Comment by LorenPechtel

While we don't have access to their minds we do generally have access to what they say. They think they are shooting at bad guys, the claim is innocents hit without military advantage--if they considered the target valid they'll generally either say what they were aiming at or that the ones hit aren't actually innocents. The Chinese embassy case illustrates what I'm talking about--we admitted we made a mistake and indicated what the intended target was. Nobody challenged the validity of the intended target. Or, multiple times, Israel hits some high profile "innocent", in response to the criticism they release pictures that show the person wasn't an innocent.