Comment by jvanderbot
5 days ago
Yes, the definition of war crime is not "intentionally targeted building" it is "intentionally targeted building that it knew was non-military and full of civilians". If you plausibly believed it to be a military target, then it's plausibly not a war crime.
The question about whether US launched the missiles is not really in dispute, the intent and knowledge is in dispute. NYT did a great analysis essentially concluding it was plausibly a mistake, not an intentional or indiscriminate civilian attack.
More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49739018#49741081
The double tap to me is really what is cruel. I understand americans don't want to hear it, because they need to believe their military is moral, but a double tap to me show cruelty and willingness to target doctor, nurses, firemen and any person courageous enough to help.
The US military and its sailors already showed me everything i wont to know about them when i saw the report on them shooting torpedoes at capsized boats.
Well the current leaders of the US Government have demonstrated that they believe that people of certain races, sexual orientations, and genders are less than human - and enthusiastically engage with other leaders who have similar beliefs. It’s because of this, along with their arrogance and incompetence, that I am personally not the least bit surprised that they have committed and will continue to commit war crimes.
I guess the trick for me is (1) convincing others and (2) convincing others to give a shit.
Not torpedoes, but as a former enlisted member of the US Navy, most everything else here I agree with. Shameful.
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The intent is to kill doctors, firefighters, first responders. In pretty much all situations this is considered an atrocity, morally repugnant, evil, etc.
These are civillians putting themselves in danger for the express purpose of helping other civilians. I shouldn't have to explain that killing civilians is a bad thing.
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Is there some other purpose of a double tap besides killing first responders? Maybe to hit underground targets, or the second hit was unintentional?
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TFA addresses this. It doesn't matter if it was a "mistake": the US acted recklessly "[amounting] to more than mere negligence," even when warned by their own commanders. Ignorance doesn't excuse crimes.
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
> According to the report, the US relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian military commander was present at the site but failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike.
> Investigators said the failure to update targeting intelligence and confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.
> “Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”
The NYT - never a fan of trump - did an excellent analysis on this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/iran-school-m...
That article from March doesn't refute what the UN stated in its report today:
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
Again, because this was preventable and the US acted recklessly and without regard for civilians ("indiscriminate"), going so far as to ignore the warnings of its own commanders.
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The NYT may not like Trump but they love killing Muslims in the Middle East. They have many Zionist connections.
>NYT did a great analysis essentially concluding it was plausibly a mistake, not an intentional or indiscriminate civilian attack.
See also somewhat overlooked Bloomberg story from June:
>An Analyst’s Missed Remark Surfaced in Deadly Iran School Strike Probe
>An analyst's missed remarks and US intelligence systems that weren’t connected to one another are among the missteps that investigators have surfaced while probing the cause of a missile strike on an Iranian school that killed an estimated 120 children, people familiar with the matter said.
>Years before the US attacked Iran at the end of February, an intelligence analyst examining information about potential future strike targets in Iran noticed changes at a site the US had previously characterized as a naval facility belonging to the elite wing of the Iranian military in Minab city in the southeast of the country. It was, in fact, now an elementary school.
>The analyst remarked on changes at the site in a digital intelligence tool, but that tool wasn’t linked up to the official intelligence database that the US uses to develop strike targets and the information was never conveyed to military commanders, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing sensitive matters.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-26/an-analys...
https://archive.is/LNMMf
> "intentionally targeted building that it knew was non-military and full of civilians"
That formulation guarantees that most war crimes won't be revealed as such. The militaries of the world are operating under top secrecy about what they know, knew or plan on knowing, ditto for their intent. They can claim whatever they please without regard to actual reality, proof is impossible to obtain.
Thus, under this formulation, war crimes are doubly guarded by the secrecy of two kinds of information available only to the perpetrators and protected by harsh laws again any leaks.
Assange knows, he dealt with it but I doubt he or anyone else will try to break the secrecy again given the zeal of his prosecution. To think that what he revealed was an isolated case is laughable.
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How can anyone take this argument seriously when the DoW was simultaneously committing dozens of extrajudicial executions of small boat users in the Gulf?
Every military strike is extrajudicial, question is if they hit a legitimate target.
What was "military" about those motorboats? You're suggesting the same military has vision into dozens of little boat's barrel contents but can't see hundreds of children in a school yard?
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In all sincerity, people take it seriously because it helps them sleep at night.
What is there to take seriously regarding this strike other than the facts as presented?
There were 900 strikes in 12h, and only one target involved a strike on a school, and huge coincidence that target was a dozen meters from a military compound and was in fact part of that military compound not long ago.
It's quite easy to accept that this was a horrific mistake. Whether you agree with the idea of striking Iran at all is up to you, but once they "went hot", precision strikes on military targets were successful in 900 cases, and it's plausible that one precision strike was issued incorrectly.
It doesn't bring back the kiddos. It also doesn't mean it's a war crime. It's right to be angry about that strike or even the larger war if you oppose it, but spurious legal justifications for outrage aren't required - it can be wrong even when legally justified or plausibly just a mistake.
"the kiddos"
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I am not defending this morally, but these are clearly a group of the least competent stewards of the military in a long while. They were "completely clear on OPSEC", with a left-leaning Atlantic reporter in the signal group chat. This bombing also coalesced support in Iran and had a big rally around the flag effect. Data in Iran is hard and the timetable was extremely fast, again, due to incompetence and the inability to constrain a vassal. So its appalling to say, but a bunch of morons with LLMS and outdated targeting, pushed to meet the objectives of corrupt idiots is almost certainly the cause. I personally consider it a war crime, but I am not sure if it meets the legal definition.
The NYT is not credible here. Remember how they lied to manufacture consent to invade Iraq? This bombing was clearly intentional, just like the previous 3 years worth of war crimes committed by Israel/US.
The NYT seems pretty credible, considering how much its critics rely on 23 years old WMD coverage to criticise it.