"Smart bombs are only as smart as people on the ground," Ruzicka said. "Before you bomb, you should be 100 percent certain of who you are bombing."
The most recent errant strike, around the village of Kakrak in Oruzgan Province, appears to have resulted from a reliance on faulty intelligence and the use of excessive force in trying to kill people that the US pilots believed were enemy fighters.
On July 1, during an operation to hunt Taliban leaders, an American AC-130 gunship attacked four villages around the hamlet of Kakrak. US soldiers later found villagers gathering up the limbs of their neighbors. Local officials counted 54 dead, most of them women and children, and at least 120 wounded.
US pilots fired on Kakrak after Special Operations forces on the ground reported seeing antiaircraft guns firing at the plane, military officials said. According to the villagers, there were two engagement parties that night, and some of the men were firing their guns in celebration, an Afghan tradition. The Americans said their planes had been fired on, but the villagers deny aiming at anything.
"The Americans are not from here and they don't know our traditions or our enemies, and who has enemies," said Jan Muhammad, the governor of Oruzgan Province who spent three years in jail under the Taliban. "So they should contact us first and check first."
What angered Afghans and Westerners working in the area, is what they described as a trigger-happy US approach. No Americans entered the village before the planes opened fire. Once called in, the US AC-130 gunship, which employs heavy-caliber machine guns, and cannons, strafed four villages.
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