|
|
Article: Sole Informant Guided Decision On Afghan Strike
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- September 6, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Washington Post. This material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
|
To the German commander, it seemed to be a fortuitous target:
More than 100 Taliban insurgents were gathering around two hijacked
fuel tankers that had become stuck in the mud near this small
farming village.
The grainy live video transmitted from an American F-15E fighter
jet circling overhead, which was projected on a screen in a German
tactical operations center four miles north of here, showed numerous
black dots around the trucks -- each of them a thermal image of a
human but without enough detail to confirm whether they were
carrying weapons. An Afghan informant was on the phone with an
intelligence officer at the center, however, insisting that
everybody at the site was an ...