Democrats Surprised To Learn Bombs Are Used To Bomb People

Sen. Elizabeth Warren condemned Israel for killing Palestinian civilians with bombs that she had voted to send Israel.

Bombs kill people. When someone provides bombs to a government at war, those weapons will be used to kill people. It's a simple fact but one that seems to have eluded Democrats.

After voting to send bombs to the Israeli military, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) condemned the Israeli military for killing Palestinian civilians with an American-made bomb. And after urging the Israeli military to use smaller munitions, the Biden administration found itself scrambling to deal with a mass civilian casualty event caused by one of those smaller weapons.

On Sunday, the Israeli Air Force bombed Tel al-Sultan, a neighborhood of Rafah that Israel had previously designated a safe zone for fleeing civilians. The Israeli government claimed the airstrike successfully killed two senior Hamas commanders. But a fire started by the bomb spread through the densely-packed tent city, burning to death at least 45 people, including 12 women, eight children, and three elderly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the civilian deaths were a "tragic mistake."

British doctor James Smith called the fire "one of the most horrific things that I have seen or heard of in all of the weeks that I've been working in Gaza." CNN found pieces of a GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb, a type of 250-pound bomb that the U.S. military had rush-shipped to Israel following the Hamas attacks last October, with serial numbers from a California manufacturer.

"The Israeli bombing of a refugee camp inside a designated safe zone is horrific," Warren stated on social media. "Israel has a duty to protect innocent civilians and Palestinians seeking shelter in Rafah have nowhere safe to go. Netanyahu's assault of Rafah must stop. We need an immediate cease-fire."

Last month, Warren had voted for a $26.38 billion U.S. military aid package to Israel, as Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) pointed out. "Ma'am, you voted to send those bombs to Israel," he wrote in a response to Warren's statement.

Warren's office did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last month, Warren noted that she voted for the aid package after the Biden administration agreed to certify that every military receiving U.S. aid "follows international law, protects civilians in war zones and allows for humanitarian aid."

On May 10, the administration ruled that there are "reasonable" accusations that Israel breaks the laws of war but that the Israeli government gave "credible and reliable" assurances about how it plans to use U.S. weapons. President Joe Biden also said that he would not be "supplying the weapons" for an Israeli invasion of Rafah that threatened the civilian population and held up a shipment of Mark 80 series bombs, which were responsible for some of the worst mass-casualty attacks in Gaza.

At a Senate hearing earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin presented the GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb as a safer alternative to the Mark 80 series: "A Small Diameter Bomb, which is a precision weapon, that's very useful in a dense, built-up environment, but maybe not so much a 2,000-pound bomb that could create a lot of collateral damage."

Last October, the Israeli military used two American-made 2,000-pound bombs to assassinate a Hamas commander, killing dozens of civilians in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Austin is right that 2,000-pound bombs, which can kill everything within 600 feet, are more likely to harm bystanders than lighter alternatives. And as the name suggests, the Small Diameter Bomb has a smaller lethal radius. However, that doesn't make the bombs any less lethal for people inside the radius—or people caught up in secondary fires caused by the weapon.

Much of the Israeli army's "precision" targeting is carried out by artificial intelligence programs. The Israeli publication +972 Magazine has reported that one AI targeting system called "Lavender" is allowed to kill a large number of civilians per Hamas fighter, and is believed to have a 10 percent error rate when identifying fighters in the first place.

Another program revealed by +972, called "Where's Daddy," targets Hamas fighters who have left the battlefield and gone home to their families.

In other words, the type of weapon matters but how the weapon is used matters more. Despite Biden's earlier threats and assurances over human rights, the Biden administration is keen to defer to Israeli claims.

"As a result of this strike on Sunday, I have no policy changes to speak to," White House spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday. "It just happened. The Israelis are going to investigate it. We're going to be taking great interest in what they find in that investigation. And we'll see where it goes from there."

Comments

[Don't look at me!]

“Wipe them out. Wipe them all out.”

/Palpatine

[n00bdragon]

Wipe them out. All of them.

[mad.casual]

burning to death at least 45 people, including 12 women, eight children, and three elderly

Does it seem odd to anyone else that, by the APs telling, a “random sampling” of people burned to death in a refugee camp around two Hamas commanders was ~50% “military age males”. Just me?

