses.

My question, then: is there a legitimate reason, grounded in Wikipedia policy, for the insertion of this parenthetical disclaimer, which seems to gently nudge the reader — for no reason readily apparent to me — toward regarding only the reported civilian casualties as being of doubtful veracity?

To the extent that we are sincerely unable to provide authoritative information on the number of people killed by this attack, it would appear that the principle causes of this uncertainty are:


 * 1) the unprecedented destructive power of the weapon used;
 * 2) the intrinsic difficulty of assessing the lethal damage caused by so indiscriminate a weapon; and
 * 3) discrepancies in reported casualties conforming to pre-existing lines of military and political interests and/or allegiances.
 * 4) In the absence of any compelling reason for casting selective doubt upon reports that two of the ninety-eight people reportedly killed in this attack were civilians, it seems to me unnecessary to remind the reader at this juncture that all reported casualties of all military assaults by all parties to all armed conflicts are by definition “alleged” by somebody to have been caused by something — in this case, a weapon specifically designed to obliterate everything in its unusually large blast radius.

In the absence of any compelling reason for so selectively casting doubt upon reports that two of the ninety-eight people reportedly killed in this attack were civilians, it seems to me unnecessary to remind the reader at this juncture that all reported casualties of all military assaults by all parties to all armed conflicts are by definition “alleged” by somebody to have been caused by something — in this case, a weapon the Bush administration declined to use due to “civilian casualty concerns”.

It seems — to put it charitably — that when the armed forces of the United States of America report that a given number of its own soldiers have been killed by ISIS (allegedly), we editors trust that the origin of that (alleged) death toll is sufficiently obvious to the reader as to allow its presentation in numerical form, unaccompanied by parenthetical adverbs intended (seemingly) to diminish their veracity.

In the absence of some all-knowing neutral party to arbitrate such claims, that convention seems to me entirely sensible.

Should we not, then, apply it uniformly? Foxmilder (talk) 14:20, 20 May 2024 (UTC)