UK govt admits it lied about civilian casualties in Syria

[mrswdk]

An RAF strike on the Islamic State group has caused a civilian casualty, the Ministry of Defence has admitted for the first time.

It says a Reaper drone fired on an IS vehicle in eastern Syria on 26 March this year, "unintentionally" killing a civilian on a motorbike when he crossed the target area at the last minute.

In a statement issued after the attack, the MoD had said the Reaper drone "tracked a group of terrorists in a vehicle in the Syrian Euphrates valley... and successfully destroyed it and its occupants with a precision Hellfire missile attack".

Up until now, the MoD said it had seen "no evidence" that its strikes had caused civilian casualties.

But on Monday a BBC investigation suggested other civilians may have been killed as a result of RAF air strikes.

A source inside the coalition fighting IS highlighted a strike on 9 January last year in Mosul, Iraq, when an RAF Tornado fired a Brimstone missile on what was described as a "lorry bomb" in eastern Mosul.

It caused a large secondary explosion and the source said he believed two civilians were "almost certainly" killed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43977394

[Bernie Sanders]

......and Syrian government does everything to avoid civilian casualties

[mrswdk]

You mean those reports in the Western FNM that even the US President says are not trustworthy? Or reports by governments like the one in OP that basically lies and then admits it lied later?

Who knows what is or isn't real any more?

[Bernie Sanders]

You mean those reports in the Western FNM that even the US President says are not trustworthy? Or reports by governments like the one in OP that basically lies and then admits it lied later?

Who knows what is or isn't real any more?

Yes, Trump says so, it must be true.

Ooops, Mueller investigation is just about ready to subpoena Trump. I'm sure it has nothing to do with lying....right?

[patches70]

Ooops, Mueller investigation is just about ready to subpoena Trump. I'm sure it has nothing to do with lying....right?

Hahaha! Bernie, are you making predictions again? Haven't you learned yet?

Let's say for a moment, a once in a lifetime chance you are actually right and Mueller does subpoena Trump. Trump will take that subpoena and put it in a picture frame and mount it on his wall in Trump tower and have a good laugh at it.

You see, Mueller can't subpoena Trump because, if you remember from your government civics classes way back in what ever shithole public school you went to, the only institution, the only institution that is empowered to prosecute a sitting President is Congress.
Trump can ignore a subpoena, and he should! The Supreme court can rule that he must comply with a subpoena and he can ignore them as well and there ain't a damn thing Mueller, the SCOTUS can do about it. Trump should tell Mueller that he ain't gonna answer any questions to him, to any Grand Jury or anyone else. If Congress wants to impeach, then that's where Trump will fight is battle over this stupidity.

An impeachment has it's own problems, not for Trump like you'd think I'm sure, but that's another subject. You know it's bad when even the Democrats have backed off their impeachment calls. They've given up on that and are hoping that they can get Trump on the cheap by getting him in trouble with Mueller's investigation. All Trump's gotta do is tell Mueller to go suck an egg and take his subpoena with him! It's that simple.

[Bernie Sanders]

Ooops, Mueller investigation is just about ready to subpoena Trump. I'm sure it has nothing to do with lying....right?

Hahaha! Bernie, are you making predictions again? Haven't you learned yet?

Let's say for a moment, a once in a lifetime chance you are actually right and Mueller does subpoena Trump. Trump will take that subpoena and put it in a picture frame and mount it on his wall in Trump tower and have a good laugh at it.

You see, Mueller can't subpoena Trump because, if you remember from your government civics classes way back in what ever shithole public school you went to, the only institution, the only institution that is empowered to prosecute a sitting President is Congress.
Trump can ignore a subpoena, and he should! The Supreme court can rule that he must comply with a subpoena and he can ignore them as well and there ain't a damn thing Mueller, the SCOTUS can do about it. Trump should tell Mueller that he ain't gonna answer any questions to him, to any Grand Jury or anyone else. If Congress wants to impeach, then that's where Trump will fight is battle over this stupidity.

An impeachment has it's own problems, not for Trump like you'd think I'm sure, but that's another subject. You know it's bad when even the Democrats have backed off their impeachment calls. They've given up on that and are hoping that they can get Trump on the cheap by getting him in trouble with Mueller's investigation. All Trump's gotta do is tell Mueller to go suck an egg and take his subpoena with him! It's that simple.

No one is above the LAW, even the President. Just ask Johnson [not Lyndon], Nixon and Clinton.

[patches70]

Hey, dummy, try to keep up. The President can't be charged with a crime. He has to be removed from office first. Congress, and Congress only, has the authority to remove the President from office. You can't issue an arrest warrant for a sitting President. There is no legal mechanism for that. First you remove the President through impeachment and then at that point he/she can be arrested and charged, for instance.
Clinton committed perjury. He wasn't arrested, he wasn't charged because he couldn't be. He was impeached, but the impeachment didn't have the votes to remove him from office.
You can try an issue a subpoena to try and compel a sitting President to testify, but if he refuses or ignores the subpoena, there is no legal recourse to force him/her to comply.

