How is this militarily necessary or anything but disastrous PR?
“Many were wounded in the attack, local tribesman Kaleemullah Dawar said, but rescuers delayed for fear of falling victim to a second attack, a common tactic with drone strikes.“
That tactic is known as the “double tap,” which bombs multiple targets in relatively quick succession — meaning that the second strike often hits first responders. In 2007 the FBI said the tactic as commonly used by terrorist organizations such as Hamas.
Last year a study by the NYU School of Law and Stanford Law School detailed the U.S. use of the double tap, providing first-hand accounts of its devastating effect on rescuers and humanitarian workers.
In other words, the USG is using a terror tactic against non-terrorists in the War on Terror. Brilliant. Even Rumsfeld understood that the key to winning this sort of amorphous war was to avoid making more terrorists than were killed. Which is impossible if you’re going to make your own soldiers into terrorists.