Pentagon looks to be undercounting how many civilians it kills

Not a shocker. Presumably they set the bar about as high as it goes, for what "officially" counts as a civilian death or serious injury caused by U.S. military action.

As U.S. military forces continue to kill and wound civilians in multiple countries during the ongoing 21-year War on Terror while chronically undercounting such casualties, a pair of Democratic lawmakers on Monday asked the Pentagon to explain discrepancies in noncombatant casualty reporting and detail steps being taken to address the issue.

"The report did not admit to any civilian deaths in Syria, despite credible civilian casualty monitors documenting at least 15 civilian deaths." In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—who have both led calls to hold the military accountable for harming noncombatants—said they are "troubled" that the Pentagon's annual civilian casualty report, which was released in September as required by an amendment Warren attached to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), again undercounts noncombatants killed by U.S. forces...

"Every time Congress is briefed about an instance of civilian harm, we are almost always told that the service member followed the proper protocol and processes," Jacobs told Politico earlier this month. "So I think it's clear that it's an institutional not an individual problem."

While it is notoriously difficult to track how many civilians have been killed by a military that, in the words of Gen. Tommy Franks, doesn't "do body counts," researchers at the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimate that combatants on all sides of the U.S.-led War on Terror have killed as many as 387,000 civilians as of late last year. - Common Dreams