rationalskepticism.org

There are a lot of reasons there are reports of civilian casualties following various operations. One of the ones you never hear reported much, but which happens quite frequently, is that inter-tribal or criminal acts are carried out at the same general time as the bombing raids, and the bodies are moved to the bombing sites to try to kill two birds with one stone - take out a rival, and blame it on the Americans. And this doesn't just happen with air operations - it happens after ground fights as well. I was involved in one case where the family of a man claimed that Coalition Forces had killed him with machine gun fire - from such a range that the bullet would have been travelling at about walking speed and sideways. He was murdered by insurgents, then they tried to convince the family we had done it. Stuff like this happens all the time - the enemy has learned how to use and twist the uncritical media reporting to their purposes - and since they often control local communications sources (through violence, bribery or intimidation) their message resonates with the locals. We counter with such things as providing free radios to the locals so they can get unvarnished news beyond the marketplace gossips, and it helps - but we haven't learned to counter the messages in the global media that you, among many others, seem to be taken in by.

I simply cannot get into details on how I know that the casualty rate for civilians injured or killed in aircraft operations is far lower than actual enemy killed and wounded, but it is. I know that nothing I say will convince you, so I'm just going to drop out of this discussion now - less frustrating for all of us.