Don Bacon: “I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this. After serving 30 years in the Air Force and serving with multiple air…”

“I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this. After serving 30 years in the Air Force and serving with multiple air operation centers, I know how hard our military works to get this right. Our military forces go through extreme measures to avoid civilian casualties. At any given time, combatant commanders have multiple boards, centers, cells, and working groups that are focused on reducing civilian casualties, in addition to the work of the various target development working groups. Additionally, there are significant and recurring legal reviews conducted as proposed targets are evaluated for compliance with the law of war by judge advocates, legal advisers, and target engagement authorities--and this is before any strike is even taken. To evaluate civilian casualties and allegations, military commanders look at and consider reports from all sources, including NGOs, credible media sources and outlets, and even social media. In addition to evaluating all these various reports, they look at the video surveillance that they have and other forms of data from their ISR assets, witness observations; they take human intelligence and other forms of intelligence. Of course, there are going to be differences in initial reporting-- and sometimes even months afterwards--between what DOD sees and what other groups are seeing, but this is war, and war is chaos. And our adversaries frequently also inflate civilian losses to further their aims. So my position is this.…”