[Mike Parsons]

Ya, I can say with good certainty at this point that the country is 90% women and children, if the Hamas (UN) death statistics can be believed

[n00bdragon]

What’s the over under on at least 7 of those children being 17 year old terrorists?

[B G]

Technically, almost every member of Hamas is a civilian since they have no uniformed army as such. Just as with AQ and ISIS/ISIL, their lack of a formal military creates a pretext under which those who choose to can claim 100% “civilian casualties” in a scenario where an IDF infantry unit fights through an ambush attack.

With the use of women and children as suicide bombers in the years leading up to the imposition of “apartheid” conditions with Gaza, it’s almost worth wondering if those can all be safely assumed to be non-combatant in the context of this conflict.

[mad.casual]

Right. I just thought it was interesting, from a couple of angles, that the AP slyly (or blatantly) reports:

Bombs drop in Gaza. Women, children, and elderly hardest hit.

[tracerv]

In other news, Democrats are the dumbest motherfuckers alive.

[Idaho-Bob]

E Warren certainly qualifies

[B G]

Performative outrage over the predictable result of one’s own actions has been SOP for Dem politicians since Chris Dodd started raging against the payment of bonuses to AIG execs which were made according to specified amounts and issuance dates which his own staff wrote into the terms of that company’s bailout under TARP, maybe even before that.

[TheReEncogitationer]

British doctor James Smith called the fire “one of the most horrific things that I have seen or heard of in all of the weeks that I’ve been working in Gaza.”

So this oblivious asshole didn’t hear about the initial Hamas attack on October 7th that killed 1200+ Israelis and mutioated, raped, and kidnapped more?

[Mike Parsons]

apparently he skipped the kibbutzes (kibbutzi?)

[Sevo]

“one of the most horrific things that I have seen or heard of in all of the weeks that I’ve been working in Gaza.”

Sample size = 1, duration = “weeks”, resultant value as datum = 0.

[B G]

Maybe he’s been in Gaza for long enough to have not heard that the NHS in his own home country (possibly his direct employer there?) has failed to screen their donated blood supply for basically anything that anyone anywhere else looks for (HIV, HepC, any other conditions which might be both bloodborne and terminal) before transfusing it into recipients?

Sure it’s not all concentrated in one spot, but odds are that 30 years of tainted transfusions led to the deaths of a lot more than 45 people, an most of them in some pretty horrific ways.

[Eeyore]

Public health.

[Pear Satirical]

Wait, what?

[Chumby]

This news was a bombshell to Fauxcahontas.

[Don't look at me!]

She was shell shocked.

[Chumby]

Must have blown a fuse.

[Don't look at me!]

The whole thing is going to blow up in her face.

[sarcasmic]

Commentariat logic: if you complain about A then you support B.

A can be Israel, Trump or Republicans, and B can be Hamas, Biden or Democrats.

Criticism of one equals praise for the other.

[Idaho-Bob]

You forgot your pet narrative; illegals

[sarcasmic]

Is that what the pathetic grey boxes have been saying?

[Bertram Guilfoyle]

Criticism of Israel for killing civilians during a war is barely disguised support for Hamas.

[Nobartium]

In actual warfare, there really are two sides: your side, and everyone else.

The drunk lives in an alcohol-addled stupor.

[sarcasmic]

Do you consider yourself to be at war with regular people in the country who don’t share your politics?

If so that would explain a lot.

[Mike Parsons]

In Israel’s case, that countries disagreement with their political views involves: “the jews should all die and israel shouldn’t exist”

[sarcasmic]

Have you ever looked at something from the other point of view, even if you don’t agree with it, without reducing it to a ridiculous strawman?

[Don't look at me!]

Said the guy who gleefully mutes people and rejects ideas from other people he doesn’t like.

[damikesc]

“Have you ever looked at something from the other point of view, even if you don’t agree with it, without reducing it to a ridiculous strawman?”

He is effectively QUOTING their point of view.

WTF do you think “From the River to the Sea…” means?

[sarcasmic]

I confuse you with a reasonable person who starts with a capital D. So don’t take offense for me not being a dick.

If you are interested, watch Anthony Bourdaine Parts Unknown S04 E06.

If you triggered by things that challenge your world view, ignore it.

[Don't look at me!]

Have you ever looked at something from the other point of view, even if you don’t agree with it, without reducing it to a ridiculous strawman muting them?

