On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: > Sadre protected himself with Iraqi women and young children as > human shields, showing that he expected the Pentagon to show > more concern for Iraqi lives than he did.
Pentagon protects their people by distance - being it by bombing from high altitude, or by using cruise missiles. Everybody uses the technology available to them. What's bad on it? Invariably, the side that uses the defensive measure - being it smart weapons[1] or human shields - classifies it as tactical, while the other side considers it cowardly. A nice example of symmetry in asymmetry. [1] The defensive aspect here is to allow the attackers to attack from distance beyond the reach of the other side's active defenses, thus not risking anything more than a piece of overpriced electronics.
