It’s A Hell Of A Pinpoint Nose Shwacking Operation

Remember back in the summer when John Kerry was caught on an open mic saying this about IDF operations in Gaza with a completely sarcastic tone:

“It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation. It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation,” he said during the call, which was broadcast on “Fox News Sunday.”

So listen to this (audio only):

That’s Pentagon Press Secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby:

I’d like to make two points. First of all, we don’t have the ability to — to count every nose that we shwack [sic]. Number two, that’s not the goal. That’s not the goal. The less of these guys that are out there, certainly that’s the better, but the goal is to degrade and destroy their capabilities.

Well I’ll tell you something about Israel’s “hell of a pinpoint operation”: we do count every “nose”. As its happening, Israeli defence and intelligence services are working out the actual identities of everyone we target and kill in Gaza.

And where on earth does the word “shwack” come from? Is it possibly spelt “schwack”?

Full transcript:

Q: Admiral, when you said in response to Nancy’s question with numbers, that hundreds of — we know that hundreds of ISIL fighters have been killed, can you be more specific on that number? And also, can you give us any idea of civilians killed in the airstrike campaign?

KIRBY: I cannot give you a more specific number of — of how many ISIL fighters. We just know it’s hundreds: several hundred. It’s not —

I’d like to make two points. First of all, we don’t have the ability to — to count every nose that we shwack [sic]. Number two, that’s not the goal. That’s not the goal. The less of these guys that are out there, certainly that’s the better, but the goal is to degrade and destroy their capabilities.

And we’re not getting into an issue of body counts. And that’s why I don’t have that number handy. I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t have asked my staff to give me that number before I came out here. It’s simply not a relevant figure.

On civilian casualties, what I know is that CENTCOM, Central Command, is investigating several, what they believe to be credible allegations of possible civilian casualties. I don’t know all the details of that. I would point you to Central Command. I know that they are actively investigating what they believe to be at least a few incidents of civilian causalities that they think, you know, warrant further investigation, that they have found credible to investigate. On their own, they’ve done this. But again, I’d point you to Central Command for more detail on that.

And if I could just editorialize a second, I mean, this is something we always take seriously. We are very mindful of trying to mitigate the risk to civilians every time we operate, everywhere we operate. And so when we do believe that we’ve had occasion to cause collateral damage or hurt, kill civilians, we take it seriously and we look into it. It matters to us.

H/t to the No Agenda podcast and you can hear John and Adam discussing this issue here.

5 thoughts on “It’s A Hell Of A Pinpoint Nose Shwacking Operation”

  1. Oh, for the Love of Life Orchestra. There are times when one can’t help but be utterly disgusted at the entire rest of the world, including my dear United States of Hypocrisy.

  2. I’m surprised ISIS can’t release photos of the bloody shwacked noses and other body parts. That would encourage them to start counting.

  3. Shwacking noses is much more serious than shnocking noses. It is time for the dear Admiral to call for using the appropriate means when attacking ISIL positions.

  4. Hard Little Machine

    Give more precise coordinates to Hamas, of the location of the US embassy. We’re tired of rockets hitting anywhere else.

  5. If the Americans think they can stop rocket fire from Gaza with less Civilian casualties, we should welcome them. Invite a US fleet to Gaza’s coast and let them show us how its done. I’d invite the Egyptian army to try the same, but even I fear for the Palestinians if that happens.

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