[Mark U]

It was stated more clearly in the Likud Party Charter of 1977 “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”.

[Truthfulness]

The phrase predates 1977, and it meant to wipe Israel and its inhabitants off the map.

[Mark U]

Yes, it does work both ways, but the Likud version is clearly meant to wipe Palestine off the map.

[Mickey Rat]

It is perhaps ridiculous, but it is not a strawman.

[Pear Satirical]

“From the river to the sea” is not a strawman, it’s their fucking motto!

[B G]

Ironically most of the people I’ve heard who are most outraged at the killing of civilians by Israel over the last 7 months see the deliberate and nearly exclusive targeting of civilians (both Israeli and American/European in general) for more than 50 years by PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, and anyone else who will shout “Alahu Akbar” while doing it as somewhere between a non-issue and entirely justified under “international law”.

[Nobartium]

Other than pointing out that Warren is a dumb bint, was there any other point to this post?

[Rossami]

Does there need to be any other point?

[Minadin]

Maybe Matthew really wanted to write a real headline that sounds like it should have been posted on the Babylon Bee.

[KAW]

“Mark 80 series bombs, which were responsible for some of the worst mass-casualty attacks in Gaza.” The bombs themselves weren’t responsible – the people using them were. Just like guns don’t kill people, bombs don’t either. It is the people who are responsible, not the hardware they choose to use.

[Dillinger]

>>It is the people who are responsible

ya, exactly. The Hamasies are responsible

[Winston in Wonderland]

I spent 6 years flying B-52 bombers. The notion that there is such a thing as a surgical strike is sheer fantasy.

[Rossami]

Eh, it depends what you think “surgical strike” means. If you think it means that you can magically kill only the bad guys and have no collateral damage whatsoever, you’re right – that’s fantasy.

But if you remember that real surgery includes:
– cutting through healthy tissue in order to get to the problem
– cuts out not just the bad tissue but lots of healthy tissue that’s in contact or in the way
– damages even more healthy tissue as you close up the wound.
And that’s before you consider surgical infection, surgical mistakes, complications, etc.

By that standard, a “surgical strike” merely has to minimize, not magically eliminate, collateral damage to deserve the name.

[Uncle Jay]

” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) condemned the Israeli military for killing Palestinian civilians with an American-made bomb.”

…and yet the fake Pochantas never condemned the Hamas terrorist pigs for kidnapping, raping and murdering Israeli (and maybe some American) civilians.
Why does the word “hypocrite” just leap to mind?

[B G]

Her “Cherokee” heritage makes her naturally sympathetic to “indigenous” populations, even if they’re Arabs claiming to be indigenous to a nation that existed only as a name invented by a Roman Emperor in reference to a Greek sub-group whose principal genetic tie to Arabs is that both ethnicities have 23 chromosomes, and the same dark hair, brown eyes, and skin tone shared by most of the population of the “known world” of the Roman, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Jewish, and most other cultures in the region 2000-4000 years ago.

[Think It Through]

“fake Pocahontas” = Fauxcahontas, the original and much more clever nickname.

[See.More]

No…

… held up a shipment of Mark 80 series bombs, which were responsible for some of the worst mass-casualty attacks in Gaza…

… the bombs were not responsible dumbass!

[Public Entelectual]

Isn’t that the legal theory that got Goring convicted for the Blitz?

[ErinS]

This woman is breaking my heart. I voted for her, liked her, and now for the last several years shes just a Democratic shill. What do they have on her for her to do this 180?

[damikesc]

It is almost cute you think she has changed.

Hint: She was ALWAYS a sell-out shill.

I still think her story about taking the last dollar from a student as a donation from her campaign was one of the most mind-blowingly horrible things anybody has done to another person.

[mad.casual]

It is almost cute you think she has changed.

I thought it was a joke. She’s called Fauxcahontas because she lied about being Native American almost 50 yrs. ago. A lie she doubled-down on by getting her DNA tested and then advertising 1/10124th Native American just a few years ago.

It’s like hearing OJ got arrested for robbery in 2007 and saying “I wonder what they’ve got on him. I thought he’d changed!”

[B G]

She’s been a leftist shill long before she was ever in politics. Probably even long before she was best known as one of the actively touted “diversity” professors at Harvard Law School.

