US forces bomb another hospital

That is why the U.S. needs plenty of troops on the ground.

Have the bad guys stop using hospitals, mosques, and other civilian centers as bases of operations. Have them stop hiding among civilians.

They are the ones that endanger civilians.

He would say that, wouldn't he?

Despite your overweening eagerness to absolve the belligerents - even if it were true it would not make the bombing any less in violation of the Geneva convention.

So let's get this clear. You're totally okay with US forces knowingly destroying a hospital full of patients and doctors if they think that there are enemy forces operating within it, with no warning?

I think it would be simpler if the Tailban used hospitals to get treated for injuries, and not as command centers. Damn that is just dirt simple IMO.

They did not destroy a "hospital full of patients".

They destroyed one building of a hospital out of several did they not?

They destroyed the main hospital building. This is hair-splitting prevarication.

If you're going to attack, isn't hitting the hospital the most humanitarian way to go about it? The wounded don't have to be transported by donkey down the mountain, thrown in the back of a pickup, driven across country and into the city to get to the ER, because the ER is just down the hall! Medical professionals are right on the scene from the first moments! Many more lives are saved. Patient outcomes are better.

Seems like a similar mentality to the one that led to unrestricted submarine warfare during the world wars. They actually initially followed the rule that civilian ships had to be warned and allowed to abandon ship before the submarine sank it, usually using the deck gun. But then these civilian ships started being armed specifically with the intent of ambushing an sinking a u-boat that was following this set of rules. After a while, the u-boat commanders abandoned this convention and simply torpedoed any ship they believed was supporting their enemy's war effort. The reason given for the sinking of the Lusitania was that she was believed to be carrying arms and munitions for England's war effort. Islamic terrorists have long used protected sites and civilians as a way of shielding themselves from attack, so I can certainly see someone in the chain of command deciding to not play the game anymore and focus on the destruction of the military. I have to say, I kind of see both sides of the argument. We certainly can't let the Taliban to use hospitals or any other protected site as a shield against attack, or to use hostages to the same effect, but it's also unacceptable to so casually kill these hostages. Rick pointed out the provision for this type of situation, but I can understand the reluctance to send troops in as they would be facing the asymmetry I pointed out earlier. The Taliban is not going to care about the lives of the doctors and patients in the hospital and would undoubtedly use them as hostages or meat shields while responding to any troops that entered the building. So how does one deal with them? Dan? Rick?

Don't we have spies for this sort of thing?

The Irish commie has a double standard a mile wide.

Oh, I don't know. "The United States is always wrong" is sort of a single standard.

Explain who it is that I apply a different standard to when it comes to blowing up hospitals full of people.

The provision is not the sending of troops. It is giving clear warnings that allow time for the site to be evacuated.

It all feels really hopeless. It's not like the assholes who committed this war crime will ever be brought to justice, and then you have this annoyingly large part of the American public who apparently can't find anything wrong about it because they just killed a bunch of sand-niggers, or something.

Oh, gee, with confidence levels that high, who WOULDN'T bomb a hospital? Especially with such a huge return on investment:

Does military intelligence during a war time situation normally get much better than that?

I mean, like, that could walk in the front door and look for the Taliban.

Clear warnings? Do you really think the Taliban is going to give enough of a shit about human life to heed a warning? In their eyes everyone (including themselves) is Allah's bitch. They were most likely betting the farm that we wouldn't attack, and they could continue to use the hospital as a command & control site. A hospital is usually perfect cover, but not this time. And even if the hospital staff new about any warnings, you think the Taliban would let them leave? If they did, there goes your insulating human shield.....now your command center will get leveled completely.

Why were the Taliban able to take over Kunduz anyway? Obama had said we would be withdrawing our forces.

Meanwhile, a lot of women say they'll never return to Kunduz because they'll never be safe from the Taliban there. One Taliban commander said “Before we managed to take control of the shelter, Hassina Sarwari, the head of the shelter house, along with all the runaway sluts and immoral girls, had already left Kunduz city." He went on to add “Hassina Sarwari herself is an immoral slut, and if we had captured her, she would be hanged in the main circle in Kunduz city.”

Perhaps it's time stopped defending immoral sluts and whores from righteous male justice.

Bro's before ho's is in the Koran quite a bit, so who are we to second guess divine guidance?

The point is to allow patients and doctors to evacuate, not Taliban.

The attackers didn't care enough to give them that chance.

Do you not get this? Yes I know the point (in a perfect world) is to let the patients and staff evacuate, not the Taliban. So do you really envision a situation where the innocent would evacuate while the Taliban did not? I can picture it now:
"Abullah! Get these innocent people out of here! The US military attack is imminent! But since we are hunkered down in our command center,
we will stay here and hope we don't get hammered too hard once our human shields are gone."

They use human shields just like all the other muslim terrorist groups do.

No, you don't get this. You'll go to any lengths to avoid the simple matter that the US forces were in violation of their humanitarian obligations, which you claim are hammered into them in military training.

I don't envision that Taliban (assuming they were there, a matter in dispute) will do other than leave too. But foreseeing this, their attackers aren't entitled to kill everyone else just to get them. Protecting civilians and placing their safety above military utility is the entire point of the convention.

And since the goal is to kill or capture the members of the Taliban who are illegally occupying the building, how else to you suggest that goal be accomplished without ground troops? Or do you honestly think the destruction of the hospital was the goal here? Do you think the hospital's destruction in any way hinders the Taliban?

I don't give a shit. Military utility is entirely secondary.

It has been suggested that the the hospital was targetted because it was treating Taliban members, and the attackers wanted to intimidate others into refusing such treatment in future. It's also possible that the did in fact think that there were active Taliban there (probably erroneously) and decided that murdering the patients and staff was acceptable.
A full independent investigation is needed to answer these questions and to recommend prosecutions against those responsible.

The buck stops at Obama, and there's no way you can prosecute a Nobel Peace Prize Winner who is saving the planet.