That, Bernie, is the law. Clinton was deposed by Starr about the Monica scandal. Clinton allowed himself to be deposed. Had he simply refused there would have been nothing Starr could have done to force Clinton to testify. Trump need not fall into the same trap. As far as impeachment, maybe the House could find itself impeaching Trump, but no way would the Senate convict. Thus it stands now.

Learn the law, Bernie. Give up the pipe dreams and for the love of God stop making political predictions because you are always wrong.

[Dukasaur]

Nixon resigned voluntarily rather than face impeachment. It's ironic that Nixon has become something of a synonym for dishonesty in American politics because he was actually a lot more honest than most of his successors. Nixon only lied about a few things and the media nailed him on those. Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama all told far more outrageous lies and got away with them. With Trump things have reached their ultimate conclusion. He lies about everything, all the time, and people have given up keeping track.

[mrswdk]

At least some other world leaders like Glorious Xi are truthful and constructive.

[Symmetry]

Nixon resigned voluntarily rather than face impeachment. It's ironic that Nixon has become something of a synonym for dishonesty in American politics because he was actually a lot more honest than most of his successors. Nixon only lied about a few things and the media nailed him on those. Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama all told far more outrageous lies and got away with them. With Trump things have reached their ultimate conclusion. He lies about everything, all the time, and people have given up keeping track.

Why do you think Nixon was such a paragon of honesty among modern Presidents? It seems a little counter-factual.

[Dukasaur]

Nixon resigned voluntarily rather than face impeachment. It's ironic that Nixon has become something of a synonym for dishonesty in American politics because he was actually a lot more honest than most of his successors. Nixon only lied about a few things and the media nailed him on those. Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama all told far more outrageous lies and got away with them. With Trump things have reached their ultimate conclusion. He lies about everything, all the time, and people have given up keeping track.

Why do you think Nixon was such a paragon of honesty among modern Presidents? It seems a little counter-factual.

He's only a paragon of honesty by comparison, because the others listed have lied about far worse things. Nobody died as a result of the Watergate break-in. Tens of thousands as a conservative estimate, and possibly a lot more, died as a result of Reagan's deal with Iran, which was done in violation of U.S. law and lied about. Hundreds of thousands died because of Bush Jr.'s war on Iraq, which was predicated on lies. (Bush Sr., of course, is complicit in both: he was the prime architect of Iran-Contra and he set the stage for the Iraq war which was to reach its tragic conclusion under his son.) Tens of thousands died due to Clinton's interventions in Serbia and Haiti, both of which were predicated on lies. Hundreds of thousands died due to Obama's destabilizations of Libya and Egypt, which he lied to defend.

The grand drama of Watergate was, at its source, about a burglary in which little of real value was taken and nobody was hurt. It's pretty small potatoes compared to the corpses in the streets of Baghdad and Benghazi.

[Symmetry]

Nixon resigned voluntarily rather than face impeachment. It's ironic that Nixon has become something of a synonym for dishonesty in American politics because he was actually a lot more honest than most of his successors. Nixon only lied about a few things and the media nailed him on those. Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama all told far more outrageous lies and got away with them. With Trump things have reached their ultimate conclusion. He lies about everything, all the time, and people have given up keeping track.

Why do you think Nixon was such a paragon of honesty among modern Presidents? It seems a little counter-factual.

He's only a paragon of honesty by comparison, because the others listed have lied about far worse things. Nobody died as a result of the Watergate break-in. Tens of thousands as a conservative estimate, and possibly a lot more, died as a result of Reagan's deal with Iran, which was done in violation of U.S. law and lied about. Hundreds of thousands died because of Bush Jr.'s war on Iraq, which was predicated on lies. (Bush Sr., of course, is complicit in both: he was the prime architect of Iran-Contra and he set the stage for the Iraq war which was to reach its tragic conclusion under his son.) Tens of thousands died due to Clinton's interventions in Serbia and Haiti, both of which were predicated on lies. Hundreds of thousands died due to Obama's destabilizations of Libya and Egypt, which he lied to defend.

The grand drama of Watergate was, at its source, about a burglary in which little of real value was taken and nobody was hurt. It's pretty small potatoes compared to the corpses in the streets of Baghdad and Benghazi.

Ah. ok. you've shifted the goalposts. Now it's not that Nixon was more of liar, it's about the human cost of the Watergate lies vs other things that you consider to be lies, like Benghazi.

It's a bizarre shift that you've taken on this, to start with Nixon as paragon of honesty by comparison with a very thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory about the Benghazi attack as your conclusion.

I'm not sure that your new narrative really stands up, though I am at least thankful that you've abandoned the previous one.

[mrswdk]

America needs some sort of legislation or rule explicitly forbidding presidents from lying. Clearly the lack of a specific law to this effect is emboldening presidents to lie.