@CB

that this bomb killed innocent children on their way to school. The Pentagon works diligently and tirelessly to ensure the bombs, missiles and airplanes they sell to Saudi Arabia are to be used strictly for the honorable humanitarian purpose of promoting peace and stability in this region.

A full investigation will be done by the Pentagon before the end of the year to find out how this unfortunate mistake occurred.

In the meantime, Washington has authorized the shipment of 40 brand new Mickey Mouse school backpacks

plus a shiny yellow school bus for the start of the new school year in September to replace the damaged ones.

More news: Employees at Lockheed Martin have come together and will donate pencil coloring sets plus a unbreakable water bottle to go with the 40 back packs.

This outpouring of kindness is what makes America the greatest force for good in the world.

@Big Al @Big Al
gorilla in the region that pulls the Empire's strings.

Edit: Upon rereading your post I see you hadn't forgotten the 800-pound gorilla.

corporate media and some in the democratic party. It's much more than just selling bombs to Saudi Arabia. The war in Yemen is actually a proxy war, just like the war in Syria is and has been a proxy war for western imperialists and Israel. In Syria the U.S. is using Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other mercenaries to do it's damage whereas in Yemen it's Saudi Arabia and company. I think the narrative that the U.S. is simply supplying weapons is meant to obfuscate that fact. The war and genocide in Yemen is happening primarily because of the U.S. imperialist agenda.

human life so cheap, especially the lives of little children.

The $2082.50 is just the base price. The average price for a complete PGM (precision-guided munition) is about $65,000.

Saudi Arabia may have used guided bomb on Yemeni school bus
The 500-pound US-made bomb fitted with a guidance kit is a very accurate weapon and this is not the first time a civilian target has been hit

The Saudi Coalition dropped a 500-pound MK-82 bomb on a Yemeni school bus, killing 54 and wounding scores of others, mostly children.

The MK-82 is an old “free fall” bomb that today is often sold with upgrade kits, making it a precision-guided munition (PGM) and thus much more accurate.

If the bomb was the old-fashioned version, hitting a civilian target could be plausibly called an accident, but a guided bomb would have given the Saudis the ability to target even a moving bus. Markings recovered at the site strongly suggest that a PGM kit was part of the bomb assembly.

In 2015 Saudi Arabia ordered 20,000 PGMs from the United States, spending nearly $1.3 billion. In the 500-pound bomb category, the order included:

• 4,020 GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs
• 8,020 MK-82 bombs, also designated BLU-111

...

@snoopydawg

Hard pass on American "freedom" pic.twitter.com/X9PaLi7bvq

—Christopher Oldcorn(@chrisoldcorn) August 18, 2018

COmment from Common Dreams:

A total of 51 people were killed in the attack, and 79 were wounded.”

It’s amazing the things you can find out from wiki-pedia. The price of an MK-82 bomb is $2082.50. So the next time someone asks, “what’s the value of a human life,” you can do the math and say, “$40.83”. On the other hand, it seems like such a small price compared to all the other military equipment we read about, and accountants at Lockheedless Martin probably have more sophisticated formulas to determine how many of these bombs have to be produced (and sold to authoritarian governments) to make production worth their trouble.