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The Daily

The Civilian Casualties of America’s Air Wars

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Four years ago, Azmat Khan, an investigative reporter for The Times Magazine, told us the story of Basim Razzo, whose entire family was killed in a U.S.-led airstrike in Iraq. His story helped reveal how American air wars were resulting in a staggering number of civilian deaths. Analyzing thousands of pages of U.S. military reports and investigating in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Azmat was able to gain a better understanding of why this was happening.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From New York Times, I'm Michael Borrow.

0:03.4

This is the Daily.

0:07.9

I woke up.

0:09.4

I looked and I can see this guy above me.

0:12.4

The ceiling has fell off my room.

0:16.4

Four years ago.

0:17.9

Then I started calling my wife.

0:20.4

And my daughter.

0:24.0

No answer.

0:25.5

My colleague, Osmart Khan, told us the story of Basam Razo, an Iraqi civilian whose home was targeted by a US air strike that killed his entire family.

0:39.0

The precision of the bombing is unmistakable.

0:43.5

I mean, two missile strikes, one on my brother's house and one on my house.

0:50.0

In the process, Osmart revealed that the American air war against ISIS, which the US describes as the most precise in history, was resulting in a staggering number of civilian deaths.

1:05.0

So how could this be a mistake?

1:08.0

And she discovered that the US left behind a paper trail that documented those civilian deaths.

1:17.5

Today.

1:18.5

Osmart returns to describe exactly what that paper trail revealed.

1:30.0

It's Tuesday, January 18th.

1:35.5

Osmart, there aren't that many colleagues of ours whose appearance on this show happened once every four years.

1:41.5

And you're one of them. And the first phase of your reporting occurred back in 2017.

1:48.5

So tell us what you have been up to since. And about this second phase of your reporting.

1:54.5

Right. So the last time we spoke, I had just finished this ground investigation into 100 air strikes in Iraq, where I discovered that the actual rate of civilian casualties were much, much higher than what the US was claiming.

...

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