When she started running for office, she just became a shill with a bigger megaphone.

The problem with her now is that she’s part of the “in crowd” with an administration that once announced an intention to “make the whole Country more like California”. As a 30-year resident of the Los Angeles Metro area, that thought terrifies me. No thinking person should even joke about emulating the governance of a city which has been run unchallenged by the “progressive” wing of the most “progressive” State Dem Party in the country for almost 20 years now and recently passed up both NYC and SF (both also “deep blue” for decades) to become the nations “most unaffordable City)

[Sevo]

It’s a shame you didn’t use your head much, much earlier, slaver. Fuck off and die.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I voted for her, liked her, and now for the last several years shes just a Democratic shill.

LOL, what? She ran as a Democrat since the beginning of her political career, and you’re surprised that she’s promoting the agenda of her party?

If this isn’t a joke, how on earth did you undergo such a disconnect?

[Think It Through]

You voted for ELIZABETH WARREN? And you show your face here?

Channeling my inner John McEnroe…..YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS.

[Wally]

Based on many of the contributors, she should have a Reason byline, not be relegated to the comments section.

[Wally]

She’s an elite communist. Believes in none of it, just uses her position for wealth and power. Always has.
She used her fake Native American ancestry to advance her career. She’s a Climate activist who flies in private jets. She is and always has been a scummy person.

[Longtobefree]

Um – – – – – – –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden

[Sevo]

Not sure of your point, but my opinion on this has changed several times until O’Brien’s “How the War Was Won”.
For many years WWII has seemed to be an economic competition, the tragic loss of life being only the accounting of results rather than the cause of same. As have most all wars, early 19th century on (see Sherman’s March to the Sea).
In WWII, FDR made the (hyperbolic) claim that Boy Scout scrap drives were equal to Marines on the shore. Hyperbole, but that line is drawn in shifting sand.
Overy, “Why the Allies Won”, attempted to kick up sand to obscure the view, but did so by contradicting himself in every single chapter. EVERY one; one of the authors of “Shattered Sword” had to agree after cites.
Regarding the Wiki links, Vonnegut was a novelist with (at the time) stylish anti-war stance; so much book-tour clap-trap. Numbers pulled out of his ass or “Parade” magazine.
Otherwise, JKG famously coined the phrase “making the rubble bounce” as a criticism, when, indeed, was an intent: The allies did not want Nazi workers fixing the bombed plants and refineries; we wanted ” the rubble to bounce”!
The war was won by using air and sea forces to keep material, material, and fuel out of the hands of front-line Axis troops and O’Brien argues that Dresden contributed, likely saving more deaths on both sides, like the nukes.
One more obvious lesson: No, the Red Army didn’t ‘win the war’ in the west. It served to allow Stalin to prove that he was totally irrelevant to the number of Soviet deaths. The war was not won by the number of Nazi casualties on the Eastern Front. It was lost by the lack of material, material, fuel, and transport on all fronts. Period.

[Sevo]

“…material, material, and fuel…”
…material, materiel, and fuel…

[Wally]

The number of German casualties on the Eastern Front was due to the lack of material. Had they been able to effectively supply their troops, they would have continued kicking the Soviet Army around.

Regarding nuking Japan… Maybe we didn’t realize it at the time… When we used the nukes, we had total air and naval superiority. Japan had no food, fuel, or ability to build new equipment. Have you considered that we only saved Japanese casualties with those bombs? We could have simply starved the population. It’s far less humane than the nukes, but an actual invasion of Japan was not necessary. From my perspective, the limited use of the nukes and showcasing their devastating effect has had a legacy of preventing their use ever since. It’s a net good, but was not really required to crush Japan without further significant American Casualties.

[Sevo]

Added:
“In WWII, FDR made the (hyperbolic) claim that Boy Scout scrap drives were equal to Marines on the shore. Hyperbole, but that line is drawn in shifting sand.”
He noting there were no ‘innocents’ in modern warfare, the Nazis (and the Japanese) re-enforcing it by dispersing assets, and the Japanese taking it to the extreme by arming school children.
Always willing to discuss this issue, but you’d better have cites.

[AltheDago]

Grow up.

It’s a war. Israel didn’t start it. Israel is determined to finish it. Which will, in the long run, be good for the entire region.

Hamas is a cancer.