From one of today's New York Times stories (2/16/10) about the NATO/U.S. campaign in Marja, Afghanistan (emphasis added):
The heavy civilian toll highlighted the stressful and confusing nature of the fighting, especially in Marja, and of the difficulties inherent in conducting military operations in a guerrilla war, where insurgents can hide easily among the population.
Still, the deaths are troubling to the American and NATO commanders, who have made protecting civilians the overriding objective of their campaign–even when doing so comes at the expense of letting insurgents get away. The stream of news releases flowing from NATO headquarters detailing the episodes is testament to how seriously military commanders here take the problem.
Indeed, nothing demonstrates humanitarian concern more profoundly than numerous press releases.


[...] NYT Documents NATO's Concern for Civilian Casualties [...]
Notice how the corpress conflates "concern" for civilian deaths with the "problem" it poses for occupation PR?
Brings to mind an old song …
It's a beautiful world we live in
A sweet romantic place
Beautiful people everywhere
The way they show they care
Makes me want to say
It's a beautiful world
It's a beautiful world
It's a beautiful world
For you
For you
For you
It's not for me
- Devo
[...] 2/22/10) on a New York Times op-ed (2/18/10) that urged the U.S. to not worry so much about killing civilians in Afghanistan. The piece was written by Lara M. Dadkhah, who is vaguely identified as an [...]
[...] Themedia template for writing about Afghan civilian casualtiesrequires that articlesinclude some reference to the extreme care taken by U.S/NATO forces to avoid killing non-combatants. The practice reached a new low in this New York Times story (5/29/10) about a U.S. drone attack that killed 23 civilians: The attack, in which three vehicles were destroyed, illustrated the extraordinary sensitivity to the inadvertent killing of noncombatants by NATO forces. Since taking command here last June, General McChrystal has made protection of civilians a high priority, and has sharply restricted airstrikes. [...]
[...] http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/02/16/nyt-documents-natos-concern-for-civilian-casualties/ . [...]